drawn in by some of the clans of hell; perhaps forced, as it were, against the settled judgment of the soul; and perhaps, through weakness and infirmity, could not get out of the way; or from ignorance of the crime, or from extenuation of the guilt, or from being hurried away into the service of the invader without so much as giving time for a cool thought. And sometimes the poor soul has been a galleyslave, wishing for deliverance from the bondage of corruption, and crying out of the load and fetters of sin, and saying with one of old, "Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name." The high court of judicature hears particularly the relenting groan, and the Attorney-General of heaven has compassion enough to put in a petitionary plea for the guilty wretch whose hand is still upon the bar; but the dead warrant is come down from heaven for the execution of sin and all the heads of the clans of hell: "Mortify, therefore, your members which are on the earth, fornication," &c. So, if an eye or hand offend thee, cut it off. A reprieve, at last, has been issued out for the soul; and the repenting rebel has gone again in pursuit of those invaders of the peace and court of grace. The soul, having laid hold of some of them, cries out for justice and revenge against these traitors in his own breast, and lays the sacrificing knife to the throats of these brats of hell. But how often have they raised up their seemingly dying eyes when on the very block, and asked for pity, and during the very execution have done much to make me bleed and groan afresh! I hope, at times, that they are being crucified; but crucifixion is a lingering death; and I find that they still have life, which, with the help of Satan, their grand ally, they too often discover. They break out again; and all that I can do is to cry out, "Murder, murder!" to the Lord Jesus. I may truly call them murderers; for they often destroy my peace and comfort. I long to see them dead. I desire your prayers for the poor wounded, but your affectionate, humble servant, Everton: JOHN BERRIDGE. POETRY. "FOR IN THIS WE GROAN." 2 Cor. v. 2. A groan that comes up from the heart, I groan and sigh, as under load; That groan the Spirit doth impart; I groan, and thirst, and pant for God. That, when my groaning days shall cease, And hedge me up on ev'ry side! I thee may know the God of peace." With grief I think I must have died, Well might the Lord with vengeful frown,That Jesus Christ, the sinner's Hope, But, ah! what matchless, sov'reign grace,A word of his our joy will raise, J. C. GLEANING. The soul, like the woman mentioned Mark v. 26, wearied with vain expedients, finds itself worse and worse, and is gradually brought to see the necessity and sufficiency of the gospel-salvation. A man may soon be a believer thus far: that he believes the word of God; sees and feels things to be as they are there described; hates and avoids sin, because he knows it is displeasing to God, and contrary to his goodness. He receives the record which God has given of his Son; has his heart affected and drawn to Jesus by views of his glory and of his love to poor sinners; ventures upon his name and promises as his only encouragement to come to a throne of grace; loves the Lord's people, accounts them the excellent of the earth, and delights in their conversation. He is longing, waiting, and praying for a share in those blessings which he believes they enjoy, and can be satisfied with nothing less. He is convinced of the power of Jesus to save him, but, through ignorance and legality, the remembrance of sin committed, and the sense of present corruptions, he often questions his willingness; and, not knowing the aboundings of grace and the security of the promises, he fears lest the compassionate Saviour should spurn him from his feet. While he is thus young in the knowledge of the gospel, burdened with sin, and perhaps beset with Satan's temptations, the Lord is pleased at times to favour him with cordials, that he may not be swallowed up with over much sorrow. Perhaps his heart is enlarged in prayer, or under the preached word, or some good promise is brought home to his mind, and applied with power and sweetness. He mistakes the nature and design of these comforts, which are not given him to rest in, but to encourage him to press forward. He thinks he is then right, because he has them, and fondly hopes to have them always. Then his mountain stands strong. But ere long he feels a change; his comforts are withdrawn; he finds no heart to pray; no attention in hearing; indwelling sin revives with fresh strength, and perhaps Satan returns with redoubled rage. Then he is at his wits' end, thinks his hopes were presumptuous, and his comforts delusions. He wants to feel something that may give him a warrant to trust in the free promises of Christ. His views of the Redeemer's grace-fullness are very narrow; he sees not the harmony and glory of the divine attributes in the salvation of a sinner; he sighs for mercy, but justice seems against him. However, by these changing dispensations, the Lord is training him up and bringing him forward. He receives grace from Jesus, whereby he is enabled to fight against sin; his conscience is tender, his troubles are chiefly spiritual troubles, and he thinks if he could but attain a sure and abiding sense of his acceptance in the Beloved, hardly any outward trial would be capable of giving him much disturbance.-Newton. THE GOSPEL STANDARD, OR, FEEBLE CHRISTIAN'S SUPPORT. "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled."-Matt. v. 6. "Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began."-2 Tim. i. 9. "The election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded."-Rom. xi. 7. "If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest.-And they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him.-In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."-Acts viii. 37, 38; Matt. xxviii. 19. No. 98. FEBRUARY, 1844. WRATH. VOL. X. In answer to a request from Frome, I send the following two or three hints on Psalm lxxvi. 