have enjoyed you have no more but a head knowledge, and several other grounds of jealousy you express about yourself, wherein you desire I may deal plainly with you.

Dear Madam, though 'tis hard to write on this head to one that I know no more of than just what your letter relates, yet there are some things dropped in it, which, if they be told me from an upright ingenious heart, may give some handle to show that the seed of grace may be really sown, and that the Lord is humbling you in order to heal you in due time.

First:-You complain you want the sealing testimonies of the Lord's love, which you judge you would have if you belonged to Him. As to this, it may be in mercy the Lord is withholding the seals of His love, and the comfortable feelings of it, till you be brought to find it a more cleanly way of believing His love. It is said in Eph. i. 13, "after ye believed ye were sealed." The only sure ground of faith is the word of grace and truth there spoken of, and not our feeling. The felt sealing of the Spirit of promise is not to be expected before our believing the word of promise. If we should have anything like a feeling of His love before our believing of His love, we should be ready to build our faith upon transient feelings, frames, and influences, and not upon the word of promise. Though the revealing work of the Spirit opening the word is prior to faith, yet the sealing work of the Spirit is posterior to it. Many are deluded that rest upon feelings, and build their faith of God's love not chiefly on what God has said, but merely on what they have felt, and as their feelings are up and down, so is their faith. It will therefore be your mercy if the Lord be withholding what you call the sealing testimonies of His love, till once you be made to give Him the glory of His truth by believing His love revealed to you in His word, and then you may expect the comfort of it sealed to you in your heart. The woman with the bloody issue had no sensible feeling of virtue coming from Christ till once she touched the hem of His garment by faith, Luke viii. 43-48. If you expect and wait for feeling to found your faith on, they are mercifully denied you that you may build your faith upon a surer foundation, namely, Christ speaking in the word for the ground of your faith, before you have any feeling of Him in your heart for the encouragement of faith.

Secondly:-You tell me you can hear others talk of sweet communion with the Lord, and of their longing to be dissolved to be with Him, while yet the thoughts of death are terrible to you; and at the same time you complain of deadness, coldness, and carnality, fearing you want love to Christ, and that these things are not the spots of God's children. Dear madam, if you have got a view of the plague of your own heart, and are indeed kept poor and needy and empty and humbled under a sense of your want of all grace and goodness in yourself, that Christ and His fulness may be the more precious to you, you have the advantage of those who are enriched with greater enjoyments and attainments, if they be lifted up with them: for, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," "Blessed are they that mourn," "Blessed are the meek,' "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness," "To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite heart, and trembleth at My word." Matt. v. 3-6; Isa. Ixii, 2. I hope this is the case with you,

and that because of what you afterwards say in your letter, that you can rejoice in the doctrine of God's everlasting love to His precious ones, though you cannot see your own interest in it, and are sure that if ever you are saved the crown must be upon the head of Christ. This looks like the language of one whom God is humbling in order to exalt, and emptying in order to fill in due time. See Psalm ix. 18, and xi. 5, and cxiii. 5-7. Thirdly:-You speak of your having been under temptations, but that you don't remember any promise to have come for your deliverance. Dear friend, if deliverance has come to you from time to time according to the promise, even powerful merciful deliverance, whether suddenly or gradually, though the promise itself has not come to you with such power or in such a manner as you think it has come to others, you should be thankful. The Lord's way of bringing the promise home to the heart is various towards some and others. However, I know little odds between a promise poured in sweetly upon the heart, and a heart poured out sweetly upon the promise. The latter may be as safe and sure as the former. If the promise has but in holy providence come to your mind, whether by hearing, reading, or musing, so as you have been helped to make it a matter of prayer and pleading before the throne of grace, be you content, madam, and bless God for it. Many are ready to depend more upon the felt power and sweet influence by which the promise comes to them than upon the promise itself, and hence when that power and influence is withdrawn their faith is to seek. They cannot rest upon the bare word of God, the bread on which the soul should live, unless, like children, they get the butter and honey of some sweet influence spread upon it. This disposition in any godly soul is much owing to the sad remains of a legal temper that makes them seek for a ground of faith and hope more in themselves and what is done by them, and wrought or felt in them, than they do by going out of themselves to what the Lord is in Himself, and has wrought for them and spoken to them. Faith is most strong when it can live on a bare promise without the support.

