the same sufferings which his people were liable to have undergone. He suffered both in his soul and in his body; he died the same kind of death to which they were subject; he was brought to the dust of death; he was under the hiding of his Father's face for a season, which was an equivalent of that spiritual death under which his people were lying. And that his death was not eternal, was not owing to any abatement in the sufferings his people were liable to on account of sin, but to the dignity of the person suffering.

Sinners being healed by the stripes of Christ, implies that God hath accepted of and is well pleased with the satisfaction which he hath made to his justice by his obedience, sufferings and death. "God is well pleased for his righteousness' sake." Christ hath loved us and given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God of a sweet smelling savour." There are three scriptures (Matt. iii. 17; xvii. 5; John xii. 28) wherein we find Jehovah, in the person of the Father, declaring, with an audible voice, that he is well pleased with what his beloved Son hath done and suffered in the law room and stead of mankind sinners. Many ways hath God evidenced his delight and satisfaction in what Christ hath done and suffered for poor lost sinners. He hath done so by raising him from the dead; by receiving him to his own right hand in the heavenly sanctuary; by send ing the Holy Spirit to glorify him in the application of the purchased redemption.

He hath done so by all the spiritual health and cure which he hath vouchsafed upon any of our fallen family; and he is daily doing so by continuing a dispensation of the gospel in the world.

Sinners being healed by the stripes of Christ, implies their being brought to receive the benefit of those stripes by faith. Thus they are taught their sickness and wounds in the glass of the law, and thus in God's good time,

But how are sinners healed by the stripes of Christ ? Believers are, by the stripes of Christ healed of the deadly wound which they have received by the guilt of sin. The blood of Christ is the medicine by the merit of which the sins of believers are expiated: He was bruised for their iniquities." The blood of Christ is the price of the sinner's redemption : believers are "redeemed by the precious blood of Christ," as the meritorious cause of their deliverance. They have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sin, according to the riches of God's grace reigning through his law-magnifying righteousness. Every true believer is as whole in respect of his state as ever he will be, for "there is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." All his iniquities are forgiven, and his restoration to a state of perfect health and soundness stands inseparably connected with his being justified: for whom the Lord justifies these he will most assuredly glorify. They who have received abundance of grace, and of the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life by one Jesus Christ.

Believers are healed in the way of being delivered from the reigning power of sin, and its filth and defilement, by the efficacy of the Spirit of Christ. Sin is a disease that does not only render men guilty before God, but it likewise makes them appear loathsome in his sight, and both the guilt and the stain of sin are removed and taken away by the blood of Christ: the guilt of sin is removed by remission, and the stain washed away by purification. Christ heals

once.

us of the guilt of sin, as he is made of God unto us righteousness; and of the filth of sin, as he is made of God unto us sanctification. Both the justification of the guilty, and the sanctification of the filthy, flow from the pierced side of Christ, for he came both by water and by blood. Both, as two distinct blessings, flowed from his side at once; and they both make their way into the sinner's heart at All whom God heals by the pardoning of their sins, he heals them also by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost. The spiritual eye is healed and the believer made light in the Lord. The rebellion and obstinacy of the will is brought under. The affections are set upon God in Christ. The conscience is purged from dead works. The memory is no longer a leaky vessel respecting spiritual things, it is made a treasure house, containing some of the divine truths and precious experiences of God's goodness to the soul. The Holy Spirit carries on the begun cure to perfection, by the renewed application of the virtue and efficacy of Christ's stripes to the heart and conscience, and this he does in various ways. He sends his word and heals the soul. He sends affliction and makes the rod of correction a means of drawing folly out of the heart. The cure thus begun and carried on is perfected, in respect of the soul, at death; and the whole man shall not only be delivered from the disease of sin, but also from all the woeful effects of it, in the day of the general resurrection, when the Lord Jesus shall descend from heaven, and shall change our vile bodies, that they may be fashioned like unto his glorious body."

Several other ideas arise out of these words: they point out to us the melancholy condition of mankind by nature. They are in a sick and Wounded condition: a loathsome disease fills their loins: the whole man is infected with the noisome and

painful leprosy of sin. Every man is by original sin exposed to the wrath of God, besides being so by innume rable actual transactions which he has himself committed. These words prove to us, likewise, that disease d sinners cannot help themselves. They have nothing of their own wherewith to mollify and bind up their wounds, nor can all the angels in heaven or men upon earth heal one soul of the disease of sin. All legal endeavours to procure health to the soul are to no purpose. Men may go for health to the law, to their duties, good resolutions, and purposes of amendment of life and conversation, but they will find it as when Judah and Ephraim sent to king Jareb for the recovery of their health, as a nation: "When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went Ephraim to the Assyrian, and sent to king Jareb, yet could he not heal you nor cure you of your wounds," Hosea v. 13.

