-if feeding it may be called-with a lifeless form; what stronger symptom needs he of his real state? A healthy, growing state of religion in the soul demands more for its nourishment and support than this. A believer panting for God, hungering and thirsting after righteousness, grace thriving, the heart deeply engaged in spiritual duties, lively, prayerful, humble, and tender, ascending in its frame and desires, a state marked by these features, cannot be tied down to a lifeless, spiritless form of religious duties. These were but husks to a healthy state of the life of God in the soul. It wants more. It will hunger and thirst, and this spiritual longing must be met. And nothing can satisfy and satiate it but living upon Christ, the bread and the water of life. "I am the bread of life." "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink." "My flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed." The professing man that goes all his days without this nourishment, thus starving his soul, may well exclaim, "My leanness, my leanness!" Oh, how solemn to such are the words of our Lord, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." John vi. 53.

Again: When a professing man can read his Bible with no spiritual taste, or when he searches it, not with a sincere desire to know the mind of the Spirit in order to a holy and obedient walk, but with a merely curious, or literary taste and aim, it is a sure evidence that his soul is making but a retrograde movement in real spirituality. Nothing perhaps

more strongly indicates the tone of a believer's spirituality, than the light in which the Scriptures are regarded by him. They may be read, and yet be read as any other book, without the deep and solemn conviction, that "all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." 2 Tim. iii. 16, 17. They may be read without a spiritual relish, without being turned into prayer, without treasuring up in the heart and reducing to daily practice its holy precepts, its precious promises, its sweet consolations, its faithful warnings, its affectionate admonitions, its tender rebukes. And thus read, how can a believer expect to derive that 'profit' from the Scriptures which they were intended, and are so calculated to convey?

When a professing Christian can pray, and yet acknowledge that he has no nearness to the throne, no touching of the sceptre, no fellowship with God, calls him "Father," without the sense of adoption,confesses sin in a general way, without any looking up to God through the cross,-has no consciousness of possessing the ear and the heart of God, the evidence is undoubted of a declining state of religion in the soul. And when too, he can find no sweetness in a spiritual ministry,-when he is restless and dissatisfied under a searching and practical unfolding of truth, when the doctrines are preferred to the precepts, the promises to the commands, the conso

lations to the admonitions of the gospel, incipient declension is marked.

When the believer has but few dealings with Christ, his blood but seldom travelled to,—his fulness but little lived upon,―his love and glory scarcely mentioned, the symptom of declension in the soul is palpable. Perhaps nothing forms a more certain criterion of the state of the soul than this. We would be willing to test a man's religion, both as to its nature and its growth, by his reply to the question, "What think ye of Christ ?" Does his blood daily moisten the root of thy profession? Is his righteousness that which exalts thee out of and above thyself, and daily gives thee free and near access to God? Is the sweetness of his love much in thy heart, and the fragrance of his name much on thy lips? Are thy corruptions daily carried to his grace, thy guilt to his blood, thy trials to his heart? In a word, is Jesus the substance of thy life, the source of thy sanctification, the spring-head of thy joys, the theme of thy song, the one glorious object on which thine eye is ever resting, the mark towards which thou art ever pressing? Be not offended, reader, if we remark, that a professing man may talk well of Christ, and may do homage to his name, and build up his cause, and promote his kingdom, and yet rest short of having Christ in his heart, the hope of glory. It is not the talking about religion, or ministers, or churches, nor an outward zeal for their prosperity, that either constitutes or indicates a truly spiritual man. And yet how much of this in our day passes current for the life of God in the soul!

O that among God's dear saints there were less talking of ministers, and more of Jesus; less of sermons, and more of the power of the truth in their souls; less of "I am of Paul," and "I of Apollos," and more of "I am of Christ."

An uncharitable walk towards other Christians, marks a low state of grace in the soul. The more entirely the heart is occupied with the love of Christ, there will be less room for uncharitableness towards his saints. It is because there is so little love to Jesus, that there is so little towards his followers. In proportion as the mind becomes spiritual, it rises above party distinctions and names,-it resigns its narrow and exclusive views, casts away its prejudices against other sections of the one church, and embraces in the yearnings of its Christian sympathy all who "love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity." In advocating a wider platform of Christian love, we would by no means "sell the truth," or compromise principles, or immolate conscience upon the altar of an infidel liberalism. But that for which we plead, is, more of that Christian love, tenderheartedness, kindness, charity which allows the right of private judgment, respects a conscientious maintenance of truth, and concedes to others the same privilege it claims for itself. Differing as many of the saints of God necessarily do in judgment, does the same necessity exist wherefore they shall be alienated in affection? We think, far from it. There is common ground on which all Christians who hold the Head can stand. There are truths which can assimilate all our minds, and blend all our hearts.

Why then should we stand aloof from the one body and exclaim, "The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are we?" Why should we refuse to recognise the Father's image in the children's face, and treat them as aliens in person, in spirit, and in language, because they see not eye to eye with us, in all our interpretations of God's word? Why should not "all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away, with all malice ?" and why should we not be "kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven us," seeing that the church is but one, the family but one, that true believers are all 66 one in Christ Jesus ?" This will be so where there is a deepening spirituality. And its absence marks a decay of grace, a waning of the life of God in the soul.

We have thus endeavored to bring to view some of the prominent characteristics of a state of incipient declension of the life of God in the believer. It will be seen that we have referred to those only which mark the hidden departure of the heart from God;-that state that is so concealed, so veiled from the eye, and wearing so fair an exterior, that all suspicion of its existence is lulled to rest, and the soul is soothed with the delusion that all is well with it. Dear reader, is this thy state? Has this book thus far detected in thee any secret declension, any concealed departure, any heart backsliding? Has it proved to thee the Spirit of God speaking by it— that thy soul is in an unhealthy state, that the Divine life within thee is drooping? Turn not from