The Gospel Standard, Or, Feeble Christian's Support

sweet smelling myrrh; his lips drop as the honeycomb; honey and milk are under his tongue; his garments give him smells like Lebanon, and his anointings are better than all spices. (Song iv. 5.) At times he feels a peculiar satisfaction in God and Christ, and his soul is delighted in trusting in him, and his heart glories in his salvation. "The righteous shall be glad in the Lord, and shall trust in him; and all the upright in heart shall glory." (Ps. lxiv. 10.)

Thus, I have given you briefly, though feebly, some little of what the fear of God is, and the fruits and feelings it produces in those possessed of it. Those blessed with this fear have many riches made over to them. "There is no want to them; the Lord giveth meat to them; he will fill the desire of them; great is his mercy to them; surely his salvation is nigh them; the angel of the Lord encampeth round about them; the eye of the Lord is on them; the Lord pitieth them; the Lord taketh pleasure in them; the secret of the Lord is with them; the Lord blesseth them, and knoweth them, and keepeth them, and the wicked one toucheth them not. Such is the heritage of them that fear the Lord." But the fearless hypocrites, destitute of the life and power of God, such as Korah and his company, who strove with God, and denied and opposed his wisdom and grace in Moses and Aaron, from selfishness and pride; (Num. xvi.;) the two sons of Aaron, who insulted the Majesty of heaven, and lessened him in the eyes of the people, and denied the heavenly fire and divine. power of the only Lord God and our Saviour, by offering their own fire; (Lev, x. 1;) the mixed multitude, who fell a lusting, and whose hearts went back into Egypt, who also enticed the people and tempted God; (Num. xi. 4-6;) the cursed filthy swine and unclean dogs, who return to their mire and vomit; (2 Pet. ii.;) the unctionless professors, who do unrighteousness, and commit the sin unto death; (1 John ii. 27; v. 16;) the filthy, lascivious dreamers, murmurers, complainers, and natural brute beasts; (Deut. xiii.; Jude ;) Paul's heretics and angels of light; (1 Cor. xi. 19; 2 Cor. xi. 13, 14;) and the various tribes of their numerous sons and daughters who swarm in the present day, under the mask of a pious and God-fearing profession; these clouds without water; trees twice dead, plucked up by the roots; wandering stars; raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; are reserved unto blackness and darkness, tribulation and anguish, and everlasting sorrow. (Isa. 1. 11; Jude 12, 13.)

Preston.

J. M'K.

A FRAGMENT OF EXPERIENCE

IN JOURNEYING UNDER A CLOUDY SKY, UP A STEEP HILL, AND Over A STORMY SEA.

My God, how sorely have I been tempted to believe that thou canst not make soft my heart, shed abroad thy love therein, by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto me; (Romans v. 5;) reveal thyself in all thy grace, glory, fulness of mercy, salvation, and faith

master, he will use his servant as if he were a servant himself. In trade he will deal honestly, as in the sight of God, who seeth the secrets of his heart. His tender conscience will not let him deal unjustly, nor carry on the secret frauds and deceptions of trade, as practised by the world. In short, it teaches him to set God's conduct in Christ to his people before his eyes, as the rule and pattern of his conduct, and to follow God as a dear child. (Eph. v. 1.) Sin may follow him, but he cannot follow sin. The grace of God, that bringeth salvation, hath taught him to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly. (Titus ii. 11, 12.) Neither can he use hypocrisy, deceit, or carnal flattery, nor does he wish to receive it. He does not care what men say or think of him. He commits his ways unto the Lord, who judges righteously. He knows that the Lord knows his heart, and this comforts him. He cannot do with the fleshly prayers, sayings, and ways even of many of those whom he has reason to believe are God's children. He knows the difference betwixt flesh and spirit, betwixt what is man's own and what is of God. His soul is disgusted at the abominable presumption of barren hypocrites, who can talk largely and boastingly of God's decrees, sovereignty, election, reprobation, particular redemption, &c., who in prayer accost God with a carnal, bold, impudent presumption, asking things of God in that unhumbled manner, as if they had some authoritative claim upon God, or as if God was obliged to give them their requests. At such, I say, he feels disgusted, because he knows from experience he has no claim whatever upon God, and whatever the Lord is pleased to bestow upon him, he knows it is freely of his grace, that it may be "to the praise of the glory of his grace;" for when he is brought into the presence of the great God from necessity, it is in the character of a poor, vile, helpless, worthless, wretched beggar, rather than a claimant. Nor can he at all live in the company of rotten and unsound professors in doctrine; they sicken and kill his soul. Preaching, of whatever kind, does not reach him, except it be mixed with power. The Spirit of God, at times, shines most astonishingly on the word, and then shines into his heart with the sweetness of its contents, warming and gladdening his heart, strengthening his faith, cheering his soul as with strong drink, until he forgets his poverty, and remembers his misery no more, (Prov. xxxi. 7,) overshadowing his heart with the love of God, till it thrills with joy and gratitude, drawing his soul out to Christ, his people, and his ways. And when he relapses into coldness, deadness, darkness, unbelief, fear, and distress; driven to the top of Amana, Sheñir, and Hermon, amongst the lions' dens and the mountains of leopards; (Song iv. 8,) in the body of sin and death, or sojourning and fighting in noisy and quarrelsome Mesech with the strife of tongues; (Ps. cxx. 5; xxxi. 20;) or wandering alone beside the footsteps of the flock in a solitary way, looking for the place of his rest, and the shinings of the face of his Beloved; (Song i. 7;) still he is again renewed, and revived as the corn, and grows as the vine, and smells as the blossoms of Lebanon. (Hos. xiv. 7.) His hands drop with myrrh, and his fingers with

