592 SIN. DISCOVERED $Y THE SPIRIT OP GOLD. forth, mark the instruction God gives by them, and pray more earnestly for the addition of such to the church as shall be saved. Again, Does God contend with any ofour families for the sins thereof ? If he removes the head of the family, it is fit for us to examine whether we have carried ourselves in all things suitably ? Has God taken away one that Was useful in a family i this is a time for enquiry and exa- mination: O that the whole house may receive a spiri- tual advantage by every stroke of providence, and espe- cially by this ! that they may have their thoughts called off from earth to heaven, and be ready to follow those that are gone from them ! that they may consider their faith and conversation, and be imitators and " followers of those who through faith and patience are now become inheritors of the promises !" It is a joyful thing to look upward to souls departed in the faith, because there is abundant hopes that they are encompassed with glory. Does God contend with any of us.personally ? Each is called to look to himself and seek for the cause of such personal trouble. 5. By his Spirit he chews us our sin ; this is the only effectual way. Providences themselves, though they speak ever so plain, are vain things unless the spirit ac- companies them : and the reasons of this are, 1. - Perhaps the sin for which we are afflicted lies very deep and secret in the soul, secret as Achan's wedge of gold that was hid underground, and so we cannot disco- ver it ; but the Spirit of God, that searches the deep things of God, searches the deep things of man too. Job, we may be satisfied, did not know why God con- tended with him, at the time when he prays " Shew me wherefore thou contendest with me." He had not that due sense of the awful sovereignty and majesty of God which he should have had, as appears in the beginning of the fortieth and forty-secondchapters. recause it is perhaps on account of some beloved in that we are loath to part with, if it lay open to our view, and therefore we are not willing to have it disco -_ vered ; but the spirit of God when he conies, as Nathan to David, " Thou art the man," strikes the conscience, brings gull', to the eye of the soul, and says this is the shy-
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