To another dear friend who occasionally visited him, and who asked him how he was, he replied, "I am very ill, but I trust my affliction is sanctified;" and then, as though for the moment a doubt had arisen in his mind, he said, "What do you think? Do you think the Lord would have shewn me my state, if he had intended to have banished me at last?" this friend replied, "I hope you are building your hopes on the rock of ages." "O! yes," said he, "I have no other hope;" and then, in the lines of one of our poets, exclaimed,

"Other refuge have I none,

Hangs my helpless soul on thee."

"What other hope can I have? I have been a vile, a sinful wretch, yet,

"Jesus sought me when a stranger,"

"Wandering! wandering!" he paused, and then said, "I want to have my thoughts more fixed on Christ, but, what with my pain (here I beg to observe, his was a most painful affliction) and my wandering thoughts, my mind is so soon drawn away from my precious Saviour." This friend then on taking leave said, "If we never meet again here, I hope we shall in heaven;" when, with a cheerful confidence he replied, "O! yes, and then we shall be free from sin." At another time he exclaimed, "O! how glad I am to see you, or any of the Lord's people; I hope hereafter to be for ever with them; having been washed in the precious blood of Christ, I have no other hope than in his blood;" this friend replied, "It is well when we are left without any other prop;" yes, said he, "By the grace of God, 1 am what I am.'

"O! to grace, how great a debtor,
Daily, I'm constrain'd to be,"

And then, omitting the next line, he exclaimed,

66

"Bind, bind my wandering thoughts to thee."

On one occasion, the writer of this, calling one morning, found him almost in the blackness of despair; the expression of his countenance at the time will never be forgotten; his whole frame trembled; with death staring him in the face, and his prospects filling him with terror, he exclaimed, "Oh! oh! sir, I have no hope; I have been deceiving myself; oh! what a wretch am I;" I said "yes, this may be all true, and the latter certainly is; but, what then, it does not follow that because you are such a wretch, that your case is hopeless; true, it would be so, did salvation in any way depend on yourself, but, it does not; it is a salvation freely provided and graciously applied to the unworthy-to sinners-this, you feel yourself to be;" "yes, yes," said he, "I do." I said, "you want Christ and salvation;" "that, that," he said, "is what I want;" to this I replied, "you see there is all you want in him;" he replied, "yes, yes, I want his precious blood, his righteousness; but oh! oh! that will never be mine; I thought I loved him, but-" here his strength failed him, but when a little recovered, he said, "last night I was in such pain, my poor body was in such pain and I began to murmur; I thought the Lord was dealing hard with me; I became quite exhausted, and I wanted ease, I dropped off to sleep and slept for two hours, I awoke and my pain had all left me, it was gone, I had no pain; but, oh! I had no hope, I thought I was going, and I had no hope; I am such a wretch, oh! I fear there is no hope for me." I said, "if you are not

a sinner there is none, for the salvation of Christ, is a salvation for sinners, and the hope of the gospel, is the hope of poor sinners; no one can more need a Saviour than yourself, and sure I am, Christ is just such an one as you want;" he replied, "oh! yes, he is all I want, but will he own me?" said, "yes, why not? you cannot be satisfied without him, and he will satisfy the desire of them that fear him; he does not convince of his worth and implant a desire after him to disappoint our hopes; no, blessed be his name, he is the unfailing friend of sinners." After this, I prayed with him and left, thinking it probable I might see him no more. This cloud soon after vanished, and on my calling on my return home in the evening, he held out his hand, and with an expression of happiness in his countenance I cannot describe, said, "O! how glad I am to see you, my fears are gone;" and then, with eyes and hands uplifted, he exclaimed, "it is all of grace! all, all of grace! precious! precious Saviour!' He then adverted to his former condition, and after speaking of himself as a vile and daring rebel against God, said,

"While I wandered, Jesus sought me."

