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to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. If the righteous scarcely be saved, how shall the sinner and the ungodly appear? May our minds be deeply impressed with the serious fact! May the motions of sin die within us, and we be sanctified and made holy! God is holy, Jesus is holy, heaven is holy, and nothing unholy shall enter there. To become holy is absolutely necessary for those who shall dwell in the presence of all that is holy. Sanctification is only complete at death; and then it must be complete, for there is no working in the grave. Come, then, let us, with seriousness, pray for the Spirit to sanctify our souls, and make us meet for the heavenly kingdom.

LETTER XXII.

Ye good distrest!

Ye noble few! who here unbending stand
Beneath life's pressure, yet bear up a while,
And what your bounded view, which only saw
A little part, deemed evil, is no more;

The storms of wintry Time will quickly pass,
And one unbounded Spring encircle all.

THOMSON.

Edinburgh, 15th November, 1821.

THEY Who fondly take to themselves the appellation of liberal, are too frequently found to be the practical advocates of immorality; and if we examine them narrowly, their boasted liberality flows more from carelessness about religion, than from zeal for the glory of God.

Those

Some have even dared to question the mercy and truth of God, in commanding the Israelites to take possession of Palestine by force of arms. princes who have depressed vice, and raised virtue -who, with unsparing hand, have laid low the head of the wicked, and made the righteous to flourish-have, in all ages, possessed the esteem of

mankind; and those imbecile princes, who, from want of decision of character, have feared to shew their love of virtue, by restraining the aggression of the wicked, have, in all ages, been held in contempt. We praise the individual who seizes the brand to turn the battle from the gate, when he sees his country overwhelmed with barbarians; we praise the person who boldly steps forward to pro tect virtue, though it should occasion the death of the aggressor; but still more do we praise the heralds of the gospel, though their preaching should stir up the wicked to destroy its followers. In action we only consider that person noble who is guided by the eternal laws of justice and truth, and who acts independent of foreign influence. But how shall we, who are the offspring of a day, and may in an hour be laid in the dust, assuming a freedom of thinking and acting, with impious thought limit the Almighty, and question the mercy of Him who gave his Son a ransom that sinners might be saved.

Jehovah is sovereign above all law; countries separate not his government, for he is over all and above all. The heathen inhabitants of Canaan had rejected him as their God, and obeyed not his law, but gave themselves up to the lusts of their depraved hearts. A time of visitation was given them for repentance; but every generation became worse than their fathers. To sweep such

a race from the earth was shewing mercy to those who had not followed their ways, and proved that the judgment of their sins came from the hand of Heaven. They were not ignorant of his judgments in Egypt, of his drying up the Red Sea, and of the command the Israelites had got to take possession of the land of their fathers. Notwithstanding this they took not warning; they brake not off their sins, neither gave place to the command of God.

Forty years did the sons of Jacob traverse the desert; they were fed with manna from heaven, and water from the rock; a pillar of cloud was their guide and covering from their enemies; they heard their law given from Mount Sinai, amid thundering and lightning, and blackness and darkness; the earth had opened, and swallowed up the rebellious amongst them. All this could not be hid from neighbouring nations, and particularly those nations whose land Israel had left Egypt to take possession of. The cutting off the nations to make room for them, was an act of judgment for iniquity, and an awful display of the sovereignty of Deity, shewing his abhorrence of sin, that the earth is his and the fulness thereof; and that he worketh by whatever means it pleaseth him, whether by the convulsions of nature, the sword, famine, or pestilence, the judgment is the same; but that he should choose his own people to be the ministers of wrath,

is contrary to his usual dealings in his providence. But the Jews, though chosen of God to be the depository of his oracles, and from whose race Messiah was to spring, were not all the spiritual children of God; they were a typical nation to the world, and a living figure of the last and eternal separation between the precious and the vile. Abraham was chosen of God as the father of the faithful; but his seed is spiritual, unstained by the blood of man, the children of peace, and heirs of the covenant.

The flood swept from the earth all mankind, except one family which feared God. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire from heaven, only Lot and his two daughters escaped. The convulsions of nature have buried in oblivion populous cities, and sunk their inhabitants in the shades of everlasting night. The wide-spreading torrent of burning lava, issuing from the crater of volcanic moun tains, has made a desert of fertile regions, covering in its course towns, villages, and cottages, with all their inhabitants. The lightning's flash has, in a moment, laid many in the dust; the falling of avalanches has buried the unsuspecting peasantry in a depth of snow from which no human power could extricate them. The sea has ingulfed many of our race; and the scourge of war has made kingdoms desolate, destroying alike the righteous and the wicked. That God permits such must be resolved in his sovereign

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