more ample room for Jehovah to exercise His wisdom, power, and love. As verily as God is true, there shall be no flaw nor failure; but He will work mercifully and marvellously, to the praise of the glory of His own grace, and to the admiring and adoring view of His every child. Upon the ground, however, of what we have said, it may be asked, "But what shall I do? How would you have me act?" Do? Act? Why, seek simply and entirely and abidingly to look to the Lord, and the Lord alone. Wait on Him for wisdom, grace, and strength. Don't meddle, for to meddle is to mar! God the Holy Ghost give thee to learn that great but blessed lesson, "Be still, and know that I am God!" Mark the accompaniment: "I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth." How? In connexion with this very stillness-this owning the Lord, and observing His wondrous ways and doings. "The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our Refuge." Observe the name-the great, the glorious, the condescending name, "the God of Jacob!" What was Jacob's position? where his wisdom-his strength-his courage, when Jehovah declared, "Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed." Poor limping, disjointed Jacob, with a trembling heart; crushed to the very earth; expecting a few short hours would witness the slaughter of his wives and his children-the destruction of his property-and his own death! Filled with fear-overwhelmed with the darkest, gloomiest apprehensions-perplexed and dismayed to the last degree, as his last and only refuge-after all his plotting and planning, he goes to his God (and perhaps with many doubts and fears as to whether, after all, He was his God or not, for "if so, why was he thus ?")-" O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac (he does not now say, and "my God," but), the Lord which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee: I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which Thou hast shewed unto Thy servant; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two bands. Deliver me, I pray Thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau: for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mother with the children. And Thou saidst, I will surely do thee good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude" (Gen. xxxii. 9-12). Oh, beloved, if you would know anything about the blessedness of extremities, read the thirty-second chapter of Genesis; and there mark the wondrous condescension and the marvellous love and the mighty power of our God. And the Lord help you, be your trials or troubles whatsoever they may, to test Him upon the self-same ground! Tell Him of this glorious example of His condescending love and goodness, and ask Him to appear for you-sustain you-deliver you, in the self-same gracious and merciful way. Nor forget, beloved, that precious record, as standing over and against Jacob's deep trouble and you very great extremity, "and He blessed him there." Where? Why, in the trouble-spot-in the difficulty, the danger, the distress. And this is where the Lord is ever wont to bless His people. Reader, do know anything of it? Can you say, " Thou hast known my soul in adversities"-"I have been to Thee again and again and again in such and such troubles, afflictions, and temptations; and Thou hast always heard and heeded? I have proved," says such an one, "the truth of the words— "Tis just in the last, distressing hour Where we shall see surprising grace."" There is, however, in all likelihood, another thought pressing itself upon the minds of some of our readers, as they anticipate the probable occurrences of the coming year. Such, perhaps, are saying, "What if it should be said concerning me, "This year thou shalt die ?"" Well, dear reader, we will endeavour to look this supposition fully in the face. If not this year, we admit that the year cannot be far distant in which these words will, in reality, be addressed to us, unless the Lord Himself should previously come. But, supposing you or ourselves are really to die this year now, upon the presumption that you have been taught your need of Jesus; that you have really felt yourself to be a poor lost, guilty, and helpless sinner; that Jesus, in His blood and righteousness, is your only hope; that you are not in the least possible measure or degree looking to yourself or any creature doings whatever for help or satisfaction, or as a ground of merit or dependence; but that you can, as before a heart-searching God, exclaim, "Give me Christ, or else I die" we repeat, if these are verily simply and sincerely the utterances of your heart, then we say, you have no need to fear death. The promise-this new year's word-stands good, "As thy days, so shall thy strength be." We have, as some of our readers are aware, been wont for many years to contend in these pages, that to the believer in Jesus dying strength will be assuredly given in a dying hour. It will not really be needed before; but then, as verily as God is true, it shall be vouchsafed. And, although perhaps few more painfully know than we personally do what sinkings and shrinkings are, in certain states and conditions of health and spirits, yet there is a sense in which it is God-honouring, when we are enabled to leave the issue and the circumstances appertaining to our departure out of this world in His blessed hands whose word holds good even to the end, "As thy days, so shall thy strength be." It is not by any means a careless, reckless, ill-founded, unscriptural confidence that in this respect and connected with these momentous circumstances we advocate; God forbid! On the contrary, it is a calm, sober, scriptural belief in and reliance upon the covenant engagement of a covenant God. And we repeat that the hope and expectation that He will in due time, in regard to the article of death, give the needed grace and vouchsafe the needed mercy, as in all other respects and under all other circumstances He has done, we believe, not only brings a present peace and satisfaction to the soul, but redounds to the glory of Jehovah, as a practical expression of our belief in His divine faithfulness and veracity. He has said, and it is our mercy to know it, and to plead it before Him, "I will ransom them from the of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction: repentance shall be hid from mine eyes" (Hosea xiii. 14). power The Lord never forsook His people in any one of the numberless trials and afflictions through which He has called them to pass. Strictly, to the very letter-and, we had nearly said, beyond the letter-He has fulfilled His promise, "As thy days, so shall thy strength be." Why, then, should He forget or forsake His dear ones, in connexion with the completion of their pilgrimage-the summing up-the last grand climax? If there is then to be a trial of strength-a test for the mastery-a contention who shall win, Christ or Satan, think you, reader, that Jehovah Jesus will ever suffer Himself to be defeated? He who hath already conquered? He who, in proof of His conquest and dominion, hath the keys of hell and of death? Each and every previous deliverance in times of trouble and difficulty is but the earnest, the foretaste, the pledge, the assurance of full and final deliverance in the last hour. Our God has ever and will ever put the finishing stroke to His work