the tongue of the stammerers shall be ready to speak plainly." How great and dangerous an impediment, that rashness of heart is, none fully know but those who suffer from it. Many good men have shown it, but it has been a grievous plague to them. David showed it not once nor twice; he showed it in his conduct, when he suddenly resolved to avenge himself of Nabal, by destroying all his household. But the Lord saved him from this rashness He showed it in his words, when he said, in his haste, "All men are liars!" And again he confesses in Ps. xxxi.: “I said, in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes!" But the Lord in that very extremity appeared for him, and delivered him from this rashness. It is a great blessing that there is a promise on record for the benefit of these rash ones. They shall "understand judgment," and that even in their "heart."

There is another kind of "impotent men" continually found in the church of Christ, and that is, persons who cannot speak plainly. Isaiah calls them "stammerers.' There is a want of clearness in their hearts, and so they are afraid of speaking clearly. Sometimes they are encouraged to hope. Then they are so overpowered by temptations that they dare not avow their hope. This is a painful condition. Sometimes, indeed, it is owing in part to a holy trembling before God, but very often there is great fault in it, which it will be a mercy to be made to feel and deplore deeply, and earnestly to groan for deliverance from it. If there be, (as here in Isaiah there is,) a promise that such impotency shall be healed, those who are spiritually honest, yet thus infirm, will seek and cry that they may lay hold upon it, and be led to take the ready way to find the fulfilment of it. "I believed," said the man after God's own heart, "therefore have I spoken." This is true in every degree of intenseness. clearly."

"I believed very firmly, therefore have I spoken very

I desire to lay much stress upon each of these marks of weakness and infirmity in the church of Christ. Christ's church is like the pool of Bethesda of old. It has many porches, full of impotent folk, waiting to be healed. Here Isaiah collects such together; those who are dim-sighted, those who are hard of hearing, those whose hearts are rash, and those who are slow of speech and of a slow tongue. Now he gathers them together, that he may preach the gospel to them; "to the poor the gospel is preached." All must become poor in their own feelings, all must be made willing and desirous of receiving Christ's bounty very freely. If one of these marks of infirmity does not in a particular manner appear to ourselves to be ours, doubtless another will.

Now when Christ will show mercy, he makes us keenly and painfully sensible of our need, he deeply humbles us for our own vanity and self-conceit, he makes the first the last.

In discoursing upon the former verses of my text, I dwelt upon the sin of self-righteousness, how earnest we must all be that the Lord may keep us from attempting to remove our fears by good works, instead of by coming as lost sinners to Jesus. I now go

further, and say that it is a certain truth that the reason of this is not because good works, or rather real holiness, obedience, and love are not needful; they are the fruit of Christ's divine mediation. The only question is, how we may attain really to them. Our efforts to accomplish them are vain. We attain to the appearance of them only, not the reality of them, by all our efforts and strivings through the law. Therefore the real love and desire for true holiness will lead us to be afraid to the very utmost of this power and dominion of the law. This is the personal conflict of all the saints of God in all ages. Isaiah describes it in my text, and a blessing will be found by us in his words if we can diligently read, mark, learn, and digest them. "Behold," says he, "you dim-sighted and hard of hearing, rash in heart, and slow of tongue, you must begin, in the midst of your infirmities, to look to the man Christ Jesus. You will be pursued and invaded with evils, storms, and tempests; you will be ready to faint for thirst, and be discouraged because of the way, finding dry places and a weary land. Your help will begin in looking to the man Christ Jesus; it will go on by looking to the man Christ Jesus; it will be perfected by looking to the man Christ Jesus. You are men yourselves, and have transgressed the law, and are fallen under its curse. He is a man also, who has fulfilled the law, and borne the curse thereof. You must not expect to find either hiding-place or covert, refreshment or comfort, except through him only."

