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up prophets in it, enjoins us not to be rash in our judgment of what the prophet has uttered; not to be puffed up, and heady, and high-minded, because things may be said which we see not the import of; not to behave ourselves unseemly, by taking offence at any thing that occurs; not to seek our own private advantage in the work, but the benefit of the whole body of Christ; not to be easily provoked, either at the fall of a prophet, or at the improper conduct of others in the church; to think no evil of the prophetnot to think he is mixing up the flesh, and betraying his trust; still less to think he is given up to be possessed by Satan, or that God has suffered him to be deluded ;--not to rejoice in the iniquity or injustice with which we see the prophets treated; but to rejoice in the truth which we hear them declare; to bear all things for their sake, however offensive to flesh and blood; to believe all things and hope all things that are favourable to their claim of being the persons they assert themselves to be, and to disbelieve all things which make against that claim; and to endure all things for their sakes-to share their odium; to alleviate their reproach; to support them from sinking under the burden; to shield them from all cares or thoughts that may tend to quench the Spirit; and to protect them, so that they may have nothing to do but to wait upon their gift (Rom. xii. 7), that it may grow exceedingly, for the benefit of the whole body of which we and they are common members. A striking instance of genuine Christian love on one side, and gross violation of it on the other, was exhibited at the trial of Mr. Irving before the London Presbytery. The persons who sat there as judges, and who imitated the Spanish Inquisitors rather than the Justices of the Court of King's Bench, attacked Miss Hall; a young female of Mr. Irving's flock, who had conducted herself improperly. Mr. Irving might have endeavoured to conciliate his enemies by abandoning her to their malice, and renouncing all association with one of whose proceedings he could not approve; but he refused to do any thing so base; and nobly threw his ægis around her, declaring that she was a lamb of his flock, and that he was bound to carry her in his arms. The Chief Shepherd will reward him.

Oh the cruelty and hypocrisy of these Pharisaical slanderers! Oh their cant of love! the self-sufficiency of their contempt! Verily the Pharisees of Jerusalem were models of openness and sincerity in comparison with these miserable men. Angels of Laodicean churches, where the judgment of the people is preferred to the judgment of God! stars are ye indeed, but not in the hand of Christ; instruments in the hands of a licentious press; tools of your magazines, and of the sitters in your pews. Do ye never tremble in reading the judgments pronounced against the pastors? Find, if ye can, one class of society against which

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such fearful, and such reiterated doom is pronounced, as against the priesthood. Does not God declare he will spue you out of his mouth? There is no exemption of Evangelical, or of any other. Oh, deliver yourselves individually; as a body you are "found wanting." Ye compare yourselves with others, and think ye have a name to live, while ye are dead. Judgment is upon you. Is God unjust, or are ye faithless? for one or other must be the cause of your infliction. If ye have not the love of Christ's brethren in your hearts, ye are fitted for no place but hell ye cannot have love, if ye be not filled with the Holy Ghost; ye cannot be filled with the Holy Ghost, without his shining out of you. Cry for the baptism of the Holy Ghost; cry for gifts; and then only shall ye have love.

WHAT OF THE NIGHT?

"WATCHMEN, what of the night?" Answer this inquiry, ye who say ye are the Lord's ministers, and placed by Him to guard the walls of the city; ye who have called heaven and earth to witness that ye "have been moved by the Holy Ghost" to take upon you your several offices; ye who say ye have received gifts in succession from the Apostles; or ye who say that prelacy is the Apostasy, that ye have a purer calling. Ye masters of Israel, one and all; ye teachers; ye rabbies; answer us.

the watch

What! no voice! are ye "dumb idols?" are ye men of whom it is written, "his watchmen are blind; they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; dreaming or talking in their sleep; lying down, loving to slumber?" Are ye not they upon whom the people lean? Have nearly six thousand years of the world's destiny rolled on, and cannot ye tell the hour by God's chronometer? Know ye not whether it be the morning, the mid-day, or the evening watch? "The priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts: but ye have departed out of the way....therefore have I made you contemptible and base before all the people, saith the Lord." Are ye not, ye priests, base and contemptible, in the eyes of the people? Do not all mock at and scorn you, from the officers of state down to the lowest rabble in the street? Are ye not all alike despised, from the archbishop in his palace down to the lowest sectarian? Alas! that such things should be fulfilled before our eyes, of a Christian priesthood! Yet for all this is His anger not turned away, and the souls of the people will He require at your hands.

