(Num. xx. 24;) and many a night has she spent in deadly struggles with the prince of the power of the air. Such a season is not the time for singing. It is hard work to maintain a hope that the Lord will yet appear. Those who never feel a carnal heart rising up in rebellion against the Lord's dispensations, would not have found communion with Margaret Bibby. But she had also her bright seasons, when the Lord made himself known to her as the beloved of her soul. Once, when very ill, she sent for a friend, that she might relate to her the blessed experience of the past night. "I have had." said she, "such manifestations of the love of God to my soul, that I am scarcely able to contain myself for joy." This is some years ago, and the friend alluded to did not at that time expect her to get better. She appeared to be on the brink of eternity, awaiting her dismissal with inexpressible delight. But the time appointed was not come. She had yet to wade through many a deep of tribulation. I trust I never shall forget the answer she once gave me, on quoting to her Acts xiv. 28; "It is through much tribulation we must enter the kingdom." "Yes," she replied, "through, it is through; the Lord will never leave his people in the midst." For the last twenty years she has been subject to violent attacks of asthma, which have often threatened her life. At length the messenger arrived. During the week before, she had evidently been sinking fast, and her strength failed much.

On Monday, September 23rd, a friend saw her in the morning, and asked her how she felt in her mind. She said, "Very comfortable." I saw her in the evening, when she said, "Christ is my all in all.” She breathed with difficulty, and it was with great exertion she could speak at all. After a little interval she exclaimed, "He is dear," which she spoke with all the emphasis she could. Some time after, she requested the friends who were present to sing a hymn, and engage in prayer. The 328th of the selection was sung,

"Afflicted saints, to Christ draw near,"

which she seemed to enjoy much. From this time she scarcely spoke, and about three o'clock on the Tuesday morning, she gently breathed her last. Thus died one who had for many years known and loved the truth. She was not merely informed in her judgment, and acquainted with the bare letter of the truth in the word, but by the Spirit's teaching was possessed of the very life and power of true godliness, an experimental knowledge of her misery and her mercy. In this awful day of flaming profession, how few there are like her, really brokenhearted; plagued without and plagued within. The Lord grant that more of your readers may be manifested as being of this class. Bolton, October 5th, 1839.

SPIRITUAL CORRESPONDENCE.

W. B.

TO THE EDITORS OF THE GOSPEL STANDARD. Messrs. Editors,—One of your correspondents wishes to know, if there are any "ministers of the gospel" in several places which he names, and Wells is included. Now for Wells, I answer in the negative. True, there are many who call themselves and are called gospel ministers; such are now as common in England as trees in a wood; but they have only the name. There are many about us who are advancing old wives' fables, intruding into those things they understand not, vainly puffed up and puffing up the fleshly mind, propagating lies in hypocrisy, or truth in the letter of nature's ability, building up hypo

crites, and fighting against the saints. If the preaching of the men in and about Wells be true, then believing is the easy work of the creature, and not the exceeding greatness of the Lord's power.

These preachers never had any soul questions to answer, that defied the light and learning of the natural man, nor any objections raised in their consciences by self aud Satan, that nonplusses their natural religion to silence. They were never snarled at by sin, guilt, and providence, so as to be like a bull in a net, full of the fury of the Lord. They were never brought down with their own shame and confusion covering them; therefore, they cannot tell how God the Spirit works in the soul. They cannot describe the feelings of a living man, nor touch his case, or explain his path.

I have crooked things to cope with, but they cannot ministerially make them straight. I have rough paths to walk in, but they cannot make them plain. I want stumbling blocks removing, but they cannot remove them. I want a high way cast up and a standard lifted up, but they cannot do either the one or the other. I want a seeing guide, but they are blind. I want watering, but they are clouds and wells

without water.