And now what shall be the end of your faith? Why this, that all your maladies shall be healed. You are all plagued with maladies, dimness of sight, deafness, impatience, or a dumb spirit. This faith in the man Christ Jesus will bring you to the healing of them all.

I desire, if the Lord will enable me, to make this exhortation to faith, really practical in our hearts. You will not find it easily, and after you have found it, you will be always apt to miss it again. Sometimes the enemy will try to persuade such as have found it a little that they have never found it at all; and this he does in his policy, for his very next temptation in the heart of such will probably be that there is no such thing to be found.

One thing I believe to be true, and to be worthy of our observation in this matter. Though guilt in the conscience and the wrath of God in consequence feared, would always, except through free grace, stop up our way to this faith and our prospering in it, yet there is another hindrance, less terrible in its appearance, and, therefore, dreaded less; but more insidious, more beguiling, and, therefore, often more destructive. If we may be favoured to trace out this enemy, and to fight against him, we shall find cause to thank the Lord indeed. I have hinted at this enemy before. I will close my discourse by warning you against him again. This enemy is the spirit of bondage and fear submitted to, from an idea that we are not good enough to expect the spirit of liberty and love. We want a liberty whereby we have made ourselves free. The gospel brings a liberty whereby Christ makes us free. This kind of

spirit of bondage can never be satisfied. God will not satisfy it, by letting us feel ourselves good enough to obtain a blessing through works. Therefore it craves still, and craves always what it never attains. Yet we are beguiled by it. It appears so good, and pretends to be looking for holiness.

We do not find out that it is a deceitful traitor and hypocrite, which must be crucified and mortified, not satisfied; that it is the very evil which the Lord, in his divine allegory, (see Gal. iv. 19-31,) points out by "the bondwoman and her son," which must be "cast out," and not cherished. It is born of the flesh; it denies the promise; it mocks the child of promise; if it continue in the house, it will make us servants for ever, yea, and evil servants, but never sons.

Now may the Lord have mercy, and enable us in very deed to fulfil the text, to find the man Christ Jesus a hiding place from the wind, a covert from the tempest, rivers of water in a dry place, and the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. Amen.

THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN UNDER
TRIBULATION.

WHEN stern affliction's thorny crown,
Or pain, or sickness weighs thee down,
O think of Jesus on the tree,

And what he suffer'd there for thee!

When cares and troubles much abound,
And trials gather thick around,
Like waves upon a stormy sea,
Then think of sad Gethsemane !

The Christian's way is in the fire,
His path is through the thorn and brier,
He in the furnace must be tried
Till brought out purged and purified.

But think how short your trials be
Compared with vast eternity!
May this give comfort to your soul

When waves of trouble round you roll.

And think how soon you'll reach that shore
Where griefs and sins are known no more!
O ponder this! and may the thought
Give you content to bear your lot.

66

J. H.

"LORD, what is man, that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man, that thou visitest him! Who hath known thy mind, or who hath been thy counsellor ?" "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out?" What shall we say unto these things? That God spared not his only Son, but gave him up unto death, and all the evils included therein, for such poor lost sinners as we are; that for our sakes the eternal Son of God shonld submit himself to all the evils that our natures are obnoxious to, and that our sins had deserved, that we might be delivered.-Dr. Owen.

A LETTER FROM THE LATE MR. PYM.

What a blessing: "Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out;" Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as white as wool." (Ps. cxxx.)

God the Father draws the sinner to Christ by revealing him in his attractions to the sensibly needy and convinced sinner; while Satan drives him to him by his temptations and desperate attempts to make and keep him the subject and slave of his constitutional, indwelling, besetting sins, so that the convinced sinner, made alive to the power of his corruptions, and the impossibility of his withstanding, is driven by Satan's temptations to engage in the warfare of flesh against spirit, and spirit against flesh, and in this way to prize highly every gospel truth, and sustain such a warfare only through faith. I have been one of the vilest of sinners. "In me, that is in my flesh, there dwelleth no good thing," but sensibly all that is evil. Nothing but gospel truth, the truth as it is in Jesus, Jesus as that truth, could possibly avail me anything under this present affliction. I have been the subject of fearful darkness of soul, the hidings of God's face from me as he is in Christ.