10; "Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain." And a sense of the shortness of time, and one's own heart being both as tinder-box and sparks, might make any one shy and backward to have any thing to do concerning mortal wrath. But I think there should always be two considerations (and no doubt there are those two considerations always more or less) riveted in all justified men as regards it. First. How all wrath on God's part is virtually ended, buried and sunk, in respect to the redeemed, when the sweet Lamb of God sunk and drowned it with himself, as mediator in regard to his favourites, in the sea of atonement, blood, and mercy, as far as to all vindictive feelings, for evermore towards his own. "As the waters of Noah shall no more go over the earth, so have I sworn that 1 would not be wroth with thee." And the second consideration is, that "the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God." Wherefore we, on our part, are to give place unto this wrath, (not to fulfil it). Wherefore revenge, bitterness, and all ungodly violence, are to be put away from saints. How amiable, therefore, is Christ, in the fulfilling and being the end of the fiery law, from which wrath and bitterness do spring to such wretched transgressors as we! How amiable and lovely are the fruits of free grace without works, which thus can soften such obdurate and miserable transgressors from being lions into lambs; from being tigers to dove-like gentleness; from hardness, impenitence, and ferocity, to the sweet image and sensations of Christ, who endured such contradiction of sinners B against himself; who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; gave blessings for curses; and instead of being warped from the beauties of divine excellence by ill treatment, only shone with extra gentleness towards those who scourged him. For if forgiveness does not stand like a quenching barrier against every feeling of bitterness in a saint towards others, (be they who they may) there is no end to the bitter flow of bitter feelings that thence will spring. We are not even, by ungodly violence, to pull up or destroy the tares, (the non-elect,) how much less should we, who are brethren and redeemed, rend each other with angry virulence when we are called contrariwise, that we should "inherit a blessing?" And although it is said, "Cursed is the man that keepeth back his sword from blood," (Jer. xlviii. 10,) yet to do this in a wise and profitable way, and good spirit to good and bad, is not such an easy thing. And O! the evil and venom that will arise otherwise! I know I have sinned and smarted herein; and would, in my right mind, as to recompenses, any day, be rather ill-treated to any extent, and would show two-fold kindness in return, rather than take up those dangerous weapons of hurting others, or avenging oneself, which God has expressly forbidden. Therefore the children of God are "sons of peace;" and however contrary feelings may riot and rage in them, yet their anchorage is firm; for being in Christ, his meekness and gentleness rule and reign more or less triumphantly and apparently in them. Well, therefore, may they be called the excellent of the earth; for these things, eminently so, the children of God well know are the very reverse of all the elements of nature. Therefore grace moves the sceptre, and is well worthy to reign, for "the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace." And I know (and the children of God know) that the wrath of man, when indulged in, shall praise God, and the remainder of it God will restrain, whether those men be elect or non-elect; for God, who reserves to himself the prerogative of taking vengeance, and who can over-rule poison itself to excellent ends, (as medical men say,) he, (how wonderful is his wisdom and power!) will take vengeance on both elect and non-elect men, in a gracious or vindictive way, for all their inventions; and will overrule them and their goings-on (no thanks to them) to final good. He will restrain the unrenewed part in his people, by giving them godly sorrow, that beautiful quality! He will restrain others of the non-elect, by cutting them down and sending them to hell at a stroke. Oftentimes God will outwit in their plans others of the non-elect, though cunning as serpents, and thus make their wrath to praise him. "There are many such things with him," as Job speaketh. Again, as in the history of Joseph, such a long chain of events in this praising and restraining is in the matter, that God marvellously getteth to himself the victory, that both elect and non-elect stand holding up their hands astonished. Happy soul, that has a heart to humbly inquire about these things. He giveth grace unto the humble. But in the winding up both of providence and grace, I both as regards the children of God and the children of Satan, no doubt but at the last day, and through eternity, the invisible government of God will redound then manifestly to his infinite praise, and unspeakable honour, and wondrous glory. Then will it be seen how he has brought the wheel over the wicked, and curbed and ripened them in their violent wildness, while he has screened the regenerate on account of being interested in the active and passive perfection of Christ's finished work in their behalf, to the praise of wondrous grace; which grace, as I have said, will bring the whole train of immortal excellencies that accompany salvation; and these accompanying excellencies will shine forth in a victory over all anger and such like. O beauteous victories! hope my happy soul will stand on that happy land, where peace sheds its universal sway, like balm that has cured all the havoc that anger and bitterness have dealt out amid perverse, crookedly minded, and iniquitous mortals. "For he is our peace, having made peace by nailing all ordinances of wrath that was against us unto his own cross; thereby making peace." O, costly and precious work! hoping my soul is interested in it, viz., Christ's finished work without our works! O the transcendent blaze of glory which has sprung out of it to my enraptured soul at times, making tribulation itself, as Hart says, to be even sweet, and letting in a little of the beautiful secret of forbearance and forgiveness towards others. A long illness of above twenty years, with broken nerves, unfits and indisposes an ill-deserving person as myself for all angry warring and contentious bitterness, such as the psalmist, in the passage these hints touch on, says men are engaged in. But, however, "the wrath of man is to praise God, and the remainder of his wrath is to have a restraint put upon it," by him who shall drown the war-horse and his rider, sooner or later, in the bottom of the mighty seas; for salvation or destruction (those mighty seas) must end all mortal strife. God's eye thus is both on the elect and reprobate, for he hath formed all things for himself to get glory from them, and with infinite and supereminent abundance from the redeemed; and the silvery sounds (Num. x. 2, 10) of mercy from Calvary will (as they have on mine) break on the ears of all the elect, and will make them in their hearts wisely consider and act in their lives when they see the virulent spleen of ungodly men getting themselves on the bosses continually of God's buckler; brewing up mischief for themselves or others; for "where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work." And as to the children of God, "from whence come wars and fightings among you?" says James; "come they not hence, even of your lusts?" Yes, oftentimes from pride, perverseness, ignorance, and carnality; so that anger, in its exercise, is of so difficult a nature, "be ye angry and sin not; let not the sun go down upon your wrath," that it is next door to wisdom to waive it altogether, and have nothing whatever to do with it; for it is one character of the children of God that they are "the quiet in the land." (Ps. xxxv. 20.) Abingdon. I. K. |