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that, in the mazes of my life, has led me once again to His feet, and led me in the midst of my tears, to know that there is more happiness in them than in the world's joys?' Suppose a doubt comes on him, 'Is there a Word of God?'-'I know it; it has been to me repeatedly a substance. How that doctrine has supported me! how that promise has been my joy! how that precept has been my direction! "I have found His words, and I have eaten them;" and I know them to be His words.' 'Jesus dead? He is alive again. I go to Him just as poor now as I ever went to Him; I have gone in my deepest necessities, I have gone and rested my all upon Him, and always did I find Him even at the last just as I found Him at the first.' Oh! what a clear inward testimony is this, then, that He is as a shield, and that that shield can" quench all the fiery darts of the wicked" one!

Let me suppose the case of a believer, coming to such a view of his sin, as he has never done before. Ah! you that are just beginning, we do not want to discourage you; but you may know more in one stage of your journey, by some providential dealing of God with you, than you have learned in all the after years of your lives by the scores of sermons you have ever heard up to the present day. There are discoveries which the Holy Ghost has made of a man's sin, sometimes, that he has had no conception of. Suppose this was his case. Through the working of the Holy Ghost, he has been led to present the shield of faith, which is the God-man-God in His natureevery drop of His blood has the whole worth of Deity in it. His infinite merit; who can describe how it encircles him? His righteousness; how it encircles him all around! It is the righteousness of God, which is unto all, and upon all them that believe. How this shield protects, how it defends! and all the fiery darts fall at my feet extinguished and harmless.

The child of God is oftentimes made to feel his weakness as he has never felt it before. He is put, it may be, in some new circumstances. We think ourselves strong, when we have nothing to try our strength; we think ourselves brave, when there are no enemies to fight with; but the Lord puts us into new circumstances in our business, our profession, our families. He puts us into some new position. We find our weakness, and that the grace we have had bestowed on us is not sufficient. We feel our weakness more

than language can describe. We go to Jesus and tell Him all. We lay hold upon Him by faith. Here is our shield. We lay hold on His fulness. We go to Him for wisdom, support, strength and holiness; He gives us out of His large heart and willing hand; and we find that His strength is made perfect in our weakness. There is our shield! We thought ourselves to be the weakest of the weak, and now He perfects His strength in our weakness, What a mystery is unfolded as to dark providences here! Sometimes we seem to think that every thing is against us. We attempt to reason; like babes we reason. The spike comes, the fiery dart comes, this disappointment, or that loss, and loss upon loss, and bereavement upon bereavement, and trial upon trial; it is more than I can well speak and think of. But-" He that spared not His own Son, how shall He not with Him freely give us all things?"-the fiery dart falls at our feet harmless and extinguished. And the weakness that sometimes we feel in the things of earth, when cheered by the prospect of things in heaven, oh! who can tell what it is! It is the shield which extinguishes the fiery darts of the evil one:

My dear hearers, there are some here-and I always think of them with pity, for I would always desire to preach as a dying man speaking to dying men, when I preach to you-who have heard me, and listened to my voice; sometimes approved, and sometimes disliked it; sometimes been wearied, and sometimes interested. I think of them at this moment-hopeless, helpless, shieldless; thousands of darts coming at them day by day in all the concerns of life, and yet without this shield to protect them! The trials of life-they are unable to meet them. Long, wearisome sickness-oh! if I could but see some of you after ye had been shut up in your rooms for two or three weeks, and your medical man were to say, 'No hope, no hope at all; I do not pretend to buoy you up with hope; you must die!' The quivering of the lip, the sinking of the spirit, the palpitating heart, the look of anguish, the falling brow, would tell me that you had no shield; that you were in a world of trouble, and yet had no shield against the common trials of life. Oh! what a solemn thought !— to be without a righteousness to stand in, and without a hope before God; to have no rest in one's soul; an accusing conscience, a condemning law, and all Satan's powers against one; to say, 'Lost, lost for ever!' If you were but sensible of your real state, and your

eyes were but opened at this moment to see what you really are, ye would indeed cry to the Lord for mercy; ye would go to the "fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness"-the only place where the shield is ever to be found. It never was found in any other spot, and never will.

