Ghost gave Paul of this great transaction. "It pleased the Father, (says he, in seting up Christ as the Covenant Head,) that in him should all fulness dwell."

The second step was the putting all the elect into Christ by a covenant engagement: so our Lord declares, "Thine they were, and thou gavest them to me." Christ and the church both laid in the bosom of the Father from all eternity. When, therefore, Christ was set up for the church, then was the church herself brought forth and given to him-for, "both he that sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified, are ALL OF ONE." Read a full account of this in Psalm lxxxix: 19th and following verses.

The third step was the wondrous incarnation of the Son of God: think over that mighty expression, "The word was MADE FLESH, and dwelt among us." In speaking of the incarnation of the Son of God, the writers seem to have searched for, dug out, and brought forth, various figures and expressions, whereby to define and declare it—but it is as though Paul knew it to be impossible fully to comprehend this wondrous combination, and bringing together of heaven and earth, therefore, like one fully determined on the point, he says, "without controversy, great is the mystery of godlinesss, GOD WAS MANIFEST IN THE FLESH." Who, but the Spirit of God, could have gathered up such an unsearchable fullness of divinity as is here contained in six words? "God was manifest in the flesh!"

The fourth step is Redemption by Christ: "he hath redeemed us from the

curse of the law;" he hath redeemed us unto God; we are made nigh by the blood of Christ; oh, this is a step indeed! Ask-" Am I made nigh ?"

The fifth step is the gift of the Holy Ghost, and all the essential branches of his work. We can no more get to heaven without the Spirit of Christ, than we can be cleansed and justified without the blood and righteousness of Christ.

The Spirit knows for whom the Saviour bled;
He comes to raise them from among the dead;
He takes of Christ--his righteousness reveals;

And on the sinner's conscience full remission seals. The sixth step is the dispensation and application of the word: whereby, under the Spirit's teaching, God's elect are led into all essential truth.

By these very steps the church of the living God are brought again from the

grave of sin, and from the ruin of the fall. In these heavenly places they sit together with Christ; his word comes into the sinner's heart with power; and by this "law of the spirit they are made free from the law of sin and death :" they receive the atonement: by a living faith they embrace and adore the person of Christ: the secret of the Lord is with them, and he shews unto them his covenant; here they enter into rest by a happy inwrought persuasion, that whom God did foreknow, he also did predestinate; and that whom he did predestinate, them he also calls, justifies, and glorifies. "The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." Jeremiah seems to take a solemn survey of this throne, and of the sinner's ascent by it, when he says "O, Lord, I know that it is not in man that walketh, to direct his steps" Oh, no; salvation is of the Lord.

in Isaiah xxii. 23, 24,-" He shall be for The third Scripture which I notice is a glorious throne to his father's house; and they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father's house." Whether a living and believing sinner be blessed with a large or only a small measure of grace, it will bring him unto Christ, and upon Christ will he hang all the glory of his soul's hope and salvation.

Both under the Old and New Testavelations of Christ as "the place of God's ments, there were clear and blessed rethrone." The vision which Isaiah had, under the Old Testament, seems to prefigure that solemn and distant view, which the church has of Christ on the

throne" I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple; then said I woe is me for I am undone." It is thus that the Holy Ghost revealeth Christ in

the hearts of redeemed sinners: and the Lord's people have of themselves these are the self-loathing views which when Christ in his sovereignty and glory is discovered unto them.

John's vision of Christ upon the throne, (Rev. iv.) is descriptive of that holy rest, and familiar nearness which the church triumphant in glory shall have; each vessel of mercy shall have his seat; and sitting around the throne, shall worship him that liveth for ever, and ever, casting their crowns before his throne.

I CANNOT forget here, one instance of God's providential goodness towards me-I arrived at St. Ives, in Huntingdonshire, about a week after I left London, a mere beggar, living on the bounty of those whose hearts God inclined to relieve my necessities; having passed through St. Ives, I sat down under a hedge, and prayed to God to direct me what road to take to get employment. I then got up and walked about a mile, and in a field saw some men and women at work weeding; I stopped and looked at them, when one of the men called to me, and I went to him; he asked if I wanted a job? I told him I should be most glad of one, at anything that I could do; when he set me to work at pulling up weeds, and I wrought with him for eight days. If ever I felt grateful for anything, in my life, it was for this mercy, for, humanly speaking, it was the means of saving me and my child from starvation.

After this, I wandered again in search of employment, but without success. I really thought God had set a mark upon me, as he did upon Cain of old, and that I was doomed to be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; that every body could see what I was, and shunned me, as a condemned sinner; that I should drag along a miserable existence through life, and that hell would be my portion at last.

man.

In the early part of July I returned to London again, to try what I could do, once more, there; vowing it I could once more get employment, I would become an altered Upon ny arrival, I found my wife had broken up our little home, had sold part of our goods to pay some debts we had contracted, and had gone to her sister's; but the wife of my bosom was turned against me; she refused to see me, and her sister shut the door in my face; I stood alone; I had not a friend on earth. I stopped in London only three days; and what I endured those three days, I never shall be able to tell. Oh, what a precious scripture this is to my soul, (John xvii. 2.) "Thou hast given him power over all flesh." Oh, if it had not been for the power of Jesus Christ, what would not this hand that now writes, have perpetrated! I came to London with a heart full of good resolutions, but from the treatment I received my mind became the scene of one awful storm; and though I felt amidst it, it was treatment I but too