From these words we may see what rich display a God of infinite love and grace hath made of his kindness, in thus providing a remedy for diseased and helpless souls, in the stripes of his dear Son. It pleased the Lord to give Him to be broken and bruised, that he might bring forth a medicine from his perced side for the healing of the nations. And as God the Father hath herein richly manifested his love to poor perishing sinners, so is the love of God the Son rendered equally conspicuous, in giving himself thus to be wounded for their transgressions. Nor can we

less admire the love of God the Holy Ghost, in condescending to apply the virtue and efficacy of Christ's stripes to the hearts and consciences of an elect world.

We may see from these words that believers are an unspeakably happy people. Their deadly wound 18 healed by justification and regeneration. They are passed from death unto life, and can never come into

condemnation, Happy indeed are the people who are in such a case. God hath begun a good and gracious work in you, and you may be confident of it that he will finish it until the day of Jesus Christ. The remains of indwelling sin may rage in you, but it can never obtain the victory over you. Ye are not under the law as a covenant of works, but ye are under grace, within the rainbow of the new covenant, where grace reigns through righteousness unto everlasting life.

Lastly, we may here learn that believers have great cause to be humble. Believers as well as others did destroy themselves, and were equally incapable of doing any thing to help themselves, to keep back their lives from the pit, and their souls from destruction. Your cure is effected, and your spiritual health restored, entirely at the expense of another. And the consideration of these things, calls loudly upon you to walk humbly with Him by whose stripes you were healed, and to excite and stir up your own souls to a thankful remembrance of all the gracious benefits which he hath so liberally bestowed

upon you.

T. B.

THE GROUND OF HOPE AND CONSOLA

TION TO A NEW-BORN SOUL.

My very dear brother, in a glory, grace union to our exalted Lord. I have been waiting to hear from you, yea, I have rather expected to have seen you here ere this; and having this opportunity by our friend, I drop these hasty lines, just to inquire after an old friend. Indeed, indeed I have not forgotten you. How is it with you? After so long a time, I trust thy Lord and mine is upholding, supporting, refreshing, bedewing thy mind, notwithstanding all opposition from within and without. Expect it, it must come, and from quarters we

least expect it from too. Both from sinner and from saint we meet with many a blow. If we build nests beneath the third heavens, they must be burnt up.

Dear brother, I am learning a most useful lesson, though painful to flesh and blood. The text which introduced me to the lesson, you will find in the last verse of the second chapter of Isaiah. Should I be again permitted to have an interview with you in the body, I shall have much to tell you.

Go on, my brother, notwithstanding the strife of tongues or roaring of devils, preaching our glorious Christ, in the majesty of his person, the love of his dear heart, his finished salvation, his perfect righteousness and shed blood. Let the members of his mystical body know how complete they stand in Him, how secure; and as they ever have stood, so they ever will, yea, and ever must, for the Lord God hath purposed, and who shail disannul it. Here is the source of our joy, the spring of our consolation the Great Three-One, and his everlasting, electing love: from this flows all the incalculable blessings of grace and glory, in time and to eter. nity, to the seed royal, Jehovah's predestinated ones. Of this the Holy Ghost bears abundant witness in the word, and in the heart.

Now, my dear brother, I shall expect a line by the bearer hereof; do not fail to fill up a sheet. Give my love to all the real lovers of our precious Christ. I do pray the Lord the Spirit to bless both you and your labours to the household of faith. Do not forget to pray for me, I am a poor worm,creeping at a snail's pace towards the kingdom; yet you know the door of the ark was not shut, till that slow traveller arrived safe.

But time compels me to draw to a conclusion. Pray excuse this hasty scrawl.

I remain, yours in the Lord,

HEART COMMUNINGS.

No.1-To be continued.

My Dear Brother,

THERE needs no more powerful motive than real affection to prompt any one to act, and having an opportunity to manifest a tender and I trust sincere regard, I would embrace it. But how shall I begin; surely I cannot do better than to acknowledge that it is from the love of our Elder Brother, manifested to us, that prompts us, nay, sweetly constrains us to love one another. What brought us into the bond of union that subsists, and what makes it endure now absent in body? The selfsame love that called our souls, at first, from the ruins of the fall, and which is still manifested in keeping us alive amidst all the storms of life; and as one of the best fruits and proofs of a return of love for love, we love God, and love one another. If it is not so, who will make me a liar, and confession of this nothing worth? I am sure, my brother, you will not; therefore as the holy and blessed Spirit shall teach me I will go on. The language of the poet strikes me, this moment, as suitable to my feelings

my

"Hither by thine help I'm come."

