ing influences, the streams that flow from that Fountain through that Channel. These can satisfy the thirsty soul, though in a barren land. How thoughtlessly I once repeated those words, "We bless thee for the means of grace;" but, blessed be his holy name, he has many times given me occasion and enabled me so to do. How amiable his tabernacles, how pleasant his ways, and what perfect freedom there is in his service, when his soul-enlightening, quickening, comforting presence is with us.

The Lord bless you, and keep you in his fear, faith, and love. Farewell. Yours affectionately,

Sunderland, April 17th, 1845.

S. TURNER.

Providence has a thousand keys to open a thousand doors for the deliverance of his own, when it is even come to the greatest extremity. Let us be faithful, and care for our own part, which is to do and suffer for him, and lay Christ's part on himself, and leave it there. Duties are ours, events are the Lord's.—Rutherford.

Jacob, to save his life, flies to Padan-aram; there Laban deals hardly with him, and when he made homewards, follows him with evil intent; but the Lord in a dream takes him off. No sooner is he escaped from him, but Esau comes against him with four hundred men, full bent to revenge the old grudge; the Lord turns his heart in a moment, and melts him into brotherly affection, that instead of destroying Jacob, he proffers himself to be his guard and convoy. When Simeon and Levi had so highly provoked the Canaanites, that it was a thousand to one but they would come and cut off Jacob's family at once, the Lord causes a terror to fall upon them, that they do not so much as look after them. When a seven years' famine was coming upon the land, (likely enough to eat up poor Jacob and his house,) the Lord, by a strange providence, sends a harbinger to make provision for them in Egypt. When oppressed by the Egyptians, and all means used to destroy them, and that both with craft and cruelty, the Lord so orders the matter, that the more they were oppressed, the faster they grew, and by a high hand he brings them out at last. In the wilderness, they carry themselves as unworthily towards God as ever people did; doing all that in them lay to cut off the entail of that good land by their unbelief and daily repeated rebellions; insomuch that the Lord threatens to dispossess them; but for his promise sake made with Abraham, withdraws his hand, and spares them. I might instance also the great straits and dangers they were in at the Red Sea, which the Lord divided for them; afterwards for want of water, which he brings them out of a rock; then for bread, which also, he gives them from heaven; how they were denied passage by some, and waylaid by others, and yet carried on and delivered; and at last, how the Lord drove out those giants whom they despaired of overcoming; and so gave them the land in possession, according to his promise hundreds of years before; "there failed not aught of any good thing which the Lord had spoken unto the house of Israel; all came to pass."-Elisha Coles.

REMEMBRANCES AND DROPS OF BLESSEDNESS.

"Set thee up waymarks, make thee high heaps."-(Jer. xxxi. 21.) O how precious, when grey hairs begin to alter the appearance of our head, warning us of a coffin and the grave, I say, how immensely valuable, how unspeakably precious, then and at such times, does beam forth our calling and election of God! What is free-will then? An empty bubble. Did God begin with me, there is the point, in religion? If I began with him, it will all be choked and suffocated in eternity. What a surprising thing, that the Almighty God should begin with me, so insignificant a worm! Nay, what is so far worse, so rebellious, so naturally polluted and fiendish a creature as I. The word "fiendish" will not offend one who knows all the hidden evils of his heart. But nothing short of this will do, that the Almighty verily began with us! What a stoop, that the Creator of heaven and earth, the most unspeakable Maker of the starry heavens, should ever have dealings and transactions solidly felt and known by me. His bondages and deliverances, his bindings and loosings, his anger and his love, felt by me; all, all show to my wondering eyesight that Christ is mine and I am his. The repentance he has granted me, the forgiveness of sins he has given me; the quickness in a state of sin he has given; (whereas before I was stupid, besotted, and benumbed in the sense of sin;) the lively feelings as regards guilt and pardon; the quick sense of stings and balm, envenoming stings of guilt, and healing balm felt of Christ's blood. I assure you, in sight of grey hair, a coffin, and the grave, we want our calling and election to shine warm and strong. Worms, and dust, and our mouldering to clay and corruption, want the strong hand or voice of God in us to assure us of our interest; to open the gates of paradise to our wondering eyesight; and softly to say, (louder than ten thousand thunders,) in accordance with Scripture, "Thou art mine."

