veracity, "I will work, and none shall let it." And if God "does what He pleases in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth," then He possesses a peculiar glory. And this is really so, for He says, 66 My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure." This is predestination; and we say it glorifies God. Again, (2.) It benefits all. The godly and the ungodly are so. Had it not been for this the world would not have stood ten minutes after the fall: The covenant of Noah, which is beneficial to all, would neither have been kept nor made. All creatures are benefited by it temporally; all saints are benefited by it eternally. (3.) It injures none. Be There is a prevailing idea that it does. But we affirm that if it does, then God is not "righteous in all His ways and holy in all His works." But seeing that He really is so, and that He "works ALL THINGS after the counsel of His own will," this doctrine can injure none. sides, to be injurious to any it could not be the offspring of His mind, who is "too wise to err and too good to be unkind." No dispensation of God can be unjust to any of His creatures, fallen or unfallen. III. Notice its influence upon three classes of persons. (1.) To the sinner unpardoned. It is said that this doctrine injures man. Is it so? Then it is not the doctrine itself, but must be a false inference drawn therefrom. The doctrine itself alone will never hinder a sinner's salvation. If they read this doctrine in the Bible, and become careless and reckless, and cast the criminality of their fatal indifference to divine things to this doctrine, they only prove thereby that their hearts are "enmity against God." But if it leads them to search the Bible more, and to look and examine themselves whether THEY are in the faith or not, then, instead of injuring them it has really benefited them by leading them to search the Bible more; and this will be its effect on every unprejudiced mind. (2.) To the mere professor. Nor does it injure him. If, however, he is resting on IT instead of on Christ, and vainly fancies that because he gives a rational assent to the doctrine he will certainly be saved, "he deceiveth himself, and this man's religion is vain." Christ is the procuring cause of our salvation. And "if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His." If that is the hope of any professor then it is "the hope of the hypocrite that perishes." The Bible reveals this doctrine, but man makes it the basis of a sinner's hope. Christ is our hope and foundation. (3.) To the real Christian: To such it is blessed, because if he does not see it so clearly as he desires, yet he knows it is right, and therefore he leaves it among those things which he will "know hereafter." But if he does see it so as to embrace it, and rejoice in it, then he "rejoices," because "his name is written in heaven." The grace a Christian ought to seek for and have in his speech is, so to utter truth as not to offend the hearer; that it expresses our minds without enraging his ; that it have neither gall, nor venom, nor virulency; that it be simple, humble, and modest; without reviling, without scoffing, and other such stings as may inflame those with whom we speak. CUT FLOWERS FROM SPIRITUAL GARDENS; OR, SEED THOUGHTS FROM PLANTS OF GRACE. BY MR. ALFRED PEET, OF SHARNBROOK. ERROR is a sore which must be neither neglected nor roughly handled; it must be touched tenderly, and in such a manner as if possible not to give the patient pain. The language of a poor empty spiritual beggar, in whom a confidence in God's grace is wrought is this: "I am stripped of all, I have nothing of mine own truly good; I am in want of all that God has promised to give the poor. For this I am begging, for this I am waiting; and though He should rebuke me, curse me, damn me, yet will I hold, hold, hold fast my confidence in Him. I have been in error, and yet have been so confident of being right that what I have at that time spoken has afterwards brought guilt upon my conscience and distress in my soul. This has shown me the necessity of watchfulness. The tongue is a small member, but it requires a bridle of Divine power. We should always know the truth whereof we are about to speak before we attempt to be positive. We should labour to agree mutually in love, for that wherein any Christian differs from another is but in petty things. Grace knows no difference; the worms know no difference; the day of judgment knows no difference. In the worst things we are all alike base, and in the best things we are all alike happy. Only in this world God will have distinctions, for order's sake; but else there is no difference. Dost thou delight in judging, censuring, backbiting, and sending every one to hell, because they do not altogether come up to thy standard in sentiment and opinion? Take heed, I say, take heed, lest thou be found to be an abuser of the Lord's Samuels. Perhaps thy sentence pronounced against them may return upon thine own head, and hell receive their judge. Remember the Lord's family do not consist wholly of strong men; there are some of the weaker sort among them, even babes. For a man born blind to describe the features of a person whom he never saw is impossible. No more can a sinner, spiritually blind, describe the beauty of Immanuel. The eyes must first be opened, and the object presented before the least description can be given. Illumination goes before knowledge, which knowledge is followed by the holy triumphs of faith in trouble. BY SAMUEL J. BANKS, PASTOR OF THE BAPTIST CHURCH, BANBRIDGE, IRELAND. Where they crucified the Lord, Where he suffered weeping sit, THE BIBLE AND DR. MANNING.