fering Jesus I can now discover more beauty and loveliness in pious rags, then I could ever find in all the glittering follies of the proud. O ye blessed, ye retired hours! why fly ye so swift away? Why so hasty to be gone? Are ye then, like other pleasures, short and transient? O that ye were eternal, that I might have my fill of quietness, and be perpetually thus sequestered from the vain converse of busy men ! But since these happy hours, and my life itself is so very short, I will make the best of it, and employ it all in the pleasures of thinking and doing well.

O my Lord! what need was there that thou shouldest command me to enter into my closet? The delights

which attend the enjoyment of thee, my God, in private, and the contemplations of thy beauty, are surely inviting enough to oblige me not only to enter into my closet, but to stay me there fixed and unmoved, and wholly taken up with thy glories. O ye mighty men, ye rich, ye honourable, ye worldings! all come hither and taste but one hour's enjoyment of a solitary communion with the Almighty, and you will soon forsake your glories, your titles, and all your earthly interests, and quickly be enamoured with the lives of the retired saints, who have wisely left the chase after riches and pleasures here, to pursue immortal crowns of glory ready for them at the end of their short and happy race!

Consider, O my soul! thy dear Redeemer in his forty days' retirement in the wilderness: He was tempted, indeed, but he overcame, and how glorious was the triumph! the angels came and ministered unto him. It was a great appearance:

but he that forsakes the conversation of the world, is a companion only fit for angels, whose time is, like his, employed in the contemplation of their great Creator. Think upon thy Saviour, O my soul! when he went up into a mountain by himself to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God. Here was my Lord in solitude: He chose the private recesses of a mountain to offer up his prayer to his Father, that heareth in secret. What sacred gusts of a

high devotion inspired his heavenly soul in his retirement, where, secure from the officious crowd of admirers, and the disturbing world, he could more freely enjoy the blessed presence of the Deity, and an uninterrupted converse with his Father and the blessed Spirit ?

What lively and sensible enjoyments of God's presence, 0 my soul! have blessed the solitudes of retired saints! Thus devout and heavenly Daniel; thus fervent Peter; thus John, the beloved disciple of my Lord; thus all the inspired prophets, apostles, and blessed saints and hermits, were taken up with visions of glory, and scenes of their future happiness, even before they put on immortality.

How delightful and ardent were the raptures! How blessed, how comfortable, were the communications of God, which entertained their heavenly souls in their private meditations, and retired prayers! How distant were they from the Spirit of the world, whilst they neglected and despised the grandeur of it, to meditate and converse with their God in private ! But their labour was not loss; for no sooner had they abandoned the world, but God requited them with foretastes of the joys above, and sent them an earnest of those unutterable glories which they now enjoy. O great reward of solitude! may I be ever thus secluded from the world, and pretended happiness of it, so I might enjoy a close