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A Page for the Young.

"KNOCK, AND IT SHALL BE

OPENED UNTO YOU."

Alice. Well now, Betsy, I will try to make you understand why it is that we must always pray to God through Christ; and I hope, my dear, you will understand it well, or else you will never pray in the plain, holy, earnest way that the piece of poetry speaks of; nor, I fear, will you ever pray at all so as for God to hear you, for God never changes from what he says, and he has told us that through Christ is the only way of coming to him. So you see if we were to go in any other way it would be of no use, for it would be against God's mind.

Betsy. Then I suppose you mean, Alice, that God will hear us only through Christ because he has made it so, and won't alter ?

A. That is one reason, Betsy; and it would be reason enough if there was no other. But you should say can't alter, rather than won't; for, you know, God could not alter and yet be true to his word; and he could not alter when he had the best reasons for making it so. But to say he won't, looks as if he could, but was not kind enough to do it.

B. I did not mean that God was unkind. Only I could not see any reason he had for it, and thought it was just because he had a mind to make it so. What reasons had he besides, Alice?

A. He might have a great many reasons besides, which we don't know of. But there is one great reason he has told us of, and it is a very plain and sufficient one, and that is, we are not worthy to come to him in any other way.

B. Not worthy, Alice! What do you mean?

A. I will explain. You know that God is a holy being. He loves goodness, and hates sin. He drove the devils, who were once holy angels in heaven, away from that blessed place, because they sinned; and he cast Adam out of Paradise, because he sinned; and he has said in his holy word that he will send all the wicked at the last day into everlasting fire, and this is all because he cannot endure sin. Well, then, you know, Betsy, that we are all sinful creatures; and how do you think God could let us go near him, and speak to him as we do when we pray, unless Jesus Christ were between him and us?

B. Well, but I wonder that he could let us go near him at all, if he hates sin in that terrible way. Did he not drown all the world once, and send fire and brimstone upon Sodom and Gomorrah, for their sins?

A. Yes; and so you see how much he hated it. But you forget, Betsy, who Jesus Christ is, and what he has done for sinners, when you say you wonder God will let us come near him at all. You forget that Jesus Christ the Son of God died to save sinners.

B. Well, I have often heard our minister say so, and the teachers too. But did his dying make God hate sin any less?

A. No, not at all. It shewed still more how much he hated it. But when Jesus Christ died he took our sin away from us; and you know when our sin was taken away from us, God would have nothing more to hate in us.

B. But how did he take it away, Alice?

A. By taking it upon himself, just as I might take your name upon me. Your name does not belong to me, you know, and our sin did not belong to Jesus Christ; but I could take your name, and wear it all my life, and for that matter you could have mine in exchange too. In that way Jesus Christ took our sin upon him and died for it, and so made an end of it. Do you know what the end of sin is, Betsy?

B. No.

A. Do you know what the end of sinners is?

B. It is to be cast into hell for ever. A. Yes, the only way of making an end of sin is to suffer its punishment, which is death. As it is said in the sixth chapter of Romans and the twenty-third verse, "The wages of sin is death;" and in another place, "Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." It is eternal death to those who are not saved through Jesus Christ, because they can never to all eternity suffer as much as is due to sin; but when Jesus Christ died on the cross he put an end to sin at once by suffering in his death as much as was due to the sin of men. The scriptures say, "in that he died, he died unto sin once." And thus Jesus Christ, by taking our sin upon himself, not only took away that for which alone God was angry with us, but by dying on the cross he suffered all that was due to us for our sin, and so

cleared us from eternal punishment in hell. So you see, as God is love, and hates nothing but sin, he can and does love us, with a love full and free, and therefore is well pleased with us when we come to pray to him; but then it is all because Jesus Christ died for us, or, as the Scriptures say, that "he put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." Now, I think you will see that there is reason enough for our coming to God through Christ.

B. Why, I can see, Alice, it is our being sinful that would hinder our coming to God in prayer, and that Jesus Christ has taken away that hindrance by dying for our sins, and so has made our way to God clear.

A. Oh, yes, clear! How could we come to God in any other way than through Christ? Suppose, now, we had all our sins upon us yet, how could God, so holy as he is, do anything else with us than he did with the devil and his angels,-drive us from him into hell to suffer for our sins for ever? I think it is plain, Betsy, that we could never have come near to God at all had it not been for Jesus Christ; and, therefore, I think it is quite as plain that when we come to God in prayer it must be through Christ, and through Christ alone.

B. I see. Well, then, is that what you meant when you said that if we were to come to God in any other way than through Christ, it would be like as if the blind beggar-man had rapped with his stick against the wall?

