wish! But I am a vile monster of iniquity. You little know what a compound of iniquity I am. Though, through mercy, I have been graciously kept outwardly, yet, alas! the plague of my heart none but God knows, and none but a long-suffering God could bear with me. O the riches of his long-suffering mercy! Well, I do trust I love him and long after him, and thirst after a full satisfaction of the joys of his salvation, and sigh to be delivered from this body of sin and death by Jesus Christ the Lord. (Rom. vii. 24.) Do you think I can have these feelings, and be nothing after all?

That the Lord may be with you, and bless you in your soul, is the prayer of your poor friend in the truth,

Preston, Jan. 27th, 1842.

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THE VOICE OF MY BELOVED.

J. M'K.

My beloved Sisters will rejoice to hear the praises of their dear Lord shown forth; they will rejoice to hear that the God of love and truth has been making his children receivers of his exceeding great and precious promises, and of the sweetest manifestations of his grace and love towards them. Indeed, my mind is so stored and laden with all the Lord's goodness, that I know not how to make mention of it; but I feel constrained to write to those who have prayed for us, that by them thanksgivings may abound to the glory and praise of God. Yes, you must praise our God, because one word has not failed of all the good things which he spake concerning us; you must praise him, because he has not only kept us stedfast by his power, but has caused us to triumph in Christ!

I will now tell you of that which I know will interest you, of our favoured visit to B-.

On Thursday, when we reached that place, we found —; and I can briefly say that every circumstance was so sweetly ordered by the Lord, that every hour was crowned with lovingkindness and tender mercies. The inward experience of the soul is that which most testifies of the goodness of the Lord; and this both my beloved A— and I had to say was of the most blessed kind. Whilst I leave it to her to speak the praises of her Lord, I would tell you, for his glory's sake, what he filled my earthen vessel with. Very near communion and fervent desires had been given me, and strong reflections on being made conformable to the death of my Lord, and of being planted in the likeness of his resurrection; but on Friday morning I was athirst for a message from Jesus, a message of affection, testifying, by his Spirit, his love for my soul. After waiting on him a little while, the words, "the Bride, the Lamb's wife," were applied to my soul with great power; and with repetition did the words reprove me for my anxiety after an assurance of his love, at the same time filling me with joy unspeakable, and full of glory. I was led after a while to remember how Joseph had dealt with Benjamin, saying to his servant, "Put my cup, the silver cup, in the sack's mouth;" "and the cup was found in Benjamin's sack;" and thus my soul knew Jesus had dealt with me. And then, though I

no longer needed a message from my Beloved, I waited upon him to give me one for my soul's joy; and the blessing of Benjamin was put into my mind by the Spirit,-"the beloved of the Lord." No words can describe the felicity of my soul by this bountiful supply of love and blessing from my precious Jesus.

I doubt not you remember how my soul was restless after this very experience about two months since. For one week I was quite importunate with the Lord about it, that I might realize my soul as "the espoused" of Jesus; and the Spirit did enable me to apprehend it in a blessed manner. But the strong witness of it seemed to be reserved for Friday, when I found the fulfilment of that assertion: "Thine eyes, they have overcome me!" It was blessed to my soul to find myself following Jesus in the ordinance of baptism, not as an adopted child, but as his own bride; it quite changed the character of the ordinance in my sight, and made me so full of joy to be permitted to do anything Jesus had done, that my heart gloried in the Lord.

It is because you are sisters to Jesus, my beloved, as well as sisters to me in him, that I tell you all about his love and kindness to my soul. You are necessarily interested in hearing of his praises; and I trust that it will make you both love him and rejoice in him more and more: My earnest expectation and my hope is, that he will be magnified in each of us; that with the mouth confession may be made of him, his praises shown forth, his love commended, and with consistency of life as well, our body, soul, and spirit being devoted to him, and him only. May it be thus with us: "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."

To dearest M- I give unfeigned thanks for having led me to reconsider the subject of baptism, a question which has not arisen in my mind for twelve months past, and has now so blessedly been fulfilled! I bless the Lord for his rich and free grace, and commend you both to his boundless love.

F. S:

"BLESSED IS THE MAN WHO TRUSTETH IN THE LORD."

