are some in this town that long to hear him again. May the Lord bless you indeed, and preserve you in health and strength of body for many years. That you may in the face of all your enemies stand in his strength, spread forth the savour of his name, and be still increasingly useful in calling poor sinners out of darkness into God's marvellous ight, is the earnest prayer of, THE contents of yours rejoiced my heart, and strengthened my hands; evil report and good report falls to my share daily; the former counteracts my consequence, the latter animates my hope. "The light of the eyes rejoiceth the heart," when faith discovers invisible realities; "and a good report maketh the bones fat," when attended with the witness of conscience. I find by daily experience that Satan and his adherents are no enemies to blind zeal, to feigned faith, to a form of godliness, nor to external reformation; they have no objection to the ministry of the letter, nor to a splendid profession under it. Satan's spoiler, and the hypocrite's vexation, is the spirit of life in the soul; and this we know, that man is alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in him, because of the blindness of his heart. The Spirit of life is the springing well and the flowing brook which works the sting of death and the sentence of it out of the conscience, and the fear of death and its appendages out of the mind; and is the fountain of life, and of all blessings, and all blessedness that ever came down from the father of lights to the children of men. All heat from natural affections, however moved and stirred up by gifts, fluency, zeal, or oratory, is nothing else but sparks of our own kindling; every spiritual gift that is not fed with spiritual life, must die, being nothing but a sound. Life keeps the conscience tender, and makes it susceptible of every injury offered to it, either by sin or by error. It is the quickening operations of the Spirit that kills us to the vanities of this world, and gives us all our appetites, cravings, longings, hungering and thirsting after righteousness, after the bread and water of life, and after cominunion and fellowship with the Son of God. Without life the appetite of man is vitiated; he cannot relish or savour the things of God, but those that be of men. We see not a few that fade and wither away, who once looked green and flourishing; and this must be the case where there is no union with 2 C VOL. XIV. the true vine, for the branch cannot bear fruit of itself. There is in this union momentary support, the Lord is our strength; there is a continual communication of all sorts of grace from the Lord's fulness; there is a repeated anointing with fresh oil from the unction of the Holy One, who is anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows; and there is a being watered every moment with the quickening streams of the fountain of life these, my dear friend, are the things that must keep our leaves green; and under these influences we shall bring forth fruit in old age, to shew that God is upright. W. H. S. S. END OF THE FOURTEENTH VOLUME. Printed by T. Bensley, |