baptized, how can it be bigotry to hold the necessary consequence of these opinions, namely, that christians who have not been baptized as believers, are self-disqualified for coming to the Lord's table? I. Why, he might consider our baptism to be valid for us, just as we allow him to be baptized. B. No, my brother, no one ever denied that Believers' Baptism is valid baptism, it is so clearly both commanded and practised in the New Testament; but we, with the apostle Peter, place the essence of Baptism in the conscientious profession, not in the outward act; not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience towards God." In our view, the ceremony cannot even exist without this answer of a good conscience. I. But you will surely allow, that if we are children of God, we have been baptized in the spirit. Is not that ground enough to authorize our communion with you in the Lord's Supper? B. Yes, to communion with us in spirit. If you ask us to be satisfied with your being baptized in the spirit only, you ought to be satisfied with our requesting you to commune with us in the spirit only. Let, we should say, spiritual baptism precede spiritual fellowship in the death of Christ; but let material, ceremonial, baptism precede material and ceremonial communion. I. Well, I will freely own that whether Strict Baptist opinions be right or wrong, they cannot in themselves be called bigoted. B. It is common with Independents to speak of open communion Baptists as acknowledging the validity of Infant Baptism. Even Robert Hall did no such thing. He states strongly that in his view Pædobaptists have never submitted to baptism at all. Open communion Baptists receive you as unbaptized; and if, like most Pædobaptists, they held the necessary priority of baptism to the Lord's Supper, they could not receive you to the Lord's table at all. I. But you said at first that we Independents are as strict as you, so far as principle is concerned. B. And I can make it good, too. What do you mean by communion? Do you mean communion in the Lord's Supper only, or in all the privileges of a Church of Christ? I. Oh, church fellowship is not worth the name, in which any Christian is denied advantages enjoyed by the rest. I mean certainly equal fellowship, although the Lord's Supper is more talked of. B. Just so. The Lord's Supper is more noticed; that alone enables unfair declaimers to raise a clamour against Baptists. All denominations limit the privileges of full and unreserved fellowship to those who are not only Christians, but who also agree with them on some subordinate points. Independents deny Baptists who join them an equal right with themselves in choosing a minister, for they will not allow the best pastor in the world to be elected if he be but a Baptist. They deny to Baptists an equal advocacy of their opinions from the pulpit, or, indeed, that they should be spoken of there except as false. And few are the churches in which a Baptist would be allowed to teach his opinions in the Sunday-school, or to spread them in the Church unmolested; that is, they deny a Baptist Christian "liberty of speech"-the liberty to teach what he thinks to be the mind of Christ. Poor freedom this to boast of giving us, brother! I. Well, I do begin to see that all sects are strict communionists in some things. The Methodists and Friends require conformity in more things than we do. B. And do not forget, brother, that though a Baptist may misinterpret the Bible, yet it is to no arrangements of his own, but solely to the Word of God, that he demands obedience. He acts on the ground of "the Bible and the Bible only." I. Well, my brother, I shall certainly not talk of Baptist bigotry any more. I had not thought of the subject; and though at first sight, what you do through conscientious and scrupulous regard to the commands of Christ, does look like bigotry, I am fully satisfied it is not. B. I am glad, my brother, to hear you say so. Certain I am that all Baptists would like to commune with you not only in the spirit but in the elements also, did not they fear violating the arrangements of Christ himself. If they err, it is in deference to what they firmly believe to be their Master's will. I. I quite allow it, and own that I sinned against my brethren in not taking into account their views and motives. B. But now bear with me, brother, if I beg you to "take the beam out of your own eye;" then, I think, your vision will be too clear to censure us again. I. What can you mean? B. I mean that the Pædobaptists should dismiss that pride in their alleged superior intelligence and liberality which disposes them most unjustly to think and speak of Baptists as narrow-minded and illiberal, while you are treating us with more illiberality than we treat you. I. You cannot really think so! B. I do. Besides innumerable local and social instances, there are several public ones. I have been informed by persons privy to the proceedings, that it was Independents who excluded the versions of our missionaries from the Bible Society, the Churchmen not being opposed to them ; it was certainly an Independent missionary, Mr. Gogerly, who began the attack on Baptist versions. This was exclusiveness we had never been guilty of. Baptists had never objected to Independent versions! Then when Mr. Barrett defamed our West Indian churches (an unlovely thing in the eyes of the world); and though a few noble-minded men did us justice, yet he was caressed by your body generally, and his portrait deemed an acceptable offering to it by the Evangelical Magazine! And, lastly, in the affair of National Education, the Baptists were for a general society, and the Independents for a sectarian one! I. I must own these things were unworthy of us. B. I have often remarked that if Baptists generally were inclining to open communion, the sectarian conduct of Pædobaptists would keep them back. Our time now will not allow it, but when we have opportunity to converse again, I will try to shew you, that those who baptize only intelligent agents, credibly renewed in the spirit of their minds, act on far higher and more spiritual principles than those who