LETTERS BY W. BROWN.

10, Egremont Place, Brighton.
April 10th, 1865.

My dear Friend and Brother in the Lord Jesus, grace and peace be with you. Many times have I thought of you, and now at length I take up my pen to drop you a line. If I could see you face to face it would be more pleasant, but we must not have all we wish for here: but our hearts are united, and the bond cannot be broken either by distance or by time. O! what a mercy that our God is a covenant God, and that we have a special and personal interest in that covenant which is ordered in all things and sure. We have to fight our way to the kingdom, and it is often hard work: indeed too hard for us; but God has promised to supply all our need, and has He not said, "My grace is sufficient for thee?"

Depend upon it, we shall be more than conquerors through Him that hath loved us. What did the dear Lord go through, and that of His own free-will, in love to His church? He endured the cross for the joy that was set before Him. And is there not the same joy set before us?

and are we not to tread in the Lord's steps, as well as to be baptized with the baptism of His sufferings?

The other day that word was sweet to me, John iv. 4, "Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world." So that it is not we who have to fight, so to speak, but the Lord Who fighteth for us, and Who dwelleth in us. The battle is not ours, but the Lord's. No wonder if we come off victorious at last, shouting victory through the blood of the Lamb. And yet it is a wonder of wonders, that such a poor, blind, helpless, worthless wretch, as I feel myself to be, should have any part or lot in the matter of Christ's salvation. This is how I feel, and I believe my dear friend feels the same.

I expect to go to Chichester next Lord's day, 16th: to all appearances it will be my last visit, for I cannot get about except with the aid of crutches, and then it is with difficulty.

Poor dear Mr. Prior; how I feel for him. Well, my dear friend, we are all like the forest trees that are marked.

"Like crowded forest trees we stand,

And some are marked to fall;

The axe will smite at God's command,
And soon will strike us all."

But has not the Lord also set His own special mark upon us? His word is this, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee."

"His love in time past forbids me to think
He'll leave me at last in trouble to sink ;
Each sweet Ebenezer I have in review,

Confirms His good pleasure to help me quite through."

"Cast not

Quite through! What a fulness is in that simple word. away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward." And what is our confidence but the Lord Jesus! His blood and righteousness, His finished work, is all my confidence; I have no other hope. Here is solid ground to rest upon. "He is the Rock; His work is perfect."

We have heard that our mutual friend, Mr. White, is married, but have not heard to whom.

You would be shocked to hear of the death of Mr. Grace: he went off suddenly at last. He will be much missed. The Lord is taking home His servants, and poor Zion is in a low place. There are are not many valiant men of truth, who speak in the power of the Holy Ghost, in these days. But the Lord liveth, and He knoweth them that are His. All will soon be over, and we shall look back at our pilgrimage, and see that we have been led a right way to a city of habitation. My dear wife joins me in kind love to your dear sisters and yourself.

Your affectionate friend and brother in the Lord Jesus,

W. BROWN.

"We may live by a form, but we cannot die by a form, and if we live and die after the flesh we are damned to all eternity. A form of piety and the power of impiety may consist together in the same person.'

NESS.

RAYS OF LIGHT ON OBSCURE PASSAGES.

W

CHRIST'S SOUL IN HADES.*

"His soul was not left in hell"—or hades.—Acts ii. 31.

HEN they, who through grace are enabled to believe, or to humbly to hope, that they are the children of God, duly ponder their approaching end, and comprehend that, whatever the place or state implied by the term Hades is, into which Christ's spirit entered at death, there their souls also must enter, it becomes a matter not for carping criticism, but of solemn interest, for them to know what that Hades truly is, so far as the Scriptures reveal it.

