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every avenue by which sin, Satan, or the world may approach to hurt you. This will be found the best preservative of inward peace and outward consistency, of tenderness of conscience, brokenness of spirit, and spirituality of mind; and thus will you be prepared,

5. To live under the comforting evidence of God's favour, the reverential impression of his presence, and the constraining influence of his love.

6. Mark the dealings of the Lord with you, as a God of providence, and resign yourself, with entire trust and confidence, to the whole of his providential will.

7. Whatsoever you do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, making his glory, and the interests of his kingdom upon earth, your continual aim.

8. Endeavour to unite diligence in business and fervency of spirit; in a word, to glorify God in this world whilst making progress towards a better.

9. When in company with others, let all things, as far as in you lies, be done and said to mutual edification; and in your intervals of solitude endeavour more particularly to realize God's presence, and let your thoughts and affections be much with him.

10. In order that you may redeem time, live continually, as it were, within the precincts of the grave, and on the borders of an eternal world, Eccl.

ix. 10.

11. As you would thus walk with God, by faith in his dear Son, never lose sight of your own corruption, weakness, and insufficiency, or of your entire dependence on the help of his Holy Spirit; nor ever cease to implore his promised influence to work in you effectually, both to will and to do, as

the Spirit of light, holiness, and love; the Comforter of the Church, and the glorifier of Jesus.

12. When you have done all, account yourself an unprofitable servant, and repose your every hope on the Saviour's finished work, regarding this, and nothing in yourself, as the spring of all spiritual comfort, peace, and joy.

Christian reader! a perusal of the above brief directions, if God shall graciously bless it, may serve the threefold purpose (1) of giving you a glimpse of Gospel holiness; (2) of convincing you how greatly you come short, and of humbling you on account of it; (3) of awakening your earnest desires after higher attainments, and putting you upon renewed resolutions, in dependence on the Divine Spirit, and earnest cries to God for renewed strength. And in this view nothing can be more sweet and encouraging than that precious promise which you find in Ezek. Xxxviii. 27: "I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes; and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them."

Oh, plead with God, cry earnestly to him, wait diligently upon him, to accomplish in you more and more what he here engages to do for his people. He is rich in grace unto all that call upon him, as his word and the experience of his people fully testify. But "Thus saith the Lord God, I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them." For, remember, holiness, heart holiness, practical holiness, real holiness of life, is a sweet part of God's salvation; and, while enabled sincerely to wait and long for this, you have the manifest token of God's love towards you, the seal of the Spirit, and pledge of eternal

life in Christ Jesus. If you ask what it is to walk in God's statutes, I answer, it is to walk in the Spirit (Gal. v. 16), to walk in Christ Jesus the Lord (Col. ii. 6), to walk in the light (1 John i. 6, 7), to walk in love after his commandments. And these are intimately connected with each other; they are so many links, forming one chain which cannot be broken. He that has in very deed been made partaker of the Spirit will live and walk in the Spirit. The Spirit, by his teaching, will lead him to Christ. Christ is the light of the world: no follower of his shall walk in darkness, but shall see the light of life; and the light of saving knowledge is ever attended with the fire of holy love, which cannot fail to varm the heart, and stimulate it to all holy obedienco.

DEATH NO TERROR.

THE believer in Christ should banish all solicitude about the event of death to himself, or to others who depart in the faith. Christ assumed our nature, "took part of flesh and blood, that through death"-first endured in his own person, and then vanquished by his resurrection-" he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage." The Christian has no occasion to be in bondage to the fear of death; indeed, by such a bondage he dishonours the power and the grace of Christ, and puts discredit upon his finished work.

