The Mystery of Providence

Oh, what a distinction has divine mercy made where nature made none. Consider, ungrateful man, you might have fallen into some of those regions where a tainted air frequently cloys the jaws of death, where the inhabitants differ very little from the beasts in the manner of their living. But God has provided for you, and given the poorest among us far better accommodations of life than the greatest among them are ordinarily provided with. Oh, what providence has done for you! But all that I have said is very inconsiderable in comparison with the spiritual mercy and advantages you here enjoy for your souls. Oh, this is such an advantageous cast of providence for you as obliges you to a thankful acknowledgement of it to all eternity. For let us here make but a few suppositions in the case before us and the glory of providence will shine like a sunbeam full in your faces. Suppose it had been your lot to have fallen in any of those vast continents possessed by pagans and heathens at this day, who bow down to the stalk of a tree and worship the host of heaven. This is the case of millions and millions of millions, for pagan idolaters, as that searching scholar Beerwood informs us, do not only fill the circumference of 900 miles in Europe, but almost the one half of Africa, more than the half of Asia, and almost the whole of America. Oh, how deplorable had your case been if a pagan idolatress had brought you forth and idolatry had been sucked in with your mother's milk. Then, in all probability, you had been at this day worshiping devils and racing at full speed in the direct road to damnation. For these are the people of God's wrath. Pour out thy fury upon the heathen that know thee not, and upon the families that call not upon thy name. Jeremiah 10.25 How dreadful is that imprecation against them, which takes hold of them and all that is theirs. Confounded be all they that serve graven images, that boast themselves of idols. Psalms 97.7 Or suppose your lot had fallen among Mohammedans, who, next to pagans, spread over the greatest tract of the earth. For though Arabia bred that unclean bird, yet that cage could not long contain him. For not only the Arabians, but the Persians, Turks, and Tartars do all bow down their backs under that grand imposter. This poison has dispersed itself through the veins of Asia, over a great part of Africa, even the circumference of 7,000 miles, and does not stop there, but has tainted a considerable part of Europe also. Had your lot fallen here, oh what unhappy men and women you had been, notwithstanding the natural amenity and pleasantness of your native soil. You had then adored a grand imposter, and died in a fool's paradise. Instead of God's living oracles, you had been, as they are now, deceived to your eternal ruin, with such fond, mad, and wild dreams, as who so considers would think the authors had more need of manacles and fetters than arguments or sober answers. Or if neither of these had been your lot, suppose you had been emptied by the womb of nature into this little spot of the earth, which is Christianized by profession, but nevertheless, for the most part, overrun by popish idolatry and anti-Christian delusions. What unhappy men and women had you been, had you sucked a popish breast, for his people are to be the subjects of the vials of God's wrath, to be poured out successively upon them. Revelation 16 And the scriptures in round and plain language tell us what their fate must be. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned, who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. 2 Thessalonians 2, verses 11 and 12 Nay, you might have fallen into the same land in which your habitation now is, and yet have had no advantage by it as to salvation, if he that chose the bounds of your habitation had not also graciously determined the times for you. Acts 17.26 Suppose your lot had fallen where it is, during the pagan state of England, where for many hundred years were gross and vile idolaters. Thick darkness overspread the people of this island, and as in other countries the devil was worshipped, and his lying oracles zealously believed. The shaking of the top of Jupiter's oak in Dodona, the cauldron smitten with the rod in the hand of Jupiter's image, the laurel and fountain in Daphne, these were the ordinances on which the poor deluded wretches waited. So in this nation they worshipped idols also. The sun and moon were adored for gods, together with many abominable idols which our ancestors worshipped, and whose memorials are not to this day quite obliterated among us. Or suppose our lot had fallen in those later miserable days in which Queen Mary sent so many hundreds to heaven in a fiery chariot, when the poor Protestants skulked up and down in holes and woods to preserve themselves from popish inquisitors who, like bloodhounds, hunted up and down through all the cities, towns, and villages of the nation to seek out the poor sheep of Christ for a prey. But such has been the special care of Providence towards us that our turn to be brought upon the stage of this world was graciously reserved for better days, so that if we had had our own option we could not have chosen for ourselves as Providence has done. We are not only furnished with the best room in this great house, but before we were put into it it was swept with the broom of national reformation from idolatry, yea, and washed by the blood of martyrs from popish filthiness, and adorned with