Hear then, ye poor of the flock. The Lord Jesus has arisen to

search out his flock, which has been scattered upon the barren hills of lifeless forms, and made to feed on the dry and profitless husks of man's wisdom. He hath sent His voice, yea, and that a mighty voice, into the midst of the churches; and the angels of the churches, who should have ruled the house for their Master, have said, This is the heir: let us cast him out, that the inheritance may be ours. But the love of Jesus is not to be quenched, and He has turned the heart of one pastor to bend to the voice of his Lord, and to put himself and his flock under the teaching and direction of the Holy Spirit. This coming of the Lord by and in the power of the Spirit, is to prepare his people to meet him; for he himself cometh quickly in person to take his people to himself. This time is that spoken of in Isaiah xlii. 14, and in all the Scriptures, which speak of the blessings to be given to the Jews after the coming of the King of Glory. They are now fulfilling in the Spirit to the spiritual Israel, to prepare them for the appearance of Jesus, as they shall be all fulfilled in the letter to the literal Israel, after the mystery of the Gentiles is closed.

The ordinary language of the Evangelical Preachers has had more truth in it than some of those who have written on the Second Advent have been disposed to allow, wherein they taught that the coming of the Lord is a spiritual thing wrought within the heart of the believer. The error of these teachers, however, was twofold: first, in denying a literal and personal coming also of Jesus of Nazareth; and, secondly, in teaching that the spiritual coming of which they spake was any thing less than the baptism of the Holy Ghost, the supernatural indwelling of God the Holy Ghost in power within a man.

The Holy Ghost has now come into men; the Spirit of Jesus has come into them; Jesus by his Spirit has come into them. The object is to prepare his people for his appearance in power, by filling them with the same mind that He has concerning all present things on this globe. This voice is the crying and roaring of Isai. xlii. 14: it is the stammering lip of prophecy and unknown tongues of Isai. xxviii. 11: it is the cry of the woman in travail of so many places in Scripture. The cry is one of complaint and agony: it arises from the bosom of Jesus, who is grieving at the bondage in which his members are held, so that they cannot get freedom and liberty to serve him. The Lord longs to fill his people with his Spirit, but their hearts are shut up, and they cannot receive it. In the days of his flesh he longed to tell all that was in his heart to his disciples, but they could not receive it. The Apostle felt the same when he grieved that his converts were carnal, and could only receive the milk, instead of the strong meat and wine of the kingdom. The Lord grieves over this; yea, weeps; and they who are filled with his Spirit weep also. We are called to have the mind that was, and

is, in Jesus; to feel the bondage in which our own spirits are, and to cry to Him to deliver us. It is for this deliverance that we are to plead, by reminding him, from Isai. li. 9, that it is he who of old delivered his people from the darkness of enlightened Egypt, and from the bondage of that mighty oppression. The cry of the woman in travail is the cry of the agony of flesh, out of which the Spirit is breaking forth, and by which it will no longer be restrained, and a far more stumbling thing to the carnal mind to witness than the cry of the stammering lip. The Spirit within us will not only break out in groanings which are unutterable, but in the piercing sobs of birth-pangs; and we shall realize to the letter the recorded experiences of Jesus written in the Psalms. Ah, ye savage destroyers of the church; ye foul schismatics, who are in rebellion against the Kingship of Jesus; ye who have taught the people that religion does not meddle with nations, but only with individuals; ye propagators of selfishness; learn the feelings which ye ought to have towards the doomed hierarchy of your nation, from those which the Evangelical Prophet experienced in the contemplation of the downfall of Babylon: "A grievous vision is declared unto me; therefore my loins are filled with pain: pangs have taken hold upon me, as the pangs of a woman that travaileth: I was bowed down at the hearing of it; I was dismayed at the seeing of it: my mind wandered; fearfulness affrighted me; the night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear unto me." If such were the agonies of a spiritual man in seeing the miseries to come upon the enemies of his people and of God, how far greater must they be which are experienced by a spiritual apprehension of the actual sufferings now endured by Christ's members, by the Spirit of God in his people bowed down by earthliness, by that body which ought to be, as a light on a hill, diffusing blessedness to the surrounding world!