There is nothing short of this will do; more or less. The elect of God are not permitted of God to rest at a peradventure. And the doctrine or the gift of grace, which is it in me? the tinkling bell of knowledge, or the warm life-blood, as it were, of everlasting life, which is it in me? This frets and rankles, and makes us as the Psalmist partly, "I opened my mouth and panted" after assurance. Besides, affliction, sorrow, poverty, sickness, and knowing one's own sore and grief in ten thousand ways in the course of years, makes us unwilling to rest short of assurance.

All quickened souls may be divided into two sorts; seekers or finders of Christ.

The finders of Christ feelingly, are mostly gradual, like the shining light, that shines more and more. It was in the year 1833, amid whirlwinds and hurricanes of distress, when I was preaching a few Sundays at a parish church a few miles from Baydon, Wilts, when God first plentifully broke up spiritually the great deeps of his love in divine influences feelingly to my soul, and made spiritually springs, wells, and rivers to touch or overspread my heart with hidden "manna like hoar-frost" or supernatural dew, and I said, What is it? Delight,

joy, soothing calm, peaceful bliss, moistening rapture, and gracious satiations overspread my God-fearing soul, that had greatly feared and greatly panted after rest and joy; but then was satiated. It was in 1845 or 1846, when God showed me partly and remarkably in a dream, what he would do for me in temporal things, which in 1848 he fulfilled. by his unexpectedly giving me a temporal provision, thereby setting my head above all my enemies. It is to be feared, that many good people are more or less left to smother their convictions, to please man somehow or other for a piece of bread. But I might as well have swallowed lies in the Church of England as do so among the Dissenters. In 1847, in a most distressing twelvemonth's illness, God showed me unspeakably, and never, never, to be forgotten by me, that my soul and everybody else's soul generally that was a child of God was in a sickly state. And I secretly feel now that the real children of God in the present day, through worldliness, carnality, lukewarmness, allowed and winked at backsliding within, and regarding iniquity in their heart, and want of keeping their heart and life with all diligence through grace; (all smothered up more or less in a doctrinal assurance;) I say I still believe most of God's children in our present day are in a sickly state; for as a blessed aged man near Wootton Bassett now dead, said, "When I go to see them, I mostly come back a worse man, that is, they are in a sicklier state of soul than I am? Gracious and adorable God, say I of my poor unworthy self, worthless creature that I am, can it be possible, with broken health, having left the Church of England without sixpence to depend on and no friend to look to; can it be possible that I, having stood in such most perilous places between God and my conscience, can be content with a sickly religion? No. When I was a Church minister I had more tenderness of conscience, more yearnings after God, and more love to the people of God, than many dead-alive Particular Baptists have.

God in his unsearchable providence has, unexpectedly to me, made me better off in temporal things than most of his children; so, spiritually, when I was in the Church, before I knew almost there were such people as Particular Baptists, I used much on my knees reverentially, in anxious sorrow and careworn tremblings toward God, to read the Bible from end to end, backward and forward, and forward and backward, until my knees were almost horny; so, having been 20 years at Abingdon, I lift up my hand to heaven, as I did when I left the Church without a sixpence, or kindred, or good health, to justify such an extreme step as throwing and tossing away my bread for conscience' sake, without consulting one creature under the sky; I say there is not one precept in the Bible, as well as doctrine and experience, but what I hold dearer than life. Such is religion got in prayer, and that "takes the whole gospel, not a part."

It is not saying, but gospelly doing the will of God, through enabling grace, that wins the prize. Through affliction, sorrow, and distress sanctified, for the last 20 years, in trembling anxiety, in poverty, or sickness, or unspeakable woes, I have mostly kept a diary

daily of my life, and that will show, after I am dead and gone, that I have not been permitted to do otherwise than, as Huntington says, "Balance accounts between Christ and your conscience twice a day," nor to be permitted to lie down on my bed with unrepented-of sin. Swift, daily, and unmuffled repentance is a gift; and the want of it produces much of the bondage so much cried out about:

I am a poor vile creature. My language is, "Help me to keep the bloody field." Continual temptations, vile feelings, my heart, like yeast, continually swelling with one base working or another; saved by grace, yet pained at an evil thought; glorying in feeling the imputed righteousness of Christ mine, and yet longing and struggling, through the Spirit, for an imparted righteousness as the fruits and effects of the former; for good works gospelly and tenderness of conscience, wishing in love to match or outshine any one I know, and yet glorying in being saved by my Saviour's passive and active works alone; feeling, before a heart-searching God, I could lay down my life, if required, for any one of God's children, and in love showing, by making daily sacrifices for them, I can so far prove it; feeling I am the vilest whelp under heaven, and yet desiring and struggling (having ill health), through grace, to have a spotless conscience; thus struggling to be ready to die any moment; though baffled unwillingly, stung, and goaded by imperfection and indwelling sin; hating myself worse than the devil for my shortcomings; determined, through grace, to win the prize, and yet feeling a chilling weight of sin opposing my warmest wishes after the fruits and effects of grace in holiness of life, word, and thought.

I should speak against my conscience, and the Holy Ghost, and the Scriptures, if I said I did not possess these things. These and various other items of blessedness make grey hairs, a coffin, and the grave to shine or dawn with brightest bliss on my happy, ravished, and transported feelings. And as Paul says, "The judge of quick and dead, who will reward every man according to his works, knoweth that I lie not."

N.B.-The dream above-mentioned is this: In 1845, or thereabout, having long had poor health and nothing of my own to live on, I very much inquired of God what was to be done providentially. He gave me this dream. I saw a will with my name in it, for so much money left me, as plain as could see a man standing before me. I never thought of the dream afterwards except as mere vanity. In 1848, perfectly unexpected by me, yea, perfectly contrary to my expectation, that dream was literally fulfilled. And after I had got the money, Mrs. B., a godly woman, near Abingdon, said, in effect, to me, 66 Now, you know that what you told me years ago about that dream has become literally true." "God speaketh once, yea, twice in a dream, and man perceiveth it not." If we were led and enabled more tenderly to consider and observe God's operations, little and great, inward and outward, toward us, both in providence and grace, I am persuaded we should be more built up or edified. Bless the Lord, O my soul !

Abingdon.

I. K.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A LIVING AND A DEAD FAITH.

My dear Friend, It is a great mercy if I have not been preaching in vain since I left A

I have been well attended at Eden Street, and have felt liberty in speaking two or three times. When the Lord blesses my soul, and there are signs of God's word being blest, it seems then I am in my right place. I am constrained to exalt the mercy of God, knowing there is no hope of salvation for me in any other way. What a mercy it is to know that Christ died for our sins, past, present, and to come; but a real faith in such realities is sure to be tried. It seems too great for sinful dust to call God "Father," and to feel sure we have a mansion of glory; but I have felt such enjoyments, and can therefore declare them to others. But the devil, with the infidelity and blasphemies of my heart, will ever fight against such a faith in my soul. Yet what a difference there is between a dead faith and a living faith! It is the living faith that will be tried, and will cause God's people to be very thankful for upholding and supporting grace. It is nearly 19 years since I first preached in this large city. I knew then if I went to heaven, it must be through grace. But I have, through mercy, been taught more what I am by nature and what I am by grace, and have known more of the precious love of Christ than I knew then. I wish that I could prize more and more every mark and testimony of God's love to my soul.

I hear of the Lord's blessing attending the word spoken by me at different places, which is encouraging. I believe a good many God-fearing people come to Eden Street Chapel; and although they have never had a pastor, they have now 70 members.

Mr. G., who has preached at A- for many years, intended to go by the train that was upset the other day, and ran down a deep embankment near B- However he changed his mind, and went on horseback, as he was going to Lewes, and arrived at the very spot where the dreadful calamity took place two minutes afterwards. It made him feel grateful for such a deliverance.

I hope the friends are well. "Greet them by name."

Pentonville, June 16th, 1851.

Give my love to all inquiring friends.
Yours affectionately in Christ,

A LETTER BY THE LATE W. GADSBY.

W. T.

Dear Friend,—I just drop a line to say that I am still in the wilderness, and for wise purposes my dear Lord sometimes suffers me to be very much bewildered. But, bless his precious name, he does not leave me there, but he comes again, and brings light, life, and liberty with him.

I am glad to hear that the dear Lord now and then affords you a sweet lift by the way. In fact, it is no small mercy to know when we are down and need his blessed Spirit to lift us up. I was speaking from Job xxii. 29 on Lord's Day, namely, "When men are cast