Let us next, according to our method proposed, proceed to show in what manner we are to reflect upon the performances of Providence for us. And certainly it is not every slight and transient glance, nor every cold, historical, unaffecting rehearsal, or recognition, of his providences towards you, that will pass with God for a discharge of this great duty. No: itis another manner of business than the most of men understand it to be. O that we were but acquainted with this heavenly, spiritual exercise! how sweet would it make our lives! how light would it make our burdens! Ah! sirs, you live estranged from the pleasure of the Christian life while you live in the ignorance or neglect of this duty. Now, to lead you up to this heavenly, sweet, and profitable exercise, I will beg your attention to the following directions:
First direction. Labour to get as full and thorough recognitions of the providences of God about you, from first to last, as you are able. O fill your hearts with the thoughts of him and his ways! If a single act of Providence be so ravishing and transporting, what would many such be, if they were presented together to the view of the soul? If one siar be so beautiful to behold, what is a constellation? Let your reflections, therefore, upon the acts and workings of Providence for you be full, extensively and intensively.
1. Let them be as extensively full as may be. Search backward into all the performances of Providence throughout your lives, for so did Asaph; “1 will remember the works of the Lord: surely I will remember thy wonders of old; I will meditate of all thy work, and talk of thy doings,” Psal. lxxvii. 11, 12. He laboured to recover and revive the ancient providences of God’s mercies many years past, and sucked a fresh sweetness out of them by new reviews of them. Ah! sirs, let me tell you, there is not such a pleasant history for you to read in all the world, as the history of your own lives, if you would but sit down and record to yourselves, from the beginning hitherto, what God hath been to you, and done for you; what signal manifestations and out-breakings of his mercy, faithfulness, and love, there have been in all the conditions you have passed through; if your hearts do not melt before you have gone half through that history, they are hard hearts indeed. “My Father, the guide of my youth.”
2. Let them be as intensively full as may be. Let not your thoughts swim like feathers upon the surface of the waters, but sink like lead to the bottom. The works of the Lord are great, sought out of them that have pleasure therein,” Psal. cxi. 2. Not that I think it feasible to sound the depth of Providence by our short line, for “Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known,” Psal. lxxvii, 19, but it is our duty to dive as far as we can, and to admire the depth, when we cannot touch the bottom. It is in viewing providences, as it was with Elijah’s servant, when he looked oul for rain, 1 Kings xviii. 44, he went out once, and viewed the heavens, and saw nothing; but the prophet bids him go again, and again, and look upon the face of heaven seven times; and when he had done so, what now, saith the prophet? «OQ now,” saith he, I see a cloud rising like a man’s hand; and then, keeping his eye upon it intent, he sees the whole face of heaven covered with clouds. So you may look upon some providences once and again, and see little or nothing in them; but look seven times, that is, meditate oflen upon them, and you shall see their increasing glory like that increasing cloud.
“There are divers things to be distinctly pondered and valued in one single providence, before you can judge the amount and worth of it. The seasonableness of mercy may give it a very great value; when it shall be timed so opportunely, and fall out so seasonably, as may make it a thousandfold more considerable to you than the same mercy would have been at another time. Thus, when our wants are suffered to grow to an extremity, and all visible hopes fail, then to have relief given in, wonderfully enhances the price of such a mercy, Isa. xli. 17, 18.
The peculiar care and kindness of Providence to us, is a consideration which exceedingly heightens the mercy in itself, and endears it to us. So when, in general calamities upon the world, we are exempted by the favour of Providence, covered under its wings; when God shall call to us in evil days, “Come, my people, enter thou into thy chamber,” Isa. xxvi. 19, 20, when such promises shall be fulfilled to us in times of want and famine, as in Psal, xxxiii. 18, 19, when others are abandoned and exposed to misery, who have every way as much, it may be much more visible security against it, and yet they delivered up, and we saved: oh, how endearing are such providences! Psal. ZCin7,8,.
The introductiveness of a providence is of special regard and consideration, and by no means to be neglected by us. There are leading providences which, how slight and trivial they may seem in themselves, yet, iu this respect, justly challenge the first rank among providential favours to us, because they usher in a multitude of other mercies, and draw a blessed train of Lappy consequences after them. Such a providence was that of Jes-se’s sending David with provisions to his brethren that lay encamped in the army, 1 Sam. xvii. 17. And thus every Christian may furnish himself out of his own stock of experience, if he will but reflect and consider the place where he is, the relations that he hath, and the way by which he was led into them. _