SACRED PATHS.

MEDITATION I.

"Christ formed within us."

TRUE religion is an union of the soul with God, a participation of the divine nature, the image of God drawn upon the soul; or as in the language of the apostle, it is Christ formed in the soul the hope of glory.

The love, which the true Christian bears to God and goodness, is prompted by the instructions of a new nature; his religious exercises are the proper emanations of a divine life, the natural employments of the new-born soul. What our Saviour said of himself is in some degree applicable to his true followers It is their meat and their drink to do their Father's will.

As the natural appetite requires food,

though we should not reflect on the necessity

of it for the sustenance of life. so is the Christian carried by a natural propensity to that which is good and virtuous.

Such a life is truly termed divine, not only in regard to its fountain and original, having God for its author, and being wrought in the souls of men by the power of the Holy Spirit.

But also in regard to its nature, religion being a resemblance of the divine perfections, the image of the Almighty shining in the soul of man, it is a real participation of his nature, a beam of the eternal light, a drop of the eternal ocean of goodness; and they who are endowed with it may be said to have God dwelling in their souls, and Christ formed within them.

MEDITATION II.

"And your life is hid with Christ in God."

As the animal life consisteth in that narrow and confined love which terminates on a man's self, and in his progress towards those things that are pleasing to nature; so the divine life stands in a universal affection, and in control of our natural passions; thus they may never be able to betray us into those things which we know to be sinful.

man.

Faith being the root of the divine life, its chief branches are love to God, charity to Faith has the same place in the divine life that sense has in the natural; being indeed nothing else but a kind of sense or feeling, persuasion of spiritual things, extending itself into all divine truth.

The love of God is that affectionate sense of the divine perfections which makes the soul resign and sacrifice itself wholly unto him, desiring above all things to please him, and delighted in nothing so much as in fellowship and communion with him, and being

ready to suffer anything for his sake, or at his pleasure. This affection may have its first rise from the favors and mercies of God towards us, but in its growth and progress it will transcend such particular considerations, and establish itself on his infinite goodness, manifested in all the works of creation and providence.

A soul thus in possession of divine love, must necessarily be enlarged towards all mankind, in a sincere and unbounded affection, because of the relation they have to God, being his creatures, and bearing in some degree his image.

This is that charity under which all the parts of justice, and all the duties we owe to our neighbor, are eminently comprehended. For he who truly loves the whole world, will be as truly concerned in the interests of every one, and will resent any evil that befals another, as having happened to himself.

MEEITATION III.

"Every man that hath this hope purifieth himself," &c.

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He is duly abstracted from the body, having control of the inferior appetites, or such a temper and disposition of mind, as makes a man despise and abstain from all pleasures and delights of sense or fancy, which are in themselves sinful, or which tend to extinguish or lessen our relish of more divine or intellectual pleasures.

These are the highest perfections that man is capable of; the very foundation of heaven laid in the soul; and whoever has attained them, need not pry into the hidden rolls of God's decrees, or search the volumes of heaven to know what is determined about his everlasting condition; but he may find a copy of God's thoughts concerning him written in his own breast.

His love to God will give him assurance of God's favor to him; and those beginnings of happiness, which he feels in the conformity of the powers of his soul to the nature of