*

save you.

Do not say I

have done all I can, and am waiting for the Spirit. It is not true. He is waiting for you. He would come in and dwell with you if you would only give over resisting Him. *** If you can believe man's word, surely you can believe God's word, for it is the same act of mind in the one case as in the other."

Faith is here made merely to be an assent of the understanding, but such a faith we have no hesitation in calling the faith of devils. The faith of God's elect is a gift from God, and requires, in order to produce it, as great an exertion of the power of Jehovah as it did to raise Jesus from the dead. (See Eph. i. 20). Duty faith will never take a soul to heaven. We trust if any of our readers have incautiously circulated any of the above tracts, they will seriously consider before they continue so to do. Before we leave the subject, we would say one word upon another publication, as we have been requested so to do. Dr. Cummins is publishing Lectures on the Revelations, preached in Exeter Hall, on Sunday evenings, to congregations of upwards of five thousand persons. In the first place, however true the details may be, we cannot understand how a gos el minister can exclude Christ's gospel in order to bring forward such matter. Besides, where the gospel is apparently brought in, it is almost of the same stamp as the above extracts. A gospel depending partly upon grace and partly upon man's doings, is certainly a mongrel and perverted gospel, which cannot feed God's hungry children.

True Happiness; or, the Blessedness of Divine Correction. By JOSEPH CARYL. London: W. Foster, 6, Amen Corner, Paternoster Row. 32mo., pp. 96.

This is an extract from a choice old author, who lived in those days of which we may say, in comparison with the divines of the present age, "There were giants in those days." We have never read a little work which we consider so suitable to put into the hand of an afflicted child of God. The following short extract may give an idea of the spirit of the work :

"A cross without a Christ never made man any better; but, with Christ all are made better by the cross."

This little specimen has certainly made us desirous to become more acquainted with this Author's works.

A Defence of the Doctrine of the Distinct Personality of the Holy Spirit. By THOMAS LUCAS. London Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., Stationers-hall Court. 8vo, pp. 38.

A SOUND and useful pamphlet. Numbers of professing Christians practically, if not tk oretically, deny this important doctrine, and for this reason, because they have never felt and been under His mighty operations.

Those who are born of the Spirit are certainly led by the Spirit, who guides them into all truth, and having received an unction from the Holy One, they are taught to abide in Him.

The Happy Sufferer; or, the Grace and Power of the Holy Ghost, strikingly displayed in the blessed Conversion and Joyful Removal to the Lord, of John Stidworthy, a Lame and Blind Boy. London: J. NISBET and Co., Berners-street. 16mo, pp. 36.

Ax interesting little tract, which will well repay the perusal. "The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein."

Clifton.

Poetry.

THE ANNUNCIATION.-LUKE i. xxxviii. 56.

HARK! 'tis the virgin mother's voice,
In God her Saviour does rejoice!
She magnifies the Lord of heaven,
Ere to her aims the babe is given!
Her fa hful heart on him believed,
Who was within her womb conceived.
She saw by faith, as yet unborn,

Her babe, her Saviour-both in one-
"Twas now declared from whom should spring,
The promised seed-the expected King.
The time was come;" and in that hour
The mother trusts her infant's power.
The saving might does she declare

Of Him as yet she had not bare.

So sure the word-so sure the birth,

No mother, yet her praise bursts forth;
The blessed Virgin yet had smiled

In faith and love upon her child.

The lowly Mary's humble mind
Can glory in her heaven-born child.

The promised "life" and "light" to come,

Lay silent in a virgin's womb!

That body framed "our curse" to bear
In embryo nothingness lay there!

Wonder of wonders here displayed

The "Eternal" infant weakness made!
The incarnate Deity is born

In mortal weakness, baby form!
No, Mary, none too soon, you own,
The Saviour in thy promised son,
Thy willing arms shall sure afioid
A cradle for thy coming Lord,
Safe on thy breast shall softly sleep,
That only one thy soul can keep.
Leaning on thee, shall slumbering lie,
Thy "rest" to all eternity.

MARTHA.

CHRISTMAS ODE,

LUKE ii. 8-12.

THE moon has arisen in plenitude bright,
And woven her beams, in the clouds of the night;
That star is appearing which Jacob foresaw *
Should herald the Prince of the covenant law.

The shepherds of Judah, like Jesse of old,

By the banks of the Cedron were tending their fold;
Like Moses in Midian they lay unprepared,
For tidings their fathers and prophets declared.
When, lo iu the east, to their fear-stricken eyes.
The star floats in splendour, and soft sounds arise
("Tis the music of heaven that wakens the spheres),
And Gabriel in glory before them appears.

Ye shepherds of Palestine, wonder no more,
But rather arise and your Saviour adore;
In Bethlehem Ephratah, there lieth the BABE,
But he comes as a King, and is mighty to save.

He comes, as the prophet Isaiah has sung,†
The child of a virgin, king David's great Son,
A greater than Moses, a Monarch of peace,
He comes th' enslaved of sin to release.

He comes as the seed of the woman foretold,
He comes as a Shepherd, to gather his fold,
He comes that his kingdom should ever remain,
And that sinners might live, and rejoice in his name.