gospel lights, shining in as great luster in our days as ever they did since the apostles' days. You might have been born in England for many ages and not have found a Christian in it, yea, and since Christianity was here owned and not have met a Protestant in it. Oh, what an obligation has Providence laid you under by such a merciful performance as this for you. If you say, all this indeed is true, but what is this to eternal salvation? Do not multitudes that enjoy these privileges eternally perish notwithstanding them? Yea, and perish with an aggravation of sin and misery beyond all sinners? True, they do so, and it is very sad that it should be so. But yet we cannot deny this to be a very choice and singular mercy to be born in such a land and at such a time. For let us consider what helps for salvation men here enjoy, beyond what they could enjoy had their lot fallen according to the aforementioned suppositions. Here we enjoy the ordinary means of salvation, which elsewhere men are denied and cut off from, so that if any among the heathen are saved and brought to Christ, it must be in some miraculous or extraordinary way. For how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? Alas, were there a desire awakened in any of their hearts after a gospel discovery of salvation, which ordinarily is not nor can be rationally supposed, yet poor creatures, they might travel from sea to sea to hear the word and not find it, whereas you can hardly miss the opportunities of hearing the gospel. Sermons meet you frequently, so that you can scarcely shun or avoid the ordinances and instruments of your salvation. And is this nothing? Christ even forces Himself upon us. Here in this age of the world, the common prejudices against Christianity are removed by the advantage it has of a public profession among the people and protection by the laws of the country. Whereas were your habitation among Jews, Mohammedans or heathen idolaters, you would find Christ and Christianity the common odium of the country, everyone defying and deriding both name and thing, and such yourselves likely had been if your birth and education had been among them. For you may observe that whatever is traditionally delivered down from father to son, everyone is fond of and zealous in its defense. The Jews, heathens, and Mohammedans are at this day so tenacious of their errors that, with spitting, hissing, and clapping of hands, and all other signs of indignation and abhorrence, they chase away all others from among them. Is it not then a special mercy to you to be cast into such a country and age where, as a learned divine observes, the true religion has the same advantages over every false one as in other countries they have over it? Here you have the presence of precious means and the absence of soul-destroying prejudices, too, signal mercies. Here in this age of the world, Christianity confronts you as soon as you are capable of any sense or impressions of religion upon you, and so, by unhappy anticipation, blocks up the passages by which a false religion would else certainly enter. Here you suck in the first notions and principles of Christianity, even with the mother's milk, and certainly such a prepossession is a choice advantage. For many a day the pot will keep the scent of that which first it held when freshly baked. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22.6 Here you have, or may have, the help and assistance of Christians to direct your way, resolve your doubts, support your burdens, and help you through those difficulties that attend the new birth. Alas, if a poor soul had any beginnings or faint workings and stirrings after Christ and true religion in many other countries, the hand of every man would presently be against him. None would be found to relieve, assist, or encourage, as you may see in that example of Galacius. The nearest relations would, in that case, prove their greatest enemies. The country would quickly hoot at him as a monster and cry, Away with the heretic to the prison or stake! Whether these eventually prove blessings to your souls or not, certain I am that in themselves they are singular mercies and help to salvation that are denied to millions besides you. So that if Plato, when he was near his death, could bless God for three things, that is, that he was a man and not a beast, that he was born in Greece, and that he was brought up in the time of Socrates, much more cause have you to admire providence that you are men and not beasts, that you were born in England and that you are brought up in gospel days. This is a land the Lord has aspired for you, as the expression is, Ezekiel, chapter 20, verse 6, and concerning it you have abundant cause to say, as in another case the psalmist does, the lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places, yea, I have a goodly heritage, chapter 16, verse 6. Another performance of providence which must be carefully noticed and weighed is the designation of the stock and family out of which we should spring and rise, and truly this is of special consideration, both as to our temporal and eternal good. For whether the families in which we grew up were great or small in Israel, whether our parents were of the higher or lower class and rank among men, yet if they were such as feared God and wrought righteousness, if they took any care to educate you religiously and train you up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, you are bound to reckon it among your chief