Hades is a Greek word, found in the Original of the New Testament, and is rendered "hell" in our version in every instance except 1 Cor. xv. 55, where it is translated, "grave." It also occurs in the Greek version of the Old Testament (we believe without exception) wherever the word Sheol occurs; which latter is rendered in our version by the three words, grave, pit, hell. And when every allowance is made for the difference between the ideas of godly Jews and idolatrous Greeks, in their primitive employment of these respective terms, there appears to be as close a resemblance between their signification, as it is possible to conceive of. And when it is yet further considered that, the Holy Spirit inspired His servants to employ the Greek word Hades as an interpretation of the Hebrew word Sheol, it may without risk be accepted as its scriptural counterpart.

It is quite certain that the heathen Greek writers, who frequently employed the word Hades with respect to another state of existence, did not regard it as hell. Though in the case of those they deemed worthy of punishment on account of their doings in this life, they associated it with ideas of such punishment, yet in the case of the brave and virtuous, they connected it with happiness or peace. To them it was simply the unseen world of departed spirits. And hence, as a word (according to the most able of the learned) Hades appears to have been derived from a-idein, which means strictly (as Dr. Fairbairn remarks) "what is out of sight, or, if applied to a person, what puts out of sight." Consequently, we find it to be the name of the heathen god of death, Pluto, as used continually by the poet Homer, to whom all his slain heroes descend. For it must also be noted that the idea of depth or lowness, as the nether world, as invariably connected with its mention, and that, undoubtedly because of the nature of the grave. The following words of Dr. Fairbairn may be perused with interest and profit.

He says, "Two or three points stand prominently out in the views entertained by the ancients respecting Hades:-first, that it was the

See Article on The Abode of Christ's Soul, in last month's issue.

common receptacle of departed spirits, of good as well as bad; second, that it was divided into two compartments, the one containing an Elysium of bliss for the good, the other a Tartarus of sorrow and punishment for the wicked; and, thirdly, that in respect to its locality, it lay under-ground, in the mid-regions of the earth. So far as these points are concerned, there is no material difference between the Greek Hades and the Hebrew Sheol. This, too, was viewed as the common receptacle of the departed: patriarchs and righteous men spake of going into it at their decease, and the most ungodly and worthless characters are represented as finding in it their proper home; Gen. xlii. 38, Psalm cxxxix. 8, Hosea xiii. 14, Isaiah xiv., &c. A twofold division also in the state of the departed, corresponding to the different positions they occupied, and the courses they pursued, on earth, is clearly implied in the revelation of Scripture on the subject...... Divine retribution is represented as pursuing the wicked after they have left this world-pursuing them even into the lowest realms of Sheol [or Hades], Deut. xxxii. 22, Amos ix. 2; and the bitterest shame and humiliation are described as awaiting there the most prosperous of this world's inhabitants, if they have abused their prosperity to the dishonour of God, and the injury of their fellow-men, Psalm xlix. 14, Isa. xiv. On the other hand, the righteous had hope in his death; he could rest assured that in the viewless regions of Sheol [or, Hades], as well as amid the changing vicissitudes of earth, the right hand of God would sustain him, even there he would enter into peace, walking still, as it were, in his uprightness, Isa. lvii. 2. And that Sheol, like Hades, was conceived of as a lower region in comparison of the present world, is so manifest from the whole language of Scripture on the subject, that it is unnecessary to point to particular examples; in respect to the good, as well as to the bad, the passage into Sheol [or, Hades], was contemplated as a descent; and the name was sometimes used as a synonym for the very lowest depths, Deut. xxxii. 22, Job xi. 7—9. This is not, however, to be understood as affirming anything of the actual locality of disembodied spirits; for there can be no doubt that the language here, as in other cases, was derived from the mere appearance of things; and as the body at death was committed to the lower parts of the earth, so the soul was conceived of as also going downwards. But that this was not designed to mark the local boundaries of the region of departed spirits, may certainly be inferred from other expressions used regarding them--as, that, God took them to Himself; or, that, He would give them to see the path of life; or, that, He would make them dwell in His house for ever; or, more generally, that, the spirit of a man goeth upwards, Gen. v. 24, Psa. xvi. ii.; xxiii. 6; Eccles. iii. 21; xii. 7." Thus far Dr. Fairbairn.

It becomes apparent from what has been said, and it is supported by the evidence afforded by every place in the Old Testament where Sheol