My dear Friend in our glorious Head,-Yours I received, and should have written sooner, but was expecting to see you at Wallingford. I am glad to hear of your welfare in divine things, Sure I am that the Lord's teachings all tend to abase man and exalt Christ. And how much soever old nature may kick against this, the Lord will go on with his own work, in his own way, and bring his own people to be feelingly nothing in self, and all in Christ, so that with Paul they will say, "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." And sure I am that the real believer must, sooner or later, be crucified both to the religious as well as to the profane part of the world; for a worldly or fleshly religion is as much opposed to the honour of Christ as profanity. Blessed is that man whose God is the Lord, and who is brought, by the divine

teachings of God the Holy Ghost, to go out of self, and cling to, twine round, hang upon, trust in, and live on the Lord Jesus Christ. Come what will, it shall be well with such a soul.

Give my love to all friends, both at Wallingford and elsewhere. That the Lord may be with you and bless you, is the prayer of yours in the Lord,

May 12, 1832.

W. GADSBY.

A LETTER FROM THE LATE MR. MARRINER.

Beloved in the Lord,I hope that you and all the friends are well, and your souls abounding in hope, through faith in the blood of the Lamb. In this dark day, every beam of comfort, every encouraging intimation, every confirming testimony, and every sense of covenant mercy, is worth ten thousand worlds, and deserves our warmest gratitude. But this is the Lord's work also.

About two months ago, the Lord blessed my soul in such a way as I never felt before. I had such an overcoming sense of my worthless soul's eternal justification, such an assurance of my acceptance in the Beloved, as broke me all to atoms. My soul was as humble as a babe at his feet. I kept refusing it; but the Lord caused it to keep springing up, till I was lost in wonder at his condescension. My soul bowed in sweet adoration; my inmost soul blessed his cious name; and I sank down and wept under a sense that my sins, "which are many," were all put away by the sacrifice of himself. This visit killed me to everything but himself; and for three weeks it left a little savour on my spirit, enough to satisfy me that matters were right between him and my soul. O what a mercy!

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Since that time, I have sensibly found a darkness growing upon me. With all the heart I could feel, I begged the Lord to keep me from it; and I can truly feel that the dear Lord does not suffer me to sink under unatoned guilt, nor a fear of hell and death, nor under a fear of wrathful condemnation. My greatest distress arises from a keen sense of the Fatherly displeasure of Him whom my soul adores; and I can truly appeal to him, as the Searcher of hearts, (even if I were sure that there was no hell,) that he has given me such a sense of his goodness, that, if it were his will, I never would sin any more. But, however desirable this may be, I find, by painful experience, that I grow into a deeper sight and sense of my own vileness and baseness. And sure I am, if I were left of God, that there is not an evil but what I should greedily run into. Often, in thought and feeling, I am a companion for none but the basest wretch out of hell; and this I will say, however harsh it may sound in the ears of many, that I am brought to two settled points in my own soul. The one is, that my fallen nature is determined to damn my soul; and the other, that the dear Lord is determined that it shall not. I am often astonished at his kind interference, even in my daily walk. Sometimes he has deterred me when upon the very threshold of such things as would bring a public scandal, and destroy the peace of my own soul to the day of my death; sometimes he keeps an opportunity out of the

way when I have an inclination; at other times, when I have an opportunity, he is pleased to destroy my inclination. And although I have been kept, in some measure, from outward sin since the Lord took me in hand, yet I tell you, even trembling, that such have been the means carried on between God and my own soul, to bring me off from it, that they have been fearful in the extreme. I have told the Lord, under a sense of what I am, that I ought to be doubly damned, because I have sinned against his known goodness. But, however, under God's hand, it has wrought a little of the spirit of the Corinthians in my soul: "What carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge!" (2 Cor. vii. 11.)

I bless his dear name. He saves for his great name's sake. I often admire David, even in the greatest of his distress. He says, "For thy great mercy's sake, for thy lovingkindness' sake, for thy righteousness' sake." This is all we can plead at our best or worst estate; and I bless and adore his name for a free, full, everlasting, and suitable salvation; and I rest my sinking soul alone on his finished work. This is my daily stay and hourly rejoicing, that he hath put it out of my power to damn my soul.

