THE

FOR PROMOTING SPIRITUAL UNITY.

There is "one Lord, one faith, one baptism.”—EpH. iv. 5.

"For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into

one Spirit."-1 Cor. xii. 13.

"Ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”—GAL. iii. 28.

VOL. X.

JANUARY, 1878.

No. 109.

OUR NEW YEAR'S ADDRESS.

To all who fear the Lord, and love the Gospel of His Son, and have found, or are seeking Jesus, which was crucified, their servant the Editor prays that grace, truth, love, and peace, may be abundantly multiplied throughout this New Year.

Beloved in THE LORD,

IN the prospect of the New Year we pen these lines. May that Name which is "as ointment poured forth" perfume all that we advance. May the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ by His holy eyesalve remove all dimness of perception from writer and readers. May He by His Almighty operations subdue within us everything at variance with the mind of Christ, and the will of God. May He so shed abroad the Father's love, by imparting the knowledge of the Son, as to enable us to count all things but dung and dross, that we may win Christ and be found in Him, and may He in a special manner direct our hearts and minds at the present time, while we endeavour to contemplate the following words:

"MY HOPE IS IN THEE." Psalm xxxix. 7.

We are distinctly informed, and all spiritual knowledge endorses it, that "experience worketh HOPE." An experience which proves the helping and delivering power of Him Who is "mighty to save." It is the fruit of a heavenly birth; for we are "begotten again unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." Instructed by that One Spirit Who guides the elect into all essential truth, each of those thus taught in due time discovers, in the revelation made of law and sin as pertaining to self, the need of "a good hope through grace,” and of that spiritual and gracious help which proceeds from "the God of Salvation" to Whom "belong the issues from death." The fires of temptation and floods of adversity, as days roll on and experience deepens, increase the sense of this. An offended Heaven above, a

merited hell beneath, a fallen and ensnaring world around, and the deeps of iniquity within, all appear to portend destruction. But even as the depressions of valleys serve to manifest the height of adjacent mountains, so do all the sensations of an experimental acquaintanceship with the extent of the Fall, and the depths of Satan serve to exalt the majesty, love and goodness of Him Who says, "I will love them freely, for Mine anger is turned away from him." Hosea xiv. 4.

Every fresh conflict serves to prostrate human power; every fresh entanglement in the web of Satan, to confound human wisdom; every hiding of the Lord's face, to exhaust human patience; and every withdrawal of the Holy Spirit's operations, to paralyse the exercise of faith. "Without Me ye can do nothing" is stamped on every phase of the real believer's experience. Carnal-reasoners and Duty-faith men may interpose their objections to this, as not being a truth of an absolute and exclusive character. They may name many things and occasions as exceptions to this rule. But in vain: so far as the living church is concerned. For did not the Old Testament saints affirm: "Lord, Thou wilt ordain peace for us: for Thou also hast wrought all our works in us?" Isaiah xxvii. 12. And did not Paul, under a sense of his own perfect weakness only, avow that he could do all things through Christ strengthening him? Philippians iv. 13. Even among those, in whom grace has never swayed its sovereign sceptre, but who have passed through perilous adventures, and had hair-breadth escapes of their lives being sacrificed on land or ocean, we often find an acknowledgment of a Supreme supervision of their affairs, and a providential recognition of the power and goodness of God. But what are all such preservations ? What was even the deliverance of a national Israel from Egypt, her passage through the Red Sea, her protection and provision for forty years in the wilderness of deserts and of pits, in comparison with that spiritual emancipation and upholding power which every child of God is the subject of? Pursued at times by fears of death, judgment, and perdition; often sinking into dull carelessness and worldly lightness; ever carrying about with them a body of sin and death, the flesh in which dwelleth no good thing, there is no creature power which could sustain the vessels of mercy and convey them safely to their desired haven.

It is very sweet, then, and essential to hope in the future, from any point of experience, to look back upon the past, and be able to trace the finger of God in what we have passed through, and, like Moses on Pisgah's top, to rehearse the mighty acts of the Lord in all His previous dealings. For is it not written: "Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, and to know what was in thine heart"? Deut. viii. 2. What scenes arise in the retrospect! What threatening perils! What superabounding mercies! What creature sinfulness and

ingratitude! What Divine riches of grace and forbearance! "Who can utter the mighty acts of the Lord? Who can show forth all His praise?” Psalm cvi. 2. Unbelief strikes us dumb, like Zacharias when he questioned Gabriel's announcement concerning the birth of the Saviour's herald. But shall unbelief ever prevail with the Lord's children? No. Zacharias' tongue was loosed at the performance of the promise, and so shall theirs be. And the word shall be fulfilled: “They shall abundantly utter the memory of Thy great goodness, and shall sing of Thy righteousness." Psalm cxlv. 7. And every stage of the heavenward journey calls for this. Every pillar set up and anointed bears the inscription 'Ebenezer'-"The stone of help”—and is associated with the acknowledgment, "Hitherto the Lord hath helped us." How stands this matter with our own soul and that of our readers? Is it not our privilege to say, "Thou hast been my help"? Psalm lxiii. 7.