Thus, I have given you briefly, though feebly, some little of what the fear of God is, and the fruits and feelings it produces in those possessed of it. Those blessed with this fear have many riches made over to them. "There is no want to them; the Lord giveth meat to them; he will fill the desire of them; great is his mercy to them; surely his salvation is nigh them; the angel of the Lord encampeth round about them; the eye of the Lord is on them; the Lord pitieth them; the Lord taketh pleasure in them; the secret of the Lord is with them; the Lord blesseth them, and knoweth them, and keepeth them, and the wicked one toucheth them not. Such is the heritage of them that fear the Lord." But the fearless hypocrites, destitute of the life and power of God, such as Korah and his company, who strove with God, and denied and opposed his wisdom and grace in Moses and Aaron, from selfishness and pride; (Num. xvi.;) the two sons of Aaron, who insulted the Majesty of heaven, and lessened him in the eyes of the people, and denied the heavenly fire and divine power of the only Lord God and our Saviour, by offering their own fire; (Lev, x. 1;) the mixed multitude, who fell a lusting, and whose hearts went back into Egypt, who also enticed the people and tempted God; (Num. xi. 4-6;) the cursed filthy swine and unclean dogs, who return to their mire and vomit; (2 Pet. ii.;) the unctionless professors, who do unrighteousness, and commit the sin unto death; (1 John ii. 27; v. 16;) the filthy, lascivious dreamners, murmurers, complainers, and natural brute beasts; (Deut. xiii.; Jude ;) Paul's heretics and angels of light; (1 Cor. xi. 19; 2 Cor. xi. 13, 14;) and the various tribes of their numerous sons and daughters who swarm in the present day, under the mask of a pious and God-fearing profession; these clouds without water; trees twice dead, plucked up by the roots; wandering stars; raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; are reserved unto blackness and darkness, tribulation and anguish, and everlasting sorrow. (Isa. 1. 11; Jude 12, 13.)

Preston.

J. M'K.

A FRAGMENT OF EXPERIENCE

IN JOURNEYing undeR A CLOUDY SKY, UP A STEEP HILL, AND OVER A STORMY SEA.

