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THE LIFE OF GOD IN A BELIEVER'S SOUL.

Verbatim copy of a letter, never before published, from the Rev. W. Huntington, to Mr. T H-, Lewes, Sussex. No date: postmark, Pentonville, December 22nd, 1812.

DEAR FRIEND,

I have received a meat-offering, with its drink-offering, and for which 1 return you a thank-offering. Through mercy, I am better in health, and in hope, than I ever expected to be at my advanced age. The darling Son of God, who is the sinner's friend, the true witness, and faithful and true to his charge, to all the covenant characters and relations in which he stands to us, has of his infinite mercy lodged in our hearts, by his most Holy Spirit, a little treasure from his own infinite fulness-which treasure, in our earthen vessels, is so many parts of himself, in every member, and constitutes the body of Christ mystical, in the whole church (1 Cor. xii. 12, and Eph. i. 23). This treasure is the Spirit's crop, it is God's husbandry and under the Spirit's guardianship and operations, it is preserved and kept. The choicest blessing in this treasure is divine life, hence called expressly "the grace of life" and this life is coupled with every leading grace; repentance is unto life, a lively hope, a living faith, that works, feeds, and clothes the soul, by putting on the best robe, and you read of God's circumcising the soul to love him, that we may live. From this principle of life springs all our tender feelings, all our craving appetites, all fervour in prayer, all our delight in devotion, and all our praises to God; in this way, the living water springs up to its original source, and it will convey the living soul, and all its spiritual devotions, into a life of glory. This is not the religion of the present day; it is not understood nor taken any notice of, but rather despised; but our Lord says that without this, we have only "a name to live, and are dead.'' Christ came that we might have life, and that we might have it more abundantly, and we know that the just man is to live by his faith; but it is a dead faith that brings nothing in, and a poor hope that never anticipates, and a cold love that never meets with the heloved. Life in the soul must have bread, righteousness, power, comfort in God, and peace with him. It is life that brings us off from a dead form, from the killing dead letter, from husks, and from an empty profession; "this is my comfort in my affliction, for the incarnate word hath quickened me." Farewell! Farewell! My love to Mary, and Dame joins with me. I fear you will not make this out, my

shakes.

hand

W. H., S.S.

THE SAINTS-THEIR GIFTS AND TEMPTATIONS.

SATAN appears in sacred history as the ancient, subtle, and malicious accuser and persecutor of all the holy brethren (Rev. xii. 9, 10; 1 Peter v. 8). Knowing that he himself is under a final and irreversible doom, he regards the Most High as an irreconcilable enemy; and not being able to injure his essence, or to subvert his throne, he strikes at his image in his people, as the fury of a dog will sometimes vent itself upon the picture of a man (Jude 6; Matt. viii. 29). He finds not the least difficulty in distinguishing the saints from the rest of mankind. He knows them by the likeness which they bear to their Father in heaven, and the choice gifts by which they are enriched; and instigated by malice against God, he makes them the objects of his most furious assaults. Indeed no men on earth are exposed to such fiery trials as believers; the excellent of the earth, as the Psalmist calls them, have been always the most tempted. The more distinguished any saint is for faith, love, and holiness, the more will he be assailed with Satan's fiery darts, as may be instanced in David, who was tempted to number the people from vain-glorious motives; and Job to curse God and die; and Peter to deny Christ with an oath; and Paul who was fiercely buffetted, lest he should be exalted above measure through the abundance and variety of the revelations vouchsafed to him of God (2 Sam. xxiv.; Job ii. 9; Mark xiv. 71; 2 Cor. xii. 7). Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who taketh pleasure in his people, as though the delight and contentment of his being arose exclusively from them, who watcheth over their interests with jealous care, as being intimately identified with his truth, his faithfulness, and his honour; and who remembereth his covenant for ever: He will keep the feet of his saints, and the wicked one shall be silent in darkness, through sheer vexation that he cannot harm them (Ps. cxlix. 4; Zech. ii. 8; Ps. cxxi. 3, 4; ciii. 4; 1 Sam. ii. 9; Ps. xci.; 1 Peter, iii. 13). Austin thanked God that his heart and the temptations of Satan did not meet. The Lord is beforehand with the tempter. Knowing that he casts an envious and malicious eye upon his beloved ones, as soon as they become manifest to him, he is pleased by his choice gifts to fortify them against his most insidious and powerful attacks. True, Jehovah, in the exercise of his sovereignty, may suffer some of his people to be chastised and apparently overcome of Satan for a period, in order that they may learn their own weakness as creatures, and feel the necessity of looking every moment unto Jesus, the Author and

Finisher of their faith, for grace to resist and conquer all their foes. But, in his gracious dealings with his people in general, he designedly gives them his most precious gifts, that their hearts and Satan's temptations may be kept apart; that though they be tempted, yet they may not be overcome; though they be assailed with hellish darts, yet they may not be vanquished. Paul, Basil, and Luther, met with strange and fearful temptations, but the choice gifts of their God and Father in Christ, enabled them to triumph over all. The prerogative of the saints, is to vanquish all their enemies in the strength of Christ, through whom they can do all things.

Harewood.