A. Yes, that is what I meant. If we do not pray to God through Christ, we can no more expect him to hear us than the beggar-man could think to be heard by rapping at the wall instead of at the door. And so when God says, "Knock," we must remember to come to Christ, for only then will God hear and answer our prayers. If we pray for God to forgive us our sins, we must ask him to forgive them through Christ, or for the sake of the death of Christ for sin; and so if we want anything else from God, we must knock there till we get what we want, and keep knocking, as the beggar-man did, till we get it, and we have no need to fear but that God will open to us, and give us all we want; for the promise is, "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you." But is it not almost chapel time?

B. Yes, I believe it is, for I heard grandmother getting ready. Come, let us go,

for I hate to be too late; and we can talk more about it as we go up the lane.

Obituary.

MRS. BROOKS, NEWARK. The dispensations of the Divine Being, with regard to his church and his saints individually, while passing through this vale of tears, are often involved in the profoundest mystery. We have been led to make this remark in contemplating the removal, by the hand of death, to her Father's house above, of our late friend and sister, Ann, the beloved and lamented wife of Mr. Andrew Brooks, of the Temperance-House, Beamond-Street, Newark, who fell asleep in Jesus, June 25th, 1849, aged 49 years.

Were we not assured that the Judge of all the earth does right, the removal of one whose longer stay seemed to us so very desirable, both for her family and the church, might perhaps lead us to cherish a want of confidence in the rectitude of the Divine administrations. However, it is our happiness to believe, that what we know not now we shall know hereafter, and an unspeakable consolation to be perfectly satis

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a woman of no ordinary attainments in piety and intelligence, and eminently exalted in the talent of intellectual conversation, especially on religious subtects, which were her delight. In her principles as a Baptist and a Nonconformist she was uncompromising, and was not ashamed fearlessly to advocate them on all suitable occasions. She was always ready for every good word and work,-willing to spend and be spent in the service of her Redeemer.

She was married young and called to endure much family and personal suffering and trial, all of which she was enabled to meet and surmount with an uncommon

degree of christian fortitude and courage: her mind being generally richly supported by the glorious doctrines of the grace of God; and frequently would she say with humble confidence, that the Lord had made with her, through the dear Redeemer, an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure, and that this was all her salvation, and all her desire. She was the mother of a numerous family of children, all of whom except three preceded her, we trust, to glory, most of them dying in infancy. And we earnestly pray that the three who remain will not disregard the many pious admonitions and prayers of their now sainted mother, but instantly prepare to meet her in the skies to be separated from her no more.

For several months past our dear friend appeared to be rapidly sinking under that flattering but generally fatal disease pulmonary consumption, which has at length brought her body to the grave. But death to her had no terrors, Christ having taken away its sting. Not a doubt was permitted to trouble her mind. With Paul she could

say, "O death where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory ?" And, with the same apostle, she was confident that the Lord would keep that which she had committed to him against that day. A short time before her departure, when taking leave of a dear friend, she pressed her hand and with a smiling countenance and confident tone of voice, said, "All is well."

As her end drew near her weakness and bodily suffering increased, and conversation was to her extremely difficult and painful. At lenth the hour of dissolution arrived,

and at her request prayer was twice offered to the Divine throne by her weeping partner. After which she said, "My dear, you did not ask the Lord Jesus to receive my spirit." On his enquiring if it was her. desire that he should, she instantly assented. When he had so done, she immediately repeated the words after him. "Lord Jesus receive my spirit," and she was shortly released from her clay tenement, and took her flight to the regions of everlasting life and glory.

Her death was improved on Sabbath evening, July 8th, 1849, by the Rev. J. Phillips, of Southwell, in a most impressive and faithful discourse from Eccl. xii, 1-7; a passage chosen by our late friend for the occasion.

Nothing in this very brief and imperfect sketch of one so greatly respected and sincerely lamented by a numerous circle of friends, has been said with a desire to exalt the creature, but to glorify the riches of Divine grace, as exhibited in the life and happy death of our departed friend and sister in the Lord.

May the writer and every reader of this narrative, follow her so far as she followed Christ. Amen.

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Miscellaneous.