If you, Messrs. Editors, will indulge me, I will in a few words tell you how things have been with me, under such preaching and preachers as these parts are deluged with. One night my heart was meditating terror; I was overflowing with rebellion; I was accusing and condemning the Lord, because he had not prevented me bringing myself into condemnation. These were my thoughts and words as I walked alone, "Why did not the Lord keep me from sinning in the way I have sinned? Why did he let me run to the awful lengths I have run, and then damn me for it? He could have prevented me, but he would not. O what a wretch am I, and how cruelly the Lord has dealt with me. What a pitiable estate is mine, and yet I share no pity in the heart of Him whose pity will avail in my soul's salvation." I felt enmity boiling up in my heart against the Lord, beyond what I dare to name. In the midst of these musings, these words came to my mind, "To the praise of the glory of his grace." In that moment I was thrown down, covered with shame and confusion; my mouth was stopped, for I saw and felt that if the Lord kept and saved me, it was to the praise and glory of his grace; but he was under no obligation to save me; I had no claim upon him for his keeping and saving power. It was to the praise of the glory of his grace, and he therefore had in himself good right and lawful and absolute authority to choose upon and in whom the glory and praise of his grace should shine forth, in keeping and saving. was occupied in these musings until I came to the door of what is called a Calvinistic chapel, which being open, I went in, and the preacher's text was, "To the praise of the glory of his grace." I felt my bowels move within me when he read the words, and a hope sprung up in my heart that I should that night have my case fully opened and made plain, and no longer remain in doubt as to whose or what I was. I durst not say I was one of the Lord's, yet there was a something in my soul that cried after the Lord; what that something was, I did not know, nor could any of the preachers which came within my reach tell me. I was sinking in despair without hope, and, as I often said, without God in the world; and yet, I found in spite of myself, there was a hope, which kept me waiting on the Lord. to end my poor scrawl. The preacher never touched my case in any one particular; yet there were many good doctrinal truths spoken, all which in the letter I knew equally with the preacher. I returned

But

home a poor wretch, despairing yet hoping, sighing and groaning, yet calling myself a thousand fools, to be so troubled about that which could never be cured. When at home, I began musing upon what I had heard, and my awful estate before God, and these questions sprung up in my thoughts; Has the Lord sent these men to preach? Are they servants of the Lord, taught and endued by him with power from on high? I was afraid to think otherwise. But again, I thought, If Jesus has sent them, how is it they cannot touch my case, nor describe it, though the Lord, whom they call their Master, sometimes, in a little measure, opens and describes my case. Now, if they were sent by Jesus, they would have the Spirit and mind of Jesus, and that would gualify them to enter into, and unfold the exercises of my poor soul; but as I never found one of them that did, or could come near it, therefore, I must say, these men are not ministers of the gospel; rather they are, as the Holy Ghost hath said, witches and wizards, that do nothing but peep and mutter out of the dust, where they crawl, serpentlike, but are strangers to plainness of speech, according to an experimental knowledge.

I dare not now call a man a gospel minister, although he can explain to me the truth as it is stated in the book. I want the Spirit and power of the word opened up to me, as it has been wrought in my heart's experience. I want to know how God the Spirit works by the word, and what part of the word it is that is living and working in me, what feelings are created by it, and what is the nature of it, and from whence comes the opposition against its workings, which I every day feel. In the book it is a dead word, that will be destroyed; but in Jesus, and in the soul's experience of them that are his, it is the living word that liveth and abideth for ever; but our divines do not understand this.

Wells,

1839.

ERUDITUS.

Messrs. Editors,-There has come out the most virulent and contemptible stuff I ever saw in my life against the truth of God. It is printed at Marlborough, Wilts. It is printed on the side of a sheet of paper, and people are recommended to paste it up in their houses. The paper I allude to is called, "On Calvinism and Antinomianism." O my soul, bless the Lord that thou hast not come into the secret of the rubbishy writer thereof. The venom, poison, ridiculous and most terrible abominations of the writer are beyond everything. Whatever can the writer mean? He libels every truth of God. He drives right ahead against the whole plan of salvation. He jeers all the solemnities of revealed religion. He brings old covetous Bishop Tomline to support him. Tomline, the Arminian's and the writer's prop, was notoriously covetous, which is idolatrous. Adam Clarke is signed at the end of it; and if any one could extract one drop of gospel out of Adam Clarke's farrago of books, he might be immortalized as a doer of impossibilities. The putter-out of the above sheet at Marlborough, Wilts, and all such like persons, I wonder what Satan thinks of. The sheet is to prop up the most nauseous free-will, universal redemption, man's power, and God's servility. One line of the man's poetry will sicken you to the back-bone. It is this:

"Heaven but persuades; almighty Man decrees."

Did you ever hear such stuff? Such a writer ought to be put in a glass case to be looked at as a great curiosity; but the poor thing is not

