a branch of the church of God, and many times I have breathed out a groan and sigh for you, yet was I so faithless and unbelieving as to think that poor dark D- would remain in the state it was; and when the Lord removed you and the few others there, that the salt would have lost its flavour at D, and it would be ready for the wrath of God; but my heart rejoiceth in God my Saviour, while I feel ashamed of my ingratitude and unbelief. O for that precious faith which is the gift of God, which has proved that God's power stands not in might, nor in the arms of strong men, but that he is a God of the afflicted, an upholder of the weak, a protector of the forlorn, and a Saviour of those who are without hope. My prayer is for prosperity on the good work you are engaged in, and on the blessed declaration of faith which you have sent out, which I believe to be in accordance with the word of God, though all God's people do not see or have faith in the Christian ordinance of baptism, by immersion, which I often wonder at. May the Lord of his infinite mercy enlarge the heart of the man of God, who, through mercy has come forth from the world of sin and iniquity into the glorious liberty of the ever-blessed gospel of God. May he be deeply and experimentally taught of God, that he may be able to break the bread of life to those that hunger after righteousness, strengthen the feeble knees, and hold up the hands that hang down. The King's command is, "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people!" May he have on the helmet of salvation, and his feet be shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, endure hardness as a good soldier, prove himself valiant for the truth, and through grace be enabled to stand in the day of trial; for it is not a smooth road that leads to the kingdom. God, in his word, positively declares it a rough and thorny path, and that it is through much tribulation we must enter into the kingdom. But we have also this precious promise, that He will make crooked paths straight and rough places plain, and, if blessed faith is in exercise, what are the troubles of a day to the enjoyment of eternal life for ever and ever? There will be times when faith will not be in exercise, but all the corruptions of the heart be rising up in open rebellion, and the troubles of the heart enlarged by some trying providence, we mourning an absent God, and all our heart-sins testifying against us; this is as much as the strongest Christian can well bear. This I write from experience, but the covenant of his love is ever sure, and nothing but a full Christ will do for such a poor tempest-tossed soul.

I am afraid, my brother, I shall not be able to succeed in any contribution for your cause here, as they are so averse to baptism by "immersion. Woe, woe to the church of God, that while anti-Christ is spreading, and Arminianism, and dry doctrine and Calvinism are covering the land, good and faithful men can withhold their support from those that hold the same essential truths that they do, because they cannot see eye to eye in a Christian doctrine. These things will cease, my brother, if the beast again gets power. We ought to be most thankful that the Lord condescends to send here and there a faithful labourer into his vineyard in this dark day.

May the blessing of God rest upon the little church you are about to establish; may you never lean to your own understanding, but by fervent prayer inquire at the hand of the Lord for direction in all things; may you see the good hand of God with you, and may you grow as the palm tree, and flourish like a cedar in Lebanon. "Go forth in peace, and in righteousness be established.”

May, 7, 1839.

I remain, yours in gospel bonds,

H. M.

THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD.

Since writing my former letter, headed "Mrs. Diffidence and Old Mr. Honest," I have been harassed by the thought that there may be as much pride connected with the acknowledgment of our temptations, infirmities, and deliverances as though, like pharisees and hypocrites, we were making long prayers in the synagogues and at the corners of the streets to be seen of men. This thought has, indeed, made me many times wish that I had never intimated my intention of making any farther communication to you. But, being necessitated to believe that the Spirit of the Lord caused me to pen my former letter, and recollecting that the infirmities, temptations, deliverances, sorrows, and joys of the elect, whose names are mentioned in the sacred Scriptures, are therein abundantly recorded, and that such records have been both there and elsewhere instrumental in reproving, instructing, strengthening, and comforting the redeemed of the Lord, I am again induced, at all hazards, to prosecute my design; and should the accursed, all-coloured chameleon pride make his appearance while I write, may the meek and lowly Jesus, by his Spirit, so show him to my view as to give me fresh occasion to hate and loathe the monster for his own sake, and myself for being in his company; and may every fresh discovery of the truth of the apostle's statement, "when I would do good, evil is present with me," awaken new hungerings and thirstings after the righteousness of Christ, that thus "out of the eater there may come forth meat, and out of the strong there may come forth sweetness." (Jud. xiv. 14.) And blessed, for ever blessed be the name of "the wonderful, the Counsellor," that while sin is in itself an infinite evil, and the abominable thing that be and his people hate, it has been, is, aud shall be overwhelmed by the streams of divine grace to the last moment of every believer's liability to its annoyance, since it is written by him that cannot lie, "Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace." (Rom. vi. 14.) And again, "The law entered that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound; that as sin hath, reigned unto death, so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord." (Rom. v. 20, 21.) Aye, and from the battlements of glory shall the exulting song of triumph be sung by the once weakest and guiltiest of the blood-bought throng, "Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. (Rev. i. 5, 6.) "Hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth." I am just reminded that one of the ancient writers furnishes the Christian with a good text; it is, when translated, "The shepherd counts his sheep, and the soldier his wounds." Yes, believer, thy Shepherd counted his sheep when he stipulated in covenant to redeem them, for we are told he foreknew them; (Rom. viii. 29, and xi. 2;) and he counts them now, for it is written "he knows his sheep; (John x. 27;) and again, he "knows them that are his." (2 Tim. ii. 19.) Yes, and he will count every one of them into the fold of paradise, for "they shall pass again under the hand of him that telleth them, saith the Lord." (Jer. xxxiii. 13.) "I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand.” (John x. 28.) “My Father which gave them me is greater than all, and no one shall pluck them out of my Father's hand." (John x. 29.) Dear rs the tears of wonder are starting into my