baptize unconscious babes, on the ground of their fleshly descent from believing parents. F. CLOWES. GOD'S WISDOM IN MAN'S SALVATION. BY THE REV. E. S. PRYCE. Of this subject how many are the illustrations! Some present themselves to the mind of the simplest servant of God; some to him, who, with strong intellect and devout heart, has long meditated on the wonderful method by which sinners are forgiven and saved; and some, possibly, are only discerned by spirits who have kept their first estate, and who, unconscious of the joys of pardon and reconciliation, esteem the ransom of man a mystery into which they desire to look. t The author of the human spirit, and of the work of salvation, is one and the same Being. It is to be expected, therefore, that the method employed by him in the gospel, in his appeal to the human heart, should be in accordance with a thorough knowledge of it, and adapted, by divine wisdom, to accomplish his benevolent purpose. Occasionally, in the history of human beings with each other, we may observe illustrations of the success of the method which God has adopted for man's salvation. Far removed, indeed, are all these earthly instances from the perfection which distinguishes the ways of God; but though the correspondence is feeble, consistent with mighty differences, and often undesigned, it is far from being devoid of interest to a religious and reflecting mind. The following instance of voluntary substitution in the endurance of punishment, and of the effect of it on the human heart, is related in Colman's Agriculture of France, Belgium, &c. It took place in Mettray, near Tours, at a French agricultural colony, intended for the instruction and improvement of condemned and vagabond boys. "Among the rewards given at the Institution, and those, extraordinary as it may seem, most coveted and deemed most honourable, are what are called 'tickets of favour.' These only entitle the possessor to obtain some mitigation of punishment for an offending companion, by bearing it himself. In one case, at the strong solicitation of the parents, a very unmanageable boy had been received into the Institution. Silence is always strictly enjoined at meal times. This boy, after repeated admonitions, persisted in violating this rule, when a monitor took him by the collar, in order to remove him from the table. The boy instantly stabbed the monitor, so as to endanger his life. For this offence he was sentenced to some months' imprisonment and seclusion, upon short allowance. "After being some time confined, the boys solicited his release, the boy who had been wounded among the rest, and who had a right to claim a favour. After repeated refusals, the master at length consented, upon condition that the boy who had been wounded should take his place, and suffer out the time that remained to complete his sentence. This being agreed to, and the wounded boy taking the place and the penalties of the criminal, the culprit was appointed to the duty of attending upon him and carrying him his food. The confined boy finished the time to which the criminal had been sentenced. In the meanwhile the culprit, witnessing the sufferings of the boy whom he had injured, and his magnanimity in undertaking to suffer for him, and the kind and forgiving conduct of the - whole school towards him, was so deeply affected by it, that it appeared to have worked an entire reformation of character, and he became, and had continued for a long time, one of the best boys in the school." THE LORD'S PRAYER. Our Father, God, great Lord of heaven, All reverence to Thy name be given; Thy kingdom magnify, until In earth like heaven, all do Thy will. Our every need each day supply, Thine is the kingdom, Thine the power, Through Christ may we Thy grace obtain, Trafalgar-Square, Peckham. S. DAVIS. Tales and Sketches. THE LAST SHILLING LOST. A TRUE NARRATIVE. It was a cold dismal-looking morning, in the month of November, the winter had set in early, and the usually thronged streets of Liverpool were not yet overflowing with the moving mass of men of business and men of labour, which, at a late hour of the day, might have relieved the eye of a looker-on by the variety it presented. The quiet of this great commercial town has always a something melancholic in it, arising from the association of ideas; its recent bustle, and recommencing hum, giving to the immediate and brief pauses of temporary dullness, some vague and indefinable connexion with moments between the successive shocks of an earthquake, or the loud howlings of the storm, when the sullen interval only silently announces the approach of additional violence. Mrs. S went to the window, looked out, sighed, and again sat down. The bible was open before her; she had been reading in it; but there was a restlessness about her feelings which prevented her deriving all the consolation she otherwise might have done from the sacred page. Two children stood beside her, one six years old, the other four; "Mamma," said the eldest, James and I are very hungry, do let us have breakfast soon." "I cannot, my dear boy," she repled, "till you have brought me some little things from the next street; and I have been watching the weather all this time, that you might not go out till the rain had ceased. It is now clearer; put on your cap, and hold fast the money which I now give you, till you reach the shop. It is my last shilling." Little Francis liked very much to run Mamma's errands. He was an affectionate, lively child, and contrived to find amusement wherever he went, without losing much time, or forgetting any of his commissions. But he had one little trick, which had he known how rude and disagreeable it is, he would never have practised. Whenever he was running alone, he would draw a small stick across the iron paling of the areas he passed, just to have the pleasure of hearing the hopping of the stick, and the twanging vibrations of the metal; on this 'occasion he forgot his stick and ran off promptly, promising to be careful and expeditious. He passed one large house, then another, wished he had his wooden companion, tried his naked hand on the iron rails, shrunk