mercies that you sprang from the loins of such parents, for from this spring a double stream of mercy rises to you. First, temporal and external mercies to your outward man. You cannot but know that as godliness entails a blessing, so wickedness and unrighteousness accurs upon posterity. An instance of the former you have in Genesis 17, verses 18-20. On the contrary, you have the threatening, Zechariah 5, verse 4, and both together in this passage. The curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked, but he blesseth the habitation of the just, Proverbs 3, 33. True it is that both these imply the children's treading in the steps of their parents, Ezekiel 18, but how frequently is it seen that wicked men breed their children vainly and wickedly, so that, as it is said of Abijan, and he walked in all the sins of his father, which he had done before him, 1 Kings 15, 3, and so the curse is entailed from generation to generation. To escape this curse is a choice providence. But especially take notice what a stream of spiritual blessings and mercies flows from this providence to the inner man. Oh, it is no common mercy to descend from pious parents. Some of us do not only owe our natural life to them as instruments of our beings, but our spiritual and eternal life also. It was no small mercy to Timothy to be descended from such progenitors, 2 Timothy 1, 5, nor to Augustine that he had such a mother as Monica, who planted in his mind the precepts of life with her words, watered them with her tears, and nourished them with her example. We will a little more particularly inspect this mercy, and in so doing we shall find manifold mercies contained in it. What a mercy was it to us to have parents that prayed for us before they had us, as well as in our infancy when we could not pray for ourselves. Thus did Abraham, Genesis 15, 2, and Hannah, 1 Samuel 1, verses 10 and 11. And probably some here are the fruits and returns of their parents' prayers. This was that holy course they continued all their days for you, carrying all your concerns, especially your eternal ones, before the Lord with their own, and pouring out their souls to God so affectionately for you when their eye strings and heart strings were breaking. Oh, put a value upon such mercy, for they are precious. It is a greater mercy to descend from praying parents than from the loins of nobles. See Job's pious practice, chapter 1, verse 5. What a special mercy was it to us to have the outgrowth of corruption nipped in the bud by their pious and careful discipline. We now understand what a critical and dangerous season youth is, the wonderful proclivity of that age to everything that is evil. Why else are they called youthful lusts, 2 Timothy 2.22? When David asks, Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? It is plain enough implied in the very question that the way he takes lies through the pollutions of the world in his youth, Psalm 119, verse 9. When you find a David praying that God would not remember the sins of my youth, Psalm 25.7, and a Job bitterly complaining that God made me to possess the iniquities of my youth, chapter 13, verse 26, surely you cannot but reflect with a very thankful heart upon those happy means by which the corruption of your nature was happily prevented or restrained in your youth. And how great a mercy was it that we had parents who carefully instilled the good knowledge of God into our souls in our tender years. How diligent was Abraham in this duty, Genesis 18.19, and David, 1 Chronicles 28.9. We have, some of us, had parents who might say to us as the Apostle, My little children, of whom I travail in birth again, until Christ be formed in you, Galatians 4.19. As they longed for us before they had us, and rejoiced in us when they had us, so they could not endure to think that when they could have us no more, the devil should. As they thought no pains, care, or cost too much for our bodies to feed them, clothe, and heal them, so they think no prayers, counsels, or tears too much for our souls that they might be saved. They knew a parting time would come between them and us, and did strive to make it as easy and comfortable to them as they could by leaving us in Christ and within the blessed bond of His covenant. They were not glad that we had health, and indifferent whether we had grace. They felt the miseries of our souls as much as of our bodies, and nothing was more desirable to them than that they might say in that great day, Lord, here am I, and the children which thou hast given me. And was it not a special favor to us to have parents that went before us as patterns of holiness, and beat the path to heaven for us by their examples? They could say to us, Those things ye have heard and seen in me, do. Philippians 4.9 And be ye followers of me, as also I am of Christ. 