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Published in the Gospel Magazine April 1841. by Simpkin. Marshall & Co

the most entertaining and useful description, communicated with considerable aptitude. His pulpit discourses may be said to consist of detached sweet sentences, at once illustrative of his subject, and abounding with consolation to the believer, interspersed with occasional quotations from some of our sweetest poets. Our present Number, it will be perceived, contains a piece bearing his signature.

REVIEW S.

Glorying in the Lord; or, Christ the Sanctification as well as Justification of his People. A dialogue between two brothers, young men in Christ. Drawn up and designed for the relief of distressed consciences, labouring under a sense of sin, and thirsting for a perfect Salvation. Second Edition. London: Hatchard and Son; J. Nisbet and Co.

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We believe that a confused idea of the true nature of sanctification, is a principal source of sorrow and disquietude to the real believer. If your experience, reader, accords with that of the writer, you are constantly seeking for something in yourself, some good thing or other towards the Lord God Almighty, some price that you may bring in your hand, so you may approach the throne of grace less in the character of a poor pauper-a pensioner upon divine bounty; whereas, as the little tract before us very powerfully sets forth, in Christ Jesus, our covenant Head and Representative, we have not only wisdom and righteousness, but SANCTIFICATION and redemption. While looking within, we are looking to the wrong quarter for satisfaction; in ourselves, we are black as the tents of Kedar; our comeliness and beauty are in Christ; we are complete in him." "Oh! Israel," says he, "thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me (mark that), in me "is thine help." And the Church in the Canticles says, "Look not upon me, for I am black;" and again, "Look upon me in the face of thine anointed."

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The work before us is written in the form of dialogue between two brethren in Christ Jesus. The younger brother proposes such questions as naturally suggest themselves to the mind under the dawnings of divine light and understanding; such an one is constantly anticipating better days, when he trusts he shall not be plagued with an unbelieving heart, nor be compelled to carry about with him a body of sin and death; when he shall have attained the victory over many evils by which he is now assailed, and consequently have less need to adopt the humiliating cry, God, be merciful to me a sinner!" The elder brother, on the contrary, labours to show him, that Jesus-and he alone is his sanctification; that in him, and him only, is his meetness for eternal glory; that neither prayers nor penances are the ground of his acceptance with God, but the person and work of Christ, and these alone. Oh that we could express these things more clearly,

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and that our readers and ourselves could live upon them more entirely; and yet, without divine grace were kept in lively operation, we should be making as it were a little Christ even of this spirit of dependance. Ere we are aware, our minds are taken off from the object of faith to contemplate faith itself, which is like a lame man looking at the crutch that is to help him to yonder hospital. Faith is nothing more than the eye that sees- -the hand that lays hold upon-the medium of communication, while its possessor is the recipient, and Christ Jesus the object.

From this very excellent tract we extract the following, as precisely in accordance with our own sentiments :

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Having received Christ, all things are ours, both title and fitness. We may grow in the enjoyment of Christ, but we can never gain anything beyond Christ. "He is our wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." Whatever Christ was, or did, or suffered, in the flesh, he was, and did, and suffered, for us. Was he perfect wisdom, so that no man spake like this man?" He was made wisdom for us. His righ teous life also, and holy nature, even the holiness of the holy child Jesus, are ours; and so of his death. "He was bruised for our iniquities;" "he bore our sins ;" and, in short, "was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him; not by him, or through him, but in him, even in Christ. Thus all his graces are ours, in the merit of them, and shall be ours in the full enjoyment of them. His love, his joy, his peace, his meekness, his gentleness, his long-suffering, his patience, his faith—all these his graces are ours, and are placed to our account; wherefore, he saith, "If ye abide in me, aud 1 in you, ye shall bear much fruit, for without me ye can do nothing."

