There is nothing more important to the believer's faith, than to apprehend that there is no uncertainty, nothing imperfect or weak in the dispensations of God, as they respect the final issue of the Christian's trials. Either God is wholly absent and forgetful of his daily wants, or else he is wholly and for ever at work on his behalf. If he were wholly absent, well might his servants doubt that, after all their endeavours to that end, they should be able to turn to good all the events of this mortal life. If _he_ do not temper the trials of his servants, how in truth shall they overcome them? If _he_ do not controul their enemies, how shall they ever escape them? Figure to yourself any place, or time, or circumstance, where God is not, or where he _can_ be spared from the concerns of his people, either temporal or spiritual: but, if none can be imagined or assigned, then is it but justly and essentially true, that, by his especial order and his immediate appointment, "all things work together for good to them that love God." III. But we may proceed, lastly, to show, in a practical manner, _some of those very things_ which shall thus work together for good. Take the most unpromising and most unfavourable case, for instance, that of _great prosperity_. None will deny it to be a case of many others the most trying to the graces of the true Christian. Yet even shall the temptations arising from worldly honours and successes, to a man armed with the love of God, work together for good. Graces rarely exercised in exalted stations, shall be found to shine the more conspicuously in his instance. The grace of humility, and tenderness of spirit, shall be the more eminently illustrated in that station, where, too often, there is only pride and hardness of heart. If he be found, in a sober, self-denying spirit, setting little value on those things so commonly called good amongst mankind--using this world without abusing it--shall not the grace of God be more abundantly magnified? When not overcome, as Agar feared he might be, saying, "lest I be full, and say, who is the Lord?"--but rather, when led by fulness to more gratitude, and by a lofty station to deeper humility, and to a more lowly submission to God, and meekness to man--how will he by such prosperity as this testify to the reality of Christian principles: how will he, in giving freely where he has freely received, esteeming even his highest gains as loss for Christ's sake, and returning upon others all that mercy which has been exercised towards himself, prove that _he_ has not received the grace of God in vain; but that even prosperity has "worked together for good to them that love God."