THE following Statements, which were unanimously approved by the Synod, have been sent to us by the Clerk of the Synod by the Synod’s authority with instructions that they be published in the Magazine.
STATEMENT I.
- Declaration of the Synod re Rev. E. Macqueen’s Claim:—The Synod authorise the following Statement for publication in the Magazine and recommend that it be publicly read to the congregations of the Church*:”In view of the claims made by the Rev. Ewen Macqueen, Inverness, that he is ‘the sole ministerial representative of the constitution of the Free Presbyterian Church of 1893,’ we, the Synod of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland repudiate this claim as unfounded and false, and deplore the position and attitude taken up by the Rev. Ewen Macqueen which we hold to be untenable and to be misleading to the people. Further, we unanimously dissociate ourselves entirely in the most emphatic way from the Rev. Ewen Macqueen’s schismatic activities with which he has been pursuing his unwarrantable claims.”
*This does not mean that the Statement must necessarily be read.
- “While the law of the Church ‘leaves no room’ for the tabling of a protest against a decision of the Supreme Court, the Synod declare this Church does not hold the view that a protest made and tabled against such a decision necessarily means and effects separation from the Church. A minister, however, who tables a simple protest against a decision of the Supreme Court and persists in that protest, will inevitably find himself in the position either of facing a charge of violation of his ordination promise to submit to the judicatories of the Church, or, of renouncing the jurisdiction of the Court. The Rev. E. Macqueen, by his actions and his words,* spoken and written, established beyond doubt to the minds of all members of the Synod at Inverness in June, 1938, that, having regard to the reasons annexed and his defiant persistence in adhering to it, his protest was directed by Mr. Macqueen towards effecting his separation from the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland and his renouncing the jurisdiction of the Courts of that Church. In view of this, the subsequent steps taken by the Synod and the Northern Presbytery were not disciplinary or penal, but were the inevitable and necessary administrative consequences of Mr. Macqueen’s separation from the Church.”
*Rev. E. Macqueen, at the Synod, in Inverness, June, 1938, when appealed to, to withdraw his Protest, refused; and declared, “I have considered this matter for years.”—Robert R. Sinclair, Clerk of Synod.
STATEMENT II.
Statement anent Church Discipline.—To clear up any misunderstanding, the Synod declare that the Church abides by the following two principles:—(1) A minister of the gospel has the Scriptural warrant, publicly to admonish, with all longsuffering and doctrine, a public course of conduct which may appear to be inconsistent with a life of godliness. (2) No person shall be subjected to the discipline of the Church without a fair hearing and trial, and a full right of appeal to the superior Courts of the Church.
A High Priest Touched with the Feeling of our Infirmities.*
This “celebrated sermon,” as Dr. Hugh Martin justly terms it, was printed anonymously in Rev. Marcus Dods’ able treatise Incarnation of the Eternal Word*, a work that does credit to the biblical scholarship of Scotland. Mr. Dods was the father of Prof. Marcus Dods whose scholarship unfortunately belonged to another school. The sermon was preached by Rev. James MacLagan, D.D., Kinfauns. He was afterwards Professor of Divinity in the Free Church College, Aberdeen.—Editor.
II.
(Continued from p. 52.)
“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” (Hebs. iv. 15).
III.
But now we come to the third inquiry, Whether the temptation of Christ, being without sin, could give Him a thorough experience and feeling of human infirmity in the hour of trial. To judge of this we must attend to the manner in which that sense of weakness is produced in ourselves, to which our Lord’s sympathy has reference. Some moral conflict is necessary for the production of it: for whatever may be our real infirmity, it is only in some struggle that we have the “feeling of infirmity.” Then only are we thoroughly conscious of weakness, when putting forth our whole strength we feel it insufficient, or but little more than sufficient to meet the exigency—and are, consequently, open to the impressions of danger and the assaults of fear. Such alarming sensations may alike be excited, whether we fail or whether we are victorious in the conflict. He that has been overcome must, indeed, have felt his weakness; and yet experience will testify, that he may have a much less clear and affecting sense of it, than the man whom God’s especial grace and providence have enabled him to stand in the evil day; and who afterwards from a place of safety looks back with wonder and awe upon his painful wrestlings, his perilous exposures, and his critical escapes. And why then may not our High Priest, though unconquered, have acquired the like sensibility in His temptation? He had no sin, it is true; but He did not feel weakness? Did He not see danger? Was not His heart afraid? When tempted, had He not experience of a conflict which brought His strength and holiness to as unsparing a trial as any that befalls His people can bring theirs? What less can be intimated to us by such complaints and supplications as these? “I am poured out like water; all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels: My strength is dried up like a potsherd. Be not thou far from me, O Lord! O my strength, make haste to help me! Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog. Save me from the lion’s mouth. Thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns!”