| justly deserved, yet such was the exasperation of my mind, that could I have got to see my wife, after she refused to see me, (humanly speaking,) I should have murdered her; I was tempted to murder my child, destroy myself, and put a finish to my career of sorrow in this world. Nothing but the power of God could have upheld me, and brought me through this awful storm, and bless his name he did, and I am the living, this day to praise him. On the morning of the fourth day I determined to leave London, there was no shelter for me there, yet I knew not where to go. I went into St. James's park; there was a band playing; I followed the music to Palaceyard, foolishly thinking it would abate the storm within; but music had lost its charms on me; I turned away in disgust, and wept; a soft feeling came over my mind, my heart was drawn to pray to God; I felt what I had never felt before, I felt relief in telling him all my guilt, all my sorrow, all my woe, all my trouble; the storm in my feelings passed away, a calm came over my mind, and I cried "Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?" when I heard a voice, saying, "Return by the way which thou camest." I turned round to see who spake to me, but no one was near me but my child, who was crying by my side, to see the tears roll down my cheeks; I asked her if she heard any one speak ? but she told me no; but I still heard the voice; it was within me: "Return by the way which thou camest;" what could it mean? When all the events, and more than I have recorded, came to my mind, till the mind arrived, at the period of the death of Mark, and the first thought God fastened on my conscience-Where did I come from? Wantage, by the way of Watlington; Return by the way which thou camest." I felt I had the mind of God, and the direction of God, which way to take, and immediately struck across Hyde-park for the Uxbridge road, to proceed to Watlington, begging my way; when I arrived within two miles of Watlington, I opened a gate, and went into a retired corner of a field, and sat down under a bank; what I felt I cannot tell; but I was completely heart-broken; I wept before God and confessed my sins, but begged of the Lord to appear for me; the enemy of my soul told me it was presumption to pray; and I feared it was, but such was now the state of my

Y

One evening, as my custom was after I had done work, I went to take a walk; for if anything yielded me any comfort, at this period of misery, it was a lonely walk, to muse over my sorrows, and in many of these walks, oh, with what different eyes, have I gazed on the works of creation, to what I had ever done before. Every thing conspired to proclaim there is a God, and all joined to condemn me as a sinner against him. I have listened to the singing of the birds, the bleating of the sheep, the lowing of the oxer, and every thing seemed to have a voice, to praise the Maker of all; and I had been that blind, dark, benighted fool, to deny his existence. "The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib." But I was more ignorant than the ox, and more stupid than Well, in one of these walks, one of my shopmates overtook me, and after some common place talk, he observed, "Jemmy, I think you are in great trouble of mind, and I have observed you are quite silent with respect to your principles of infidelity; and politics you have dropped altogether." I stood stock still in the road, and I answered, "Billy, I once thought I was a wise man, and knew everything; but now I know I am a fool, and know nothing. God hath turned me inside out, since I was at Wantage last, and that is all I can tell you, for my heart is full;" and he could get no more out of me; my mouth was stopped, I had a yoke upon my jaws and could proceed no further. I now come to another eventful period in my experience.

the ass.

I had been about two months in Wantage, when I heard of man of the name of Tiptaft, a minister who had left the establishment, and had become a dissenter, and on Sunday, Sept. 23rd, was coming to Grove, a village about a mile from Wantage, to preach; somehow or other, I felt a desire to hear this man preach; and when the day arrived, I walked in the morning to Grove, and stood outside the chapel and listened, for I did not go in. Nothing particular struck my attention, only that Mr. Tiptaft was very loud speaker; I came home to dinner; and an irresistible something prompted me to go to Grove again in the afternoon; and this time I ventured inside the chapel; after they had sung an hymu, Mr. Tiptaft read the 34th of Ezekiel. I marked he read it in a solemn and impressive manner, and it seemned to me a chapter I had never heard nor seen in the Bible; he prayed and preached, and again nothing particular struck my attention. I went home, and had some tea; and Grove so held my mind, I was constrained to go again at night, when nothing laid hold of me till Mr. Tiptaft read his text -1 Cor. iii. 13. " Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare

it; because it shall be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is." The text was no sooner read than it dropped into my soul as the word of God; (not the word of man,) "quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing assunder of soul and spirit; and of the joints and marrow," and it was a discerner of the thoughts and intents of my heart; this sermon was a fiery sermon, that cut me up root and branch; stripped me naked and bare; a guilty sinner before the naked eye of God, before whom all things are naked and opened; and what appeared to me most strange, was, that Mr. Tiptaft in describing the fiery work of God in stripping a sinner, bringing him in guilty, and causing him to cry for mercy, entered into some of the very feelings of my heart, and described the things that passed in secret betwixt God and my poor soul, so that the secrets of my heart were made manifest; and I was compelled to declare that God was in the man of a truth.

This sermon produced three effects in my soul, which amidst all the changes my soul has gone through, from that day to this, nothing hath been able to efface:

First-It brought me into deeper soul trouble.

Second: - From that very night the poor infidel has become a chapel goer, rom downright necessity; sometimes to hear what God the Lord shall speak concerning me; sometimes with a desire to get food for my never dying soul; sometimes, feeling my ignorance, I have gone with the desire to be instructed in the things of God; sometimes feeling that I was carnal, sensual, and devilish, and satan telling me, it was of no use to go; but all his temptations, and all the sin of my nature, hath not been able to hold me back; and "having obtained help of God, I continue unto this day."

Third: From that very night, I have been a Bible reader from necessity; a searcher of the Scriptures, if so be there might be hope. I went home and borrowed a Bible, (for now I really wanted one; I had not got one to call my own;) I took it up stairs into my bed-room, opened it, and found the text-"the fire shall try every man's work ". -was written with letters as a sun-beam, not only in the Bible, but in my soul. And now my work was tried; solemn work it was; my iniquity was found out to be hateful; my work was nothing but sin, iniquity, transgression, and rebellion; the language of my soul, was, "Woe is me, for I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips," unclean heart, unclean life, unclean walk and conversation; rottenness entered into my bones, my lips quivered, my belly