* THE BIBLE—as the book of Heaven, as the book of God, as the book revealing THE ONLY SAVIOUR, and the alone way of salvation;-the Bible, the book our heavenly Father has given to us to be, in the hands of the Holy Spirit as a lamp to our feet and a light unto our path-this Bible must ever be dear, valuable, and precious, to all the regenerated and truly called sons and daughters of the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY. Let this good old Bible be taken away-let it be cast aside-and immediately we are all at sea as regards the one only true and living way of life and of peace. There are not a few of the professed leaders and teachers of the people, in these days, who are most craftily supplanting and setting aside the Bible. Thousands of the most naturally-gifted men in our pulpits (when they stand up to preach to the people) place their manuscripts inside their Bibles, and instead of EXPOUNDING THE WORD OF GOD they read a lecture on some new-fangled theory, and thus carry the minds of the people away from THE TRUTH as it originated with God the Father, as it was spoken by God the Son, as it was, and is revealed by God the Holy Ghost, and as it was preached by the apostles, and still is preached by all the ministers who are anointed and sent forth by the Lord of Hosts. We say the people are fast going away from the essential revelations of the Bible into ten thousand bye-path meadows, where they lose themselves and perish, we fear, through the delusions of men. Oh! Englishmen, beware. It is not the Bible now, but the brains of finite mortals, who have dared to despise the sovereignty of God, and to exalt the superiority of the creature. They still hold the Bible in their hands and give it to the people; but the saving mysteries and mercies of God's word they neither know themselves nor declare unto others. The Bible is our charter. We read the Bible. We preach the grand truths of the Bible. Hence, we are despised, cast out, condemned. But where the Bible is not opened by the Spirit in the preacher's soul, and opened by the preacher, instrumentally, in the souls of the people, there is nothing but death in the pot, nothing but the devil in the pulpit, nothing but delusion in the pews. England is not in want of preachers; but, if she is to be saved from an almost universal apostasy she must have faithful, experimental, and God-taught expounders of the Book of Heaven's covenant, the reve lation of Christ's cross, and the opened seals of those glorious secrets in which are contained the sanctification of the whole election of grace. We believe, most fearfully, that the Bible is almost now a sealed and unknown book. Dr. Manning, the " Archbishop of Westminster," as the Romanists call him, has published a work entitled, "The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost," in which he labours eloquently to exalt "the Church" and her "Seven Sacraments" above the Scriptures. Of course, he writes some things true enough; but, if with a sumptuous dinner your host * "Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost, &c." By Dr. Manning. London: Longman. takes care to mix up a little of the deadly night-shade, we should cry out most vehemently, "Hurl the dinner to the deep pit, or you are all dead men." So, we say, beware of these elegant writers, or your souls are all poisoned, and despair will be your doom. We give one extract from Dr. Manning now; but we shall not leave him here. He says :— It seems hardly necessary to say that Christianity was not derived from Scripture, nor depends upon it; that the master error of the Reformation was the fallacy, contrary both to fact and to faith, that Christianity was to be derived from the Bible, and that the dogma of faith is to be limited to the written records of Christianity; or in other words, that the Spirit is bound by the letter; and that in the place of a living and Divine Teacher, the Church has for its guide alwritten Book. It is to this fallacy I would make answer by drawing out what is the relation of the Holy Spirit to the interpretation of the written Word of God. I. First, then, it is evident that the whole revelation of Christianity was given by the Spirit of God, and preached also and believed among the nations of the world before the New Testament existed. The knowledge of God through the Incarnation, and the way of salvation through grace, was revealed partly by our Divine Lord, and fully by the Holy Ghost at His coming. The faith or science of God was infused into the apostles by a divine illumination. It was not built up by deduction from the Old Testament, but came from God manifest in the flesh, and from His Holy Spirit. It was in itself the New Testament, before a line of it was written. It was a Divine science, one, full, harmonious and complete from its central truths and precepts to its outer circumference. It was traced upon the intelligence of man by the light which flowed from the intelligence of God. The outlines of truth as