believe that our infinitely rich partner, the living
God, will help us in our need, and we shall not only be in peace, but we
shall actually find that the help which we need will be granted to us.
Let not the consciousness of your entire unworthiness keep you, dear
reader, from believing what God has said concerning you. If you are
indeed a believer in the Lord Jesus, then this precious privilege, of
being in partnership with the Father and the Son, is yours, though you
and I are entirely unworthy of it. If the consciousness of our
unworthiness were to keep us from believing what God has said concerning
those who depend upon and trust in the Lord Jesus for salvation, then we
should find that there is not one single blessing, with which we have
been blessed in the Lord Jesus, from which, on account of our
unworthiness, we could derive any settled comfort or peace.

IV. There is one other point, which, in connection with several portions
of the word of God which bear on the subject, I desire to bring before
the believing reader, and it refers to the "scriptural way of overcoming
the difficulties with which the believer now meets who is engaged in a
business, trade, profession, or any earthly calling whatever, which
arise from competition in business, too great a number of persons being
occupied in the same calling, stagnation of trade, and the like." The
children of God, who are strangers and pilgrims on earth, have at all
times had difficulty in the world, for they are not _at_ home, but
_from_ home; nor should they, until the return of the Lord Jesus, expect
it to be otherwise with them. But whilst this is true, it is also true
that the Lord has provided us in all our difficulties with something in
his own word to meet them. All difficulties may be overcome by acting
according to the word of God. At this time I more especially desire to
point out the means whereby the children of God who are engaged in any
earthly calling may be able to overcome the difficulties which arise
from competition in business, too great a number of persons being
occupied in the same calling, stagnation of trade, and the like.

1. The first thing which the believer who is in such difficulties has to
ask himself is, _Am I in a calling in which I can abide with God?_ If
our occupation be of that kind that we cannot ask God's blessing upon
it, or that we should be ashamed to be found in it at the appearing of
the Lord Jesus, or that it _of necess