And what shall hinder you from saying so too? not a downright ignorance of God and yourself; no, I have a document of your own hand-writing to this: and if I fear about your prove living against your right, do not be surprised if I should bring it as a witness, for I am determined neither you nor the devil himself shall have one more inch of ground to stand on, upon that subject, than you can get by dint of argument, and the mighty feats that unbelief can perform. And therefore if you are resolved to enter the field with a host of doubters, To arms, I cry, and I doubt not, my dear brother, but you will be right glad of all hell's defeat, and fall down, with

a melting heart, and weep to the praise of merey found. I cannot find any sound so sweet as that of sovereign mercy; that freely pardons such poor sinners as you and me.

What induced a Three-One Jehovah to enter into covenant to save a rebellious race? Not your good works or mine, if we had done any; and if any were in anticipation, in the great council of eternity, surely it would have been some where recorded; but not a most distant hint is given throughout the sacred page. Oh, no, ever since man fell, that humiliating account of man's total lost and depraved state has been without variableness or even a shadow of alteration; namely, the imaginations of man's heart, not his head only, but his heart, is spoken of as the grand and secret repository of all man contains; out of this receptacle nothing but evil thoughts, evil workings, evil actions of all sorts and every variety spring. And Oh what lamentable fruits this evil tree produces! Methinks it does not merely bear fruit every year, or every month, but every moment and hour. Can it be otherwise, seeing all the seed was sown at Adam's fall. The tree is radically bad. Is it not so? From feeling I confess I find it is the case with me. Well in this let us rejoice, that is, not in sin, nor in our first parents' fall, but that, as the poet says―

"The fall wrought the channel where mercy should run."

For if there had been no fall, no redemption, no death of a precious Jesus to rejoice in, no everlasting righteousness to be clothed in, no sanctifying effects to glory in, nor would the body have been made the temple of the Holy Ghost, or we ever experience those sweet meltings of heart under a sense of blood-bought pardon. And what was all our first parents' enjoyment in innocence compared with that which is realized when our dear Lord,

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by the voice of his Spirit, says, in peace; thy sins are all forgiven." Not worth a thought, I say, happy as the man might be who was as perfect as creature innocence could make him. But Adam had no certainty in his covenant or agreement his Maker made with him, of standing for ever, but we have; the Redeemer's righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, neither can it be soiled, nor we either, in the Father's sight, for he graciously says, I will not behold iniquity in Jacob, nor perverseness in Israel;" and, "When their sins are sought for, they shall not be found." As to all you or me may say about unworthiness, a heart-felt sense of it proves us to be in a fit state for the fulfilment of the taunting language of the Pharisees, who said, "This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them." This is just what I like. Little did those enemies of the church imagine what signal use their declaration, spoken in malice and hatred, should be to the children of God in all ages; for, as Gadsby says, Bless your poor heart this is what we want,' and oh, when so indulged how we realize what our dear Lord himself declares, "My flesh (says he) is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed." And again, He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood shall live for ever." Oh the blessed harmony there is in the word of God. Let men's fertile brains bring forth what they may, they produce nothing that can sound so sweet in a poor sinner's ear, as free grace, from first to last. says the poet

"We'll sing no other song than this,

Throughout the azure skies."

Yes,

It is a subject a sensible sinner is never tired of, though he may be and is weary of earth, himself, and sin; yet he is never, in heart, weary of this. On the other hand he is downright covetous; for the more he is indulged with the enjoyment, the

we,

more he wants, and in reality likes to be always feasting, saying, with Peter. "It is good to be here." But as the appetite must be sharpened by a fast, like the disciples, must come down from the mount, be taught to live by faith, do business in deep waters, combat with the powers of darkness, and there learn the faithfulness, love, and care of Him who was on the mount, but who also came down with them. It was needful for him so to do to accomplish the great work he had in hand, and also, as was designed, that his members should have fellowship with him in his sufferings; not in the work of salvation, in performing part of that, no, no, but you know what I mean.

Here I must stop, my paper being almost full. My sincere regards to Mrs. E. I hope you both get the choice morsels kept in reserve for troubled saints against a time of need, and that outward trials are so sanctified as to be the means of keeping a praying spirit in exercise. May the good Lord provide for you and me : I know he will. Oh my unbelieving heart!

I trust I am somewhat better in body, but ofttimes very unwell. My sincere love to Mr. Fowler and those few friends known through you to With this poor scrawl I leave you, but shall be glad to hear from you soon, do not mind the postage, I shall not grudge that, it is poor love that is not worth ninepence.

me.