joicings of unholy youth,-while you "walk in the ways of your heart, and in the sight of your eyes," that "for all these things God will bring you into judgment." (Eccles. xi. 9.) "The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it." (Prov. xxx. 17.) If you pursue the paths of impiety, your condemnation will be unspeakably aggravated; and the sudden punishment of your iniquity, swifter than the eagle that hastens to the prey. But we turn to the brighter considerations: God is our record, that we long to win you by the encouragements of piety. May we summon to your view honourable examples of youthful devotion? Who was entrusted with prophetic tidings from God to Eli? One who "ministered before the Lord, being a child, girded with a linen ephod;" and who reverently replied to the mysterious voice, "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." (1 Sam. ii. 18; iii. 10.) Who had the honour of screening from Ahab's malignant Queen a hundred Prophets, whose blood was precious in the Almighty's sight? One whose true witness 66 was, I thy servant fear the Lord from my youth." (1 Kings xviii. 12.) When the wrath of heaven was lighted by the idolatry of Judah, for whose sake was the lifted thunder long suspended? For the sake of Josiah, who, "while he was yet young, did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the way of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left." The vengeance was delayed; and the patriot King, whose heart was tender, who wept and humbled himself in intercession for his people, was "gathered to the grave in peace," (strange record!) though he was mortally wounded by the archers in battle, and hurried from the blood-red field to moulder in the sepulchre of his fathers. (2 Kings xxii. 2, 19, 20; 2 Chron. xxxv. 23, 24.) Who was appointed the first Bishop of Ephesus? He whose childhood was enriched with a knowledge of the holy Scripture; and whose "unfeigned" and hereditary "faith" had been copied from his "grandmother Lois" and his "mother Eunice." (2 Tim. i. 5; iii. 15.) May we appeal to your special circumstances, for the tenderest motives to a course of virtue and righteousness? More than common are your sacred obligations. Dedicated to God in holy baptism,-remembered night and day in a thousand prayers,-committed more than any other class of the young, to the sympathy and the love of our united societies,-you are especially claimed for the service of the Lord of hosts. Your very association in this place reminds us of your intimate relation to the ministry. Your fathers are honourably toiling in our wide-spread churches, and cultivating the public vineyard. Some of them, in foreign and insalubrious climes, are not " counting their lives dear" unto themselves, so that they may "finish their course with joy, and the ministry which they have received of the Lord Jesus to testify the Gospel of the grace of God." (Acts xx. 24.) All hail, ambassadors for Christ! "O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountains: O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah," and to all the Gentile nations, “Behold your God!" (Isai. xl. 9.) And "listen, O isles," O continents, to the proclamation of the world's jubilee. "Be silent, O all flesh, before the Lord: for he is raised up out of his holy habitation." (Zech. ii. 13.) Some of your sires, my dear young friends, have reached the goal of immortality. Their work is finished, and they stand with the Lamb on the Mount Sion. Nor are maternal solicitudes to be forgotten. Your mothers are presenting you, though separated from them, to Him “of whom the whole family in earth and heaven is named." They remember you with tears of love and prayers of faith. What is their chief care for you? A hundred voices reply, as Abraham said unto God, "O that Ishmael might live before thee!" (Gen. xvii. 18.) Are you not constrained by every filial emotion? As you cannot bear a perpetual exile from your kindred, O be persuaded to follow them to Calvary and to Sion! By the voice of parental solicitude, My son, if thy heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even mine;" by the tears, the sighs, the intercessions, unmarked by you, but recorded above; by the "labour of love," still pursued by your reverend fathers with "the patience of hope," or triumphantly finished; by the glory of the sainted spirits in light, and the confidence with which they committed you to Him who says, "Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust in me;" by their mouldering ashes, resting in hope, and watched by guardian angels; by each and every motive, respectively applicable, I beseech you from this time to cry unto God, "My Father, thou art the guide of my youth." (Jer. iii. 4.) By the fragility of youth, we entreat you to employ this moment in the greatest resolve and business of life. Near this sanctuary lies one of your number.