when placed on the creature, it often proves a fource of forrow, because it is too often treated with ingratitude and neglect. The lover in giving his heart, gives his all; and, if after so great a facrifice, he cannot obtain the fond return he coveted, what can be expected but that he should ficken with grief, and fink under an oppreffive load of melancholy? But though our fellow worms fhould reject our love with difdain, yet it is always-Q! adorable goodness! it is always acceptable to God. Amidst the adorations of millions of glorious angels, he graciously obferves the attentions we pay him, and receives with -complacency our smallest tribute of affection. He knows that the fouls which he has made cannot be happy until they return to him. Unceasingly he calls

to them

"SEEK ye my face." And if, convinced by a thoufand difappointments,

of

of the vanity of all other loves, we fhould at length, happily take up our refolution and fay, "Thy face, O God, we will feek." Immediately his preventing love meets us more than half way; the harps of Heaven fwell with louder ftrains of joy, and fongs of congratulation fill the eternal regions.

DIVINE love infinitely exceeds in point of true happiness, all other attachments, because, it does not, like them, expose us to the pangs of feparation. If that sweet paffion, which, with chains dearer than those of gold, unites earthly lovers, were never to be diffolved, it would be well: But, alas! this is a felicity which Heaven has not thought fit to confer on erring mortals. The iron hand of neceffity or duty often tears us away from our dearest friends, and configns us to wearifome months of mutual fears and restless longings for re-union. Sometimes, in the happiest

moments

moments of friendship, the thought of death occurs and throws a fudden damp on our rifing joys. Sometimes it is our lot to fit by the fick beds of those we love, and hear their piercing moans, to mark, with unutterable anguish, the faultering fpeech and finking eye, or wipe the cold damps of death from those cheeks which we have kiffed a thoufand times. Such fcenes and feparations, and all mortal loves are liable to fuch, occafion a grief not to be equalled by all the misfortunes of life, and make us dearly pay for all the past pleasures of friendship.

IN these melancholy moments we are made to feel how truly bleffed are they who have made the eternal God their love, nothing can ever feparate them from him. When the fairest of the human fair are gone down into the duft, and have left their lovers to mourning and woe. Nay, when after millions

of revolving years, the fun is extinguished in the skies, and the lamps of heaven have loft their golden flames; when old time himself is worn away, and nature funk under the weight of years; even then the God Jehovah will be the fame, and his days fhall never fail. Even then fhall his triumphant lovers behold his glorious face cloathed in eternal beauty, and fhall drink of the rivers of pleasure that flow at his right-hand forevermore. Neither will the lovers of God ever experience, even in this world, the pangs of feparation from him, while they walk firmly in the golden path of duty. Should they be driven from their homes, and obliged to forfake their dearest friends ; fhould they be compelled to plough diftant feas, or to toil in the remotest regions of the earth; even there they will fweetly feel that

They cannot go where univerfal love reigns not

"around."

THOMPSON.

Even there they meet and rejoice in their ever present friend; with facred pleafure they inhale his breath in the fragrant gale, they mark his pencil adorning the fields and meadows in their flowery pride; or with fublimeft awe, they behold his hand fwelling the everlafting mountains, or,

"Hanging the vast expanfe in azure bright, and cle: the ing the fun in gold."

YOUNG.

HENCE it is, that the man who loves God is feldom lonefome, feldom knows. what it is to want agreeable company. A great addition this to our happiness ! For as man is by nature a focial being, he must be miferable unless he has fome beloved friend to converse with. But, as those who do not love God, take little or no delight in converfing with him, they become more dependent on the company and converfation of their earthly friends. And, when destitute

of