Words which he often quoted, and then said, "I do think I shall get there, and if we meet no more here, we shall meet in heaven." After this, I again took my leave, thinking it might be for the last time; his life however was still spared and I saw him once more, when he appeared so near his end, that we thought he could not hold out the day; as soon as he saw me he held out his hand; I said, "you are still here;" "yes," he said, "I thought I should have been gone!" On this occasion it was difficult for him to articulate, but the few words he uttered, were expressive of the sweet serenity of his mind; his sun was going down, but it was the calmness of a summer eve; I took my leave, to see him no more in time; he survived two days after this, during which time, he continued in the same happy frame, until he almost imperceptibly breathed his last, on the fifth day of October, in the twenty-seventh year of his age. His mortal remains were interred in the burying ground, at the Baptist Meeting, on the following Monday, there to await the last summons, at which voice, the dead shall be raised, and his dust come forth, a spiritual body, to live for ever with the Lord. And now, reader, do you know the grace of God? and art thou a fearful and trembling soul, fearing you shall sink in the day of trial? such, at one time was the subject of this memoir; but he was supported, sweetly supported, and brought, not only safely, but, triumphantly through; trust thy poor tempest tost soul's care to him who is the helper of the helpless; his love and grace will never leave thee to sink; this he cannot do so long as he is the friend of sinners, and thou hast a poor consciously helpless soul to cast upon him; believe me, he will give thee strength according to thy day, and shew forth the power of his grace in your victory over the world, flesh, satan, and unbelief. Is the reader one on whom the Lord has laid his afflicting hand? so was the subject of this memoir; but, painful as was his affliction, he was enabled, not only to bear his afflictions, but found the days of affliction to be the happiest days of his life. But, it may be, that the reader of this, is a stranger to himself and God, and consequently a lover of the world and sin; such, was once the subject of this memoir; but, O! what an awful state to have died in; a state, out of which he was happily delivered; and although thou art accustomed to mock and scoff at divine truth, and to persecute the lovers thereof now, there is a day coming, when, to die such a despiser, will be to die under the frown of heaven, and an eternal banishment, as the just desert of your transgressions, that lan

guage cannot describe, nor the utmost stretch of imagination conceive. O! sinner, tremble! saint of God, rejoice, the days of thy mourning shall

soon be ended.

H. Oxfordshire.

WILLIAM.

NOTICE OF BOOKS.

THE EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT, IN ITS RELATION TO GOD AND THE UNIVERSE. By T. W. Jenkyn, D. D. President of Coward College.

The above is the title of a book which promises fair, ere long, to become the test of orthodoxy, on the subject on which it treats. The Patriot, which speaks the tenets of at least one-third of the Independent denomination, and which forms and circumscribes the opinions of at least another third, writes thus:

"This is a remarkable work, especially considering how much had already been written on the subject. Notwithstanding the multitude of publications which have appeared on this great subject during the present century, and second half of the last, few have much claim to the praise of sterling merit. They have added but little to the lights of a former age. Both Owen and Baxter had, upon the whole, profound and comprehensive. views of it; but neither of these eminent men succeeded in setting it forth in a luminous aspect. Andrew Fuller was, in our opinion, the first to illumine the darker portions of the profound enquiry. What that great man did in this way was done so well, that he has left us little to desire but that he had discussed the subject somewhat more largely. Death cut short his labours, but the work has not been neglected. The pastor of Kettering has. found a meet successor in this field of evangelical labour. After a luminous statement of the nature and design of the atonement, a process of the closest reasoning is commenced and carried on by our author, without break or pause, through a space of four hundred pages. The atonement, in its relation to the person of Christ, to the perfections, the purposes, the works, and the providence of God, to divine moral government, to divine truth, to sin, to the salvation of the human race, to the work of the Holy Spirit, to the church, to the various dispensations of revealed religion, and to the eternal state of the universe, is discussed in a series of some fifty sections with consummate ability. From the cross, as a centre, the author ranges at will through the mighty past and boundless future, through seen and unseen worlds, regularly returning at the close of each sublime excursion, to his starting point, the cross, and thence proceeding on a fresh flight. This principle has imparted a beautiful simplicity to the work, notwithstanding the comprehensiveness of its plan. The author's thoughts radiate on every subject, and on every side, with clearness and directness. There is no confusion, no contradiction; the multitudinous parts unite in presenting a consistency and a harmony rarely found in such publications. We affirm that in this volume great things have been attempted, and great things have been performed. It appears to have started up in the writer's mind at once, and as he received it, he transferred it to his pages, and gave it to the world. To such productions after-thought and experience add but little. The third edition differs very little from the first; there is a retouching, but small improvement, and no alterations. Indeed it scarcely admitted of any beneficial change, either in thought, arrangement or expression. It seems to have been one of those happy first efforts, which are seldom improved in themselves, or exceeded by subsequent productions of

the same author. It is fraught with powerful statement, and enriched with happy allusions; is subtle, yet lucid; continuous in argument, a study in the art of thinking, a model of discussion. We know of no treatise in which the bearings of the great doctrine of the atonement upon the different branches of practical religion, upon personal piety, social worship, and the diffusion of the gospel are so clearly distinguished, so fully developed, or so powerfully enforced."