The voice of the Lord within us proclaims the desolations of the church and of the state, and it puts to death our flesh, our wisdom, and our pride. It proclaims the war which the nations are about to wage with each other; blows the trumpet; gives the note of warning that the Jews are now to return to their inheritance; and takes us into the possession of the riches of the Spirit which Jesus received for us upon his resurrection. It sounds the alarm, but does not wage the war against Babylon; and takes us out of the city of confusion, out of a church of lifeless form, spirit-quenching ordinances, and earthly eloquence; for the Lord cannot destroy it until after his people are delivered. It lifts up a standard, to which the soldiers of Jesus, who have wandered into the camp of the enemy, rally, and shews that Satan has indeed come in like a flood. It is the Refiner's fire which purifies the sons of Levi, making them afterwards to offer

a pure spiritual offering, before it burns up the wicked like stubble. It is "the shout of the King amongst us," proclaiming aloud that God is in us of a truth.

The hand of the world's horoscope points to the Voice of the Lord as the stammering lip of Isa. xxviii. 11; the name that cometh from afar with a heavy burden, Isa. xxx. 27; the cry of the woman in travail of Isa. xlii. 14, and many other places; the guide of the blind, Isa. xlii. 16; the water on the thirsty ground, Isa. xliv. 3; the standard lifted up, Isa. lix. 19, xi. 12, xiii. 2, xviii. 3; the deliverer from Egypt, Isa. li. 9; the looser of the exile of Isa. li. 19; the guide of the sons of Zion, Isa. li. 18; the voice of the watchmen, Isa. lii. 8; the teacher of the children, Isa. liv. 13; the trumpet testifying of transgression, Isa. Iviii. 1; the visible glory of lx. 2; the mourning in Zion, Isa. Ixi. 3; the adorning of the bride, Isa. Ixi. 10; the perpetual cry of the watchmen, Isa. Ixii. 6; the rending of the heavens of Isa. lxiv. 1; the voice of noise from the city, the voice from the temple, the voice of the Lord, of Isa. lxvi. 6; the baptism of fire of Isa. xxxiii. 14; Ixvi. 15; the refiner's fire of Malachi iii. 3; the mustering of the sanctified ones, even the host of the Lord, Isa. xiii. 3, 4, 2 Chron. xii.; of whom the children of Issachar are the heads, 1 Chron. xii. 32; the threatening to those who are at ease in Zion, and feel not for the suffering of Joseph, Amos vi. 1; the call to arise out of the polluted flesh, Micah ii. 7—11.

There are many amongst our readers, who, having not despised prophesying, know that the time of the Lord's advent, the hour of his judgment, is come, and who have been long praying for his appearance. They have done well; but are they all sure that they are ready? the Lamb's wife makes herself ready: two cannot walk together unless they be agreed a marriage union cannot be happy where the tastes, sympathies, judgment, and feelings are at variance. They who are to compose the bride of Jesus must be of one mind with Him in all things: the experience of her Husband in the Psalms and Prophets and Apostles, must be hers: she must have known and tasted of his sorrow, before she can be prepared to taste his joys: she must weep with those that weep, as well as rejoice with him who rejoices: she who would reap in joy, must first sow in tears. Ye who long for the appearance of your Lord, cry earnestly to be filled with his Spirit, that ye may be prepared for him; that ye may have oil in your vessels, as well as in your lamps; that, being indwelt of God, his never-failing fountain and source of holiness and love may flow through you with mighty power, destroying your flesh in its course, and blessing all around you; that God may be manifested in flesh through you, and through all the other members of Jesus.

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