from this state of indifference, we feel an anxious solicitude to promote the present welfare and eternal felicity of those precious souls, which are all around us perishing for lack of knowledge. We deplore the awful state of ignorance, thoughtlessness, and vice, into which they have fallen; we feel for those miseries which they are now suffering, and for that future anguish to which they are exposed, as the just consequence of sin; and having formed ourselves into a society, with a view to communicate to them the glorious Gospel of the blessed God, we call upon you, brethren, to assist us by your countenance, by your support, by your counsel, and by your prayers. We call upon you, by the consideration of the many thousands who have already perished beyond the reach of hope, and in the names of those vast multitudes who are daily dying around us. We would urge you by the solemn thought, that in a very little time our seasons of usefulness will be for ever over; and that he that soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; but that he that soweth bountifully shall then reap also bountifully. We most earnestly intreat you, by all that you have ever known yourselves of the love of Christ, of the compassion of his heart, and of the freeness of his grace, to endeavour to impart this interesting know ledge to others. We would further press this point upon you from the honour, the unfading honour, which will be attached to that man who winneth souls. Finally, permit us, dear brethren, to beseech you by the time already lost, by the shortness and uncertainty of that yet to come, by the awfulness of death and the solemnities of judgment, that none of you will discourage us by a cold silence; but that you will more and more strengthen our hands by your aid, and animate our hearts

by your approbation. Signed, on behalf the committee,

"ROBT. STEVENSON, Chairman." The committee of the Congregational Union, having proved Mr. Stevenson's ability and willingness to employ his pen in their service, requested that he would draw up a short and evangelical address to the ignorant and unawakened, which produced a tract, entitled A Warning Voice to Sinners, and the Salvation of the Gospel proclaimed. This truly valuable address was also received upon the list of the Religious Tract Society, as No. 45, The Warning Voice, about 10,000 of which are annually published in our own country, besides the wide extended circulation it has throughout the Continent, it having been translated, under the direction of the committee, into most of the European languages. Scarcely a report of that society is published, without recording some striking instances of its usefulness; so that the remark which a venerable Minister made fifteen years ago, may be now well recorded, "that if Mr. Stevenson had lived to no other purpose than to write the Warning Voice, he would have lived to answer a valuable end."

The death of the Rev. Aaron Wickens, of Dunmow, the secretary of the Essex Associated Ministers, gave them an opportunity, in 1799, of testifying their affectionate respect, by appointing Mr.S. to the vacant office; and the punc tuality, diligence, and courtesy, with which he fulfilled its duties till the last year of his life, proved that they were not mistaken in their choice.

In 1803, it was his happiness to receive his eldest daughter as a member into the Church at Castle Hedingham, when she was in her 19th year; and her amiable, active, and holy temper, made her an example to many that were beyond her years, and was a source of pe

culiar satisfaction to her much-loved parents; but she was soon to be removed to a more perfect state of society: a pulmonary complaint attacked her in 1806. "But (to use her father's words) the flattering nature of the malady, a slight cough, a little hoarseness, and these very symptoms occasionally giving way to medicine, deceived both the parents and herself as to the real danger of her case; but in the summer of 1807, these symptoms, renewed by some little cold she had caught, began to assume a very formidable aspect. All the aid of medicine was resorted to, which either the London or country practice could supply, change of air, and journies to distant friends were tried, but all in vain ; this flower, this lovely flower, which gave such pure delight to every beholder, gradually faded-for the worm was at its root!"

She died, in the arms of her father, Sept. 6, 1808, sustained by

the hopes of a glorious immortality, and leaving behind her those unquestionable proofs of her happy state, which cheered her sorrowing family under this afflictive visitation.

Mr. S. collected from her papers many interesting extracts, and compiled a memoir,* which is at once a monument of her piety, and his parental affection.

In 1816 Mr. Stevenson was requested, by the Associated Ministers assembled at Witham, to write an address to their churches on the subject of Schism, with a view to expose the sin and danger of divisions in Christian societies. This task he performed with his accustomed ability, and a large impression of it was printed and sold, and it is in contemplation to reprint it.

(To be concluded in our next.)

*First published in the Evangelical Magazine for July, 1810, then as a distinct tract, and also in S. Burder's Memoirs of Eminently Pious Women, vol.3.

No. XXXIV.

MAN'S TRANSIT THROUGH TIME INTO ETERNITY. "When a few years are come, then I shall go the way whence I shall not return."-Job xvi. 22.