"I have been upheld till now;

Who could hold me up but Thou ?”

A covenant God, Whose love is everlasting, Whose salvation by the Mediator's blood and righteousness is everlasting, and Whose grace, in the Holy Spirit's display of it, is pledged to consummate what it undertakes and commences, is He by Whom we have been upheld, and in and upon Whom our “HOPE" is reposed for time and eternity. And can we not, as we stand at the close of an Old and the opening of a New Year, magnify Him thus far? "Unless the Lord had been my help my soul had almost dwelt in silence,” said David. Psalm xciv. 17. And cannot we? Surely we had perished in the Red Sea's waves, at the waters of Marah and Meribah, at Sinai, at Taberah, at the graves of lust; surely the hand of Egypt, Edom, Sihon, Bashan, Moab, or Philistia had prevailed against us, had not a living covenant God, in a living interceding Christ, by the living abiding Spirit, been our "HELP." He only has covered our heads in the day of battle. He only has led our purblind souls in a way they knew not, and in paths we had not known, and in His Own wise time has made darkness light before us and crooked things straight.

If we have not always had rivers in the wilderness and streams in the desert, He has been to us as the dew, silently but effectually descending upon our hearts and minds in our night seasons, when parched and fit for nothing, causing us to grow as the lily; and when the gentle showers have fallen on us, to revive as the corn and grow as the vine, and our scent to be as the wine of Lebanon. When fatigued in body and mind with various labours, in waiting upon the Lord we have re newed our strength, and if we have not soared like eagles, or run like athletes in an Isthmian race, we have walked and not fainted: for our help has been "in the Name of the Lord, Which made heaven and

7.

earth." All the sufficiency according to the day which has been afforded us serves to compel us to exclaim :

"Through many dangers, toils and snares

I have already come;

'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace shall take me home.'

All the records of the Lord's dealings in the times of old prove that they who obtained a good report through faith, who waxed valiant in fight, and turned to flight the armies of the aliens, were "out of weakness made strong." This abased them and glorified the Lord. They felt they could not trust in their own arm, and so were compelled to trust wholly on His. This is the case with all who are blessed with a vital experience of religion to this day. Without it, "pride, arrogancy, the froward mouth, and the evil way," which the Lord hateth, will prevail in the professor to the dishonouring of Christ; Who is the "refuge and strength" of His people, and their "very present help in trouble." Psalm xlvi. I. And as His people's body and spirit equally belong unto Him, even as He to God, that body and spirit must by all their exercises, and drawing upon His fulness for daily grace, wisdom and strength, be led to glorify Him. Cor. vi. 20. And nothing so really and truly glorifies the Son of God in body and spirit, as their entire subjection to His authority and perfect humble reliance upon His inexhaustible store of merit and mercy. Adverse scenes and trials, both spiritually and temporally, are wisely overruled for the bringing about of this. Joseph must pass through all he did to wear his honours to the praise of his God; and David likewise: for, before honour is humility; even as pride precedes a fall. And to this day and hour Jehovah is as fully and warmly interested, and as actively engaged, in all the affairs of His chosen, as in the times of Joseph and David.

Infidel Rationalists, who seek to ignore all His ancient testimonies in His written Word, and to represent that all His faithful witnesses have followed cunningly devised fables, may exclaim after the old fashion of such-like characters, "The Lord seeth us not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth." Ezek. viii. 12. But "the Lord is known by the judgment which He executeth :" and "the hand of the Lord shall be known toward His servants, and His indignation toward His enemies." Isaiah lxvi. 14. And amid all the surrounding desolation in the visible church, amid the almost universal apostasy from the faith of God's elect, His Own humble witnesses are still to be found, whose inward knowledge of Him, His truth and ways, enable them at the present time to look back and say, "Thou hast been my help." If they have not beheld this in wondrous events, and marvellous manifestations; if they have not seen it in the falling avalanche and upheaving earthquake, n the standing still of the sun, or the fighting of the stars in their courses, they have witnessed it in milder forms in answer to daily and special prayer: and can unite