and ye would not." "O my impenitent friends," said he, "when will you awake to righteousness-when will you arise from the deadwhen will you begin to work out your salvation with fear and trembling? Often have I prayed and wept for you; and watched for the first risings of love to God in your souls, as they that watch for the morning. But alas, no morning dawns upon your souls-No star of promise cheers the dark horizon. No rain, no dew descends upon the thirsty ground. All the day long I stretch forth the hand in vain. My friends, suppose your souls were committed to my care, and I should be as careless of their salvation as you yourselves arewhat would you think of me? Methinks I see you already come around me; and hear you with anxious hearts begin to say, "Sir, our souls are precious; they are committed to your care, and the time is short. We come to you thus early, that we may not be forgotten. Our day of probation may close suddenly, before you have attended to our salvation. Do you not know that you have a great work to do for us and will you delay?" what would you think of me, if I should say, I admit all that you have said about the value of your souls and the importance of attending to them; but you are young-there can be no great danger yet. Besides, I am engaged, at present, in the pursuit of pleasure. She promises me all the kingdoms of this world if I will follow her a little longer. Come to me when I have obtained the object of my present pursuit and I shall have nothing to do but attend your request. "But sir, we are dying-we want you to forego the pleasures of this world, and attend to us immediately-There is no time to be lost." Do not be alarmed, I will certainly attend to you, but not to day. Thus dismissed you go away sorrowful.

"Scarcely a week has passed away, when you come to me again. I perceive that you have been weeping, and with frequent sobbings you begin to say "why will you delay the business of securing our salvation? Death is at work. Since we were here some of our number have gone into eternity, and you have done nothing for them. where are they now, and where shall we all be soon? The great day of accounts is coming, and, comparing time with eternity, it will be here in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. If you ever mean to do any thing for us, we entreat you to do it speedily." And what if I should say, I am engaged in the pursuit of wealth. I cannot stop to work out your salvation; when I get time I will attend to it. It can be done at any time. Be quiet-wait, wait a little longer-all shall yet be well.

"Again, you come round me, with yet deeper solicitude. "O hard

We will not

hearted man, what are pleasure and wealth and fame and all that the world can give, compared to our immortal souls. Suffer us not to die in this state. Disperse this heavy cloud which hangs in aw ful suspense over our heads. On our knees we beg you to lay aside your present pursuits and work for us. Each of our souls is worth more than ten thousand worlds. You must hear us. leave you until you begin and finish the work." O what would you think of me if I should turn away in anger, and say to you-begone. I am not to be driven to this great work. Must I give up my grat ification to attend to you? But although I have reason to drive you from my presence because of your improper and unnecessary impor tunity, yet you need not despair. I will hear your prayer and attend to your salvation at some more convenient season. How would despair settle upon your souls, as you were driven away. How would you execrate a man whose heart was harder than the nether millstone Methinks I hear you say "O that the care of our souls were committed to ourselves. Then we would not sleep till we were safe.”But my friends the case is your own. I would not refuse to help you if I could. Thou art the hard hearted, the cruel man who art about to destroy thy own soul. Thou art the woman who can delay repentance and bring destruction upon thine own head. Lay not the charge to me, that I have refused to warn, to entreat, and to pray for you. You are the murderers of your own souls.-Stay thine hand, O sinner. Your soul is too precious to be thus trifled with-your life is too short to be thus wasted-Heaven is too glorious to be thus vilely cast away."

EFFICACY OF PRAYER.

Mr. Powel (a minister of the gospel, and author of the concordance affixed to the Rev. T. Scott's Bible,) being informed that an officer was come to apprehend him for preaching the gospel, quietly resigned himself into his hands, requesting only that he might be permitted to join with his wife and children in prayer, before he was dragged to prison. With this request, the officer complied, and the family being together, the officer was so struck with the ardent and tender prayers of this suffering servant of God, for his family, for the church, and for his persecutors in particular, that he declared he would rather die than have a hand in apprehending such a man. What a striking proof that the hearts of all men, are in the hands of the Lord, and that even the wrath of man shall praise him.

THE

CALVINISTIC MAGAZINE.

"Earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.”

No. 5.

MAY, 1828.

VOL. II.

DR. DEECHER'S LETTER TO MR. BEMAN.

[Concluded from page 108.]

VII. Bold or imprudent expressions in the ardor of preaching, or under the provocation of opposition, of in the delirious exultation of spiritual pride. The pre-eminent importance of religion and the soul, may tempt a man to pour contempt on all carefulness about style and well selected epithets; but if negligence in this respect may destroy souls as well as save them, then the more important the soul, the more important it is that in none of these respects we offend and destroy those for whom Christ died.

VIII. Language of unbecoming familiarity with God in prayer. Such a thing is possible in good men, but it is piety degenerated and mingled commonly with carnal affection or spiritual pride. A just sense of ourselves and of God, will produce any thing rather than irreverent familiartiy. If in heaven pure spirits veil their faces and adore, shall not mortal man, whose eye by faith seeth God, abhor himself? The difference between humble and presumptuous boldness is immense; and no frequency of real spiritual access and communion with God, can possibly breed irreverent familiarity.For a man, then, to talk to his Maker about men and things in the dialect more famliar and divested of reverence than a well educated child would adopt in addressing an earthly parent, is utterly inad missible.