* The bud has been scorched by fatal lightning, while the stem that bore it is spared. That a similar stroke of mortality may soon blight and scatter the efflorescence of your maturing vigour, is a proposition which needs not evidence, but impression. To appropriate the allusions of your own Tully,-the flame of life may be quenched by the rush of waters, as well as permitted to expire by the gentle and tardy exhaustion of age; and many fruits are plucked from the branches, while few are left to fall by their own maturity.+ Are you at length conquered? Do you say, "I will arise and go to • Samuel Sierra-Leone Brown, aged ten years, died in the Lord at the Grove, March, 1838; and his remains lie in the front of the chapel. 66 + Itaque adolescentes mori sic mihi videntur, ut cum aquæ multitudine vis flammæ opprimitur: senes autem, sicut sua sponte, nullâ adhibitá vi, consumptus ignis extinguitur. Et quasi poma, ex arboribus, si cruda sunt, vi evelluntur; si matura et cocta, decidunt.”—(Cic. De Senectute, 19.) 66 my Father?" We hail the decision. But the magazine of motives is not exhausted. Prophecy and promise draw you onward: “Fear not, O Jacob, my servant; and thou, Jeshurun, whom I have chosen. For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring: and they shall spring up as among the grass;" and, in their rapid growth and beautiful appearance, as willows by the water-courses. One shall say, I am the Lord's; and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob; and another shall subscribe with his hand unto the Lord, and surname himself by the name of Israel." (Isai. xliv. 2—5.) Excellent choice! It is crowned with every blessing. Who will madly refuse an infinite good? "Will a man," in the sultriness of south-eastern climes, "leave the snow of Lebanon which cometh from the rock of the field? or shall the cold-flowing waters that come from another place be forsaken?" (Jer. xviii. 14.) The neglect of the Fountain of living joys is an infinitely stronger proof of infatuation it is the very suicide of rational nature. Religion is worthy of our loftiest powers of mind and soul. To borrow the words of a late author, "Jesus Christ is all excellence, and to love him truly is to love all that is worth loving in the universe. It is the tuning of the heart, the fitting it for the universal concert." But eternity crowns and consummates the argument. In its clear and steady light, the wisdom of a religious decision is fully apparent. A crown, gemmed and unfading,-a "weight of glory," the more blissfully overwhelming because of your early consecration to Christ, -robes of everlasting white,-" fulness of joy,"-" rivers of pleasure,"-" the resurrection of the body, and the life of the world to come," will be the grand sequel. Jesus, it is enough! "Abolishing death, and bringing life and immortality to light by the Gospel," "Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!" We ask no more. We gladly give up all that a transitory world can offer. "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven!" "Firstborn among many brethren," at length accept the sacrifice of our lips and lives! "Captain of our salvation, take The souls we here present to thee; "Train up thy hardy soldiers, Lord, In all their Captain's steps to tread: Thy Gospel through the world to spread, Freely as they receive to give, And preach the death by which we live!" • Alexander Knox, Esq. Letter to Joseph Butterworth, Esq. HORE BIBLICÆ. (No. XVI.) "I WILL HARDEN PHARAOH'S HEART." To the Editor of the Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine. THE above and similar expressions have proved stumbling-blocks in the way of many sincere but unlearned Christians, on the subject of man's free agency in connexion with the divine government of the world. And persons holding the doctrines of Calvin have eagerly grasped at such figurative modes of speech, and given them a meaning which they were never intended to convey. There is, however, no real difficulty in satisfactorily explaining these expressions in such a manner as to leave man's moral agency quite untouched by the divine decrees. This may be done in three ways: the first regards the divine interference in a negative point of view; the second looks upon it as being exerted in an indirect or mediate agency; the third allows of an active influence. And though it is principally on account of the last of these methods, which we wish to show in its connexion with the Hebrew idiom, that the present article is written; yet we consider it right to exhibit a short statement of the former modes of exposition. 