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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
of
our
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-second
chapters.
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-