Our understanding and belief of this most important truth receives some disturbance from certain ill-defined notions of the share which our Lord’s Godhead must have taken in supernaturally sustaining His human powers while under temptation. “The Word was God,” we say with the evangelist; “how then,” we add, “could He ever be in straits?” The question would be quite in point, did it belong to the perfection of His fitness for the mediatorial office, or did it even consist with that fitness, that His humanity should be placed, as without doubt it could easily have been, beyond all reach of sharp and distressing temptation. But the case was far otherwise. “For in that He was tempted,” says the apostle, “He is able to succour them that are tempted”—words which distinctly teach that, in consequence of encountering painful conflict, such as calls for succour, He has acquired, for the relief of others in similar circumstances, a qualification and a meetness which He could not otherwise have possessed; but without which it is obvious that He could not be, what He now is, a perfect mediator. According to the Scriptures, then, it was the work of that Divinity which is mysteriously united with manhood in His person—not to raise his suffering nature to such a height of glorious power as would render all trial slight and contemptible; but to confer upon it such strength as would be infallibly sufficient—I say infallibly sufficient—but not more than sufficient, just to bear Him through the fearful strife that awaited Him, without His being broken or destroyed—so that He might thoroughly experience, in all the faculties of His soul and body, the innumerable sensations of overpowering difficulty, and exhausting toil, and fainting weakness, and tormenting anguish, though by the Holy Ghost preserved from sin—and might touch the very brink of danger, though not be swept away by it, and feel all the horror of the precipice, but without falling over.
This view of the case implies no disparagement to the greatness of our Lord’s endowments considered as a man. On the contrary, the belief that His conflict was extreme, is held by none more consistently than by those who hold, at the same time, upon the fullest evidence, that even as a man, He was in every excellence, moral and intellectual, exalted unmeasurably, not only above all that are born of women, but even above all that is revealed of angelic sanctity and grandeur. The unrivalled greatness of His soul was no reason why He should pass through His trial without difficulty; because the hostility and the hardship with which He had to contend was high and formidable in proportion. It was little that He was to meet the rage of confederated men in all the plenitude of carnal power. It was even little that He stood alone against the concentrated might of the kingdom of darkness, when it was stimulated by circumstances to the utmost violence of desperate animosity, and came armed with the whole subtlety and vehemence of its spiritual temptations. He had to stand before the face of incensed Omnipotence—and to encounter the strokes of that flaming sword of Jehovah, which was to fall in vengeance upon the sins of an apostate world. And who then shall undertake to tell, what a marvellous enlargement of forethought and knowledge in a human soul—what an inextricable grasp of assured faith upon the promises of God—what an iron strength of holy resolution—and what unextinguishable ardours of divine and saving love—must have been found in Him, who could not only before-hand resolve to meet such terrors, but could actually sustain them, and not only sustain but conquer them, when they came at once, with united force and fierceness, to wrestle with His spirit in the agonies of the cross!