Amen."

And as

eyes while I write these precious soul-refreshing words. though he would drown our doubts in his love, he tells us he will seek his sheep and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day. (Exek. xxxiv. 12.) Yes, at that very moment, when our anxious spirits seem surrounded with darkness, danger, and death, shall the crook of our ever-loving Shepherd be stretched forth to rescue "his darling from the dog and the lion."

But not only does the Shepherd delight to count his sheep, but the soldier obtains relief and communicates pleasure, by telling of his wounds and his victories, and none of us surely can be strangers to the intensity of interest manifested by military men, while listening to the artless tale of one returned from a long campaign. Why, then, should the Christian warrior, whose calling is so much more honourable, whose enemies are so much more numerous and formidable, whose deliverances are so much more illustrious, and whose triumphs are so infinitely more glorious, be awed into silence from a fear that his motives may be suspected, and that a few envious persons may revile? especially, seeing that the captain of salvation spoke so often of his wounds! The practice of Christ and his people, and the overflowing hearts of the redeemed, forbid this silence, for the stones would rise up and memorialize God's mercies did they neglect to do it. And as to what some raw recruits may say, who, though they have put on the regimentals, have never entered the war, who have never had their skin grazed nor their bones broken, and who know nothing but by hearsay of poor Christian's experience when in the valley of humiliation, and are ignorant of the nature and the source of his exultation when he exclaimed, "Rejoice not over me, O mine enemy; when I fall I shall arise again!" I say, as for such objectors, they are entitled to no more consideration than a warrior of a thousand fights would manifest to a young intruder, who should impertinently interrupt him in his narrative, towards whom he would turn for a moment his scarred and weatherbeaten face, give him a smile of pity, and then proceed with his tale as unmoved by the interruption as though nothing more than a puff of wind had blown by. A veteran in the divine campaign has said, "Come all ye that fear God, and I will tell you what he has done for my soul." But where God has done nothing either in wounding or healing, in bringing into trouble and in bringing out of it, in cutting down and in raising up, it is not to be wondered at that no sympathy should be felt towards the writers in The Gospel Standard, or that a certain minister should have libelled the work and its correspondents lately, from the pulpit, by saying that "those are the best writers therein who can write most about their abominations." Poor man, he reminds one of a stay-at-home traveller, who should boast that in all his travels, he never knew weariness, hunger, nor thirst; or of a soldier who should gravely assert that he had been to parade every day for seven years, done his exercise, and taken part in several sham fights to the bargain, without losing a single button or obtaining a solitary scar! But such pop-gun soldiers may rest assured that those who have been in the hottest of the King's wars will never be frightened by their silly hempen pellets, nor their "flash-in-the-pan" reports; and that, like the saints of old, they will continue to converse together of their temptations and their deliverances, their weaknesses and their strength, their bitters and their sweets, their sicknesses and their cures, their sorrows and their joys, their conflicts and their victories, "though hell itself should gape, and bid them hold their peace!"

And now, Messrs. Editors, I will endeavour, with singleness of eye to the divine glory, and with the hope of being in some humble measure instrumental in instructing and comforting the tried and tempted ones of the Lord's family, (among the poorest and most despised of whom I trust it will ever henceforth be considered by me a high privilege to be found,) to draw a brief outline of the way in which a covenant and gracious God has led me. And I will first begin with some of those providential interpositions which, on their own account, but especially on account of their connexion with the richer manifestations of divine grace, demand from every child of God a memorial of gratitude and praise to him, "in whom we live, and move, and have our being."