1 Corinthians 11.1 The parent's life is the child's copy. Oh, it is no common mercy to have a fair copy set before us, especially in the molding age. We saw what they did, as well as heard what they said. It was Abraham's commendation that he commanded his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord. And such mercies some of us have had also. Ah, my friends, let me beg you that you will take special notice of this providence, which so graciously wrought for you, and that your hearts may be more thoroughly warmed in the sense of it. Compare your condition with others, and seriously consider the following. How many children there are among us that are drawn headlong to hell by their cruel and ungodly parents, who teach them to curse and swear as soon as they can speak? Many families there are in which little other language is heard but what is the dialect of hell. These, like the old logs and small spray, are preparing for the fire of hell, where they must burn together. Of such children that scripture will one day be verified, except they repent. He shall go to the generation of his fathers. They shall never see light. Psalm 49 verse 19 And how many families there are, though not so profane, who yet breed up their children vainly and sensually, and take no care what becomes of their souls, if they can but provide for their bodies. Job 21 verse 11 If they can but teach them to carry their bodies, no matter if the devil actuate their souls. If they can but leave them lands or monies, they think they have very fully discharged their duties. Oh, what will the language be with which such parents and children shall greet each other at the judgment seat and in hell forever. And how many there are who are more sober and yet hate the least appearances of godliness in their children. Instead of cherishing, they do all that they can to break bruised reeds and quench smoking flats, to stifle and strangle the first appearances and offers they make towards Christ. They would rather accompany them to their graves than to Christ, doing all that in them lies, Herod-like, to kill Christ in the cradle. Ah, sirs, you little know what a mercy you enjoy or have enjoyed in godly parents, and what a good lot providence casts for you in this affair of your bodies and souls. If any shall say this was not their case, they had little help heavenward from their parents, to such I reply as follows. If you had little furtherance, yet own it as a special providence that you had no hindrance. Or if you had opposition, yet admire the grace of god in plucking you out by a wonderful distinguishing hand of mercy from among them and keeping alive the languishing sparks of grace amidst the floods of opposition. And learn from hence, if God gave you a posterity of your own, to be so much the more strict and careful of family duties by how much you have actually felt the want of it in yourselves. But seeing such a train of blessings, both as to this life and that to come, fall upon an holy education of children, I will not dismiss the point till I have discharged my duty in exhorting parents and children to their duties. And first for you that are parents or to whom the education of children is committed, I beseech you, mind the duty which lies on you, that I may effectually press it. Consider how near the relation is between you and your children, and therefore how much you are concerned in their happiness or misery. Consider but the scripture account of the dearness of such relations, expressed by longings for them, by our joy when we have them, as Christ expresses it, the high value set on them, the sympathy with them in all their troubles, and by our sorrow at parting, Genesis 37 verse 35, Consider how God has charged you with their souls as well as bodies, and this appears by precepts directly laid upon you, Deuteronomy 6 verses 6 and 7, and Ephesians chapter 6 verse 4, and by precepts laid on them to obey you, Ephesians 6 verse 1, which plainly implies your duty as well as expresses theirs. What shall comfort you at the parting time if they die through your neglect in a Christless condition? Oh, this is the cutting consideration. My child is in hell and I did nothing to prevent it. I helped him there. Duty discharged is the only route of comfort in that day. If you neglect to instruct them in the way of holiness, will the devil neglect to instruct them in the way of wickedness? No, no. If you will not teach them to pray, he will teach them to curse, swear, and lie. If ground be uncultivated, weeds will spring up. If the season of their youth is neglected, how little probability is there of any good fruit afterwards. Youth is the molding age, Proverbs 22, 6, how few are converted in old age. A twig is brought to any form, but grown limbs will not bend. You are instrumental causes of all their spiritual misery and that by generation and imitation. They lie spiritually dead of the plague which you brought home among them. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Psalm 51, 5 There is none in the world so likely as you to be instruments of their eternal good. You have peculiar advantages that no one else has, such as the interest you have in their affections, your opportunities to instill the knowledge of Christ into them, being daily with them, Deuteronomy 6, 7, your knowledge of their character. If therefore you neglect, who shall help them? Again, the consideration of the great day should move your bowels of pity for them. O remember that text, And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God. Revelation 20, verse 12 What a sad thing will it be to see your dear children at Christ's left hand. O friends, do your utmost to prevent this misery. Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. And you children, especially you that sprang from religious parents, I beseech you, obey their counsels, and tread in the steps of their pious examples. To press this, I offer the following considerations. Your disobedience to them is a resisting of God's authority. Children, obey your parents in the Lord. Ephesians 6, 1 There is the command. Your rebellion therefore runs higher than you think. It is not man but God that you disobey, and for your disobedience God will punish you. It may be their tenderness will not suffer them, or you are grown beyond their correction. All they can do is to complain to God, and if so, he will handle you more severely than they could do. Your sin is greater than the sin of young heathens and infidels, and so will your account be also. O better if a wicked child that you had been the offspring of savage Indians, nay, of beasts, than of such parents. So many counsels disobeyed, hopes and prayers frustrated, will turn to sad aggravations. It is usual with God to retaliate men's disobedience to their parents in kind. Commonly our own children shall pay us home for it. I have read in a grave author of a wicked wretch that dragged his father along the house. The father begged him not to drag him beyond such a place, for, said he, I dragged my father no further. O the sad but just retributions of God! And for you in whose hearts grace has been planted by the blessing of education, I beseech you to admire God's goodness to you in this providence. O what a happy lot has God cast for you, how few children are partakers of your mercies. See that you honor your parents. The tie is double upon you so to do. Be you the joy of their hearts and comfort of their lives if they are alive. If not, yet still remember the mercy while you live and tread in their pious path. That you and they may both rejoice together in that great day and bless God for each other to all eternity. Chapter 3 The Work of Conversion In nothing does providence shine forth more gloriously in this world than in ordering the occasions, instruments, and means of conversion of the people of God. However skillfully its hand had molded your bodies, however tenderly it had preserved them, and however bountifully it had provided for them, if it had not also ordered some means or other for your conversion, all the former favors and benefits it had done for you had meant little. This, O this, is the most excellent benefit you ever received from its hand. You are more indebted to it, for this, than for all your other mercies. And in explaining this performance of providence, I cannot but think your hearts must be deeply affected. This is a subject which every gracious heart loves to steep its thoughts in. It is certainly the sweetest history that ever they repeated. They love to think and talk of it. The places where, and instruments by whom this work was wrought, are exceedingly endeared to them for the work's sake, yea, endeared to that degree, that for many years after, their hearts have melted when they have but passed occasionally by those places, or but seen the faces of those persons that were used as instruments in the hand of providence for their good. As no doubt but Jacob's Bethel was ever after that night sweet to his thoughts, Genesis 48, 3, so other saints have had their Bethels as well as he. O blessed places, times, and instruments, O the deep, the sweet impressions never to be erased out of the memory or heart that this providence has made upon those on whom it wrought, this blessed effect at years of discretion, and in a more perceptible way. But lest any poor soul should be discouraged by the display of this providence because he cannot remember the time, place, instruments, and manner when, and by which conversion work was wrought, I will therefore premise this necessary distinction to prevent injury to some while I design benefit to others. Conversion, as to the subjects of it, may be considered two ways, either as it is more clearly wrought in persons of riper years, who in their youthful days were more profane and vile, or upon persons in their tender years, into whose hearts grace was more imperceptibly and indiscernibly instilled by God's blessing upon pious education. In the former sort, the distinct acts of the Spirit, illuminating, convincing, humbling, drawing them to Christ and sealing them are more evident and discernible. In the latter, these are more obscure and confused. They can remember that God gave them an esteem and liking of godly persons, care of duty and conscience of sin, but as to the time, place, instruments, and manner of the work, they can give but a slender account of them. However, if the work is savingly wrought in them, there is no reason they should be troubled because the circumstances of it are not so evident to them as they are to others. Let the substance and reality of the work appear, and there is no reason to afflict yourselves because of the lack of evidence of such circumstances. But where the circumstances as well as substance are clear to a man, when we can call to remembrance the time when, the place where, and the instrument by whom that work was wrought, it must needs be exceedingly sweet, and they cannot but yield a fresh delight to the soul every time they are reflected upon. There are many of the following occasions which, it may be, we took for stragglers when they first befell us, but they proved scouts sent out from the main body of providence which they make way for. Now there are various things in those providences that respect this work, which are exceedingly sweet, and taking as namely, the wonderful strangeness and undecountableness of this work of providence in casting us into the way and ordering the occasions, yea, the minutest circumstances about this work. Thus you find that the eunuch at that very instant when he was reading the prophet Isaiah, had an interpreter, one