JOSHUA LAYCOCK.

REVIEW.

Half Length PORTRAIT of the REV. JOSEPH IRONS, Minister of Grove Chapel, Camberwell. Engraved on Steel, in the finest style of Mezzotint, by GEORGE ZOBEL, from a drawing by EDWARD THOMPSON. Size, 12 inches, by 10 inches.

OUR friends at Grove Chapel have now an opportunity of possessing what may be truly termed a portrait of their beloved Minister. After the very many failures which have occurred, we had almost concluded that to make a correct likeness of Mr. Irons was impossible. Mr. Thompson, has, however, succeeded most admirably in every particular; the countenance-the figure, and position-in fact, the whole is so excellent, that we can most cordially recommend it to every body, who is desirous of constantly seeing before them this highly-favoured man of God, as he really appears in his pulpit; and we hope that a sufficient number of copies will be sold to remunerate the widow and orphan children of the young artist, who are left to mourn his loss, Mr. Thompson having lived only just long enough to see the completion of his work.

City Press, 1, Long Lane, W. H. Collingridge (Successor to D. A. Doudney).

THE

GOSPEL MAGAZINE.

"COMFORT YE, COMFORT YE, MY PEOPLE, SAITH YOUR GOD." "ENDEAVOURING TO KEEP THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT IN THE BOND OF PEACE." "JESUS CHRIST, THE SAME YESTERDAY, TO-DAY, AND FOR EVER. WHOM ΤΟ KNOW IS LIFE ETERNAL."

VOL. VII.]

SEPTEMBER, 1847.

[No. 81.

THE SYMPATHY OF JESUS.

"For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin."-Heb. iv. 15.

"TOUCHED with a feeling of our infirmities!" What a precious expression this is! Something so soothing-so inwardly strengthening and cheering and hope-reviving to a poor tempted soul. Not merely knowing the infirmities-what they are, how many they are, or who the subject of them, but having a thorough familiarity, acquaintance, and understanding of them, from personal realization; for surely the declaration of the Holy Ghost in the 2nd chapter of this same epistle, gives the warrant for this assertion there we read that this glorious High-priest "took not on him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham; that in all things it BEHOVED him (literally, it was a profit, an advantage, a help to him!-how wonderful the language touching our God!) to be made like unto his brethren; and why? in order "that he might be a merciful (pitiful, compassionate) and faithful high-priest in things pertaining to God." As if it were not sufficient that he, as God-in and by his omniscience, should know all that his people were, and all that they suffered, in common with mankind at large; but, in order (we had nearly said) that he might the better understand? but we would rather say, that he might give his children the more readily to comprehend, he came down into their very state and circumstances; so that " he himself having suffered being

tempted (or tried), he is able (and in this very word is included the disposition or willingness-mark this, ye doubting ones!) to succour them that are tempted;" or, in other words, that he having himself, in his own sacred person, been tried or put to the test by temptation and trial, can by the experience which he hath gained thereby, aid, help, run to the assistance of those that are in trial or temptation. As if a tenderhearted father, or an affectionate brother, seeing the one they loved in jeopardy and danger, ran to their aid.

We believe we shall not be charged with having done violence to this text; for the words certainly bear this construction. And the language before us is equally comforting: "that we have not an high priest who cannot be touched (cannot so sympathize with-cannot be affected in the same manner as another-as to have compassion on) with the feeling of our infirmities (with our weekless, powerlessness, frailty, affliction) but was in all points (in every possible particular) tempted like as we are, yet without sin."

We know this last clause will be attended with at least some degree of pain to sin-harrassed souls; they will be ready to give their assent and consent to all that touches upon the sympathy-the tenderness— of Jesus, in connexion with his poor tried brethren, as far as those trials have to do with the common afflictions, sorrows, and pains of every-day life; with these they doubt not Jesus has a heart to sympathize and a hand to help but oh with sin-the inward, harrassing, all-but-breakingforth, power of sin, how can Jesus (who was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners) have sympathy?

:

Beloved, sympathy with sin is one thing-sympathy with the sinner is another. Though the Lord Jesus could say what you cannot, "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me, yet we can form no conception how far he can and does sympathize with those who, tempted to sin," and in measure falling under the power of sin, feel within a warfare--a struggling-a holy contention against it. The flesh loves sin, and, as flesh, always will love it; but you cannot deny the hatred you feel to it, and to yourself, on account of it.

Under the immediate power of temptation, and in that battle after battle in which the soul is called to engage against it and the tempter, he cannot distinguish between the mere temptation to sin, and the actual commission of it; the conflict is so great-the contention so bewildering and at the same time absorbing, that, so to speak, the man has not the opportunity nor has he the judgment even though he had the opportunity

to make this all-important distinction. He is like one engaged in a dread contest, who cannot stay to consider his position, or estimate his strength; the warfare resembles that of two mighty armies, whose very conflict produces a disorder that renders it for a season impossible to decide which has the advantage. It is not until the Lord rebukes the tempter, and the spirit breaks in with new light, that the soul discovers it has been resisting-contending against, and not yielding to, an enemy which he hates with a perfect hatred. Surely it is after such exercises

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