MY DEAR SIR,-My good friend, the first editor of the Christian Guardian, more than twenty years ago, informed me that he was requested one Sunday to visit a lady who was ill. He went, as he was desired, between the services. Having spoken to her and prayed; as he was going out of the room, the lady accompanied him to the door, and knowing that he was going to his church, she took hold of both his hands, and said with much feeling and force, "Preach Christ, Sir: preach Christ." As this lady knew that her minister did preach Christ Jesus the Lord, I can only understand her request as joined to a more full exhibition of the cross, or as expressive of her more firm persuasion, as she stood on the verge of an eternal world, of the increasing preciousness of Jesus, On a near approach to heaven, you and I, Sir, shall think more deeply than we do now. I have been many times very forcibly struck with the reply of Mr. Richmond, when he was drawing near the closing scene, to a clerical friend; Brother, we are only half awake, we are none of us more than half awake. The enemy, as our poor people would say, has been very busy with me. I have been in great darkness, a strange thought has passed through my mind, it is all delusion. Brother, brother, strong evidences, nothing but strong evidences, will do at such an hour at this. I have looked here and looked there for them, all have failed me, and so I cast myself on the sovereign, free, and full grace of God in the covenant, by Christ Jesus; and there, brother, there I have found peace.' Such was Richmond's dying testimony. Like another Lambert at the stake, his cry was, 'NONE BUT CHRIST. NONE BUT CHRIST.' This, Sir, was the experience

of Ambrose Serle. Christ, with him, was all and in all; and Christ was magnified in his body, by his life and by his death. While he lived, he lived to display the fulness of grace, mercy, and peace, which flows to the church of God, through the union of God and man in one Christ; and when he died, he went into his grave resting wholly on Jesus. This was his dying testimony, written only two days previous to the last attack of palsy let me depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen, and my soul hath tasted, thy precious salvation! Be with and uphold me, and then all shall be well, and I shall have nothing to do or say, but, Blessed be God, who giveth me the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen! Hallelu-JAH for evermore! Amen! write this with a trembling hand, but, blessed be God, with an undismayed heart, through the love of Christ vouchsafed to me. Blessing, glory, honour, power, to HIм that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb for evermore! Amen! Hallelu-JAH !—July 14, 1812.'

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'I wish modern preachers would read Serle's Horæ Solitariæ; if they would, we should not have so many flimsy divines, so many cold-hearted preachers, so many dubious evangelists.'

The Old Disciple gave you his thoughts of Serle's works in the following words: 'He being dead, yet speaketh: and as long as the church of God shall militate on earth, his Horæ Solitariæ shall bless the solitary hours of many a true believer. He shall still remain The Christian Remembrancer and guide till time shall be no more.' I was going to say, Will you allow me, Mr. Guardian, to tell your readers something about Mr. Serle's works? But I will ask you, Sir, to favour us with a review of them; and the rather, as

you have recorded this as your opinion of that departed saint,Among modern writers in divinity, we assign, in our estimation, a very high rank, if not the first rank, to this departed Christian.'

The first time that I had the pleasure of seeing the Old Disciple was in the University of Cambridge. One evening at Trinity Church, after the prayers were read, I saw, while we were singing, a stranger go up into the pulpit. Before he began to preach, Mr. Simeon walked up the middle aisle, and addressing the preacher, said, Stop! brother, stop! there's a fire!' The congregation went away and resorted to the place where the fire was. When all was overfor the fire was soon put out-we returned to church, and found the preacher sitting in the pulpit, where he had continued for the half hour of our absence. When all was silence he read this text, Psalm xxv. 7. Remember not the sins of my youth. I saw him no more for nearly ten years. We then met at a missionary meeting in this county, Northamptonshire, and were the guest of Gaius mine host, and of the whole church. During that interview, I mentioned to the Old Disciple the occurrence in Trinity Church: he said to me, "That, Sir, was my recantation sermon. I had not been into Trinity Church for fourteen years, and then I went from a wine-party to make sport.'

But you are anxious to inquire the real name of the Old Disciple. Then, Sir, I will tell you. It was your interesting friend Simplex,it was the devout, the eloquent, the Old Disciple, and the amiable Legh Richinond. Yes; these three valuable correspondents lie buried in the same vault in the chancel of Turvey church: and were I allowed to do so, I would in very deed order it to be written upon the tomb-stone, 'Here lies a grateful admirer of Ambrose Serle.'