I have been in the deepest waters, and have endured a fiery furnace of soul-trial, in which I have been made so acquainted with myself that I need not think it strange, as it seems impossible that I could be saved except by fire, a needs-be existing that I should at this time be in heaviness through manifold temptations, that the trial of my faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, might be found unto praise, and honour, and glory at the appearance of Jesus Christ, whom, having not seen, I love; in whom, though now I see him not, yet, believing, I rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving the end of my faith, even the salvation of my soul.

I am deeply convinced and satisfied at this moment that I cannot yet be finally saved unless I am kept by the power of God through faith, and that to this keeping by God's power, through faith, (God's gift,) must be ascribed this my having continued believing under the trials which for so many years faith has been subjected to in me. It is said by John (i. 16) of all born of the will of God, of his fulness, Christ's fulness of grace and truth, all fulness of Godhead bodily, have all we received, and grace for grace; that is, grace answering to the fulness of Christ. We have not grace, but it is in Christ for his people. So that the very first spark of grace in his people comes of his fulness, is supplied from him, and is the same truth as the Scripture declaration: "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.'

Eph. iii. 14-19 has been made by the Holy Ghost a most blessed and suitable subject-matter of prayer in me, which I have been enabled to pray most earnestly. So believers, when realising their justification by faith, have peace with God through Jesus Christ their Lord, by whom they have access, through faith, into that state

of grace wherein they stand. In them is fulfilled Rom. v. 3, 4, 5. That love of God spoken of in the prayer in Eph. iii. 17, 18, 19, waich, while it surpasseth all knowledge, is in an effectual and influential way apprehended by faith, and the poor sensible sinner is filled with all the fulness of God.

How true: "By grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast," "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." Thus Christ is all and in all.

How sensible am I at this time of my need of Christ! How blessed am I when I can and and living in faith's realised and sensible dependence upon him! While how awful is my state when this living in a sensible exercise of living faith in Christ is supplanted by the soul-darkness of unbelief, bringing me into the deeps of an all-powerful self-condemnation. It is a great contrast between the enjoyment in experience of the light of life which Christ is in the soul, and the felt darkness of unbelief through the withdrawings and hidings of the light of the countenance of Christ from me. There is a sensible, feeling contrast between the two. While no

thing can uphold under the season of this felt darkness, but what attends gospel knowledge in the soul. Then it is hoping against hope, striving against unbelief, to set the gospel in its revelations of Christ and the truth in him against my own frames and feelings; to strive in prayer, looking unto and pleading Jesus.

I wish the Lord's own, to whom I have been enabled to preach from time to time, could have before them all that passes within me. Elmley, Nov. 6th, 1861. ROBERT PYM.

A LETTER BY THE LATE MR. HENRY BIRCH.

Dear Hannah,-I confess I have been very negligent in not writing to you before this. I have spent some time this evening in trying to find your last letter, but I cannot find it.

You are not forgotten by me. I hear by Mrs. Slee that your health is not good. Perhaps you will find it advisable to give up your place; but in all your ways acknowledge Him who has fed you hitherto, and he will direct your steps. "Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established." (Prov. xvi. 3.) He was the end from the beginning, and is the best of "counsellors," (Isa. ix. 6,) and encourages us in all things, by prayer and supplications, to let our requests be made known unto God. They who are enabled to embrace his dear Son have a privilege known only to sons. He gives them power to plead with him, and his answer is a token that he accepts them in the Beloved.

I have but little time to write, for four days are occupied in procuring food for my flock. I can say that what I set before others I feed upon myself. There is no food that satisfies my soul but the Lamb of God. I thank him I know that he is an all-sufficient portion, and nothing else is.