NOTHING is so flattering, yet nothing so deceitful, as human life! for though all through it is big with promise and fair in prospect, yet in the issue it proves empty, and inadequate to our expectations. After a man has reached the ordi

nary limit of human existence, it is but too generally the fact, that he appears to have lived in vain. The god of this world, whom men serve through life, forsakes them in death, or attends them only in the character of a tormentor, to mock their wickedness, and triumph over their credulity. But the wisdom

which cometh from above will teach us so to number our days, as to expect nothing of substantial good from the flattering prospects of the world; and yet so to number them, as to make them introductory to scenes of perfect, unalloyed, and eternal blessedness. The sentiment of the text is founded on a fixed, universal, and unalterable decree. Men may think it strange or they may think it hard, they may deem it cruel or they may deem it unwise, but it remains an unquestionable truth, the fatal day is hastening on, and each one must feel it to be a fact which requires to be laid home with infinite seriousness upon his soul, ́“ when a few years (at the utmost) are come, then he shall go the way whence he shall not return."

I. First then let us impress our minds with the brevity, the rapidity, and the uncertainty of our years. When we speak of human life, let us cautiously watch against the folly of deeming it a long and pleasant journey; against the delusion, which would make its progress appear slow, and its end distant. What is your life but a vapour the flight of an arrow through the air-the rapidity of the weaver's shuttle-the flower of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the furnace. Well are we denominated creatures of a day, of a summer's day: not always long, often deceiving our hopes before noon, and sometimes even in its morning obscured and abbreviated by clouds and tempests. Life, human life, signifies the brief measure of that duration in which body and soul remain in a state of union and co-operation. This mysterious union, which constitutes us conscious and accountable agents, takes place at our birth; and though its continuance doubtless depends on the will of God, yet it is every moment liable to dissolution, and is exposed to an infinite multitude of evils and accidents, any of which may reach the hidden and mysterious principle of life, and, in an instant, cut asunder its firmest links. Even time itself, which seems at first but to cement and strengthen the union of body and soul, and which, as day succeeds to day, appears to invigorate and mature them, is the most certain destroyer: while it leads us on from the weakness of childhood to the gaiety of youth, and then to the vigour of manhood, it is but hastening our steps to the verge of life, and weakening the bond that it first contributed to strengthen. While it developes our power, it does but exhaust it; and while it measures out to us the cup of life, it drops into it the poison of death.

1. The first words of this text seem to remind us of the rapidity

of life, even in its best state-when you have said your utmost of its length, it consists only of a few years; and how hasty is the passage of these! How hurried our succession from stage to stage ! Who has not been surprised at the speed of time in review? And who has not again and again remarked of periods including more than a few years, "why it seems but yesterday!" When we have passed one stage, and look back upon several years, they appear but as so many days. In looking forward, indeed, time appears long, because our imaginations people it with events, and colour it with every change and variety of pleasure. But when we have gone through its several stages, we are still prone to be dissatisfied, still fond of anticipating a longer, and still a longer space; while the past is like a dream when one awaketh, only a very small portion of the confused scene remains. We are travellers, who are hastening on our journey, or as pilgrims moving towards a distant place: at setting out, our imagination lengthens the course by its busy, its vague, and its endless anticipations; and at the close, shortens it by that oblivion of the past, with which it introduces the present, and promises the future.

2. Again, let us remember in connexion with the words of this text, the brevity of human life in the whole-for not only does one period rapidly succeed another, so as to make each appear hurried and unsatisfactory, but the whole sum is brief. Job says, a few years; Moses says, a few days; David says, Mine age is as nothing. Let it be stretched to its utmost; let it be supposed that I shall retain my vigour to seventy or eighty, yet they are only a few years from the age of twenty, or thirty, or forty, when we first begin to know what years mean. Onward from the experience and wisdom of manhood, all the rest

are soon counted; the sands are dropping while we speak the stream is flowing while we watch it; yea while we float down it, for 66 we are carried away as with a flood." Our hasty years steal silently and surely on, and we think little of an hour, or a day, or a week, and have probably spent many-perhaps months and years, in mere amusement, or trifling, or positive sin, while we were all the time borne rapidly forward, and are come to the present moment, as to a point from which the future is all hidden, and to us has no existence; and all the past appears brief as a tale that is told. The inspired writer here speaks of a few years not as certain, but as at best the brief passage of his soul to a state from whence it cannot return. Ah! where shall the writer and the reader be in a few years? Let none reckon even on a few years. To some there remain only a few days-a few hours- -a few moments.