We have read this wonderful book over and over, and did we not know the uniformity of commendation bestowed on works of this class, and on writers of the same stamp as Dr. Jenkyn, by every periodical conducted by his friends and contemporaries, we should have suspected it was copied from a New York paper. It is perfectly true that the book contains nothing fundamentally new. The system is unquestionably that of Mr. Fuller, pursued and developed into consequences which that great man plainly denounced in many parts of his writings. Mr. Fuller has been charged with denying the imputation of sin to Christ, and his punishment at the hands of justice; and so inconsistent is error with itself, that it was impossible for this profoundest of thinkers, and carefullest of reasoners, at all times to avoid self-contradiction. But nothing can be more clear than his denunciation of those errors which leave for the doctrine of the atonement nothing more than its name. Mr. Jenkyn is not by any means so scrupulous. His first position is that the atonement is a grand expedient in the moral government of God, conducted on principles not of commercial, but of public justice. The Lord Jesus, by assuming our nature, has become the representative of the whole species; and though a divine and innocent person, he was treated as the vilest of sinners, and suffered from their hands an ignominious death, by which sin is publicly denounced, the holiness of the law, and the justice of God's government, are fully recognized, and abundantly honoured. This may be called an atonement, but it is not the atonement of the bible. Philosophers are wont to make experiments, and then to devise theories to explain them. That theory which reconciles by far the greatest number of experimental anomalies, is of course the most beautiful, and is by its abettors declared to be the vcry truth, till some unlucky discovery shews it to be all error. Such a theory is this beautiful scheme of atonement, this brilliant discovery of the nineteenth century, which has brought its inventor, or rather its re-inventor, to be president of a college, that the power he has to disseminate dangerous errors may be increased a thousand-fold. There is one truth in the bible so unfortunately clear (we do not mean for perishing sinners) that it must eventually prove these babels to be as baseless as they are confused. We mean the scripture doctrine of the imputation of sins to the Lord Jesus Christ. If the plainest words in any language may be supposed to have any meaning, if the same thing taught in every variety of expression may be called a doctrine of scripture-if the testimony of types, of prophecies, and apostolic teaching, may be received as evidence of the truth of such a doctrine, then there is an end of Fullerism, and of the extravagancies of Jenkyn and Finney. Let not the honest reader be deceived,—there is a great deal of talk about vicarious suffering for sin, but every line in this book is opposed to the idea that the sins of sinners were laid upon the head of Christ as their surety that God punished those sins in his person, and buried them in oblivion; that thus individual sinners were personally and really redeemed from eternal death by an actual transfer of their sin and its punishment to their surety, and the real transfer of his righteousness and eternal life to those whom he represented.

This is plainly what the bible declares. How it will stand with modern maxims and theories, it is not for us to say. This is the clumsy doctrine of Owen, and Charnock, and Goodwin, of Paul, and Peter, and Isaiah, which Dr. Jenkyn and his friends laugh to scorn. Let it be admitted that the Lord Jesus merely appeared in our world to vindicate the public justice of God-that he suffered death as the representative of the whole race, so that God can offer pardon to any sinner, and give it too in consistency with his character; and we have it is true, a theory which will justify the modern views of salvation for the whole world-the duty of every sinner to accept it-the sin of the church in not publishing it to every creature, and so thwarting the designs of omnipotence-the impertinence of waiting for some "subtle gas" to come down from heaven to convert sinners, and the impiety of not seeing to the complete conversion of our children before they can walk to chapel. All this is of a piece, as much as error knows how to be of a piece; but as for the bible, it is as remote from its testimony, and as plainly contradictory of its statements, as truth is opposed to falsehood, darkness to light, and wisdom to folly. It is impossible in a short space to point out even a few errors of a book fundamentally opposed to truth. A few extracts may perhaps serve to enlighten the reader on the scriptural purity, the lucid reasoning, and the consistency of this wonderful book. Perhaps something may be attempted hereafter to unfold its principles in detail.

"It seems to me that it is thoughtless and wrong to say that God has in anywise punished the substitute. It were better to say that God allowed sufferings to be inflicted on him. Indeed, I deem it incorrect to say that justice has punished an innocent being at any time, though thousands of innocent persons have been involved in the punishment of the wicked."Page 73.

"The supposition of God acting on the principle of commutative or commercial justice, taking and receiving a quid pro quo, completely perverts and destroys the moral dignity of the atonement, and its influence as a medium of saving man with honour to the divine government. It makes God to exact punctually from Christ the identical punishment threatened to the sinner, as none other could have been due. It makes God to proportion the sufferings of his Son to the number of sins imputed to him, as it would have been unjust to have inflicted more or less than the proportion really due. It represents the Father of mercies as doling out favours in proportion to the number and degree of his Son's sufferings, giving neither more or less to any man than the purchased quantum. It represents the elect as claiming salvation as what is justly due to them from God, for value which he has received from their substitute, because it would be unjust to exact the same debt twice. It represents the salvation of some men as utterly impossible, because their debt has never been paid. It represents the great and blessed God as mercenary in his gifts, unwilling to yield a single boon but for value received in the sufferings of his Son--sufferings which are represented as inducing him, not to say bribing him, to be propitious and merciful. All these limitations of the atonement are to be traced to commercial views of divine justice; and surely such troubled and unwholesome streams should make us seriously doubt the purity of their source."Page 189.

"An atonement of such a commercial character is made to appear a measure of niggard calculation and dribbling mercenariness. It will be a glorious day for the doctrines of the gospel, and for practical godliness,