He is come like the sun, in his fiery car,
And his beams shall be felt, by the nations afar;
The types are completed, and finish'd ̧ IN HIM,
For He comes as a Priest, and to wash away sin.

Searce had the words of the angel been spoken,
When the stillness of midnight in music was broken,
For the harps of the holy were hymning his love,
And our earth caught the notes of the choir above.
County of Waterford.

W. E. S.

"There shall come a star out of Jacob (Numbers xxiv. 17) + "Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son" (Is. vii. 14). "It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel" (Gen. iii. 15)

W. H. COLLINGRIDGE, CITY PRESS, 1, LONG LANE.

GOSPEL

THE

MAGAZINE.

"COMFORT YE, COMFORT YE, MY PEOPLE, SAITH YOUR GOD."

ENDEAVOURING TO KEEP THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT IN THE BOND OF PEACE." "JESUS CHRIST, THE SAME YESTERDAY, TO-DAY, AND FOR EVER. WHOM TO KNOW IS LIFE ETERNAL."

VOL. VIII.]

FEBRUARY, 1848.

[No. 86,

THE CHURCH IN SAFE KEEPING.

"He will keep the feet of his saints.”—1 SAM. iii. 9.

READER! what a mercy to be able to set to your seal that this is true. It is a mercy in the simplicity of faith to say, "I believe this or that portion to be true, because the word of God says so; but it is a far greater mercy to be enabled to add, "I know its truthfulness, because the Lord hath demonstrated the same in my heart." It was this heart-acquaintance with (and not merely head-knowledge of) divine realities that furnished the Apostle John with such a holy boldness in the opening of his epistle, "That which was from the beginning (says he) which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of Life, that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you" (1 John i. 1-3).

Now, the fulness of our text will never be known-no, not to all eternity; for vast as will be the disclosures of that glorious day, the dawn of which will speedily break to our enraptured view, but a partial knowledge of the ten thousand times ten thousand snares and dangers in which and from which our feet shall have been preserved, will be afforded us.

We will glance at a few of them now, as God shall enable. Take, first, that to which we have just alluded, Head-knowledge; and surely, brethren, it is no small mercy to be rescued from this snare. It is a dangerous-a most dangerous one. It has been quaintly asked, "How is it that the religion of so many men lies above their shoulders, and

E

that with decapitation head and all would be gone? The answer is plain Their religion never reached the heart. Important, indeed, in such cases, is our Lord's exhortation, Luke xii. 4, 5.

We will defy the accusation that we are indifferent to scriptural instruction. In our own little sphere we count it a mercy for a poor Roman Catholic, or any other child, to be admitted to the school to listen if it be but to a single chapter of the blessed Bible, not knowing but what the Spirit may condescend, sooner or later, to seal home the sacred contents of that very chapter upon the heart and understanding; but, in immediate connexion with these convictions, we are compelled to acknowledge-and that with deepest sorrow-the fact that an immense amount of scriptural information is obtained-the children receiving, the teachers communicating-whilst both parties are alike ignorant of that real spiritual operation of heart into the various ramifications of which every Spirit-taught child is led. And how painful is the collision with such! No fault with the outward conduct, probably, to be found. A becoming deportment-consistency of conduct and yet withal the too common betrayal of a self-love and adoration to disguise the memorable truth (Luke v. 31), "The whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." Brethren, the religion of such is in the flesh-in the letter, and not in the spirit. See Romans ii. 28, 29, and vii. 6. How great, then, the mercy to be saved from this so great a delusion; for the axe to be laid at the root of the tree at once, to bring down pride, self, and all our fleshly props, as so many vain dependencies; how great the mercy for the Lord the Spirit to send the arrow of conviction at once into the heart, and to extract the importunate cry, "God be merciful to me a sinner"-a cry not to be stifled, nor to be silenced, but with the application of blood -all efficacious blood-to the conscience.

And surely, brethren, you can speak-if as yet not sing-of this mercy. He will keep the feet of his saints." Yes, adored be his name, not one shall founder or make shipwreck upon such a rock as head-knowledge-letter, and not heart-acquaintance. Better, a thousand times, be crying for mercy, and waiting for the revelation of pardon all the days of your pilgrimage, than fall upon such quicksands as these, in which never so many were engulphed as in the present day, when "many are running to and fro, and knowledge is increased" (Dan. xii. 4.)

A second sense in which the feet of all the Lord's family shall be kept is from resting upon a false foundation or anything short of the Rock Christ Jesus. The Lord having (as we just now said) pierced the heart, and brought the sinner (truly a pitiable object in his own eyes-full of wounds, bruises, and putrifying sores) to the foot of the cross, how boundless the mercy-we say so in the fullest conviction of it-to see him there lying waiting for mercy; waiting for it to be revealed. Mercy brought him there, and now Mercy keeps him there; preserves him from turning hither or thither to any other ground of hope, or false refuge of lies. Surely this is a wondrous keeping, beloved. You that are in this position, do not-cannot-half estimate its value. You are in bonds, and you cannot love those bonds, but