soul

And thus the loiterer's utmost stretch of Climbs the still clouds, or passes those that roll,

And loosed imagination soaring goes High o'er his home, and all his little woes." "As I descended the hill, leaving the wood, my route conducted me through fields of luxuriant grain, which rustled as I passed along, ripening for the sickle. Ah! thought I, the fields are indeed already white unto a harvest to be gathered by a higher hand. But, how few are the labourers! ( thou, the Lord of the harvest, send forth thy servants and collect thy scattered

flock, that there may be one fold under one Shepherd! O call, call in thy straying sheep! Let them hear thy voice, blessed Redeemer, and O commission thousands to feed thy lambs! Order thou my goings, that I, an unworthy messenger of thy mercy, may never forget thy sacred injunctions, nor the object of my vocation-Thy glory in the good of man!' O grant, gracious Saviour, that I may persevere to the end, and be faithful even unto death!"

HER Maker let Creation bless,

In praise let all unite;

His praise is perfect happiness,

His service is delight:

Then raise your songs his power to own,
And humbly bow before his throne.

Ye cheerful hours of beaming light,
Thou full orb'd globe of fire,
And you ye awful shades of night

With all your starry choir,
Proclaim, with more than mortal tongue,
Your Maker's praise in matchless song.

Let e'en the rapid lightning's form,
Dread messenger of wrath,
The boiling ocean's billowy storm,

The direful whirlwind's path,
Adore the Lord who reigns on high,
And bear his praises through the sky.

Each beast within its untracked lair,
And ocean's finny band,
Ye feather'd families of air,
All creatures of his hand,

I HAVE no objection to the word condition. It was a word often used by no less a man than Dr. Owen. The promises are all conditional, without a single exception; but then we must remember the condition itself is the subject of promise - "I will subdue your iniquities; a new heart I will give you." The idea of condition any further than of cause to effect, a mean to an end, a capacity of enjoyment, is inadmissible. Repentance, faith, and obedience are all conditions, but they are God's gifts, "that not of yourselves" may be said of every thing. It is grace for grace, or a gracious promise, made to a gracious state. If the conditions of salvation are not so understood, man has whereof to boast. He is his own Saviour.

Explain the term theologically, and there can be no objection to

it.

The perfection of government is a meek firmness.

To deny discrimination in temporals or spirituals, is to close our eyes against facts. Is not one born rich, another poor, one healthy and strong, another weak and sickly, one under a dispensation of light and truth, another exposed to delusion and abomination from the cradle to the grave? It may astonish us, it is nevertheless the fact, deny it who can. Let us, however, be rather thankful than curious. It is a beautiful thought of Leighton, O the depths: 1 choose rather to remain in silence on the sea shore, than venture out into an abyss from whence I may never return.'

Other men are my looking-glass. In them I see myself. Sin deceives and makes fools of us, or we should need no mirror.

Reason staggers and stumbles at original sin. It is one of the most mysterious doctrines of theology. Many have attempted to

explain it, but all have left it just where they took it up. It seems to us, and ever will in this world, without further light, altogether inequitable to impute sin to those who never committed it; to punish for sin committed before a man was born. Yet there is no arguing against fact. The man, with his denial of imputation, who allows condemnation for inherent corruption; or the man who talks of a compensatory law; or the universalist, with his final restoration of all things; they all do nothing. In whatever sense we take the atonement, still the question returns, How came man to need atonement at all. If we allow the consequences to deserve condemnation, we are still in as great a straight as if we maintain imputation. To say God has provided a remedy, is really saying nothing to the purpose. If the death of Christ be not of obligation (and who would maintain so impious a tenet), but of mere mercy and grace, then Christ need not have died, and man might justly have been condemned, though involved in ruin by another. I say, the remedy as a free gift supposes the justice of the condemnation, and the sin of nature deserving such condemnation, must be traced to the first offence as its cause. Now can reason make this out?

Shall I then deny primitive evil independent of personal volition? Then I must deny fact; for is it not manifest that children suffer for their parents' crimes, and inherit diseases communicated to them at their birth - yea, while in the womb. A deist is as much concerned to explain the fact, as a believer in Revelation; yet he knows no more about this matter than others.