CHRISTIAN UNION. The bond of union between Christians is love. This is the evidence of our discipleship, that we love one another. The influence of mutual love is to make church fellowship at once our delight and our honour. Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. Every member of a Christian church is under the most solemn obligations to endeavour to "keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace." How careful should Christians be not to give offence or to take offence. How lamentable is it to see members of churches absenting themselves from the table of the Lord, because of some difference with a fellow-dis

ciple, as if the imperfect conduct of another would abrogate the command, "Do this in remembrance of me." Instead of first seeking reconciliation with an offended brother, and then approaching the table of the Lord with a broken and contrite heart, the humiliating spectacle presents itself of one professedly the Lord's, refusing to partake of an ordiance which is to shew forth the Lord's death till he comes. "Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another." In order to preserve this peace there must be prayerful sympathy. "You are to rejoice with them that do rejoice, and to weep with them that weep.' "" "Be of the same mind

one towards another." "Mind not high things but condescend to men of low estate." The poorest, the humblest in the church has a claim upon the sympathy of his brethren; the meanest as well as the most eminent should be honoured as dear to Christ, and as useful to the body. It becomes you as fellow-members to comfort the feeble-minded, to strengthen the weak, encourage the fearful, bear one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.-From the Bristol Association Circular Letter, by the Rev. C. J. Middleditch.

THE FOLLY OF PERSECUTION.- No man ever did anything that was good, without meeting with terrible obstructions. The price you must pay for every kindness you bestow, is ingratititude; and the idea of a vicarious sacrifice or suffering seems to be perpetuated still,- one generation suffering that their successors may have privilege, or happiness, or peace; and when the noblest deeds were done, and the noblest lessons taught, the greatest persecutions then broke forth. But the anathema of the world never put down or scattered the children of God. It made them rise with greater energy, and gave to their spirits a nobler elasticity, and made their high souls capable of more heroic enterprises. In fact, persecution never yet, in the history of humanity, put down a good cause, and it never built up a bad one. It is a law which

God himself has made, that the arrow which is shot from the persecutor's bow rebounds and pierces the persecutor's heart. And hence, if the sword and faggot are ever to be employed in our warfare, let the one be unsheathed and the other kindled by the foes, not by the friends, of Jesus Christ. The cause of Christ disclaims them. "For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but spiritual, and mighty through God."Dr. Cumming.

LIVE FOR SOMETHING. Thousands breathe, move, and live-pass off the stage of life, and are heard of no more. Why? They did not a particle of good in the world; none were blest by them; none could point to them as to the instruments of their redemption; not a line they wrote-not a word they spoke, could be recalled, and so they perished, their light went out in darkness, and they were not remembered more than the insect of yesterday. Will you thus live and thus die, O man immortal? Live for something. Do good, and leave behind you a monument of virtue that the storms of time can never destroy. Write your name by kindness, love, and mercy, on the hearts of the ten thousands you come in contact with year by year, and you will never be forgotten. No-your name, your deeds, will be as legible on the hearts you leave behind, as the stars on the brow of evening. Good deeds will shine as brightly on the earth as the stars in heaven.

Entelligence.

THE FLY SHEETS, AND THE PRESIDENT'S VINDICATION OF CONFERENCE.

Wishing to give both sides the fullest hearing our time permits, we have read both these publications. We wish our space allowed a full notice of the latter. It is to us a melancholy proof of the blinding and corrupting power of connexion with a self-elected clerical corporation.

"Hence charter'd conferences are such public plagues;

And preachers, men immaculate perhaps
In all their private functions, once combin'd,
Become a loathsome body, only fit

For dissolution, hurtful to the main.
Hence preachers, unimpeachable of sin
Against the charities of domestic life,
Incorporated, seem at once to lose
Their nature; and disclaiming all regard
For mercy and the common rights of man, &c."*

The style of the Fly Sheets may doubtless be objected to; still there is much to excuse its homely inartificial character. It is the style of preaching most valued in the "Connexion," and it is Dr. Bunting's own style of "putting down" the obnoxious in Conference. We fear the gravamen of their offence is not the style, but the unrefuted matter of their charges. They attack the

High Tory Church and State Monarch of Methodism; attack his centralization policy, his clique policy, his rewarding of favourites, his punishment of remonstrants, and his engrossing for himself and agents all the most lucrative and important offices of the body. Now, seeing that all the time and zeal of the Methodist monarch and his cabinet have for several years been directed to find out the authors of the Fly Sheets, while one quarter of the effort would have sufficed to put an answer to them into the hands of all the ministers (and to them the circulation of the Fly Sheets was carefully limited), the public must conclude, that it was held a much easier course to stop the liberty of the press by punishing authors, than to answer their charges.

We do not for a moment suspect Dr. Bunting's pecuniary integrity, neither do we think £500 a year more than his abilities and diligence merit; but we object (if such be the fact) to indirect payment of salaries, and we have but too long seen with pain his success in imbuing the body with an ignoble Tory and servile spirit. Lord Glenelg's chastisement of the base servility of their missionary in Africa, in encouraging the colonial governor to murder the wretched

* See "The Task," Book iv.

Caffres, can never be forgotten. Methodist missionaries in our colonies do even more civil and social mischief than at home. They are every where the ready tools of corrupt governors; and they teach a like spirit to their people, and that, too, in the name of religion; all which we trace to the centralization and monarchy denounced in the Fly Sheets.