in a way and manner that shall be worthy of Himself. It would be to His discredit and dishonour to leave incomplete or unsightly that upon which He had bestowed so much pains, and in which He had taken so deep and manifest an interest. It was not without divine warrant the apostle was led to testify, "Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun in you a good work will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." Were only one solitary soul, out of the myriads upon myriads of redeemed and justified sinners, left in the last trying hour to perish, Satan would exult over such soul to all eternity, in that he had at last triumphed over Jehovah, and had proved that word to be untrue, which declares, "And they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." Dear child of God, as the Holy Ghost is pleased to lead us into a contemplation of these divine verities, we are lifted up above all the fears and faintings by the way. Faith, in spite of feeling, takes her stand upon the high and exalted ground, "Thou hast said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee;" "As thy days, so shall thy strength be;" "He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of His people shall He take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it. And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us this is the Lord; we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation " (Isaiah xxv. 8, 9). We repeat, that we are not to judge, by present feelings and present fears, of how it will be with us in the swellings of Jordan. If we belong to the Lord, or, in other words, if we have those marks and evidences to which we just now referred-that is, a feeling sense of our totally lost, helpless, and bankrupt condition-and are simply and entirely looking to Jesus only for succour and deliverance, then, with respect to the time and article of dying, we may say, as the poor painter's boy did to his father, when the latter was looking up at the lofty house, and asked, "How shall we do up there?" "Let us stop till we get there, father!" So every seeker after and hoping one in Jesus may say, with respect to the Jordan. Let the reader note particularly the fact mentioned in a later page in the present Number, with regard to the martyr GLOVER, that, although he had been the subject of such darkness, and had so much fear and trembling in the prospect of martyrdom, yet, when at length he came in sight of the stake, the Lord so graciously and timely and effectually broke in upon his previously poor benighted soul, that he exulted in the prospect of what awaited him, and clapped his hands for very joy. Reader, we believe that, as verily as we sit here at this moment penning these lines, so shall the like mercy of all needed grace and strength be granted to each and every vessel of mercy, when the Lord's time comes for them to depart out of this world, and enter upon vast eternity. We shall close our observations upon this precious New Year's portion, "As thy days, so shall thy strength be," by a quotation from a sermon by the late ever-memorable WATTS WILKINSON, which appears in the December number of the Remembrancer. Before giving the extract, however, we would just state our belief that this venerable servant of God, notwithstanding the peculiar sweetness, mellowness, and power of his pulpit testimony, was personally the subject of much shrinking from the article of death. We believe it was upon this account that he expressed a wish that he might depart in his sleep, so that he might never know what the act of dying was. Afterwards, however, he recalled this wish, fearing it might savour of dictating to the Lord. His desire, notwithstanding, was granted him, for he did pass away in his sleep. Moreover, a day or two since, we were reading an account which appeared in this Magazine, some fifteen years ago, of a dear departed saint, who earnestly desired three things: first, that he might not have a long illness; secondly, that he might be taken home on the Sabbath; thirdly, that he might, in his last moments, be seated in his arm-chair, which he was wont to call his piece of freehold, and which was all he had, in this poor sinsteeped world. The whole of these wishes were granted. He was only ill some three or four days; on the Saturday took to his bed; and, on the Sunday afternoon, being a little restless, requested to be placed in his arm-chair, in which he was scarcely seated, ere he sweetly, peacefully, blessedly fell asleep in Jesus. The Editor of Zion's Witness, in a recent number, speaks of the high privilege it would be to be called hence from the pulpit! That has been personally our wish for many years, if it were the Lord's will; and we sometimes think that the Lord will thus indulge us. Oh, sacred, high, exalted privilege, one moment speaking of Him, and the next to Him! The quotation from the blessed WATTS WILKINSON's sermon is as follows: "Oh, that we could learn to look at death with more composure! Death is put among the inventory of the riches of a believer given by the Lord of hosts. All things are yours. All things are yours. Life is yours, death is yours; for ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's unspeakable gift, and you are God's gift to Christ by covenant union. If you die in Christ, your Covenant Head, you will live with Christ-live with Him to all eternity. Your life is hid with Christ in God; and when Christ, who is your life, shall appear, then shall you also appear with Him in glory.' 'If we be dead with Christ (crucified with Him, considered one with Him, and part of His mystical body of which He is the Head), we believe that we shall also live with Him :' knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more: death hath no more dominion over Him.' So it shall have no more dominion over them, or do any real or essential injury to them. So, again, 'where sin abounded, grace did much more abound; that as sin has reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness (put for the whole work of Christ, His obedience and death, His fulfilling the law and enduring its penalty), even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ, our Lord.'' Dear reader, farewell! We pray that you and ourselves, by the precious ministry of the Holy Ghost, may realize these glorious verities yet more and more sweetly and powerfully this year. St. Luke's, Bedminster, Dec. 9, 1871. HINTS ON PRAYER. THE EDITOR. DIRECTIONS on prayer are too often of little worth, yet I think a few hints might be useful without being legal. Besides mental and ejaculatory prayer, I think a greater regard to time and place would in many cases result in more profitable seasons of closet prayer. The custom of deferring evening prayer until the time of retiring to rest is open to very serious objections. Circumstances and opportunity of prayer must vary in individual cases; but generally that season when business and work are over for the day is the time when the mind is most at rest, therefore the most fitting to set apart for deep and earnest prayer; retire to the furthest part of the house from the domestic circle, and the habit once formed will not soon be forsaken. It is of all times the most delightful when the soul can pour out unmolested its utmost energy in supplication, praise, &c. Arkesden, Essex. J. E. S. |