Neither let it be imagined, on the other side, that the putting forth of such astonishing power by the Man Jesus, was at all inconsistent with the “feeling of Infirmity.” That feeling does not depend alone upon the measure of a champion’s strength, whether small or great, of the force that is brought against him; but it depends still more upon the proportion—the adjustment—the almost equality, of the conflicting powers. When these differ only so much as is just sufficient to decide the combat, then he that conquers and does hardly more than conquer, will find in every nerve a thorough sense of his weakness. But this is not all. Though it may seem paradoxical, it is a truth, that he will have this feeling the more perfectly, the greater degrees and varieties of skill, and strength, and courage, and patience, he may have found himself compelled to exert in the struggle. If it be one in which multitudes, besides the leaders, are concerned, this truth will be the more evident. The more that we enlarge the field, and multiply the destructive engines, and exasperate the fury, and magnify the consequences of battle, the more we shall deepen the sense of infirmity in him, who with his eyes open to see the whole danger, does but just rescue his life and his cause from the tumult, though it be victory. In the shock of contending armies, when some monarch experienced in war surveys at one view the nearly equal numbers and advantages of the opposing lines—beholds all the strength and resources of his enemies for the work of destruction—comprehends the perilous skill and boldness of their hostile movements—and perceives the deep and ruinous impressions made by them upon his own host; when he foresees not only the immediate discomfiture, and rout, and carnage, which must ensue upon any failure in courage or conduct on his own part, but also the revolutions and miseries of nations that must be the consequence of his defeat: how much more strong and enlarged, at such a moment, must be his sense of insufficiency and inadequacy, than can be that of any ignorant soldier in his army,—or shall I say, of the war-horse that carries him—which feels no burden but the weight of his master, and sees no danger but in the weapon that glitters at his breast! And what has occasioned this intenser feeling of infirmity in the man and the sovereign? Nothing but the greater extent and variety of his powers, when tasked to the uttermost, by an occasion of overwhelming interest and danger. Even so—since we have no better means of arriving at the conception of spiritual things than by likening them to earthly objects infinitely mean and contemptible in comparison—even so we may understand how Christ, in possessing the most glorious powers, can yet have had a sense of weakness more deep and affecting by far, than we, in the narrowness of our faculties, can either experience or conceive; a sense entirely suited to the unparalleled greatness and terror of his conflict. He saw the conjunction in all its awful magnitude! He viewed the result in all its tremendous importance! He knew Himself advancing to a post where His created and mortal nature, struck with the fiery darts of hell from beneath, and pierced from above by the arrows of the Almighty, must abide the shock and pressure of a falling world; and where the failure but for one moment of His human endurance and resolution, must effect not only the universal and eternal triumph of wickedness and misery; but what it is fearful to name, even while we know it can never happen—the defeat of His Father’s counsel—the failure of His Father’s truth—and the desecration of His Father’s Godhead! What wonder if we find it written that with a crisis like this before Him, Jesus, in His “sore amazement,” “sweated blood?” or that when actual extremity of His agony arrived, he poured out supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to help Him, and was heard indeed—but heard in that He feared?
IV.
That Christ then, in His fearful though sinless conflict, thus gained a thorough “feeling of infirmity,” is certain:—that this feeling lays an ample foundation for a true and perfect sympathy with His people in all their trials, remains to be briefly manifested. The text obviously intends to teach nothing more than that the sympathy of Christ is secure to those who believe in Him—who acknowledge Him as their High Priest—and who hold the same attitude in which He was found on earth, striving against sin. But this does not prejudice the truth taught in many other passages of Scripture, that He regards with compassion even the very chief of impenitent sinners. That He could derive from the experience of suffering on account of sin a vivid sense of the miseries which men bring down upon themselves by their transgressions, is self-evident; and that He has no disposition to withhold from any who will accept of it, the benefit of this fellow-feeling, appears from His lamentation over the perishing rebels of Jerusalem. In one point, however, it is quite true, that His participation of such men’s sentiments does entirely fail. He can have no fellowship with their love of sin. Their impure, unrighteous, ungodly thoughts and feelings are utter strangers to His heart. There can be no concord of Christ with Belial. But is this any advantage to those unhappy persons in seeking salvation from Him? Quite the contrary. If He could possibly have a fellow-feeling with their sins, yet to what end would they wish for the existence of such a feeling? Is it that He might the more indulge them in their wickedness? That, instead of promoting their salvation, would be deepening their destruction. Is it that He might the better mortify and expel their sins? But how could such an object be promoted by His concurring in their sins, and entering into the spirit of them? Surely His invincible abhorrence of every the least iniquity, and His infinite love of holiness and unspotted righteousness, are the very best pledges that sinners can desire of His most earnest readiness to aid them in renouncing all their transgressions. Thus even where His fellow-feeling comes short, and in reference to His very enemies, it is most for their real interest that it should do so. But if any such desire to be, in every point, and to the utmost extent, in harmony with the Son of God—their course is plain—let them repent and believe the gospel.
