A Treatise on Spiritual Comfort

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1814 Excerpt: ... every grace, and the diligent performance of every duty, to grow up into Christ in all things: and he may wairantably hope that, in proportion as he is enabled to do so, the end, or ends of his mental trouble, will be gained upon him. CHAPTER VII. OF THE MEANS WHICH, DISCONSOLATE BELIEVERS SHOULD EMPLOY, IN ORDER TO RECOVER THEIR SPIRITUAL COMFORT. Q Opiritual consolation is a commodity of heaven, not to be imported, but from that distant and better country. It is God only, the God of all comfort, to whom infinite mercy and power belong, who can impart holy consolation to the sorrowtul heart, or pour the balm of peace into the wounded spirit. It is only the adorable Spirit the Comforter, who, like Noah's dove, can fly with the olive-leaf of peace, to assure the troubled soul, that the winter is past, and that the rain is over and gone. When a holy man is walking in darkness, the day of comfort will not dawn, nor the shadows flee away, till the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings: and he can no more command at his pleasure, the rising of the spiritual Sun, within, than he. can, that of the natural sun, without. All that he can do is, in the strength of the grace which is in Christ Jesus, . to use meatis of recovering comfort, or, like the! mariners in the ship with Paul, to cast anchor, and wish for the day. The means which he ought to employ for that purpose, must be means of Divine appointment, especially the following: 1. He ought, in humble reliance on the grace of Christ, to search out, and confess to his heavenly Father, those iniquities, which have proVoked Him to hide his face from him. He must without delay resolve, as the Israelitish Church in captivity did, to search and try his ways, and to turn again to the Lord; until the...