I conclude under a sense that he has redeemed my soul from hell, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. All honour, all glory, all praise, and all power be to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Israel's One God, and my worthless soul's everlasting portion. Amen. Yours in love,

Oxford, Nov. 13th, 1830.

N. MARRINER.

[We have felt so much sweetness and savour, and have seen such a sincerity and reality in well nigh every line of Marriner's letters, that we must express our thankfulness to the friends who have favoured us with them; and if there be any more in their possession still unpublished, we shall feel obliged by the loan of them for insertion. They are what letters on spiritual subjects should be-simple, original, full of life and feeling, free from all affectation, without either feigned humility or presumptuous vain confidence, and breathed forth from a heart made tender in God's fear, and softened into contrition by the powerful operations of God the Spirit.-EDS.]

AWAKENED TO SEE THE DEPTH OF THE FALL.

Dear Friend, I have often thought of writing to you since I received your kind letter, but my mind is almost always in such a state of confusion that I know scarcely where to begin or what to say.

You have made a distinction, in your letter, between the poor in spirit and the spiritually poor;* and I fear that I belong to the latter, and have nothing of the former. I believe that the poor in spirit are blessed, because they have some tokens of the divine favour, and are sometimes enabled to rejoice, because they nave an evidence of all their sins being forgiven. But, my dear

Is not this a distinction without a difference? But we are very moles compared with some of the "eagle-eyed divines," who can split hairs which we cannot see without a magnifying glass.-EDS.

friend, I have lived more than fifty years in this world, and have not yet learned these things, except in the letter. I have, for many years past, learned that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, but fear now that it was only in the letter; and now I want him revealed to my poor soul savingly. I have been so burdened, inwardly, for nearly six years, with darkness, guilt, and fears of every kind, that my soul is distressed and cast down; and I have, during that time, often thought and felt in my mind that it was impossible that I could be saved. I find that I was born blind to every spiritual good, and that I am utterly an outcast, and have no power to recover myself; and my cry has often been, "Save, Lord, or I perish!" I am often a wonder to myself that the Lord should spare such as I am thus far; and when I look at what I am and have been, I cry for deliverance and salvation, but find it not. I want to feel my soul set at liberty. The Lord has said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." I want a great many things, but I will not tire you with them.

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I thank you for your kind letter of the 12th October last; and although I have never since acknowledged it, yet I have often thought of you, and have begun to write, but I am held fast in affliction, not in body, (I desire to thank God for that,) but "in darkness and in the shadow of death, bound in affliction and iron." (Ps. cvii. 10.) I am dumb, and can neither write nor speak; dumb before the Lord at a throne of grace, and cannot cry," Abba, Father!" and dumb before the children of God. I hear them tell of the wonders which he has done in their deliverance from death, and what he has done for their souls, and I am dumb still. I am dumb before the world; and I am also dumb in my own family. Although I have assembled with them, morning and evening, for nearly twenty-five years, to read his holy word, yet I fear that I never knew Jesus as my Redeemer. I never had a clear manifestation of the pardon of my sins; I never could see Jesus on the cross for me; I never had such a clear token of his love and an interest in his salvation as I now feel I stand in need of. But I feel as if I had always been under the law and in bondage; and for many years was satisfied with my state. My head was full of the doctrines of the gospel, without a saving, experimental feeling of their power by the Spirit of the Lord. This is the sad state I was in for many years, being blinded and deluded by a deceived heart, the world, and the devil.

I often read the promises quoted in your kind letter, but feel that I want help to take them to my soul's comfort and support. I believe they are set forth for sinners, and for those that in their feelings are lost, and yet I cannot take them to myself. O, my dear friend, my state of mind for the last six years has been miserable indeed. Jeremiah's words in Lam. iii. 7, 8, express my wretched condition: "He hath_hedged me about, that I cannot get out; he hath made my chain heavy. Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer." But, then, before he ends that long chapter of spiritual complaints, he says in the 57th verse, "Thou drewest near in the day that I called upon thee; thou saidst, Fear not." Now, my dear