To all who are already in the faith, the comfort of the text is offered without reserve. Engaged in the very same conflict by which Christ acquired His own sense of infirmity, they may rest assured that He can thoroughly appreciate theirs. With what kind or degree of affliction can they be tried of which He had not experience? Toil, pain, poverty, disappointment, reproach, and calumny, the strife of tongues, the violence of hostile deeds, oppression, mockery, murder, were His portion more than any man’s. His tender feelings were wounded by the death of friends—by the anguish of a mother with the sword in her soul—by the treachery of false disciples—by the desertion, in His time of utmost need, of those who were sincerely devoted to Him—by the eternal ruin of some whom “beholding He loved,” and also, the conduct of His own unbelieving kindred. The mysterious powers of hell were let loose upon Him. The hand of God touched Him. These things, and more, came upon Him to the uttermost. “He was tempted in all points even as we are.” Then what could we wish for besides? He is with us to relieve every one of our afflictions with the united skill of God and of a fellow-man who has experienced the same; so long as we do not willingly yield ourselves to the influences of sin, but are found like good soldiers enduring hardness for His sake.
Say not that He could not, like you, have felt the burden of conscious guilt, having committed no personal sin. For, on the one hand, the sins of the world were laid to His charge, covering Him, before God and angels and men, and in His own eyes also, with the garment of shame; and, on the other hand, He hath taken all the guilt of His people wholly and for ever away, so that “there is now no condemnation for them that are in Christ Jesus,” who, in striving against temptation, are “walking not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” Then why should the sense of guilt be more disheartening to those from whom guilt has been removed, for the purposes of forgiveness, than to Him upon whom guilt was laid, for the purposes of retribution?
Say not that, by having committed innumerable sins, your temptations from within and from without have greatly gathered strength, while your powers and means of resistance have been proportionately diminished—a source of discouragement which could not have affected Christ, as being free from the commission of sin. But wherein lies the real force of this objection? Is it not in the great hardship and difficulty of the conflict to which the disadvantages in question expose you? But is your struggle, at the worst, more severe or more desperate than was the Lord’s? If not, believe not that your feeling of infirmity can be more perfect than His, or that there can be any pangs of fear or faintness in your heart which His experience did not more than parallel.
Oh! but in him was Godhead—and He had the promise of the Father that He should not fail nor be discouraged until His mighty task was completed. And is not Godhead also your refuge and your strength, a very present help in the time of trouble? Does not the Holy Spirit dwell also in you? and has not the Father said to you also, “Fear not, for I am with thee: Be not dismayed for I am thy God; I will strengthen thee, yea, I will help thee, yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness?” Nay, that very Saviour, whose almighty sufficiency our cowardly distrusts pervert, by such reasonings, into a source of misgiving, instead of a theme of triumph—can His destinies be separated for a moment from those of His people? Is not He Himself our head, and we the members of His body? Are we not of His flesh and of His bones? Is it not the power of His resurrection that keeps us from death? Is not our life hid with Christ in God? And is not the promise absolute, that when He who is our life shall appear, we also shall appear with Him in glory? Let us then be strong and of good courage. Let us fight a good fight. Let us lay hold on eternal life. Insufficient of ourselves for these things, let us look the more to that sufficiency which is promised us of God; and seeing we have not an High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin, let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. Amen.
A Soliloquy on the Art of Man-Fishing
By THOMAS BOSTON.
(Continued from p. 55.)
XI.
And to shut up all, remember that there are other things for thee to set thy affections on than the things of this world. There are things above that merit thy affections. Where is Christ, heaven, and glory, when thou lookest upon the world, highly esteeming it? Seest thou no beauty in him to ravish thy heart? surely the more thou seest in him, the less thou wilt see in the world. And hath not experience confirmed this to thee? Alas, when the beauty of the upper house is in my offer that ever I should have any kindness for the world, that vile dwarf and monster, that shall at the last be seen by me all in a fire! O, my soul! thou lookest too low! Behold the King in his glory! look to him that died for thee, to save thee from this present evil world! See Him sitting at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven! Behold the crown in His hand to give thee, when thou hast overcome the world! Behold the recompense of reward bought to thee, with His precious blood, if thou overcome! Ah! art thou looking after toys, and going off thy way to gather the stones of the brook, when thou art running for a crown of gold, yea, more than the finest gold? Does this become a man in his right wits? Yea, does it not rather argue madness, and a more than brutish stupidity? The brutes look down, but men are to look up. They have a soul capable of higher things than what the world affords. Let the swine feed on husks. Be thou of a more sublime spirit: trample on those things that are below. Art thou clothed with the sun? get the moon under thy feet then; despise it; look not on it with love, turn from it, and pass away. Let it not move thee that thou art poor, Christ had not where to lay His head. Let not the prospect of future troublesome times make thee solicitous how to be carried through; for “thou shalt not be ashamed in the evil days, and in the days of famine thou shalt be satisfied.” God hath said it, Psal. xxxvi. 19; therefore do thou believe it. Be not anxious about thy provision for old age, for thou mayest never see it. It is more than probable thou wilt be sooner at thy journey’s end. Courage, then, O my soul; ere long the devil, and the world, and the flesh, shall be buried under thy feet; and thou shalt be received into eternal mansions. But though the Lord should lengthen out thy days to old age, he that brought thee out of thy mother’s belly will not forsake thee then either. If he give thee life, he will give thee meat. Keep a loose hold of the world, then; contemn it, if thou wouldst be a fisher of men.