IX. Coarse, blunt, and vulgar expressions.-These, if indulged by good men, indicate or infallibly produce the want of that delicacy of feeling, which next to conscience and piety, is our greatest safeguard against impropriety; and when coupled with religion, adorns the doctrine of God our Saviour: and though some ears may not be offended, there are always, in every assembly, some that will bes and though some souls may not be injured by it, why should it be indulged, when these might be as much benefitted by other language, while many may be offended and perhaps destroyed by it? VOL. II.

17

Say not it is their own fault: for though it may be that they ought not to have been so offended as to reject the truth, yet if we, knowing the liability of men to be thus offended and injured, proceed wilfully to create the offence, the wo may belong to them by whom the offence cometh, as really as to those who are criminally offended.My own observation has taught me that there is a critical state of the mind in the experience of almost every sinner, when small causes may turn the scale the wrong way; and if a minister, careless of his language or conduct in dealing with men, shall save many, the day of judgment may disclose the appalling fact, that he was the means of destroying more souls than he saved. And besides all this, human nature needs elevation and refinement; it is of itself prone enough to sink down to coarseness and indelicacy; and the evil must be immense, of sending religion, the great purifier of mat., through the nation in a style which will be calculated to increase the obtuseness of feeling, and the roughness of civilized intercourse. Let grossness characterize the church, and refinement the world, and you throw a large portion of mankind into hopeless oppositiu: to the Gospel.

X. A harsh and severe mode of addressing sinners. Whatever language a man uses, it tends to beget in him the style of feeling c which it is characteristic. If an awakened sinner, to conceal hi impression, shall affect lightness of language and manner, he will soon become what he affects to be, a careless sinner. On this principle it is, in my judgment, no minister can adopt a severe, bars!. and censorious manner with sinners, and not become to some extent in spirit, what he seems to be in language. We must, at times, use the language of severity and terror; but if this becomes the unvarying or common mode, it will be unhappy. Nor can the language of denunciation and threatening, such as 'cursed,' 'hell,' 'damnation,' and the like, be made frequent and familiar in the pulpit, without bringing up the association of similar language, from profane lips, in far different places; or without producing, if not as much, yet some degree of the bad influence of profane swearing. In the time of Davenport, they used to address men from the pulpit as "cursed sinners," and about their being "damned to hell," which made some people wonder what had got into the ministers to swear 80.

XI. New era in revivals-reformers-reformation always op posed, even by good men, &c. Such ideas, cherished, bring to the naughty and deceitful heart of man no small danger, and have rained many; for though multitudes have thought they were raised up to he reformers in the church, but a small number of men have beer

in reality such; and as to opposition from good men, the facts generally have been the other way. The opponents of Luther and Cal vin were not pious men, but the legions of Antichrist; and so long as enemies only lifted the lance against them, the Reformation advanced; but from the time the Reformers began to lift it one against the other, it stopped. The chief opponents of Whitfield in England were the hierarchy; and in the country, the cold-hearted Arminians and formal Calvinists. But the ministers who held the doctrines and maintained the views of revivals, which now pervade New-England and the West, were his most ardent friends. And there is no instance upon record, of a great evangelical reformation which was opposed strenuously by the best of men, and carried sword in hand by denouncing and breaking down the most active, experienced, and successful ministers of Christ and members of his church. Whitfield and the Tenants strengthened the hands of good ministers, and were terrible only to the Arminian and lukewarm; and while their counsels prevailed, the revivals went on. It was reserved for Davenport and his followers to stop it, by setting up a new mode of preaching and conduct, which good men could not adopt; for this they were denounced, and separations encouraged, whose deleterious effects a whole century will not obliterate.

XII. A self-sufficient and daring state of mind, which is reckless of consequences, and incorrigible to argument or advice. It may be the result of confidence inspired by success; of the magnifying effect of intense interest on one subject, which throws every thing else out of the circumference of vision, and into relative insignificance; of nervous excitement which quickens all the sensibilities of the soul, and magnifies objects of interest; and at last, of a settled state of perverted feeling, the product of the preceding causes, which, in the estimation of the subject, becomes absolute knowledge, and pours contempt on argument or advice, and can no more be stopped in its career than the foaming cataract, or the resistless whirlwind. For why should a good man stop, who knows certainly that he is right exactly, and that all men are wrong in proportion as they differ from him? This unquestionably was the state of mind to which Davenport and his followers came. He and they, upon the subject of promoting revivals, were undoubtedly the subjects of a religious nervous insanity. They mistook the feeling of certainty and confidence produced by nervous excitement and perverted sensation, for absolute knowledge, if not for inspiration; and drove the whirlwind of their insane piety through the churches with a fury which could not be resisted, and with a desolating influence which