used by God to alarm him; but that would have soon been forgotten after it abated. What great numbers of natural men have been terribly alarmed with thunder, in a heavy tempest; what great numbers have been alarmed by the thunder of the preaching of God's terrible law; but so soon as they have got out of the sound of it, the alarm is all over. No; it is the Spirit of God that fixes the dart of your sins so fast in your hearts, that it can never be removed but by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

David says, "all men are conceived and born in sin;" and we all know ourselves that we are all actual sinners. We are all, by nature, children of wrath. Paul says, "there is none righteous, no not one; there is none that understandeth; there is none that seeketh after God; they are all gone out of the way, they are altogether become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no not one." To this he adds, "That every mouth must be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God." And again he says, "That the carnal mind (which is the mind of the natural man,) is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be." Thus it is that the natural man cannot know any thing spiritually; he must first be born of the Spirit, and he must be taught of God. How can he pray spiritually without the Spirit of prayer? No; Christ says, "Without me ye can do nothing." I have heard some call out to the natural man to pray, and strive, and seek, which would have just the same effect, without God's Spirit, as to tell a blind man to look at you. Where such teachers got their commission, I know not; but I am sure they neither got it from Christ nor any of his apostles; Christ did not tell the natural man to pray, nor did he pray for them: "I pray not," saith Christ, "for the world, but for them which thou hast given me, for they are thine, and all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them; nor do I pray for the apostles alone, but for all them also which shall believe on me through your word." By the world here, it can mean no other than all the natural men of the world, who live and die in that state.

open

Now all natural men, so long as they are in that state, are under the curse and wrath of God, whether they know it or not. Some are driving on in the world in their career of rebellion against God, as though they set him at defiance. Others go on in a state of forgetfulness both of God and their poor souls. Others are going on, trusting to their own rotten selfrighteousness: thinking they have good hearts, and that they their say pay every one their own, they pretend to read their Bible, when they can spare time, and they go to church or meeting, &c., out of custom, or to be thought well of by men they therefore think they do their duty, and that God is well pleased with them; at the same time have no sorrow for

prayers,

and

their sins, no love of God in their hearts; have never thought what an immense debt of sin they have been contracting ever since they have been able, and that they are every minute adding to it; they have never thought that if this immense debt be not discharged, that to prison they must go.

But if they have so far thought that they cannot do this wholly by themselves, they will at last put Christ into the scale, and that they think will make good weight, so that they have nothing to fear.

Some of these ways all natural or unconverted men are in; and there they must remain until the Lord is pleased to shew them by his Spirit their situation and danger.

In some one of these ways the gaoler was in before the earthquake, which was the means in God's hand, and by his appointment, to shew him what a situation his sins had brought him into. If it should be asked how God generally brings his people to this knowledge of their state, in Ezekiel xxxvi. you'll find it; God says, by the prophet, "A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh; and I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do

them."

Now, when God is pleased to put his Spirit within a man, it is no matter what means God uses to bring it about; he can use what means he pleases; the means are of his appointment, as well as the end. God has appointed the preaching of his word for that purpose, but he is not confined to that; we do not read that the gaoler was thus brought to his senses, for it was the earthquake; nor do we read that Paul was brought to a sense of his case by the means of the word, for he was in full pursuit, to bring all he could find that not only preached the word, but all who gladly heard it, whether man or woman, to be tried for their lives; but God stopped him in his career, and opened his eyes to see what a hell-deserving wretch he was: which he never before thought anything about. I say, when God puts his Spirit within a man, it immediately arraigns him at the bar of God's justice, which brings him in guilty; now he stands trembling, and will pray somehow, whether he know how to pray to God or not. The gaoler called upon Paul to know what he must do to be saved; this shews he knew but little, if anything of God. Paul cried, "Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?" He knew something must be done, or that he must be lost; and he was now made willing to do it, let it be what it would, although he so lately kicked against it with all his might. Thus God's people are made willing in the day of his power. say, when God lays the weight of the sins of a poor convicted soul upon his heart, neither the world, the flesh, nor the devil,

can keep him from praying; and as that weight, which is laid on by God's power, will never be eased until he hath faith in Christ, so he will continue, till then, to cry, "Save, Lord, or I perish."

(To be concluded in the next Number.)

A CONGRATULATORY EPISTLE TO A BELOVED SISTER ON HER BIRTH DAY.

Dearly Beloved in the First-born of our Father's Bosom,

WITH sacred pleasure I congratulate you on the return of your natal day, and wish you all the felicity a heart born from above can desire; the predestinated order of our God in time's revolvings, open and display his searchless wisdom and boundless understanding: let us unceasingly bow the knee and adore the divine majesty that has embraced us in his arms of everlasting love, and assigned our lot among the chosen of his delights.

It is the glories of a supernatural relation that heighten my affection, and as recognized in the pure supercreation love union standing with the first-born of our father's house, my interest for your welfare is doubly excited. Your natural birth was preparatory to the opening of the higher purposes of Jehovah in your spiritual birth into the family of heaven; the beginning of an endless life, which is rooted in the self-existence of the Son of God, to whom you are united by the unfrustrable will of Deity. This sheds a thousand glories around the day which was a porch of entrance into the sublime assignments of infinite grace, when the womb of the Eternal opened, and brought you forth among the living in Jerusalem. Our association with the Son of God consecrates all our low land movements, and fills with importance every step of life. Though thorns and briars witness the displeasure of Jehovah for the original offence, yet they are converted to set off his over-ruling wisdom, and become channels for inflows of his supreme and endless grace.