Seventhly, Christ was useful to souls in his private converse, taking occasion to instruct, rebuke, &c., from such things offered. Thus he dealt with the woman of Samaria; he took occasion from the water she was drawing to tell her of the living water, &c. Thus, being at a feast, he rebuked the Pharisees that chose the uppermost seats, and instructed them in the right way of behaviour at feast. O, my soul, follow Christ in this. Be edifying in thy private converse. When thou art at any time in company, let something that smells of heaven drop from thy lips. Where any are faulty, reprove them as prudently as thou canst; where they appear ignorant, instruct them when need requires, &c. And learn that heavenly chemistry of extracting some spiritual thing out of earthly things. To this purpose, and for this end, endeavour after a heavenly frame, which will, as is storied of the philosopher’s stone turn every metal into gold. When the soul is heavenly, it will even scrape jewels out of a dunghill; whatever the discourse be, it will afford some one useful thing or another. Alas! my soul, that thou dost follow this example so little; what a shame is it for thee to sit down in company, and rise again, and part with them, and never a word of Christ to be heard where thou art? Be ashamed of this, and remember what Christ says, Mat. x. 32, 33, “Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before My Father,—but whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father, which is in heaven.” How many times hast thou been somewhat exact in thy conversation when alone; but when in company, by the neglect of this duty, especially of rebuking, thou hast come away with loss and a troubled mind, because of thy faint-heartedness this way. Amend in this, and make thy converse more edifying, and take courage to reprove, exhort, &c. Thou knowest not what a seasonable admonition may do; the Lord may be pleased to back it with life and power.
Eightly, Christ laid hold upon opportunities of public preaching when they offered, as is clear from the whole history of the gospel. He gave a pattern to ministers to be instant in season and out of season. O, my soul, follow Christ in this, refuse not any occasion of preaching, when God calls thee to it. It is very unlike Christ’s practice for preachers of the gospel to be lazy, and slight the opportunities of doing good to a people, when the Lord puts opportunities in their hand. For this end, consider, 1. Besides Christ’s example, that thou art nothing worth in the world, in so far as thou art lazy. What for serve we, if we are not serviceable for God? 2. It may provoke God to take away thy talent, and give it to another, if thou be not active. Whatever talent the Lord hath given thee, it must be employed in his service. He gave it not thee to hide it in a napkin. Remember what became of the unprofitable servant that hid his Lord’s money. 3. Thou knowest not when thy Master shall come. And blessed is that servant whom, when his Lord shall come, he shall find so doing. If Christ should come and find thee idle, when he is calling thee to work, how wilt thou be able to look him in the face? They are well that die at Christ’s work.
(To be continued.)
Letter* from Mr. John Livingstone to a Friend
*This is the John Livingstone of Kirk of Shotts fame. In reading the letter one feels as if reading one of Samuel Rutherford’s seraphic epistles.—Editor.
(Continued from p. 64.)
II.