I have heard my dear mother say that I was introduced into this world of sin, and therefore of sorrow, in the severe winter of 1798, when such was the scarcity of fuel in the west of England that neither love nor money could procure it in the town in which the family dwelt, and that at my birth (in a large cold room) not a bit of coal or wood was in the house to mitigate the intensity of the weather, or to cook the slightest portion of food for mother or child. But he who heareth the young ravens when they cry listened to the crying of the mother and her babe, and sent his angel (a messenger of pity) into the heart of a neighbour, so that he was induced to part with a portion of his small stock, and thus instrumentally save the lives of both. Fevers of the most virulent kind preyed upon the health of my earliest years, and placed me, as it was thought, beyond the reach of recovery; but strength returned, and health was restored. Stimulated by the pride of being one of the most courageous boys in my school, and having said I would never take a challenge without accepting it, although not naturally quarrelsome, I was induced to fight numerous battles with boys much older and stronger than myself, and was once brought home, after fighting an hour and a half, all but breathless, and so disfigured that my own mother did not know me. These battles were generally agreed upon on a Saturday, during the time given us to look over the church catechism, and were uniformly fought in the church yard. A watery grave also repeatedly threatened me, once by the malevolence of the two sons of a clergyman and a magistrate, who, because my father was, as they said, a "dipper and a methodist," had vowed to dip me while bathing till the breath was out of my body. This they attempted, and would, I believe, have accomplished but for the timely interference of a third party, who rescued me when quite black in the face. These malicious persecutors, on a subsequent occasion, seized me and suspended me, with my head downwards, from the top of a high castle, with pointed rocks and sea beneath. At this period no redress could be procured for the greatest insults and hardships inflicted on dissenters, who were suffered by the clerical magistracy to be abused in every shape, and spies were sent out by the government to inspect the congregations of Jacobins, as all the nonconformists were opprobri ously and falsely called. No Tory prints, no Tory parsons made use, in those days, of the honeyed words, "our Wesleyan brethren; dissenters were then painted with the same brush, and that brush was dipped in wormwood and gall! On another occasion I recollect having fallen into deep water while leaning over the quay, with a view, by the means of a long furze-bush, to save a favourite little book from being carried away by the tide, that had been given to me by a gentleman from Bath, and which I had dropt into the sea. At this time no one was near but a sister, only eleven years of age, and a little girl still younger. They called in vain for help; no rope, nor any other means

"all

of deliverance was at hand, but the tide had providentially just turned, and was going out. My sister, young as she was, as if intuitively, perceived this, and observing that my coat and pinafore had helped to buoy me up, although my head had several times gone beneath the surface, she resolutely determined to attempt my rescue by hastily descending some landing steps close by, and bidding the other child follow her with the view to be enabled, by the steadying influence of her hand, to reach as far out as possible. She walked into the water up to her chin, watched the nick of time that the body floated by, and with her arm extended to the full, and by means of her finger and thumb, reached the corner of the pinafore and succeeded in saving her brother's life at the peril of her own. Such, however, was my exhaustion, and such the distance the children had to take me home in my wet clothes, that it was a long time before a healthy circulation of the blood could be promoted. The varied, slender, but indispensably connected links in the chain of this providence bave made me often exclaim,

"Great God! on what a slender thread
Hang everlasting things."

At another time I was all but lost in an attempt to save a youth who is now one of the most talented and successful physicians in the land. Being summoned to the spot by the piercing cry and clenched hands of a near relation who could not swim (I was at this time about eighteen years of age and a good swimmer), and perceiving, on my arrival, that the youth, at a considerable distance from the bank and in deep water, was gurgling at the mouth, and struggling in the very agony of death, I rushed into the river without even stopping to remove either my boots, my hat, or any part of my clothes. I snatched him by the arm while sinking at least for the third or fourth time, but while turning myself round to make for land, he seized my right arm and rendered it useless, and then, managing to encircle my neck, grasped me with a strength that seems peculiar to persons so circumstanced, and so encumbered me that, together with his weight and that of my now drenched clothes, my face was brought completely under water. Being, however, a skilful diver, and knowing the direction of the bank, I made for it with an energy that I can now scarcely imagine myself capable of, and succeeded in reaching it, but in such a condition of utter debility that I believe if it had been another yard more remote, both of us must have inevitably perished. Several times I have been all but lost in open boats, and the oldest seamen have pronounced the escapes to be perfectly miraculous. I have been thrown from the backs of malicious and runaway horses when young, and have been dislodged from my chaise, and dragged for a considerable distance between the horse's heels and the splash board, without receiving the slightest injury. Cholera and influenza have both repeatedly threatened, and I have been mobbed and stoned while accompanying my father and others in preaching expeditions in the New Forest and elsewhere. In addition to all these dangers, and many more that might be told, I have been graciously saved from a purpose of self-destruction, formed many years ago, while encountering some youthful disappointments. And on these and numerous other kindred accounts I have had "to sing of judgments and of mercy." But these are only as the small dust of the balance when contrasted with my soul troubles, and my deliverances therefrom. Being, however, unwilling to trespass farther on your patience for the present, I will conclude by expressing a hope that as the opening of the leaves of divine Providence is often made, in the