and with a more formidable aspect. It is well, my brother:-all right; for it is the Lord's doing. Has he not told us that the hairs of our head are all numbered? Does he not say-"It is I; be not afraid?" Does he not mercifully rebuke our unbelief in such language-“Do ye not remember? Are ye yet without understanding? O ye of little faith!" You say you feel yourself" less able to refight this battle than when it first began." No matter: it is not your's. Remember that word-" When I am weak, then am I strong." But you are really weary of such a contention, and ashamed of it, as it is deemed to spring from enthusiasm or imbecility, &c. It is a sad affair, to be sure, when such clever fellows as J. L or John Walker are laughed at as fools for Christ's sake : and there is but one effectual remedy for that pride which kicks at it, and would make us faint under it-to consider HIM who endured to be called mad, and to be the song of the drunkard.

March, 1824.

Have you ever read, dear J———. of certain women which ministered to him of their substance? To whom? do you know? Aye, aye; it is written, Luke viii. 2, 3. I know that passage very well.' Say, my brother, do we not forget the thing, however we may recollect the words, when we kick so proudly, as you seem to do, against the idea of our possibly becoming dependent on our fellow sinners. That the flesh will kick at it, I know: I am well acquainted with the feeling: but let us not be imposed on by it, as if it were a good and proper feeling.

There is a spirit of independence which the Word enjoins, of eating our own bread, &c. But if He, whose we are, be pleased to say" I see it best that you should be unable to earn your own bread, for I see the pride and naughtiness of heart which lurks under your independent spirit. Go-1 have commanded the ravens -or a widow-woman- —or such and such brethren, to sustain you”would it not become us to say-" Good is the will of the Lord?" But all this while you are fretting and fuming under an imaginary trial in possible prospect. You have discovered it to be false, I suppose, that sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." O, J—————— ! let us rather be in subjection to the Father of Spirits, that we may live. Be still and know that HE is GOD."

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It grieves me much to hear that F- is disturbing you with questions that minister strife rather than godly edifying. I well recollect how much comfort and food I had singing the Scotch version of the Psalms of David with you. I believe I checked your impatience for the new hymn-books, thinking that you are better off as you are. But really I should think myself ill employed fighting with any brethren, which should be used. While the Psalms are used, in the mind in which they were indited, they are a feast of marrow and fatness above all hymns that ever were composed by man. I smile at his objection to the version on the ground of taste. I should decisively object to the more poetical English version, or to Dr. Watts's. I do view with pain and surprise our brother's objection

to the language in Gal. i. 7, 8, as if unfit for any believer except an inspired apostle. May it be the language of our whole heart and soul unto the end! But as used by the apostle or by us, I really have never conceived the words, "Let him be accursed," as denoting a prayer that the curse of God should ultimately fall upon him (though we must be sure that it shall, if he be not given repentance to the acknowledgment of the truth), but as a direction that he should be regarded by us as an accursed thing, as one (however specious and highly esteemed) upon whom the wrath of God lies. He that will not heartily join with the apostle in the solemn words, must be animated by some spirit very different from that of the truth. May you all follow the things that make for peace, and the things whereby ye may edify one another.

* * * *

April, 1824. Thanks for your interesting letter of the 14th. It relieved and rejoiced me in many views. How tenderly does our Heavenly Father deal in allowing you to retain your situation in the Excise! It is what I expected: but to find my expectations realized, is delightful and calls for praise. So also does the termination of H. F's business. It had a very threatening aspect for some time; but I trust will be turned into a blessing. Dear J.'s last letter prepared me to expect a happy result, though I scarcely flattered myself that you would be so soon re-united to so many. I trust that mutual confidence and love will be more than ever strengthened and abound among you.

* * * *

July, 1824. It rejoices me to hear that you are all going on in the peace and comfort of the gospel. O! it is indeed a good and a pleasant thing for brethren to dwell together in unity. And the restoration of that blessing must be considerably endeared by its late interruption. Your account of our sister

's health, and the pecuniary prospects of the family, ought to excite our sympathy and prayers. May they acknowledge the rod, and Him who hath appointed it, and be profitably exercised under his correcting hand! How cheering are the assurances that whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth; "that when we are chastened of the Lord, it is that we may not be condemned with the world." I believe many of the pecuniary trials of Christians originate in their not attending to the plain rule given them-"Mind not high things, but conform to low." Rom. xii. 16.

I am at present threatened with an attack of gout. But I have had a longer interval of freedom from it than I have been accustomed to for some years. I labour also under a new disease, which I thought would have subjected me to a painful surgical operation. I felt very cowardly at the prospect, but I found great comfort from the consideration of that word-"We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones," Eph. v. 30. (It is out of his flesh;

taken out of it as Eve from Adam's). No man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church. Surely, if we had faith as a grain of mustard seed, the closeness of this union which subsists between the members and their Head, is sufficient to make us yield ourselves to him and his gracious dealings at all times and in all circumstances, in implicit reliance on his tenderness, and care, and wisdom. He does not willingly afflict or grieve us; but he loves us too well to leave us without chastisement; and has too high aims for us, to let us take up our rest here. "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from ever

lasting to everlasting; and let the people say, Amen."

* *-. And now I must dismiss my nonsense for the present. He was indeed a wise man that said-" Even in laughter the heart is sad," Prov. xiv. 13; and, perhaps, even in nonsense the heart may be sober; driven to the nonsense from not knowing how to bring forward the sober verities that press upon it. But there are circumstances which will force them out head foremost. You are going to spend (I think) three years at P; and I am sure I do not think my life worth three years' purchase. You may, on your return, find me vegetating where I am; but I think it more likely that I shall by that time have done with this life, and have got behind the scenes. You think that I shall be in a state of insensibility, or, in fact, of temporary non-entity. I am sure I shall not! for I am sure the scriptures plainly oppose the notion, and I know nothing at all about the matter but what the scriptures testify. They have spoiled me as a philosopher, and they have spoiled me as a man of prudence and respectability in the world. In short, they have made (what the world thinks) a fool of me. begin life anew, and were allowed one wish, it should be to be "yet more vile," 2 Sam. vi. 21, 22, in the same way. What folly would it be to make any of the objects of this life the matter of any one wish; for which of them is it that is not like a passing dream? But, my friend, you would mistake me much if you should think that I aimed at exciting in you or myself such a moralizing fit as has led many, under a general conviction of the emptiness of every object in this world, to devote their main solicitude to the supposed concerns of another world. One may be so exercised to any degree of earnestness, and yet be occupied with a more unreal shadow than the irreligious sensualist. If the irreligious world are walking in a vain shadow, the religious are walking in the shadow of

Yet, if I had to

a shade. The Christian alone is a child of the light and of the day: he alone is awake, and knows whither he is going." And when I speak of the Christian, I mean that man or woman who believes the truth declared from heaven in the gospel of God the Saviour. That revelation discovers the character and glory of the only true and only living God. It is the light of life; and as every Israelite who saw the brazen serpent lifted up by Moses in the wilderness was healed (Numb xxi. 8, 9. John iii. 14, 15), so every man that sees the truth revealed from heaven in the gospel, is restored to eternal life. Probably, my friend, you would wish me to throw in some qualification to this assertion, to modify it in some way, to insert some proviso or condition. If so, it is because you do not believe the statement, and hold some doctrine which represents the attainment of eternal life as hanging upon something which the sinner has to do for the purpose. And this is the universal thought of man's heart, so far as man thinks at all upon the subject. "What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" is the question which man's excited conscience suggests: yet he does not like the only answer which is in point to the inquiry-" If thou wilt enter into life, [thus] keep the commandments of that righteous holy law, which enjoins perfect love to God and to man, under the penalty of death." He has a secret misgiving that he is a sinner against that law, and will be so to the end. Hence it happens, that in the part of the world called Christendom, a private gospel has been introduced, which represents an imaginary Christ, whose office it is in some way to make up for the deficiencies of good and well-disposed sinners, and to reveal a spurious mercy in their false god, which consists in indulgence to sins so small as theirs. So far as they can contrive to twist the scriptures into a coincidence with this deism (and here they have all the tribe of commentators and divines to help them), they are ready to admit the Bible to be a very good book, though they conceive that they could do very well without it, and that many do. Many think it an unsafe thing to call in question its divine origin, and therefore take pains to conceal, even from themselves, their scepticism on the subject. But when they meet plain passages of scripture, in point blank opposition to their fundamental principles, they do not hesitate to blaspheme the doctrine of scripture as very wicked doctrine, and the God whom it reveals as unreasonable and unjust. The parts of scripture which they like (for instance, the Sermon on the Mount), they like because they misunderstand them. Other parts they cannot for the life of them misunderstand, even with all the aid of their commentators: and those, therefore, they pronounce bad and dangerous. Indeed, when I consider the essential opposition of the human mind and all its principles to the revelation of God made in the scriptures, my wonder is not, that so few believe the report, but that any do believe it, and in this I see not any betterness of disposition in those who believe, but the power of God, whose word shall not return to him void, but shall accomplish all that for which he sends it. (Isa. lv. 11.) It has pleased God, by the foolishness of preaching [of the apostles' preaching], to save those that believe. (1 Cor. i. 21. Acts xiii. 48.) "It is not of him that

willeth, or of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy;" (Rom. ix. 16), and the mercy that he showeth is indeed mercy "higher than the heavens," such as a creature altogether evil needs: while the perfection of this mercy is revealed in full harmony with the perfection of righteousness, and holiness, and truth, through that propitiation for sin which is set forth, as provided by God and accepted of Him, in the one offering of his Son dying the just for the unjust, and stooping to be made a curse in the place of sinners, that sinners (consistently with the divine glory) might be blessed in him. Here the revelation of God shows to man what is indeed good-that with which God is well pleased; and thus the gospel testifies the righteousness of God-that work of righteousness accomplished, on account of which God is just while he justifies the ungodly. The good hope which this gospel affords, it brings as near to the murderer on the gallows as to me or to you. He that believeth the report shall be saved, whoever he be; and he that disbelieves it, whoever he be, shall be condemned. And as to the grave apprehension, that such a doctrine will encourage men to commit murder, &c., it only shows that the person committing them, rejects the counsel of God against his own soul, and is of just the same mind with those who reproached Christ in the days of his flesh with being a friend of publicans and sinners. It is quite time to release you. I could mention circumstances which have led me, particularly at this time, to give you one plain testimony against that "philosophy and vain deceit" which corrupts the gospel of Christ. However, it at least is designed in true kindness; and if we should not meet again in the flesh, consider these as the last words of your faithful, though unphilosophic friend,

P.S. Why should I leave the ends blank, when I shall perhaps never communicate with you again upon the subject? You are a rational philosopher, and you think me irrational, because I disregard all the supposed discoveries of human reason about God and the ways of God, and consider the revelation made in his word as the one and only decisive oracle of divine truth. But let me not be misunderstood here. Far be it from me to undervalue right reason: but I am sure there is no right reason in these matters, till reason is rectified, by the mind being subdued to the acknowledgment of the truth and enlightened by its precepts. (How forcibly does the apostle reason against the reasoners on that subject in 1 Cor. ii. 11.) I know and am sure that my reason, or the intellectual faculty as exercised by myself, did lead me, and would have led me (if I had been left to its guidance), for ever to reject all the essential principles of divine truth, and to build one and another religious system of vanity and lies in supporting which I might have gone through this world with great eclat and prosperity, but would have lived and died without God and without hope; i. e. without the only true God and without the only good hope. But I am equally sure that my views were then as irrational as they were unscriptural. And now that I see and am convinced of what is declared in the Word of God, I do see that this is the only thing consistent with right reason;