And I pray you, labour to be rich in the royal grace of believing. Ah, how justly may Christ upbraid His passengers of this generation, O ye of little faith? And although possibly ye be not much sensible of pinching want here, and have not met with much brangling [perplexity], yet gather and lay up much, for ye know not how soon the time of famine may come, that will eat out the remembrance of your plenty, and tempt you to say that ye but dreamed it. The fresh water mariner is stout enough in fair weather. Oh, to believe in the dark and stormy midnight, that the sun will comfortably rise tomorrow! Oh, to win to trust in Him, when His hand thrusts me and my comforts through the heart! They that know thee will put their trust in thee. How seasonable is that petition now, Lord, increase our faith? And when the soul wins to the lively exercise of believing, Oh, but then there will be much loving. She loved much, because she believed much was forgiven her. When the believer wins to any clear discovery of the Beloved, he needs neither promises to allure, nor maranathas to curse him in to the love of Christ. When the little bit of brittle glass is laid open and looketh directly to the sun, “We all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” When faith findeth Christ, and getteth leave to embrace Him, then weak love hath strong arms to hold Him, and thinks not shame to wrestle Him home to His mother’s house. And then when faith and love acts the soul, I do assure you it is like new wine working on the mother, that must have a vent of praises, or else be ready to burst at the broad side. Alas! for that capital crime of the Lord’s people—barrenness in praises. Oh, how fully am I persuaded, that a line of praises is worth a leaf of prayer, and an hour of praises is worth a day of fasting and mourning! Yet there is room enough for both. But Oh, what a massie piece of glory on earth is it to have praises looking as it were out at the eyes, praises written upon the fore brow; to have the very breath smelling of praises, to have praises engraven on the palms of their hands, and the impression of praises on every footstep of the walk—although this be that day (if ever) wherein the Lord calleth to mourning and fasting! And ah, alas! there be an answer written upon every room of chambering and wantonness, upon the doors of taverns, hostlier houses, and mercat crosses. They arose up to play. Sore carriages after the play. Yet I say, Oh, how sweet and suitable is it to tune up the heart with the 101st Psalm—I will sing of mercy and of judgment! The most heavenly Christian is most in praises. And bless the Lord, I beseech you, who hath fitted you and your worthy friends about you, in any measure, to testify your praises in the practice of charity. Oh, what a rich favour is it to be admitted and made capable to refresh the hungry bowels, and clothe the naked loins of your precious Redeemer! Dear friend, you know some when they crossed Jordan, had no more but their staff to speak of, and are now blessed with a large portion of Jacob’s inheritance, either in penny or pennyworth. Oh, there is nothing so sure to you, I can assure you, of all your enjoyments, as the bread that is casten on the waters! O, how sickertly [surely] is that laid up from the reach of the roughest hands! and oh, what a rich income bringeth it in the end of the day! Be much in secret wrestling. Ah! how much am I afraid that public professors, and private professors, and society professors, and kirk professors, and family professors, prove but painted sepulchres, for want of secret wrestling, which is indeed the best prevailing way, and most free of muddy ingredients. Ay, trail the very deadened backdrawing heart before Him, and resolve to let it die among His feet, if He will but strengthen it to wrestle. Oh, but the noble Advocate maketh it clear in Heaven, that this, even this, is a valiant wrestling. And the more weakness there is in our performances, if there be sincerity, the more of strength is let forth for the making up of our wants. Blessed be the sinner’s Second! And ye will hardly believe, but I hope ye know how soon a very drowsy sleeping Jacob is turned to a prevailing Israel, “I will not let thee go, till thou bless me.” Let the second verse of the first Psalm be made your heart’s practice without a beguile. Oh! suck frequently and greedily the milk of the Word, that your soul may grow thereby; especially the Book of the Psalms, that doth indeed contain a cure for every case ye can be tristed [afflicted] with. As also the gospel-prophet Isaias, that proclaimeth the best news that ever was in heaven or the earth, to lost sinners. But Oh! eat up and digest the precious history of His life and death, contained in the Evangelists, till it turn (if I may so say) into flesh and blood to you. Come here and wonder, and believe the lively, living, yea, life-giving map of His matchless love. Remember to watch. Here is not only wily foxes, but also roaring lions, which are but emblems of the deceitful and desperately wicked heart. Labour to keep a spiritual frame in all your ways: What a sappy life were it to the merchant or the tradesman, when walking before his shop-door, or in the chamber at night, or riding out of the way? Then the meditation of Him shall be sweet. And when the hand is busy in giving out and taking in, and writing up, then keep a great hank of the heart in heaven, “For our conversation is in heaven.” Surely this would prove unexpectedly sweet and easy too, if we had past our prenticeship in it.
(To be continued.)