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O that there were more of Legh Richmond's stamp! He was burning and a shining light. burned with love to Jesus, and he shone through light reflected from the Sun of Righteousness, and directed the feet of many a darkened sinner into the way of peace. He found Christ to be a Saviour--a full, free, and sufficient Saviour. HIM he loved; HIM he made his sure foundation; HIM he preached as one that knew his value. subject warmed his heart, and kindled the same feeling in the hearts of others. Many of your readers have found their hearts burn within them, while they have listened to Legh Richmond displaying the glories of his divine Master, Jesus, speaking of the eternity and immutability of his counsel, the sovereignty and freeness of his everlasting love, the sufficiency of pardon in his atoning blood, the beauty and suitableness of his everlasting righteousness, the certainty of salvation to his redeemed, the power and influence of his grace, the pleasantness of religion, the conflicts of its possessors, and the glory to be revealed. Sir, we want to see men like unto him -men, whether in or out of the pulpit, that shun not to declare all the counsel of God; men that have heads to comprehend, and hearts to embrace, the perfect character and offices of the Redeemer ; men who have tongues to utter, and pens to describe, the fulness of the salvation of God in all its integrity; men that can look at the breadth of the love of Christ, and discover no limits to it; at its length, and perceive no end; at its depth, and confess it unfathomable; at its height, and find it to be without

measure.

I would beg to be allowed, Mr. Guardian, to call upon your readers to pray earnestly and frequently to the great Head of the Church, that he would be pleased to pour out his Spirit upon every minister of

the sanctuary, that we may all and every one live more entirely by the faith of the Son of God, out of ourselves upon the precious blood and everlasting righteousness of Jehovah Jesus; and that we may preach Jesus, and him alone, as the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth; as exalted with God's right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins ; as ALL AND IN ALL. I wish,

my dear Sir, that every minister would preach honestly and scripturally on this text, To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness, Rom. iv. 5. I would not have the preacher calculate on the charge which will be brought against his doctrine. I will honestly say, that man does not preach as St. Paul did, of whom some men will not say, "He preaches, Let us do evil, that good may come." Wicked men charged the apostle with what is now called antinomianism; and wicked men will charge faithful ministers with the same thing now. If then men guard the gospel' to that degree that they can exclude from themselves the charge brought against St. Paul, surely they are either more wise or less orthodox than the very chiefest of the upostles. Pray, Mr. Guardian, do you prove a faithful watchman upon the walls of our spiritual Zion. Take the trumpet, Sir, cry aloud, and spare not. Tell ministers that they must preach Christ faithfully, experimentally, fully; that they must do this also in simplicity of mind and of manner. Preachers are too apt to forget the poor, and to look principally to the noble, the great, the rich, not considering

that to the poor is the gospel preached. Now, Sir, if ministers preach to the educated, the uneducated will not be able to understand them; but if they preach to the uneducated, the educated will be at no loss to comprehend. Martin Luther says, They are the best preachers for the common people, who speak in the meanest, lowest, humblest and most simple style.' I wish ministers would make it a point of duty to form a habit of simple, easy-to-be-understood manner of conversation. Apt to teach is not exclusively to be applied to a sufficiency of knowledge required for teaching; but also includes a capability of making one's self easily understood. Legh Richmond used to mention-when speaking about preaching the advice given him by his tutor at college: 'Don't use terms of science; the people have no abstract ideas, they cannot understand comparisons and allusions remote from their habits. Take words of Saxon derivation, and not such as are derived from Greek and Latin. Talk of riches, not of affluence of trust, not confidence. Present the same idea in a varied form, and take care you understand the subject yourself. If you be intelligent, you will be intelligible.'