1. The first is that which is usually employed in the solution of this question; namely, that God permitted Pharaoh's heart to harden itself, by withholding those softening influences of his grace, which can alone render an obdurate soul pliable and obedient; and thus God" may be said to harden him whom he refuses to soften, to blind him whom he refuses to enlighten, and to repel him whom he refuses to call." The force of this argument is thus stated by Dr. A. Clarke : All those who have read the Scriptures with care and attention, know well that God is frequently represented in them as doing what he only permits to be done. So because a man bas grieved his Spirit and resisted his grace, he "The whole procedure was graciously calculated to do endless good to both nations. The Israelites must be satisfied that they had the true God for their protector; and thus their faith was strengthened. The Egyptians must see that their gods could do nothing against the God of Israel; and thus their dependence on them was necessarily shaken. These great ends could not have been answered had Pharaoh at once consented to let the people go. This consideration at once unravels the mystery, and explains every thing. Let it be observed that there is nothing spoken here of the eternal state of the Egyptian King; nor does any thing in the whole of the subsequent account authorize us to believe that God hardened his heart against the influences of his own grace, that he might occasion him so to sin that his justice might consign him to hell." Now this statement is in perfec unison with the declaration of St. Paul," that as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind." And, as it is also distinctly stated, "that Pharaoh hardened his heart," so the divine procedure in allowing him and his people to go their own way to ruin, is perfectly consistent with every principle of justice and good government. We must also remember the difference of idiom which subsists between eastern and western languages: for the former are by no means so precise as the latter, but delight in bold and figurative modes of speech. So that if even in our own land, a King is often said to do that which bis servants execute; a Monarch might easily be represented in the east as doing that which he knows some of his people to be performing, but which he declines interfering to prevent. A Sovereign encourages war with a foreign nation, when he winks at the aggressions of his own people, though he himself has taken no active steps in the business: and God may thus be said to "harden Pharaoh's heart" when he leaves those elements which are under his own control to produce such an effect upon the Monarch's mind. 2. Another mode of explaining this passage is that in which the Lord is considered to interfere mediately or indirectly. The acts of his providential government are here regarded as having the effect of hardening Pharaoh in his rebellious conduct, instead of producing that submission and obedience which might have been expected from such signal displays of almighty power. Thus a King is said to be the cause of a rebellion, when the measures which he pursues are such as he knows to be altogether hostile to the feelings and manners of an insubordinate people; though those measures may be just and equitable in themselves. This view of the question is displayed in a very masterly manner by the Rev. John Goodwin, in his "Exposition of the ninth chapter of Romans; "* of whose reasoning This quotation is from p. 177 of the edition 1835, by the Rev. T. Jackson. the following is a specimen as referring to the general argument:-"Such acts are frequently in Scripture ascribed sometimes unto God, and sometimes unto men; some occasion whereof only they administer, though they act nothing positively or directly, in order to the production of them, no, nor yet intend their production. Thus God is said to have turned the heart of the Egyptians to hate his people, to deal subtilly with his servants, Psalm cv. 25, only by those providential acts of his grace towards them immediately preceding: And he increased his people, and made them stronger than their enemies.' (Compare herewith Exod. i. 7-10, &c.) It cannot reasonably be imagined, much less substantively proved, that God did multiply and increase his people with an intent hereby to expose them to the hatred of their enemies; or to exasperate the spirit of the Egyptians against them; only by multiplying them so greatly, he ministered an occasion unto them, which so wrought upon their evil and corrupt hearts, that it provoked their passion of hatred against them. And when he intended, and was about thus to multiply them, he might have said, and this in sufficient propriety of speech, I will exasperate and provoke the Egyptians against my people,' as he here saith, I will harden Pharaoh's heart,' &c. Nor doth it follow, that because God knew or foresaw, though neither knowledge nor foreknowledge are properly or formally in God, that such a providence of his would raise up a spirit of envy in the Egyptians against his people, that therefore he intended such a thing; nor did he intend or design the fall of Adam in or by creating the tree of the knowledge of good and of evil in paradise, with pleasant fruit upon it; although he knew the fall of Adam would be the consequence of it, and occasioned by it. For the intentions as also the decrees of God have only that which is good, and approved by him, for their object, as we lately said, and, consequently, not that which is evil or sinful. Other texts of Scripture, where the subministration only of an |