among a thousand, that joins his chariot just as his mind was by a fit occasion prepared to receive the first light of the knowledge of Christ. Acts 8 verses 26-30 And how strange was that change, however far it went, upon Naaman the Syrian, 2 Kings 5 verses 1-4, that the Syrians in their incursion should bring away this little girl. Likely her beauty was the inducement, but she must be presented to Naaman's wife and relate to her the power of God that accompanied the prophet. Though you find in that particular case there had never been an instance given before. Luke 4.27 Doubtless, the whole of this affair was guided by the signal direction of providence. So for the conversion of the Samaritans it is observed that Christ must needs go that way. John 4.4 It lay just in the road between Judea and Galilee, and at the sixth hour that is high noon, he rests himself upon Jacob's well, still seeming to have no other design but his own refreshment by sitting and drinking there. But oh what a train of blessed providences follow this which seemed but an accidental thing. First the woman of Samaria, and then many more in that city are brought to believe in Christ. Verses 29 and 41 It is noted by Melchior Adams in the life of Junius how much of an atheist he was in his younger years. But in order to bring about his conversion to God, first a wonderful preservation of his life in a public tumult at Lyons in France must take place. Which forces from him the acknowledgement of a deity. Then his father sends for him home and with much gentleness persuades him to read the scriptures. He lies upon the first of John, and with it he feels a divine supernatural majesty and power seizing his soul, which brought him over by a complete conversion to Jesus Christ. Thus as the woman of Tekoa told David, does God devise means to bring back his banished? 2 Samuel 14.14 The vatter tells us that many Spanish soldiers going into the wars of Germany were there converted to Christ by going into the cities and towns where godly ministers and Christians were. Robert Bolton, though an excellent scholar, yet in his younger years he was a very irreligious person and a jeer of holy men. But being cast into the company of godly Mr. Peacock was by him brought to repentance and proved a famous instrument in the church of Christ. A scrap of paper accidentally coming to view has been used as an occasion of conversion. This was the case of a minister in Wales who had two livings but took little care of either. Being at a fair he bought something at a peddler's stall and tore off a leaf of Mr. Perkins' catechism to wrap it in and reading a line or two in it God sent it home so as it did the work. The marriage of a godly man into a carnal family has been ordered by providence for the conversion and salvation of many therein. Thus we read in the life of that renowned English worthy John Bruin that in his second match it was agreed that he should have one year's diet in his mother-in-law's house. During his abode there that year the Lord was pleased by this means graciously to work upon her soul as also upon his wife sister and half-sister their brothers William and Thomas Fox with one or two of the servants in that family. The reading of a good book has been the means of bringing others to Christ and thus we find many of the German divines converted by reading Luther's books. Yea, and what is more strange Slavin in his commentary tells us that Virgius though he were an eye and ear witness to that doleful case of Spira which one would think should move a stone yet still continued so firm to the Pope's interest that when he fell into some suspicion among the cardinals he resolved to perch himself by writing a book against the German apostates but while he read the Protestant books out of no other design but to confuse them while he is weighing the arguments he is himself convicted and brought to Christ. He finding himself thus overcome by the truth imparts his conviction to his brother also a zealous papist. This brother deplores the misery of his case and seeks to reclaim him but Virgius in treating him to weigh well the Protestant arguments he also yields and so both immediately gave themselves to preaching justification by the free grace of God through the blood of Christ. Yea, not only the reading of a book or hearing of a minister but which is most remarkable the very mistake or forgetfulness of a minister has been improved by Providence for this end in purpose. Augustine once preaching to his congregation forgot the argument which first he proposed and attacked the error of the Manichees beside his first intention. By this discourse he converted one firmest his hearer who fell down at his feet weeping and confessing he had lived a Manchee many years. Another I knew who going to preach took up another Bible that he had designed in which not only missing his notes but the chapter also in which his text lay was put to some loss thereby. But after a short pause he resolved to speak on any other scripture that might be presented to him and accordingly read that text The Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some men count slackness. 