It is sometimes the case that even where the intellect, the heart, and the will are all properly disciplined for the advent of death, there is a nervous

apprehension of the mere physical process that renders the thought of death unwelcome. And, indeed, there must be something repugnant to the sensibilities of our nature in the thought of dissolution, whenever the mind dwells upon this apart from its relations to a higher existence. The demolition of a house in which we have lived from infancy, and every stone, and beam, and arch, and angle of which has some association of childhood and of home, awakens feelings of sadness, though the building is old and crazy, and no longer fit to be occupied. But the mind should not live thus in the past, and hug the old stones, and timbers, and nails, as if these were home, or had in themselves any life and virtue; it should look forward to the house that is to succeed the time-worn tenement, should study its plan, arrangement, and effect, and transmute the memories of the old into the hopes of the new. It is thus, by a beautiful analogy, that Chrysostom discourses of the believer's change at death. When a man is about to rebuild an old and tottering house, he first sends out its occupants, then tears it down, and builds a new and more splendid one. This occasions no grief to the occupants, but rather joy; for they do not think of the demolition which they see, but of the house which is to come, though not yet seen. When God is about to do a similar work, he destroys our body, and removes the soul that was dwelling in it, as from some house, that he may build it anew and more splendidly, and again bring the soul with greater glory into it. Let us not, therefore, regard the tearing down, but the splendour which is to succeed. Thus in a higher strain does the Apostle speak of this blessed

BAD TIMES.

WHAT is it that makes the times bad, and when may they be said to be so? Ask the children of this world what it is, in their account, that makes the times bad, and they will tell you, scarcity of money, decay of trade, and the desolations of war. But the Scrip

exchange: "For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." The Christian should familiarize his mind with the thought of dying, as one familiarizes himself with the thought of exchanging an old and decaying, though still serviceable house or garment, for one new, bright,ture lays the badness of the times upon glorious, of better material, yes, of an imperishable fabric. It is idle to attempt to conceal from one's self the fact of his own mortality and of his exceeding frailty. And it is unwise and unnecessary to allow in the mind a secret dread of death. That event should be familiar to the Christian, not as a process of physical decay, but as a process of mysterious and sudden, but of certain and glorious transition from the seen to the unseen, and from the mortal to the immortal.

The Christian, when he leaves the body, is at once with the Lord Jesus. He rushes, as it were, instinctively, to his presence, and casts himself at his feet. He has no other home than where the Saviour is; he thinks of no future joy or glory but that which is to be enjoyed with him. Why, then, should we fear death? Lay out of view, as we may, the momentary pang, the chilliness, and the darkness of the grave, and think of that which will be the moment after death-the view of the Redeemer, the sight of the splendours of the heavenly world, the angels, the spirits of the just made perfect, the river of the paradise of God, and the harps of praise; and what has the Christian to fear in the prospect of dying?

causes of another nature: "Perilous times shall come," 2 Tim. iii. 1; for iniquity shall abound, and that is the thing David complains of in Psa. xii.

1. When there is a general decay of piety and honesty amongst men, the times are then truly bad: when "the godly man ceaseth, and the faithful fail." These two are put together, the godly and the faithful. As there is no true policy, so there is no true piety without honesty. Godly men are faithful men-fast men, as they have sometimes been called. Their word is as confirming as their oath, as binding as their bond; they make con science of being true both to God and man. They are here said to cease and fail, either by death or by desertion, or by both. Those that were godly and faithful were taken away, and those that were left had sadly degenerated, and were not what they had been: there was a general decay of religion and virtue; and the times are bad, very bad, when it is so.

2. When dissimulation and flattery have corrupted and debauched all conversation, then the times are very bad; when men are generally so profligate that they make no conscience of a lie, are so spiteful as to design against their neighbours the worst of mischiefs, and yet so base as to cover the design with the most specious and plausible pre

tences and professions of friendship. Thus they speak vanity every one to his neighbour." They will kiss and kill, as Joab did Abner and Amasa; will smile in your face, and cut your throat. This is the Devil's image complete-a complication of malice and falsehood. The times are bad indeed when there is no such thing as sincerity to be met with, when an honest man knows not whom to believe, nor whom to trust, nor dares to put confidence in a friend, in a guide.

3. When the enemies of God, and religion, and religious people, are impudent and daring, and threaten to run down all that is just and sacred, then the times are very bad; when proud sinners say, "With our tongue" will we prevail against the cause of virtue; "our lips are our own," and we may say what we will; "who is lord over us ?"

and countenance of those in authority, then the times are very bad. "When the vilest men are exalted" to places of trust and power, then "the wicked walk on every side;" they swarm in all places, and go up and down seeking to deceive, debauch, and destroy others; they are neither afraid nor ashamed; they declare their sin as Sodom, and there is none to check them. Bad men are base men, the vilest of men, and they are so though they are ever so highly exalted in this world. But it is bad with a kingdom when such are preferred; no marvel if wickedness then grows impudent and insolent.Matthew Henry.