The time admonishes me to conclude. I address myself in few words to the children of God, that are walking in the Lord. Think much of faith. Remember the apostle's words-" Above all." Do you think that forms a part of your creed? Can you join with me in the thought and principle, that if you had but one prayer, you would say, "Lord, increase my faith ?" Do you think, that the end that one has in view, is not even that I may love Christ more, that I may have more hatred of sin, that I may have a more tender conscience, a more submissive will, a more devoted life? For if faith be strong, all these are strong with it. It is the chief of the whole armour; without it, the rest of the armour would never be enough. The girdle would never fit quite close; my righteousness would always have some defect in it; and the nearer I come to God, the more I feel that those sandals, those greaves, are never quite and entirely on my feet, as they ought to be. I want a shield to cover me, a perfect, righteousness, a full treasury, a full Christ, for all I need, for time or for eternity. Oh! to pray for that faith, which lays hold upon a strong Saviour: God in all His perfections, the Redeemer in all His promises and all the riches of His grace, in all its abundance!

My dear hearers, what would poor Job have said, had he been without it?" Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."

One word of practical counsel here. Satan's great business with you is to weaken your faith. Oh! beware, then, of whatever weakens your faith! Does Satan study you? do not you be without self-study.

Oh! how many a child of God has suffered from gayness of spirit! A joking Christian, always full of joke—I never saw such an one very spiritual yet; and a joking Christiau is a poor substitute for a spiritual one. Is that your temptation ?-beware of it; beware of whatever weakens faith. Is it worldliness, is it absorption into the world, is it worldly business, which is drying up your inward vitals? or is it sin trifled with? Beware of whatever weakens faith,

for that will cause the arm to fall and drop, and down goes the shield.

And oh! I would say, be not satisfied with merely avoiding that which weakens faith. Seek that which strengthens it, which promotes it, and advances it-private prayer, secret and holy reading of the Word of God, attending upon God in all the ordinances of His worship, rising above them. Shall I mention others? I talk to some holy man of God, and I see in that child of God more that tells me of the power of the Spirit in five minutes, than I see in others in five years. Love the house of mourning; there are costly lessons to be learnt there; "the heart of the wise is in it." Dying bedsoh! who can say how the Lord shows to us the strengthening power of faith, when we have seen a saint of God die ? Everything in nature to try, yet grace rising above it, and making the soul triumph over it! To see activity in holiness in God's saints—it is one of the greatest means of drawing out holiness and activity in ourselves. But, above all, thank God there is One that upholds us. Though not by our own faith we stand; it is by Jesus, who upholds our faith. He must be the finisher, as He is the beginner. "I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not." Let aged saints give testimony-those who have known the Lord in the heat and burden of the day, who have upheld their faith at all times, and especially at some times. And then, I would say, may the Lord enable you and me to be looking upon and looking to Jesus, avoiding whatever weakens faith, and, above all, looking up to Him for faith and strength for ever.

May the Lord pardon and bless, for Christ's sake.

A SERMON,

BY THE REV. J. H. EVANS, M.A.

PREACHED AT JOHN STREET CHAPEL, KING'S ROAD, BEDFORD ROW, ON SUNDAY MORNING, JUNE 15, 1845.

σε And take the helmet of salvation."-Ephesians vi. 17.

THE apostle here begins by reminding us, that this helmet, (of which he speaks again in the first epistle to the Thessalonians, the fifth chapter, and the eighth verse-" for an helmet, the hope of salvation,") is essential part of the Christian armour. The word "and," seems to tell us that every part of it stands connected with all the other parts. And this literally was so in the ancient armour; it was all banded and bound together. But it is more gloriously true of all the graces of the Spirit; for they all hang the one upon another. He that has one, has all; one may stand more pre-eminently forth than another in the child of God, but he that has one has all, beloved. 1n regeneration, the seeds of grace are sown, and the seeds of all grace are sown, and they are all dependent one upon another. There is not one too many; they are all needful. The shield is not a substitute for the sword; the girdle is not a substitute for the breastplate. And we know that a man may have holiness of character, and yet he may find that he has some painful deficiency in some acts of sincerity before God. We have been taught oftentimes, in our painful experience, that we want them all; and in some peculiar stages of our journey, we have been made to feel the necessity of some one, perhaps, that we may have too much overlooked.

But there is another remark here, which is, that we see how much there is in the armour that is of a defensive character. Even the sword is not strictly aggressive; it is also defensive. And with that be it remarked, that all the rest are defensive alone. The girdle, the breastplate, the sandals or greaves, the shield, and now the helmet, all are defensive. And a great truth is thereby unfolded to us, that the greatest business in a believer's life is the defensive. He is a poor creature in himself, but he is a great treasure in the sight of God; and he has a great treasure within him. He has a soul of infinite value; be has a new and Divine nature in that soul; and he has the life of Christ in that soul. He is one, therefore, of infinite value; and Satan is always aiming to spoil him; and, therefore, one of the great objects of his life is to defend himself against Satan. Hence the girdle, hence the breastplate, hence the greaves, hence

VOL. XI.-No. 391.-June 26, 1845.

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