But 3. The phraseology of the text reminds us that human life is all uncertairi. The expression is indefinite; it does not say when ten, twenty, thirty, forty years are come; the whole was deemed questionable; he might live a few years, but at best it could be only a few, and therefore it became him to feel the whole matter as uncertain, but as leading to a state from which he should certainly never return;-and who knoweth what shall be on the morrow? We may feel strong, and imagine our life sure for many years, but it is only a vapour which appeareth for a little season, and then passeth away; we come forth like a flower, and are cut down, or appear like a shadow, the shadow of a cloud moving along the ground, it is gone while you gaze. The man of forty or fifty may feel almost sure that he shall have a few; the man of seventy or eighty hopes that he

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shall have a few; the man of twenty or thirty is almost confident that he shall have but yet many; not one of all the myriads of human beings that pursue the flitting shadows of earthly good, has any security for another year, or even another hour; all, all is uncertain. The summons may come upon us suddenly, and in the midst of our strength, or the midst of our folly. II. We advance to remark upon the text, that the termination of these few years of human life, whether it be distant or near, will inevitably bring us into a state of conscious being, from whence there is no return. These words of the text demonstrate, that Job was a believer in a future state: " I shall go the way I shall not return." "I shall not cease to be, when a few years are expired, but I shall pass into a fixed eternal state: I, retaining my identity, my consciousness, shall go, disappear indeed from time, but still I shall be, though I shall not return here." It is a matter of great moment to fix deep in our minds the belief of a future and eternal state; and not to allow its distance from sense, or its difference from this obscure state of being, its height above us, or its depth below us, or its undefined verge, which, though near, is invisible, and cannot be recrossed, to induce us to doubt its reality, or neglect its pre-eminent claims. There is indeed in us, because we are slaves to sense, a constant tendency to forget, or to dispute, the existence of that state; but when we revert to Scripture, to reason, or to the nature and constitution of man, these all declare, that when a few years are come, we shall go the way whence we shall not return: Death may separate the soul and the body, but all that essentially goes to constitute that all important identity that imperishable personality, represented by this one significant word, shall go into a new and interminable state. The

house may lose its inhabitant; the traveller must pass on his journey; the sun may leave one hemisphere, but the withdrawment of its light and heat, is not the annihilation of its orb. The soul is the sun which shines upon the body and uses it as its own instrument, and though it must pass from the hemisphere on which it now shines at death, it is neither to lose its lustre nor its being. The word of God affords us ample satisfaction upon this point: it teaches us that all souls return to God for judgment, but that all souls of believers in Jesus ascend to immediate glory in the presence of their God and Saviour. I shall go the way, says Job, whence I shall not return. The wicked may be as sure of the fact as the righteous, for while Lazarus was carried at death to Abraham's bosom, the rich man, at whose door he had famished, died also, and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments. It is a disbelief or a disregard of this invisible, future and eternal world, that lies at the foundation of all the sensuality, carelessness and sin of mankind. They dream that all things are to continue as they are; and that they shall never be awaked to eternity and to God: or they conceive that the obscurity in which they suppose these awful subjects are enveloped, justifies their hesitation; or they have a secret hope that death will land them on the shores of some new world of sensual delights; or they may be glad even, through the power of sin, the prevalence of unbelief, and the desire of impurity, to cling to that last and most degraded hope of fallen humanity-the hope of annihilation. But let every one be assured upon testimony which he is challenged to controvert, that every human soul shall continue in the full exercise of its faculties for ever, CONG MAG. No. 55.

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for God has made the soul to live for ever, and I feel that in assigning his will and counsel for its immortality, I am assigning the strongest proof that any proposi tion can possess, and the most satisfactory that the human mind can receive.

III. Upon the words of this text let it be remarked, that the character of that fixed and eternal state into which we pass at death, will be determined by the manner in which these few years of human life have been spent. There is an intimate connection between that state of heart towards God, in which we spend the sum of life, and with which we quit the present earthly scenes, and the condition of our immortal spirits after death— Our eternity will derive its character from time-for God has connected by his purpose, and by his revealed word, a state of eternal happiness with a cordial and prac tical reception of the gospel, and a condition of indescribable and endless sufferings, with the rejection of the only way of salvation, which sovereign love has provided. While, therefore, our few years of earthly sojourn remain unexpired, it becomes a matter of infinite interest to know what is our present state before God. All other consideration as to our state in this life-our poverty or riches-our meanness or greatness-our wisdom or ignorance, are comparatively insignificant; they are the trifles that will leave no trace upon our heart, and no influence upon our state at that period when we go the way whence we shall not return. Equally unimportant is it to us now whether our years have been few or many-or whether any remain behind-all, all depends in that future world upon our character in this. How are we spending the days we now enjoy? for if we have lived but a few years, and have been led in them to 2 Y