LOVELINESS OF CHRIST. "He is altogether lovely."-SOL. SONG,

v. 16.

LOVELY in his person; in the glorious all-sufficiency of his Deity, gracious purity and holiness of his humanity, authority and majesty, love and power.

Lovely in his birth and incarnation; when he, though rich, for our sakes became poor; taking part of flesh and blood, because we partook of the same; being made of a woman, that for us he might be made under the law, even for our sakes.

This bespeaks a proud conceit of themselves and confidence in themselves, as if the point were indeed gained by eating forbidden fruit, and they were as gods, independent and self-sufficient, infallible in their knowledge of good and evil, and therefore fit to be oracles; irresistible in their power, and therefore fit to be lawgivers. This bespeaks an insolent contempt of God's dominion, as if he had no property in them, and as if he had no authority either to command or judge them, like Pharaoh. This is as absurdness and obedience which, in the depth and unreasonable as the former; for He in whom we live, and move, and have our being, must needs be, by an indisputable title, Lord over us.

4. When the poor and needy are oppressed, and abused, and puffed at, then the times are very bad.

5. When wickedness abounds, and goes barefaced, under the protection

Lovely in the whole course of his life, and the more than angelical holi

of poverty and persecution, he exèrcised therein; doing good, receiving evil; blessing, and being cursed, reviled, reproached, all his days.

Lovely in his death; yea, therein most lovely to sinners; never more glorious and desirable than when he came broken, dead, from the cross. Then had he carried all our sins into

a land of forgetfulness; then had he made peace and reconciliation for us; then had he procured life and immortality for us.

Lovely in his whole employment, in his great undertaking; in his life, death, resurrection, ascension; being a Mediator between God and us, to recover the glory of God's justice, and to save our souls; to bring us to an enjoyment of God, who were set at such an infinite distance from him by sin.

Lovely in the glory and majesty wherewith he is crowned. Now he is set down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, where, though he be terrible to his enemies, yet he is full of mercy, love, and compassion, towards his beloved ones.

Lovely in all those supplies of grace and consolation, in all the dispensations of his Holy Spirit, whereof his saints are made partakers.

Lovely in all the tender care, power, and wisdom which he exercises in the protection, safe-guarding, and delivery

of his Church and people, in the midst of all the oppositions and persecutions whereunto they are exposed.

Lovely in all his ordinances, and the whole of that spiritually glorious worship which he hath appointed to his people, whereby they draw nigh and have communion with him and his Father.

Lovely and glorious in the vengeance he taketh and will finally execute upon the stubborn enemies of himself and his people.

Lovely in the pardon he hath purchased and doth dispense, in the reconciliation he hath established, in the grace he communicates, in the consolations he doth administer, in the peace and joy he gives his saints, in his assured preservation of them unto glory.

What shall I say? There is no end of his excellences and desirableness. "He is altogether lovely." This is our Beloved, and this is our Friend, O daughter of Jerusalem.-Owen.

Biography.

SARAH ANN HARDSTAFF.

"Patient in tribulation."-ROM. xii. 12.

MISS SARAH ANN HARDSTAFF was to her that cards was one of them, born at Newark, September 26, 1831. her mother expressed her regret at this, Nothing occurred which merits notice saying, that they were Satan's books, until she was six years of age, when a and if she delighted in such amusecircumstance happened which made ments, God would not love her. This manifest the tenderness of her con- rebuke, although tenderly administered, science, and gave a hope that the affected her deeply, and at midnight Spirit of God was at work upon her she awoke her mother to tell her that heart. Having spent an evening at a she could not sleep until assured that friend's house, with whose entertain- her sin was pardoned. She had prayed ment she was pleased, on her return herself, and felt some hope, and behome she gave her mother an account lieved that if her parent's prayers of her amusements. On mentioning were united with her own, the blessing

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