Let me invite your thoughts, under the illuminating reign of Zion's infallible teacher, to a contemplation of the heart-warming subject of divine love,-a theme that constitutes the bliss of the glorified, the felicity of the chosen passing through the vale of tears, which, if you are blessed to enter into, will yield a fund of happiness and solid delight, surpassing all the pleasures of the world, and make auspicious the anniversary of your entrance into life. My thought is upon the Apostle's words,"The love of God which is in Christ Jesus the Lord." Rom. viii. 39. The love of God, in his trinity of persons, to the objects of his delight is the boundless source of all our felicity; from this vast spring did all our bliss take its rise, and in the contemplation of its perfection and fulness, we are soon lost in

ence.

an ocean which has neither bottom nor shore. The love of God to our persons is everlasting; it is a dateless love, that never knew a beginning. God is love. It is coeval with his existIt is the eternal loving one. It is called a great love. How immense! how infinite! how vast! it embraced us with omnipotent arms, holds us in its grasp through all the lapse, and is unfolded in its provisions, bestowments and endless blessings; it is inconceivable, sovereign, wonderful, unparalleled, superlative; immutable as his perfection, and lasting as eternity. To be in the circumference of this love is an unspeakable favour-a vast inheritance, for which we shall pour forth eternal praises at the foot of his topless throne.

We behold the love of the Eternal Three in their immortal acts of affection, in their goings forth from everlasting in the person of Christ; the co-equal and co-operating love of the Divine Three is manifested in their council, thoughts, designs and purposes from eternity. In all the vast resolves of the infinite mind, no thought, no design, no decree but what love impregnated; the whole was to exhibit his love to Christ and the church. When Jehovah came forth from his invisibility in the person of Christ, he clothed himself with love, exhibited his vast affection, and spoke, saying "I have loved thee with an everlasting love." We further look at the love of God in its revealed order in the personal acts of Father, Word, and Holy Ghost; the every-day familiar way in which we have personal fellowship in its embraces, we behold the reigning affection of our Father's heart, in all the sublime acts of the Father's will, the settlements of his infinite mind, the copious outflows of his immense regard, the exuberant expressions of his vast affection to all the persons of his distinguished favourites.

What an immense act of his love to constitute us his sons and daughters from all everlasting, to make us heirs of himself and joint heirs with Christ in that glorious display of divine affection, making himself over in all his boundless perfections and vast fulness to be our portion for ever. Well might our brother John cry out "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God;" what an immense bestowment of love is this great interest, which unfolds all the blessings of time and the bliss of eternity; this insured our persons for ever; held in its immutable grasp we smile at all the combinations of earth and hell; Jehovah's saying "I will be thy God," will place us among the glorified throng, where we shall for ever sing-to him that loved us.

The love of Jehovah the Father to us, in every display of his love, is in Christ Jesus the Lord. He is the primitive object of it; the foundation of it in its fixation upon us, the centre of divine love. In him all the family are comprehended, embraced and loved, in his indestructible person, not in Adam. Jeho

vah's love did not settle upon us in any peccable standing: here we contemplate the superexcellent glories of divine love. How surprisingly glorious is the love that pitched upon us in Christ, that made us one with him for ever, that wrapt up the whole interest of the church in him. Here we behold the divine manner of the love opening in all its inseparable and unchanging glory. This relation union to the Son of God, in whom we are constituted sons for ever, was an overwhelming expression of the Father's love. The love of God opens in its supreme and distinguishing glories in the choice of our persons in Christ to eternal life; this sacred act of his will in our eternal election is a choice of love according to his good pleasure. The Father manifested his love in settling all grace and glory upon us; it is a vast expenditure of love, his treasuring up in Christ all fulness; the storing of his person with all spiritual blessings was expressive of his great love. The glorious ancient union of the natures in Christ God-man, wherein the Father expressed his love to him, and to us in him, was the great outlet of immeasurable love to us; the marriage union consequent between him and the church, the constituting him the husband-head of the church, were acts of immense love, are folios to be read out in an eternal world, which entail upon the church everlasting blessedness.

The covenant of ample and endless redemption bespeaks the love of the Eternal Three; witness their joint engagements to secure our persons through all the lapse of time, to rescue us from the awful chasm of sin, and in which is involved our blessedness for ever. Here we behold the manner of the Father's love in anticipating our downfal, providing a remedy, and securing our forthcoming from all its enthralment and damning consequences: the love that reigned in those transactions surpasses our finite thoughts, but we in measure apprehend it, as the Holy Ghost opens them up to the view of faith: the church is carried to heaven in the arms of covenant faithfulness, by virtue of all its conditions being accomplished and ratified.

In the imputation of all the church's sin to Christ, (and ours in the great aggregate,) we have an especial display of the Father's stupendous love; what an act of grace to transfer all our iniqui ties to his spotless Son, which act sprung out of the great bosom of infinite love. Here was an ocean of grace, in providing and making him the surety of the people; all our vileness was charged to his account. Infinite knowledge took in all the transgressions of our days, and imputed them to Christ, the secret sin bearer. What an unfolding of divine love is exhibited