I think the American divines, in attempting to explain the difficulty, have done mischief. They are not

ardice. Mr. Newton is said to have endured a very severe operation without a groan. The operator expressed surprise at his fortitude. 66 Why, Sir," said this excellent man, "I have preached some years from my pulpit about divine support, and shall I live to negative all by my cowardice." Alas! my frame is not braced up to a firm endurance, but is dissoluble and weak. I have not a bit of back bone in me. There is a noble hardihood, but I shrink from a man with his instruments. God saw my weakness, and saved me from the trial. He may yet bring me into it. Be it so: He can carry me safely through; and if he leaves me to discredit myself, his name shall some way or other be glorified. Let the whole earth keep silence before him. He can make a man timid as a hare, to be bold as a lion. He won't leave me: I am satisfied he will stand near me in a more terrible condition than man can put me, even in the dark valley of the shadow of death; thither shall I descend after a few years at most, and there shall his staff support me. O how little does the world and all its concerns appear by the side of such thoughts such expectations.

How unspeakably precious did opportunities of preaching Christ seem to me, in a moment when I feared I should never more be allowed to preach him! I am permitted to enter my pulpit again; and if the savour is still in my remembrance, I begin to feel my

spirit gliding away to this and that wearying vanity. I have long done with vows and resolutions. "They are deceitful upon the weights." But to thee, O Lord, do I turn for life and power, to keep me to dying thoughts and feelings. O that I may die daily, and live every hour as if it were my last.

Calvinists and Arminians, said Mr. S. are both wrong, and both right. They are right in what they assert, and wrong in what they deny. There is a preordination to eternal life, says the Calvinist, You are right; Scripture is full to the point. I deny it, says the Arminian.

Then you are

wrong. Rom. viii. 19. I assert, says the Arminian, that God willeth the salvation of all men. You are right; it is expressly affirmed in Holy Writ. I deny it, replies the Calvinist. Then you deny what is affirmed and implied throughout the Bible. Ezek. xviii. 23, 32. 2 Pet. iii. 9. Then, exclaim both, you are inconsistent. I am content. I dare not evade or shuffle, or explain away, or charge God foolishly. I will submit my opinions to Scripture, and not torture the Scripture to meet my wisdom. I see through a glass darkly, and I wait with patience to see face to face.

Works foreseen or works done, it is still work; and if God's purposes are formed on either, man has whereof to glory. Salvation is not of grace.

CLERICUS OXONIENSIS.

for the accomplishment of designs, which shall at last fill heaven and earth with admiration and delight. I, Sir, am old enough to remember almost the first measures which were adopted for terminating the Slave Trade, that curse of Africa and disgrace of Europe. In every step that was taken I felt the most lively interest; and when the British Parliament decreed its termination, my heart leaped for joy. In this I only shared the feelings of thousands and tens of thousands of my countrymen; and I have an equal number of associates in lamenting the continuance of the horrid traffic by other European nations; and in deploring the miseries which that unhappy portion of the earth still seems doomed to suffer, to gratify the avarice of men called Christians. This is one of the mysterious events of Providence, to which we ought to bow with silent submission ; assured that "the Judge of all the earth will do right," though we cannot understand the reasons of his decision.

But while we thus adore the depths we cannot fathom, it will still be very satisfactory to see some rays of light issuing out of this thick darkness-to trace out some purpose of mercy, which the dispensation may be intended to answer. With this view I would beg leave to call your attention to the accounts with which the Reports of the Church Missionary Society furnish us, relative to the state of things at Sierra Leone. Had our wishes and prayers for the complete extinction of the Slave Trade been granted; had the powers of Europe agreed to brand it as piracy, and punished with just severity all engaged in it, which was undoubtedly their bounden duty, how very different would the state of things have been! It is true, Africa would have been greatly benefited. The predatory wars, which have constantly been carried on to procure Slaves, would

have ceased. Cultivation and commerce might gradually have been introduced. But still an almost insurmountable obstacle to her being Christianized, arising from the want of persons whose constitutions would bear the climate, or who could accommodate themselves to the habits of the natives, would remain. God, however, seems to be overruling the iniquity of the European nations, and of some of the natives of our own land, so as to remove this mighty impediment to the spread of the Gospel in that large portion of the earth.

At Sierra Leone are collected together a vast number of native Africans, from the various tribes that inhabit the country. They are receiving instruction in the arts of civilized society; and more than all, they are taught that which is "able to make them wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus." The success which has attended the labours of the Missionaries among them is most cheering. Is it then too much to hope, that from amongst these recaptured negroes many will be found to convey back to their countrymen that knowledge which they themselves would not have attained if they had not been once the wretched inhabitants of a slave ship? Is it enthusiasm only which leads me to expect, that many more successful preachers of the Gospel to the African tribes will be found among them, than we could ever hope to export from the shores of Europe? I confess I cannot help indulging the expectation, that froin the colony of Sierra Leone (a colony which may be called the child of many prayers, though they remained many years unanswered) light will burst in upon the dark regions of Africa; and that ere long its "wilderness shall blossom as a rose, and its desert be like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be heard therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody."