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INDEX TO VOLUME X.

Affairs, publick, view of, 37, 85, 134, 183, || Cowper and his Brother, 448.

230, 275, 325, 374, 420, 470, 519, 558.

Antiprofane Society, 73.

Clark, Dr. Adam, Death of, 459.
Campbellism, Debate on, 506.

Centrifugal force, 512.

Ardent Spirits, Abandonment of, on board Charge at the Ordination of Missionaries,

Burman Mission, 82.

Birds, Longevity of, 132.

Bishop of Calcutta, 180.

Burning Spring, 265.

Brown University, 266.

Boar killed, 267.

524.

Christian Morals important in Rural Life,
242, 290, 344, 531.

Coin struck at the Mints of France, 555.

Deaths in New York, 32.

Digestive Power of Birds, 71.

Duello, Novel, 72.

Deaths at Baltimore, 73.

Distant Sight, 131.

Death from Charcoal, 266.
Dykes in Holland, 458.
Dahlia, 459.

Bunyan's Lament for his blind Mary, 241. || Diamond Mill at Amsterdam, 511.

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Evening Prayer, 11.

Education, Assembly's Board of, 35, 74.

Earthquake at the North, 72.

Extracts from the Journal of Mr. Poor,
179.

Expedition to the North West, 266.
Early rising, 411.

Expulsion of Man from the Garden, 437.
Education of the Blind, 555.

Faith, Weak, Evidences of, 189.

Means of confirming, 237.

Frazee's Bust of John Jay, 178.

Foreign Plants, 267.

Fire, Ready Means of obtaining, 411.

Green, Rev. Jacob, Sketch of the Life of,
11, 51, 99, 145, 194, 317.

Geological Fact, Singular, 179.

Gambling, 267.

General Assembly, Annual Session of,
267.

Ginger Beer, 317.

Christian Spectator, Review of, 66, 125, Germany, 368.

176.

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Hymns, Original, 99.

Hospital for Blind and Lame, 179.

Hope, 194.

Hall, Rev. Robert, Extracts from the works

of, 285.

Holy Spirit, Gracious operation of the,
529.

Influenza in Horses, 73.
Influenza and Cholera, 367..

|| Indian Curiosities, 178.

Jay's Evening Exercises, 396.

Pardon, Abuse of, checked, 205.

Justification, Witherspoon on, 7, 46, 95, Population of London, 224.

140.

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Lectures on Shorter Catechism, 1, 41, 90,
137, 185, 281, 329, 377, 425, 473, 521.
Liberia, Emigration to, 31.
Latin Ode, Translated, 50.
Looking Glasses at Rotterdam, 72.
Locusts, 131.

Lines-to a Tract, 194.
Lemur's Journal, 224.
Levet, Robert, 344.

Lace made by Caterpillars, 511.
Liberia, 554.

Mission, American at Bombay, 466.
South Sea, 513.

Missionaries at Batavia, 556.
Missions, Assembly's Board of, 32.

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Presbyterian, Domestic, 73.
Missionary Convention at Cincinnati, 33.
Herald, Extracts from, 75.
Society of the Synod of Pitts-

burg, 416, 467.
Mental Science, 102, 148, 199, 252, 488,

540.

Modern Miracles, and Phrenological In-
terpretations, 154.

Mud, Storm of, 223.

Morning, 386.

Pastoral Letter, 233.
Plague of London, 296.

Demon of, 316.

Phenomenon in Rain Water, 410.
Plants, Number and variety of, 451.
Prayer of Faith, Lectures on, 501,
Righteousness of the Saints, 14.
River of Death-A Dream, 108.
Rail Roads, 179.

547.

Rural Life, Moral of, 242, 290, 344, 541.
Miniature of, in the higher

circles, 344.

Revivals, Sprague's Lectures on, 361, 440.
Reform Bill, English, 368.

Revelation consistent with Science, 399,
452.

Retrospection, 436.

Return of Man to the Garden, 485.
Reverence for the Name of God, 545.
Reviews, 66, 125, 176, 210, 258, 304, 361,
399, 452, 547.

Steam Engines, Safety of, 31.
Sora, 31.

Singular Phenomenon, 32.

Sanford, Rev. Joseph, Obituary of, 37.
Silk, 72.

Sunday Schools in Germany, 82.
Shoes, Manufacture of, in Lynn, Mass.
132.

Stanzas, 193, 436.

Scott's 3d Volume Reviewed, 210, 258.
Sinking of a piece of Land, 267.
Seeing Darkly, 290.

Scott's last Volume Reviewed, 304.
Sandwich Islands, 319.
Snow in August, 411.

Means by which Ministers may best win Slide, Another, 459.

Souls, 431, 480.

Moon, 458.

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Shoe Blacking, 512.

Turkish and French Journal, 30.
Tariff, English, on Titles, 31.
Taste, Seat of, 31.

Temperance Society in Miniature, 64.
Tracts, Distribution of, 65.
Tillipally, 182.

Throne of Grace, 333, 380.
Thermometers, 409.
Tears of Parents, 533.
Vessels, 511.

Weather, Statement of, 71.

Cold at Germantown, 73.

Wolffe, Rev. Joseph, 132.

Washington's Birth-day, Centennial cele-
bration of, 132.

Works of a Woodpecker, 132.
Wind, 175.

Winter Evenings, 555.

THE

CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE.

JANUARY, 1832.

Keligious Communications.

LECTURES ON THE SHORTER CATECHISM OF THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY OF DIVINES-ADDRESSED TO YOUTH.

LECTURE LXIII.

3. The nature and acts of saving faith-receiving and resting on Christ alone for salvation-now call for your most serious and engaged attention. The essential nature, as well as one of the principal acts of saving faith, is very happily described by the phrase, receiving him, as he is offered in the gospel. By this, faith is discriminated from the other cardinal graces. In hope, we pleasingly anticipate the possession of a future good. In love, our affections delightfully fix and exercise themselves on an amiable object. But in neither of these do we receive an object, and appropriate it to ourselves. To do this, is exclusively the province and function of faith. Its object has already been described-Christ in the gospel offer. This object, when about to be received in an act of justifying and saving faith, is most distinctly perceived by the mind, aided, as it always then is, by the Spirit of all grace. The soul looks alternately at its unspeakable wants and necessities, and at the complete provision which is made for them all, in the infinite fulness of Christ. It is seen that there is not, and cannot be, a necessity or a deVOL. X.-Ch. Adv.

mand, for the supply of which a provision, exactly suited to it, is not most wisely and amply made. The offer, too, is seen to be made freely; not only demanding no price or recommendation, but forbidding all attempts to bring any. -It is seen that the full salvation tendered, not only may, but must be accepted simply and purely as a free gift. The anxious soul, it may be, hesitates. Here is something perfectly new-of a kind like nothing else. The greatest of all possible blessings is presented to the most undeserving; requiring nothing in the recipient, but a sense of guilt, and hopeless inability to help or recommend himself, and a willingness to receive all that he needs from an Almighty, all-sufficient, Saviour. Wonder and admiration fill his soul. He asks, perhaps, have I indeed nothing to bring? A single glance at his state gives a decisive negative answer. He sees himself destitute of every thing but guilt, and misery, and want. Then, he thinks, this offer exactly suits my case. It requires nothing, it admits of nothing meritorious in me; and truly, I have nothing-nothing but demerit, and pollution, and desert of eternal death. "Oh blessed Saviour! can it be true that thou dost stand ready to impute to me thy righteousness; to account as mine, and to make over to me, all A

the fulness of thy redeeming merit, gifts and graces, if I be but willing to receive them without money and without price! And am I not willing, yea, intensely desirous to receive them thus! Searcher of hearts, see if I deceive not myself-see all the powers of my soul bowing in humble and adoring thankfulness, to accept thy offer. I receive it, just as thou dost proffer it. I receive thee, O my gracious condescending Redeemer! in all thy precious offices, as my prophet, priest, and king. I receive thy atoning sacrifice as the full expiation of all my crimson and scarlet sins. I receive thy finished righteousness to be upon me, as my justifying righteousness, to satisfy all the demands of thy law, and to ensure me an acquittal as guiltless, before the bar of God. I receive it as my title to eternal life. I receive thy Spirit to lead me into all truth, and to sanctify me in all my powers. I receive thee as my holy, and rightful Sovereign, to give me thy laws as the rule of my duty in all things; to reign in my soul, to conquer its corruptions, and subdue it wholly to thyself; to protect me from all my spiritual enemies; to order my whole lot in life; to make thy grace sufficient for me at all times; to sustain me in the trying hour of death; to own me as thine in judgment, at the great day; and to make me a partaker, with all thy redeemed people, of the eternal and ineffable bliss of heaven. O astonishing, overwhelming grace! O condescension and love unutterable! that such blessings should be conferred on a wretched, polluted, helldeserving worm of dust! But such, O God! is thy own plan of mercy; such thy way of getting glory to thyself; and to thee be all the glory and the praise, forever and forever, amen and amen.' My dear youth, I could not feel contented to give you merely a dry and doctrinal description of those

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acts of saving faith, in which the believing sinner receives Christ his Saviour. I thought, too, that the subject would be best illustrated by a short description of the exercises themselves. Such exercises, or rather, such as my description does not reach, and indeed no language can adequately express, many a believer has known, on his first coming, in a saving manner, to Christ Jesus; and often afterward, in his spiritual intercourse with his Saviour. Yet you are to observe and carefully remember, that these high exercises, however desirable, are not essential to the actings of saving faith. They have, I doubt not, been but little known by some of the most sincere, deeply sanctified, and exemplary Christians. Religious sensibilities, of all kinds, depend, not a little, on constitutional make, habits of thought, and methods of education, as well as on the sovereign and special communications of divine grace-God adapts the dispensations of his Spirit, in a measure, to our natural temperament, and the allotments of his providence, awarded by himself, to each of his own people. What is essential to these actings of saving faith is, a complete rejection of all our own righteousnesses as filthy rags; an entire willingness to make the Saviour the all and all of our souls, in the matter of our salvation; a wellpleasedness-an unspeakable preference to be saved by the imputation of Christ's righteousness, rather than in any other way; and an actual, hearty, fiducial reliance on his finished work, as the entire ground of our acceptance with God-accompanied with strong desires for the sanctification of the soul, deliverance from all sin, and conformity of heart and life to the whole law of God.

In our Shorter Catechism there is scarcely a redundant word; and therefore it is reasonable to believe that its framers did not consider

the terms, receiving and resting on Christ, as entirely synonymous. They have, indeed, a closely related, yet a somewhat different meaning. Those who truly receive Christ Jesus, always, in some measure, rest upon him; yet resting upon him implies not only a continuance of the acts by which he is received, but a firmness and stability of faith, and a perseverance in its exercise, which is something additional to what takes place at first. "As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord," says the Apostle Paul, "so walk ye in him; rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving." The excellent commentary of Scott on these words is as follows: "As they [the Colossians] had by faith received Christ Jesus to be their Saviour, according to the several offices which he sustained for the benefit of his church, let them continue in habitual dependance on him, and obedience to him; let them seek all their wisdom, strength, hope, holiness, and comfort from him, and aim in all things to serve and glorify him. Thus being rooted in him, as trees in a fruitful soil, and builded upon him as a house upon a firm foun dation; and being established by living faith in him, according to the doctrine which they had been taught; they would abound more and more in faith, and proceed in their course with fervent thanksgiving to God for all his benefits." When believers obtain their first release from the bondage of sin and fear, by those lively views and actings of faith which you have heard described, they are ready to think that their difficulties and conflicts are terminated forever that their mountain now stands strong, and that they shall never be moved. Yet rarely indeed, if ever, are those high expectations realized. The vivid views of faith

fade away. Darkness and doubt succeed; and perhaps the genuineness of all that has been experienced is questioned; till a fresh gracious visitation, a renewed lively exercise of faith, restores confidence, and hope, and peace. In such fluctuations of elevation and depression, too many real Christians pass a great part, and some perhaps, the whole of their lives. They live, as it has been well said, entirely on their frames and feelings. This ought not to be so. Such believers can hardly be said to rest on Christ alone. They rest, so far as they have rest, too much at least, on the present state of their own minds. It is equally, my dear youth, the duty and the privilege of a child of God, to aim at knowing that he is oneknowing it on good evidence, and such as cannot be easily taken from him, or be greatly obscured. This is to be done by searching the scriptures to ascertain the reality of his gracious state, and by much prayer for the illumination and guidance of the Spirit of grace and truth; and thus getting to see satisfactorily that he is really interested in the covenant of grace, and made one with Christ. Then, rest on him alone will take place. Frames and feelings may vary greatly, as they almost invariably do, but the soul that is thus brought to rest on the rock Christ Jesus, may see the waves and billows of distress or temptation breaking around him, and at times seeming to go over him, and yet, though perhaps somewhat shaken and partially alarmed, he will not be moved away from his steadfast- / ness. His anchor is cast within the veil, and he will ride out every storm, without shipwreck, and with but little loss. But, my beloved youth, this happy state of Christian steadfastness of a good hope through grace-of an abiding sense of the spirit of adoptionis not to be reached without much

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