2 Peter 3.9 And though he had nothing prepared for the Lord yet the Lord helped him to speak both methodically and pertinently from it. By which discourse a gracious change was wrought upon one in the congregation who has since given good evidence of a sound conversion and acknowledged this sermon to be the first and only means thereof. The accompanying of others in a neighborly civil visit has been overruled to the same end. Thus many of the Jews accompanied Mary unto Bethany designing only to manifest their civil respect. But there they met Christ saw the things which he did and believed on him. John 11.45 Sermon tells us of one who had lived many years in a town where Christ had been as clearly and as long preached as in any other town in England. This man when he was about 76 years of age went to visit a sick neighbor. A Christian friend of mine says my author came to see him also and finding this old man there whom he judged to be one that lived upon his own stocks, civility, good works, etc. He purposefully fell into that discourse to show how many persons lived upon their duties but never came to Christ. The old man sitting by the bedside heard him and God was pleased to convince him that he was such a person who had lived upon himself without Christ to that day and would say afterwards had I died before threescore and sixteen I had perished for I knew not Christ. The committing of a godly man to prison has been the method of providence to save the soul of a poor keeper. So Paul was made a prisoner to make his keeper a spiritual free man. Acts 16.27 The like success had Dr. Barnes in Queen Mary's days who afterwards celebrated the Lord's Supper in prison with his converted keeper. The scattering of ministers and Christians by persecution from cities and towns into the ignorant and barbarous parts of the country has been the way of providence to find out and bring home some lost sheep that were found there to Jesus Christ. Acts 8.1-4 The like signal event has since followed upon the like scattering of godly ministers of which there are many outstanding instances in this day. A servant running away from his master probably out of no other design but to live an idle life yet falling into such places and companies as providence ordered in a design to him unknown has thereby been brought to be the servant of Christ. This was the very case of Onesimus who ran away from his master Philemon to Rome whereby a strange providence possibly a mere curiosity to see the prisoners he there falls into Paul's hands who begat him to Christ in his bonds. Philemon verses 10-16 Going to hear a sermon in jest has proved some men's conversion in earnest. The above named Mr. Furman tells us of a notorious drunkard whom the drunkards called father that one day would needs go to hear what Wilson said out of no other design it seems but to scoff at that holy man but in the prayer before the sermon his heart began to thaw and when he read his text Sin no more lest a worse thing come unto thee John 5-14 he could not contain and in that sermon the Lord changed his heart though so bitter an enemy that the minister on lecture days was afraid to go to church before his shop door lo these are parts of his ways but how small a portion is known of him. The dropping of some grave and weighty word accidentally in the presence of vain carnal persons the death of a husband wife or child a fit of sickness with a thousand other such like occasions have been thus improved by providence to the conversion of souls and no less remarkable and wonderful are the designs of providence in ordering the removals and governing the movements of ministers from place to place for the conversion of souls thus often it carries them to places where they did not intend to go God having unknown to them some elect vessels there who must be called by the gospel thus Paul and Timothy a sweet and lovely pair when they were traveling through Phygeria and Galatia were forbidden to preach the word in Asia to which probably their minds inclined Acts 16 6 and when they assayed to go into Bithynia the spirit suffered them not verse 7 but a man of Macedonia that is an angel in the shape or habit of a man of that country appeared to Paul in a vision and prayed him saying come over into Macedonia and help us verse 9 and there did God open the heart of Lydia I knew a pious minister now with God who falling in his study upon a very rousing subject intended for his own congregation was strongly moved when he had finished it to go to a rude vile profane people about five miles off and first preach it to them after many wrestlings with himself not being willing to quench any motion that might be supposed to come from the spirit of God he obeyed and went to this people who had then no minister of their own and few durst come among them and there did the Lord beyond all expectation open a door and several profane ones received Christ in that place and engaged this minister to a weekly lecture among them in which many souls were one to God the same holy man at another time being upon a journey passed by a company of vain persons who were wrestling upon a green near the road just as he came near the place one of them had thrown his antagonist and stood up triumphing in his strength and activity this Reformation audio track is a production of Stillwater's revival books SWRB makes thousands of classic Reformation resources available free and for sale in audio video and printed formats our many free resources as well as our complete mail order catalog contain thousands of classic and contemporary Puritan and Reformed books tapes and videos at great discounts is on the web at www.swrb.com we can also be reached by email at swrb at swrb.com by phone at 780-450-3730 by fax at 780-466-7000 by mail at 4710-37A Edmonton Alberta Canada T6L 3T5