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Home » Publications » Free Presbyterian Magazine » 1911 » May 1911 » “Wonderful History of James Barry.”

“Wonderful History of James Barry.”

THIS is an interesting booklet that has just been issued by Miss Mackay, 85 High Street, Dingwall. It is the reprint of the striking experience of Mr. James Barry, who lived in the early part of the eighteenth century, and who was the son of a Bishop, and a nephew of a Lord Chief Justice in Ireland. Mr. Barry describes in his first chapter a number of remarkable providences which happened in his infancy and early life, whereby he was preserved from many deaths which threatened him. This part of his book should be particularly interesting to the young. In the second chapter he gives an account of some divine dealings with his soul from boyhood, between fourteen and fifteen, until he was twenty-one years of age, and shows that during this period he was still trusting in his own righteousness for salvation. The third chapter describes the manner in which the Holy Spirit seized him as a spirit of bondage, and convinced him that he was a lost sinner in danger of eternal destruction. This painful exercise continued for about four years, and he was reduced to great bodily weakness and extreme mental misery. He then proceeds in a large fourth chapter to relate the way in which the spirit of adoption succeeded the spirit of bondage, beginning with the comfortable application of Isaiah xliii. 25, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.” He obtained a full assurance of his interest in Christ, and his joys were rapturous. His closing word is a “Postscript” in which he cautions very judiciously “the poor doubting believer” who may be ready to conclude that “the work of true conversion was never yet effectually wrought” in him or her, because such a degree of bondage or of uplifting was not experienced such as he in God’s sovereign mercy obtained. “Some are brought, as it were, through the very jaws of hell and desperation as I was, while others are dealt with more easily and gently, being sweetly allured and insensibly transplanted into Christ, they not well knowing what is done to them. Paul and the rugged jailor were handled more roughly, their consciences were more deeply wounded with the frightening terrors of God’s law sent home by the spirit of bondage than was Lydia, whose heart the Lord opened with more gentle touches of His Spirit.” The history recorded is not widely known in Scotland, but we expect that if it becomes known among our readers, there will be considerable demand for the booklet. A commendatory preface has been written by the Rev. D. Macfarlane, Dingwall. The price is 3d. each, post free; 2/6 per doz., post free. J. S. S.

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