worth taking notice of. I think I understood that it was a parson who had it printed. This proves what Huntington says, that parson-making is the devil's employ. Why? Let the adorable Lord answer; "The blind lead the blind." Satan begets, nurtures, and finishes off the blind leaders, and then all is right. The leaders (like the putter-out of the trashy paper I have alluded to) being secured, the blind followers of such blind guides are guided captive by the prince of hell at his will. As says the apostle, "Led captive by the devil at his will." As the freewiller has attempted rhyme, so must I. As he is as bitter as a wasp against predestination (for predestination is what he is knocking his knuckles against all through the paper) I must strike a stave not in concerto, to the poor creature. But the flat abomination of his whole paper, is what I do not like to soil my hands by even alluding to. I wonder what the Marlborough folks think of the Adam Clark-y writer of the dish of free-will he recommends them to paste up in their houses? He vilifies predestination as the "devil's doctrine"! I revere predestination as in God's hands the supreme arbiter, guide, aud witness of my whole life, both in providence and grace, and all the circumstances thereof. I believe the devil believes in predestination about every thing. "Thus far shalt thou come and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." It is a wonder how the devil can therefore set men on to vilify predestination. But here is the old serpent's matchless effrontery; he sets men on to fight like dragons against what he knows to be true. Thus, the bigger lie, the more the devil is thereby pleased. O, shocking! What a nest of false witnesses, like a nest of hornets the old serpent does set off a-flying and buzzing over this earth we are living on! And no wonder, for the devil being the false Christ as well as the god of this world, need we wonder at his having flocks of amanuenses like the Marlborough writer? But what an awful thing, that the sublime and eternal truth of predestination should be flown at waspishly, both by the learned as well as the unlearned, by the peasant, and the prince, by the clownish and polite! But so it is to be! The gospel is to be a stumbling-block to all but the elect. They stumble both at the incarnate and written word whereunto also they were appointed. (1 Peter ii.) The chapel of truth in Marlborough has been sold to the Papists; for the Ranters are only Papists modernized and vamped up afresh. O, horrible times! Baxterianism, Arminianism, Fullerism, and such like trash are spreading. Martin Luther and John Calvin are flat against the profession of the day. Universal offers, universal sufficiency, and a universal atonement, are the strange doctrines and wild-fire of this missionary-phrenzied, falsely religious age. Mongrel and not heaven-made preachers are shouting away in a false gospel in nearly all the pulpits of the land. A mongrel preacher is one taught of man, and not of God; one taught of self and not supernaturally; in the letter and not in the Spirit. God is a Spirit, and can only be worshipped in God the Holy Ghost. Therefore every letter preacher is only a conjurer. "Because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines." (Isaiah ii. 6.) "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His." "Sensual are they, not having the Spirit." "But these speak evil of those things which they know not; but what they know naturally as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves. Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core." (Jude 10, 11.) "But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed." (2 Peter ii. 12.)

Abingdon.

'Tis predestination's glow,

Lights my steps while here below;
By that sovereign truth's high blaze,
I do trace out all my ways.

'Tis God's blessed Spirit shines,
Marks decreed and boundary lines;
All events, in his control,
Predetermin'd, shining roll.

O, my soul! the wicked stand,
To be dash'd at his command;
Pillars shatter'd, through the fall,
Softening ne'er at mercy's call.
Vast tremendous waves, too, roll,
Piercing o'er my ransom'd soul;
But the sea that sinks the goats,
Wafts to harbour favour'd boats.

I. K.

Dear Sirs, In reading the Gospel Standard, I have, at times, felt my soul refreshed, strengthened, and encouraged, except I am awfully deceived, which I very much fear I am, as all my past experience seems to have been begun and carried on only by the flesh and Satan; and although I have had very many seasons when I could, with all the familiarity of a child, call God my Father, and seem to feel myself to be his adopted child; yet, it seems to me that it was only the natural passion excited, which so terrifies my soul from day to day, and month to month, that I am ready to give up all for lost; and had not an unseen hand preserved me, I should long ago have plunged myself into an awful eternity. That I am out of hell to the present moment, only attribute to the wonderful forbearance of God.

can

I have submitted the following brief sketch of my experience to you, hoping God may enable you, if it is his sovereign pleasure, to drop a word of encouragement to a desponding, hell-deserving sinner.

The first convictions I had of sin were in childhood. When four years old I feared to sin against God openly, lest he should strike me dead, and send me to hell. When I grew older, these impressions wore off, and I became by degrees, as I advanced in youth, one of the most notorious characters in almost every species of crime, till I had almost reached manhood. While in this state I had, at times, great terrors and distress of soul, for I sometimes thought the devil would take me away bodily. At such times I would promise, if spared, to do better; but the more I promised amendment, the more I fell into sin. While in this state, the house of God was to me a prison, and but seldom did I enter it. But it came to pass, on a certain day, that from very abominable motives I entered the house of God, where, to my great surprise, I heard, from the pulpit, my character described, even my very thoughts, with which the minister pronounced several awful threats against me, and on hearing which I verily believed the earth would swallow me up, and I should sink to hell to suffer for my sins. agony of soul it produced I cannot describe. After my feeling of horror was abated, I resolved to act differently, and be very pious, which I was told was my duty. But how to part with my companions and choice amusements I could not tell, as they were very dear to me, and I was equally ashamed to be religious before them. For some months I endeavoured to act better, and prayed God to help me to leave my sinful ways and pardon the past. In this way my horror of

The