to have that which the providence of God has denied you.  “The silver and the gold is mine, saith the Lord;” and it cannot be without a special purpose, relating to the peculiar discipline requisite for such characters, that this silver and gold is so often withheld from those who would make the best and kindest use of it.  Murmur not, then, when this hard trial comes upon you, when you see want and sorrow which you cannot in justice to others relieve; and when you see thousands, at the very moment you experience this generous suffering, expended on entirely selfish, perhaps sinful gratifications, neither be tempted to murmur or to act unjustly.  “Is it not the Lord;” has not he in his infinite love and infinite wisdom appointed this very trial for you?  Bow your head and heart in submission, and dare not to seek an escape from it by one step out of the path of duty.  It may be that close examination, a searching of the stores of memory, will bring even this trial under the almost invariable head of needful chastisement; it may be that it is the consequence of some former act of self-indulgence and extravagance, which would have been forgotten, or not deeply enough repented of, unless your sin had in this way been brought to remembrance.  Thus even this trial assumes the invariable character of all God’s chastisements:  it is the inevitable consequence of sin,—­as inevitable as the relation of cause and effect.  It results from no special interposition of Providence, but is the natural result of those decrees upon which the whole system of the world is founded; secondarily, however, overruled to work together for good to the penitent sinner, by impressing more deeply on his mind the humbling remembrance of past sin, and leading to a more watchful future avoidance of the same.

It is indeed probable, that without many trials of this peculiarly painful kind, the duty of economy could not be deeply enough impressed on a naturally generous and warm heart.  The restraints of prudence would be unheeded, unless bitter experience, as it were, burned them in.

I have spoken of two necessary preparations for the practice of economy,—­the first, a clear general view of our probable expenses; the second, which I am now about to notice, is the calculation of the probable funds that are to meet these expenses.  In your case, there is a certain income, with sundry contingencies, very much varying, and altogether uncertain.  Such probabilities, then, as the latter, ought to be appropriated to such expenses as are occasional and not inevitable:  you must never calculate on them for any of your necessary expenditure, except in the same average manner as you have calculated that expenditure; and you must estimate the average considerably within probabilities, or you will be often thrown into discomfort.  It is much better that all indulgences of mere taste, of entirely personal gratification, should be dependent on this uncertain fund; and here