Again, the elder brother says,

I would just ask you then, why barren states of soul are permitted? Are they not permitted to teach us this very thing, that we are as clay in the hands of the potter; and that our strength is to sit still? One principal branch of our uprightness in the ight of God, is to acknowledge our utter unprofitableness, and that "we are altogether gone out of the way, and that there is none that doeth good, no not one; nor is it possible, for the good that is done upon the earth, the Lord doeth it himself. Now how can we learn these truths unless we are left at one time or other to feel them? nay, I believe there is nothing more profitable for us, than to be left to feel our own unprofitableness, and that we can neither pray, read, nor hear to any purpose, but by a supernatural power.

"We are never permitted to fall," he continues,

Till we begin to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think; that we have at length got above our corruptions; and that God has made our mountain so strong, that it cannot be moved. Indeed, I believe we are never cast down through our inherent natural weakness, absolutely considered; but from our beginning to entertain notions of inherent strength, or holiness, or knowledge, in the way of salvation. It is the strong that God feeds with judgment; but "he giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might he increaseth strength." Now this mystery of our perfection in Christ teaches us, first of all, not to look for anything but evil in ourselves, nor to hope to experience anything of ourselves, but weakness and a want of all true wisdom ; for it is in Christ only are hid all the treasures of wisdom and of know

ledge. Nor are we afraid to believe our own natural state, nor to take a view of our natural barrenness, when we see ourselves perfect in Christ, and in him without spot before the throne of God. Hence you may always observe, that these temptations to self-admiration are accompanied with more or less of legality, and with a looking to the precept, as though something were to be performed by us. Now, it is to purge these legal humours that we are left to fall, and often too, left to feel our own natural blindness, that we may know that we have nothing but sin and ignorance in ourselves, and that he that "glorieth, may glory only in the Lord." In short, all the dealings of God with us seem directed to this one point, that he may humble us and empty us of self, and that often by the outbreakings of corruption, that so we may be made willing to look only to Christ. Our falls and backslidings are not permitted for their own sakes, nor to discourage us by the feeling of our infirmities simply; but to bring down every high thought of self, and to lay us low in subjection to Jesus. Whenever you are so forsaken, you may rely upon it, you had begun to think yourself "rich and increased with goods, having need of nothing." God, truly, can take no pleasure in the distresses of his people, nor in their falls and miscarriages; and yet he suffers these things for their good, and for the discovery of the abominable workings of their own self-sufficiency. Depend upon it, therefore, when you are permitted to fall, that it is not because you are weak, for so is every saint upon earth; but it is because you thought yourself strong, and able to stand by yourself. This persuasion will enable you to look your infirmities in the face, and even to glory in them, that the power of Christ may rest upon you; for when we are weak, then are we strong.

We recommend the tract to our readers, praying that God the Holy Ghost may seal home its contents upon their hearts; giving them at the same time a fresh discovery of Christ as their wisdom, righteousness, SANCTIFICATION, and redemption.

A Sermon on the occasion of the Death of Miss Mary Howes, containing a short account of her conversion, written by herself, preached in Bethesda Chapel, Bath, January 31, 1841. By the Rev. J. A. WALLINGER. Bath Binns and Goodwin. London: Simpkin

and Marshall.

"PRECIOUS in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." No part of our duties in connexion with the GOSPEL MAGAZINE affords us greater pleasure, than the contemplation of the departure of any of the Lord's family. There is a secret something which awakens in our breast unutterable satisfaction, when we read the testimonies of dying saints; when we in imagination place ourselves by their death-bed, and witness the termination of sin, sorrow, vexation, and care; when we see Satan vanquished, unbelief defeated, and the once timid, tempted, despairing soul, brought off more than conqueror through him that hath loved them. Such was the character on the occasion of whose death the sermon before us was preached. Though the text itself (taken from Isa. lvii. 1, 2), is treated with brevity, from the preacher's desire to let the deceased speak for herself; yet it is handled with propriety, and bears the marks of one taught of God the Holy Ghost-such truths as are not very congenial to the general taste of professors of the present day, as the following quotation will show:

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Many cry out against the doctrines of grace, by which I mean the exhibi

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