from the cold, and then applied the edge of the shilling. Alas, alas! It pitched with force and rapidity into the area below, and disappeared. The house was without a tenant; no search could be made; and poor little Francis turned deadly pale, as it struck on his heart, his Mamma's last shilling was lost! There is no sight under heaven so interesting as a christian in calamity. Nothing proves so convincingly the value of religion, as the aids it supplies, "when waves and storms go over the head." Mrs. Shad long known the gospel of Christ to be "the power of God unto salvation." In early youth she had become a "partaker" of that "precious faith," by which, "without the deeds of the law," we are "justified freely through the redemption that is in Jesus." Her family had been highly respectableher prospects in life bright and prosperous -her mind intellectual and cultivated; but when she decided to choose, with Mary, "that better part," every thing else became tributary, and of minor importance. The first of her kindred to receive "the love in the truth thereof," she "behaved herself wisely in a perfect way;" and by her conciliating, yet devotional spirit-by her prudent, yet exemplary conduct by her speech being" always with grace," she was made instrumental in winning most of them to walk in "wisdom's ways," which "are pleasantness," and in "her paths," which are peace." 66 But after years brought affliction to purify the gold; through many a furnace of this kind had she passed; still she maintained her integrity-lost nothing, save dross, and sweetly shone with light reflected, in successive nights of sorrow. Her husband feared God, but he had embarked a large capital in an unsuccessful business, became a bankrupt, gave up every thing to his creditors, and was, at the period when my little tale commences, in a distant land, struggling with adversity, and remitting from time to time all he could earn to his beloved wife and children. He had left her in lodgings in Liverpool, six months She had eaten little for some preceding days. The dear boys had just enough of bread and milk to keep them uncomplaining during the day before, and a small portion which they insisted Mamma must eat, had been by her secretly abstracted, and carefully kept, almost as by presentiment, till morning. › Francis entered. "Oh! mamma, what shall we do? I have lost the shilling." He burst into tears, and was violently agitated. "My child," said the heroic mother, clasping him to her heart, " weep not, it cannot be recalled. The Lord will provide." She placed him and his brother at their little table, produced the crust of bread and cup of milk, and drying the eyes of poor Francis, and kissing the cheek of little James, she retired to her bedroom, and carefully locked the door inside. Reader! art thou taught of God to pray? Knowest thou the felicity of calling him Father, feeling the relationship, and exulting in the deep consciousness of his paternal regards, when thou drawest near to a "throne of grace?" Have there not been seasons when thy rapt spirit, regardless of the cross that pressed, the difficulties that surrounded, the dark cloud that impending gave a sable hue to every earthly object, held communion with Deity; and time unheeded flew, whilst thou wast rolling thy every burden on the Lord, and feeling hat He sustained thee? Then may thy eye penetrate the hallowed seclusion of that chamber, thy gaze rest on that Christian mother, thy heart imagine her soul-engrossing engagement. She had a Friend, and there she went to meet him; that Friend was ever "swift to hear," strong to deliver, good to redeem, "mighty to save." "In six troubles" HE had been with her, nor did HE forsake her in the "seventh." Mark her clasped hands, her bended knees, her look of humble, confiding, grateful adoration. She pleads the promises, and recounts how often they had been already fulfilled. "Let not my Lord be angry; I will speak again; deliver my children from perishing; send us help, and that speedily, for we are cast upon Thee." Such was the prayer of one of the Saviour's followers; as like Jacob she wrestled, like him she prevailed. Her petition was granted; and, as in the case of Solomon, more than she asked was given. Her soul was filled with "joy unspeakable." No pain was felt, no grief endured; all was a delightful conviction that God was "for" her, and would, "in due season," make "a way of escape," and till then enable her to bear up, and " go forward." A loud knocking at the door at length aroused her. "Madam," cried the mistress of the house, "do come down stairs immediately; here is the strangest sailor-man I ever set my eyes on. He has got a book for you, and he won't give it to no one till as how he sees yourself, just as if I could not carry the book without soiling it. He says he promised to give it to you and he'll do it, that he will; and I may keep my sixpence; he's no porter. I wonder a man that swears as hard as he does, makes such a fuss about telling a bit of a lie." Mrs. S went to the sailor, re ceived the book, and on opening it, found inside a letter from her husband, giving hopes of a permanent provision, and enclosing five pounds for the present exigency. Reader! whoever thou art, remember the words in Job xxii. 21, " Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace, thereby good shall come unto thee." Seek an interest in Christ; never rest till thy sins are forgiven, through faith in his blood, and thou canst claim the inheritance of the children. "Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desire of thy heart" (Psalm xxxvii. 4). Closely cleave to Him, faithfully serve Him; give Him thy heart in youth; keep it with all diligence; and "when thou passest through the waters, He will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle, upon thee" (Isa. xliii. 2). And when the world tries thee, and the devil tempts thee, and the voice of consolation in the blessed scriptures is almost drowned by the noise of the surging billows; catch a gleam of hope from the mercy vouchsafed to others, and bear in mind that never was the heart of Mrs. S made happier, never was her |