THE absolute necessity of spiritual influence in the conversion of the sinner, is a truth which cannot be sufficiently impressed upon the mind of the Christian minister. Whilst he desponds over an apparent want of success in his daily vocation, and has to contemplate as the only, yet melancholy reward of his labours, a stupid indifference to the momentous concerns of eternity, amongst his flock, he will derive consolation from the words,

Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." And indeed, what but supernatural agency, what but the immediate power of the eternal God himself, can regenerate the soul of man ? Here the force of argument, however convincing, must fail, unless carried home by the Spirit to the heart and conscience : the most pathetic appeals that ever dropped from the tongue of eloquence must prove but as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal; nay, even the word of inspiration itself, is only then "quick and powerful, sharper than any twoedged sword," when wielded by the hands of the Spirit. If an inspired Apostle, one so highly distinguished at once for cogency of argument, and the arts of persuasion, if even St. Paul were obliged to attribute the splendid success of his ministry, and the triumphant effects of his preaching, solely to the Divine blessing which accompanied it, how should the ministers of the gospel in the present day, at once adopt his humility and his language: "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing

into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ."

There is no reason for supposing the heart of man to be essentially different now, from what it was in the days of the Apostles; it is still, as then, cold to the impressions of Divine truth; unaffected by the awful denunciations of God's wrath against sinners on the one hand, and the sweet promises of gospel mercy on the other; the former fail to startle, and the latter to move: the veil of ignorance rests as heavily now, as it did then, on the human understanding: there are still the same natural prejudices to be overcome, the same errors, the same settled opinions to be removed, the same idol of unsanctified reason to be laid prostrate in the dust. And "who is sufficient for these things?" might the most distinguished minister of Christ exclaim with equal propriety and truth. Who shall effectually grapple with such a host of difficulties ? Who shall triumph over that most formidable of foes, a corrupt nature?" With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." He who opened the heart of Lydia to attend to the things which were spoken of Paul; he who induced the jailor to ask, What shall I do to be saved; and he who sweetly constrained the persecuting Saul, to preach the faith he once destroyed; is still able to render his word effectual even in the most hopeless, yea, apparently the most desperate cases; and while the pastor is anxiously inquiring, "Can these bones live ?" there may be a noise, and a shaking, and the bones coming together, bone to his bone: the breath may come into them, and they may live, and stand up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.

A CURATE.

SIR,-If you think the relation of the following circumstance at all likely to convince any of the injury they may ignorantly and unconsciously do the cause of religion, by their unguarded and unholy conduct, you will perhaps give it publicity.

There is living in the neighbourhood of the writer an old gentleman possessed of considerable property, who makes a more than common profession of religion. Some five or six years ago he began to hear a celebrated and faithful minister of the gospel, who lives a few miles from hence; as he was advanced in years, he could not often walk that distance, and therefore took his horse and gig, and was driven over by his boy, and his horse and vehicle put up at the public house; the boy who accompanied him had the same in charge till his master's return from church, which was frequently late in the evening, as he usually remained during the afternoon service-the boy meanwhile was debarred attending church himself, and was actually kept many times during the whole day without being allowed to eat or drink. At his master's coming from church he drove him home, and as often as it happenned that any trifling thing went wrong, or the old gentleman was in any measure displeased, he would break out into an uncontrollable fit of passion without imposing the least restraint upon his temper, and suffer himself to be hurried away by the violence of his passion.

Matters continued thus during the whole period the boy lived in his service, and he of course thought it was of little use for his master to take the trouble of going so far to hear the gospel preached, while no better effect was produced; the

boy was thus not unnaturally or unreasonably induced to entertain a feeling of repugnance to religion and of contempt for its professors.

When he left that place, he obtained a situation in London, where by sobriety and good moral conduct, he recommended himself to the favour of his master, who is in a considerable line of business, he has consequently obtained promotion, a place of responsibility and a good salary. His present master is on no account a religious or even a professing man, and this boy (or young man as he is now) contrasting the conduct of the man who is now his master, who is no believer, and that of his late, who professed to be one; and drawing (as was natural in his case) a parallel between them, has arrived at the conclusion, that there is really nothing in religion but the name, and that it is all deception. He has therefore renounced all profession on his part, and has sunk down into the awful condition of a confirmed infidel.

The above circumstance is calculated to show in no small degree the mischief which is too often done to individuals and to the cause of truth, by culpable, careless, and selfish professors.

Doubtless had a contrary course been pursued by the master of this young man-had he been enjoined to attend church, instead of violating the sabbath in compliance with orders he had received to keep away, he would never have had to upbraid his former employer as one grand cause of his renouncing that church into which he had been baptised a member, or of the still more destructive step of entering into the wretched and awful regions of darkness and infidelity.

G.