ness as to the subject of conversion, he will endeavour to blind their eyes as to its true nature. If, for example, a person has been roused, by some means or other, to a sense of the utter vanity and unsatisfactoriness of worldly amusements, and the urgent necessity of a change of life, the arch-deceiver will seek to persuade such an one to become religious, to busy himself with ordinances, rites and ceremonies, to give up balls and parties, theatres and concerts, drinking, gambling, hunting and horse-racing; in a word, to give up all sorts of gaiety and amusement, and engage in what is called a religious life, to be diligent in attending the public ordinances of religion, to read the Bible, say prayers, and give alms, to contribute to the support of the great religious and benevolent institutions of the country.

Now, this is not conversion. A person may do all this, and yet be wholly unconverted. A religious devotee whose whole life is spent in vigils, fastings, prayers, self-mortifications and alms deeds, may be as thoroughly unconverted, as far from the kingdom of God as the thoughtless pleasure hunter, whose whole life is spent in the pursuit of objects, as worthless as the withered leaf or the faded flower. The two characters, no doubt, differ widely-as widely perhaps, as any two could differ. But they are both unconverted, both outside the blessed circle of God's salvation, both in their sins. True, the one is engaged in "wicked works," and the other in "dead works;" they are both out of Christ; they are unsaved; they are on the way to hopeless, endless misery. The one, just as surely as the other, if not savingly converted, will find

his portion in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone.

Again, conversion is not a turning from one religious system to another. A man may turn from Judaism, Paganism, Mahometanism, or Popery, to Protestantism, and yet be wholly unconverted. No doubt, looked at from a social, moral, or intellectual standpoint, it is much better to be a Protestant than a Mahometan; but as regards our present thesis, they are both on one common platform, both unconverted. Of one, just as truly as the other, it can be said, unless he is converted, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Conversion is not joining a religious system, be that system ever so pure, ever so sound, ever so orthodox.

A man

may be a member of the most respectable religious body throughout the length and breadth of Christendom, and yet be an unconverted, unsaved man, on his way to eternal perdition.

So also as to theological creeds. A man may subscribe any of the great standards of religious belief, the Thirty-nine Articles, the Westminster Confession, John Wesley's Sermons, Fox and Barclay, or any other creed, and yet be wholly unconverted, dead in trespasses and sins, on his way to that place where a single ray of hope can never break in upon the awful gloom of eternity.

Of what use, we may lawfully inquire, is a religious system or a theological creed to a man who has not a single spark of divine life? Systems and creeds cannot quicken, cannot save, cannot give eternal life. A man may work on in religious machinery like a horse in a mill, going round and round, from one year's end to another, leaving off just where he began, in a dreary

Death!

monotony of dead works. What is it all worth? what does it all come to? where does it all end? Yes; and what then? Ah! that is the question. Would to God the weight and seriousness of this question were more fully realised!

But further, Christianity itself, in all its full-orbed light, may be embraced as a system of religious belief. A person may be intellectually delighted-almost entranced with the glorious doctrines of grace, a full, free gospel, salvation without works, justification by faith; in short, all that goes to make up our glorious New Testament Christianity. A person may profess to believe and delight in this; he may even become a powerful writer in defence of christian doctrine, an earnest eloquent preacher of the gospel. All this may be true, and yet the man be wholly unconverted, dead in trespasses and sins, hardened, deceived and destroyed. by his very familiarity with the precious truths of the gospel-truths that have never gone beyond the region of his understanding-never reached his conscience, never touched his heart, never converted his soul.

This is about the most appalling case of all. Nothing can be more awful, more terrible, than the case of a man professing to believe and delight in, yea, actually preaching the gospel of God, in all its fulness, and teaching all the grand characteristic truths of Christianity, and yet wholly unconverted, unsaved, and on his way to an eternity of ineffable misery-misery which must needs be intensified to the very highest degree, by the remembrance of the fact that he once professed to believe, and actually undertook to preach the most glorious tidings that ever fell on mortal ears.

Oh! reader, whoever thou art, do, we entreat of thee, give thy fixed attention to these things. Rest not, for one hour, until thou art assured of thy genuine unmistakable conversion to God.

(To be continued if the Lord will.)

REFLECTIONS ON THE EPISTLE OF JUDE.

PRAYING IN THE HOLY SPIRIT.

He is

WHEN the sinner first receives the message of the gospel, and bows by faith to the name of Jesus, under a sense of his sin and guilt before God, the Holy Spirit, we know, is at work in that soul. There is repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. a child of God, though, for a time, there may be great feebleness of faith as to the completeness of the work of redemption, and as to his forgiveness and acceptance, in virtue of that finished work. But when he has learnt these further truths by divine teaching, he rests in that work, he has peace with God, he knows he has eternal life, and joy fills his heart. Now he is not only quickened as a sinner, but sealed as a believer.

There must at least be a moment of time between quickening and sealing. The one follows the other; as saith the apostle, "In whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise." And again he says, "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." The Christian is now indwelt by God the Holy Ghost, in whose power he prays, subject in heart and conscience to the word of God, and by whose indwelling he is united to the exalted Lord in glory.

This is the distinctive truth of the present dispensation, the believer's practical security against the evils that surround him, and most subservient to the one grand exhortation of the apostle, "Keep yourselves in the love of God."

THE MERCY OF OUR LORD JESUS.

The coming of the Lord Jesus is the grand future of the faithful. Though they may be endeavouring to keep themselves in the love of God; to build themselves up on their most holy faith, and to pray in communion with God through the power of the Holy Spirit, the end of all is, looking for the mercy of the Lord Jesus unto eternal life-for a life of eternal, unmingled blessedness, with our God and Father in the presence of His glory. The coming of the Lord to take us up to be with Himself, is here viewed, not as His love and faithfulness-though unchangeable in both-but rather as a mercy, for surely it will be a great mercy to be taken away from the presence of such mere formalism and abounding wickedness. The apostle Paul, in referring to the kindness of Onesiphorus, speaks of the Lord shewing mercy to those who had been faithful in a time of trial. "The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day; and in how many things he ministered unto me at Ephesus, thou knowest very well." (2 Tim. i. 16-18.) The special truth here is, the coming of the Lord for His saints, which is looked at as a mercy. The ungodly will be dealt with, and the unrighteous judged with all the workers of iniquity at the appearing of the Lord with His saints in full manifested glory.