it is in the Divine Mind so far as God was pleased to reveal, that is, to unveil it, were impressed upon the human mind. This truth was preached throughout the world by the apostolic mission. They were commanded to 'preach the Gospel to every creature,' and 'to make disciples of all nations. And what Jesus commanded, the apostles did. They promulgated the whole of Christianity. They baptized men into the faith of Jesus Christ. But before they baptized any man he became a disciple: that is, he learned the faith. The faith was delivered to him in the articles of the Baptismal Creed, as the law was delivered in the Ten Commandments. These two summaries contain the whole truth and law of God. And every baptized person, according to his capacity, received the explicit knowledge of all that is implicitly contained in them. But what was the source of this perfect science of God in Jesus Christ? It was no written Book, but the presence of a Divine Person illuminating both the teachers and the taught. And this universal preaching of the apostles was written by the Spirit upon the intelligence and heart of the living Church, and sustained in it by His presence. The New Testament is a living Scripture, namely the Church itself, inhabited by the Spirit of God, the author and writer of all revealed Truth. He is the Digitus Paterna, dexteræ, the finger of the right hand of the Father,' by whom the whole revelation of the New Law is written upon the living tables of the heart. S. Irenæus, the disciple of Polycarp, the disciple of S. John, writing fifty years after the death of the last apostle, asks: What if the apostles had not left us writings, would it not have been needful to follow the order of that tradition which they delivered to those to whom they committed the churches? to which many of the barbarous nations who believe in Christ assent, having salvation written without paper and ink, by the Spirit in their hearts, sedulously guarding the old tradition.' This was a hundred and fifty years after the Incarnation. During all this time, which is nearly four generations of men, on what had Christianity depended for its perpetuity but upon the same Divine fact which was its source, the presence of a Divine Person inhabiting the mystical body or Church of Jesus Christ, and sustaining the original revelation in its perfect integrity? Our notes on the above next month; meanwhile, take the following:I think the private and prayerful study of the Bible is much neglected. Yet, if this be God's revelation of Himself, of His holy will, and of His pre-determined way of saving sinners; if this Bible is "THE BIBLE”—the book of all books-the book which the SPIRIT of the living GOD indited; if it is the fruit of a heavenly inspiration; if it is the great instrumental light which our Father has given to us in this dark world of sin, misery, infidelity, and death, then, to despise it is dangerous; but to study it, lovingly, carefully, earnestly, and with much prayer to the Holy Spirit, that He would open our eyes to see its beauty, unstop our ears to hear its harmony, and make a door in our hearts to receive its testimony, this must be safe and salutary indeed. Let us pause, and remember there is no Bible in the bottomless pit, except in the torturing memories of some who read it, and maybe preached from it, but never sought to know it experimentally, or to follow it practically. Only here on earth have we God's most blessed Word. May He to us make known its vitality and invaluable treasures! May we drink deeply of this fountain and live for ever. The angels in heaven are said to "desire to look into these things" contained in the Book. May we not conclude that they have no Bible? They need none, you say. Truly they received their commands and commissions direct from the throne itself. Still, I think, it is from the Church on earth, the angels learn much of the wonders of redeeming love. Look at three little things: 1. What determined efforts have been made to destroy it; yet it has been preserved. 2. Think what multitudes of mighty minds have studied it, preached from it, written Commentaries on it, and still it remains as full and as rich as ever. 3. See how its copies are now increasing, spreading, and multiplying all through the civilized world. Oh! let us open our Bibles, and more than ever study them. We shall be glad to see this "spiritual and explanatory journey through the Bible" published; and from its pages to cull some pleasant portions. THE ENOCH OF SOUTHWARK, THERE are very few men in this world that I have known upon whose epitaph I could write, "another Enoch." But there was for many years in Bermondsey, a clear, genteel, little, innocent-looking, and most pleasant Christian man, of whom I can believe it may be said—“He walked with God;" and respecting whom now it may be said-"He is not, for God has taken him." How lovely, how heavenly, how holy, how rich in meaning beyond all expression is that sentence of the ancient Enoch"He was not, for God took him." How dreadfully different is the end of the wicked- "Driven away in his wickedness!" As though the Almighty could bear the existence of the wicked no longer, he says-" Depart from me, I never knew you!" but, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints;" therefore, when their earthly course is finished |