But Mr. Jackson's Jesuitical pamphlet has filled us with deep pain. Though not Wesleyans, we could answer all worth answering in it. Even the attempt to justify the Conference methodistically, is an utter failure. The long extracts from its Minutes have no bearing on compelling a man to convict himself of crimes deemed worthy of ecclesiastical death. They only prove that before admitting young men as ministers, they were carefully-and often very properly-interrogated; and that others present at district meetings and Conference, might be asked if they objected to any minister, on his name being called over, not that he might be compelled by a brotherly (!) question, to accuse himself of an offence, against which 500 dependents of a monarch and his cabinet were, literally, raving furiously. Then as to the famous law of 1835 (the year which sealed the bondage of Wesleyans, whether laymen or ministers-see Eckett's unanswered pamphlet), the law whose preamble falsely states, that it is merely declaratory, and which authorizes the putting of these "brotherly questions," -even this vile law, the very implement for slanderers and informers, is acknowledged by Mr. Jackson to be applied in the case of Mr. Everett in a novel way. On the other hand, the expelled ministers have amply shewn that John Wesley, and Wesleyanism too, until this year of slavery, required, in case of suspicion, 1st, that the letter of Matt. xviii. 15-17, should be strictly adhered to; 2ndly, that any charge against a minister should, with the name of the accusers, be furnished to him in writing, and in time for him to prepare his defence. We think the expelled have fully shewn, that they have only stood by Wesleyanism and Methodistical Equality, and opposed Buntingism and Methodistical Monarchy.

Mr. Jackson attempts to shew that the "brotherly question" system is scriptural! Joshua asked Achan "a brotherly question!" Peter asked Saphira one! He might have added the still more convincing instance, that Caiaphas asked Peter's Master several, which He refused to answer, and repeated them before Pilate, but still He answered nothing! Perhaps, had the spiritual barristers on the platform of Conference, imitated Caiaphas, or an Old Bailey counsel, more closely, and added, "Now, upon your oath, Mr. Everett," they might have elicited an answer. But whatever becomes of Methodist "rules" for detecting christian "elders" opposed to priestcraft, has Mr. Jackson never read a rule given to one who was a kind of Evangelist President, and given too by one whose -authority all other christian bodies think

equal, to say the least, to that of John Wesley, or even to that of the Conference itself? It runs thus, "Against an elder receive not an accusation but before two or three WITNESSES." Now, since the accusation was received without one single witness, on Mr. Jackson's own shewing, we must think. Methodist rules for discipline, and Pauline rules for discipline, to be at open variance. And, then, as to the whole spirit of the thing, imagine Paul directing the assembled elders of Ephesus or Rome, to ask each other annually "brotherly questions." Think of the apostle mounted on a platform with Silas and Timothy, and others as secretaries, putting brotherly interrogatories to those who accused him of making gain of his apostleship, and of lordliness! No, an apostle condescended (see 2nd of Cor. 10 chap. to the end) to answer the really slanderous Fly Sheet charges of his day, if they were at all calculated to injure the grand cause.

But Mr. Jackson has actually attempted to shew, that "brotherly questioning" is quite English. Mr. Offor, in a letter to the Nonconformist, has given this attempt its due.

But on what would our readers suppose he lays special stress as his most valuable support? On the marriage service of the Prayer-book! the "brotherly question before the ceremony, whether the parties know of any just cause or impediment, &c. Now, setting aside the question how far a half-popish service, legalized by half-popish parliaments and sovereigns, be now a worthy exponent of English feeling, what resemblance, we ask, is there between a question asked to prevent parties, of whom the clergyman may know nothing, from performing an illegal act, and asking known parties whether they have committed an illegal act. The question in the former case only implies, that amongst thousands of unknown individuals there may be those capable of doing wrong; it indicates no suspicion in a particular case. In the latter it implies a direct suspicion that the party is guilty; and English law, and the spirit of Englishmen everywhere, except in Conference, would reply, "If I have done evil, bear witness of the evil."

We may add, that we disapprove of the ante-marriage questioning. We, not having had a Methodist training, felt it un-English when addressed to us, and think that the marrying officer ought merely to enquire whether the parties are acquainted with the legal limitations of the right of marriages, to give them any requisite information, and not intimate suspicion even of strangers.

In concluding, we must proffer our thanks to Mr. J. for his putting the Weekly Dispatch at the head of the press in its righteous denunciation of spiritual tyranny, and the Dissenting press at the bottom; and for his assertion of our being piqued at the refusal of Conference to join the Anti-State- Church Association ! Dissenters expect that of such fawning adulators of Toryism and the Church as the Wesleyan Monarch and

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