fulness in my poor weather-beaten soul, because I have been again feeling as cold, dead, and insensible, as though the Sun of Righteousness had never arisen and shone into me with healing in his wings. (Mal. iv. 2.) For a time, it has appeared to me selfevident that I have been speaking lies in hypocrisy, having my conscience seared with a hot iron, (1 Tim. iv. 2,) and, therefore, cannot feel any true vital spiritual repentance, though I should seek it carefully with tears. (Heb. xii. 17.) I have been led to inquire whether all that I have been speaking of as my past experience, be not a delusion of Satan transformed into an angel of light, (2 Cor. xi. 14,) or else nothing more than the natural workings of the flesh, and whether, while talking and preaching to others of the strait gate and narrow way, (Matt. vii. 13, 14,) I really know any thing of it myself, and am satisfied that I am not a thief and a robber who has not entered by the door into the sheep-fold, but climbed up some other way. (John x. 1.) I have longed and panted to be assured that I hate sin even more than Satan and the second death, hell; but, alas! all I have gotten in return is, to have the blackness of my old heart, or carnal mind, placed in a more conspicuous point of view, and to be convinced that it is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, (Jer. xvii. 9,) being enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be; (Rom. viii. 7;) for I am carnal, sold under sin. That which I do, I allow not; for what ́I would, that I do not; but what I hate, that I do. So then, with my mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin, (Rom. vii. 14—25,) which loves sin rather than Christ, who is my life, (Col. iii. 4,) wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. (1 Cor. i. 30.) How I have prayed and striven for a sense of that holy and filial fear which is put into the new heart, according to Jehovah's covenant promise, (Jer. xxxii. 40,) which fear is to hate evil, (Prov. iii. 13,) and is a fountain of life to depart from the snares of death. (Prov. xiv. 27.) But here, again, instead of my desire being immediately fulfilled, I have fallen into a worse dilemma than before, have become more careless, and felt as if there were no fear of God before my eyes; and to this Satan is ready enough to bear his testimony. But, blessed be God, he hath many a time shown and told me of Satan's devices, and that he was a murderer frem the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him; "When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar, and the father of it." (John viii. 44.) But still the old charge of hypocrisy has been renewed, and what must appear very absurd to those who know nothing of these secret movements, and, as I have heard them called, dumb motions in the soul, is, when I have been most like a hypocrite in my own eyes, it has struck me most forcibly that I did not in the least degree believe it or care about it, but was going from evil to evil, hardening my heart, increasing in self-conceit, deceiving and being deceived, full of doctrines and fleshly zeal, but lacking the dew, moisture, warmth, unction, power, divine inspiration, and heavenly influences of the Holy Ghost.

Thus have I been buffeted and harassed, tossed to and fro, and cut up and down, till I look to myself like a skeleton, whose dry bones have been picked clean by the fowls of the air; now mounting up to the heavens on the boiling surges of rebellion and ingratitude, inflated and puffed up with pride even in spiritual things, and anon sinking down, as it were, to the brink of hell; diving into the flesh, and well nigh gloating over my filth and corruption, as a carrion crow over a putrid carcase; and yet, with all this, when brought into the greatest straits and soul distress, there has been, and is a secret, mysterious resting upon Christ within my soul, which it is impossible to define, and I have been conscious of looking solely to him for deliverance, longing earnestly for his appearance to divide, as in times past, the waves in the sea, and to still the tempest by his divine power, and bring me through the floods in safety.

I am, in truth, an inexplicable mystery and a wonder to myself, being as full of death and sin as I can hold, and yet so much of Christ and life as to desire to unburden and empty myself of myself, and to find Christ only in my heart, ruling and reigning therein over all my affections, thoughts, and actions. I have tried to pray, but could not; to meditate, but in vain; my ideas being scattered, and flying about like the thistle down before the wind. I have uttered the words, "O thou adorable Lord Jesus!" and have felt condemned because of my not realizing, at the moment, in my heart, that which my lips have given vent to, and thinking within myself, "Surely I do not adore the Lord, or I should not be as I am, for I have not that soul ravishing enjoyment of his glorious and blessed presence which the word of God shows many of his saints to have had, and which many speak of in the present day, who are but little troubled with indwelling sin and an evil heart of unbelief, but on whom the Sun appears to be continually shining. But I am a companion of owls, and sit in the dark for days, weeks, and sometimes months together, although I can look back to many an Ebenezer and sweet manifestation, and can recall the time when, believing with my heart unto righteousness, with my mouth I made confession unto salvation, and cried, Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth I desire besides thee." (Ps. lxxiii. 25.) "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, and crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies." (Ps. ciii. 2-4.)

Well do I remember the spot where I was first set at liberty, where Jesus shone into my heart in his beauty and in his glory, and made me feel that I was swallowed up in him, and he in me; that he was all my life, strength, righteousness, salvation, blessedness, food, and clothing; and that, as for myself, in myself, even in this, my best habits, I was nothing, yea, less than nothing and vanity. (Eccle. i. 16, 17.) But, although I can make sure my calling first, and my deliverance, which was not till some time after, yet the enjoyment and blessed experience of the opening of my prison-house in time

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