Learn what is at the bottom of all our failings, declinings, and decays in holy duties. "Tis for want of the supplies of this grace. 3. Try yourselves touching your spiritual state. See whether you have the grace of Christ or not. 4. Suffer the word of exhortation.-Exh. Let me desire you to ask this grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1. Ask it for yourselves. When we are about to ask any thing, we are thinking, Do I need it? May it be had? Is it worth having? Apply it to this, Q. 1. Do I need the grace of Christ? Ans. Thou dost; for we can do nothing to please God without it. Q.2. Is it worth having? Ans. It is; for no man ever got to heaven, nor ever shall, without this grace. Q. 3. May it be had? Ans. Yes, it may be had, for no one ever yet did ask it of God in a right manner that went without it. I say in a right manner; to prevent mistakes, when do we ask grace in a right manner? 1. When we ask it in the first place. 2. When we ask it in sincerity and uprightness, Then, and then only, do we ask in a right manner. 2. Ask it for your friends, especially at some times and in some circumstances. 1. When your friends and relations are in the great turns of their lives, then put up this petition, that they may have the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2. When they prosper in the world. 3. When they are under any affliction. 5. Are any of your relations or friends magistrates or ministers, pray this for them, that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ may be with their spirit. Obj. Some will say, I have long prayed for such or such a friend, and my prayer is not answered. Ans. 1. It may be you pray for grace for one friend, and God answers you in another. 2. Do not say it is in vain to pray, if the answer do not come speedily. 3. If you pray only, and do not use means, you may thank yourself that they succeed not. Prayers are to be seconded with en deavours. REVIEW. 1. Memoirs of the Rev. T. C. Everett, late of Reading. By the Rev. H. J. Crump, Chaplain of Mill Hill Grammar School. Hamilton, Adams, and Co. 2. Memoirs and Remains of the Rev. W. Nevins, D.D. of Baltimore, with an Essay, by the Rev. Octavius Winslow, A.M. A. and J. Mathew, Moorgate Street. 3. Remains of the Rev. C. J. Paterson, B.A. Vicar of West Hoathley, Sussex; with a Memoir of the Author. Edited by C. J. Hoare, M.A. Archdeacon of Winchester. Seeley and Co. 4. Sermons to Youth, by the late Rev. J. Hague, of Darwen, Lancashire; with a Memoir of the Author. Ward and Co. 5. Sermons, by the late Rev. W. Smart, of Paisley; with a Memoir, by his Son. Simpkin and Marshall. 6. Brief Memorials of the Rev. J. Slatterie, of Chatham, by the Rev. J. Ely, of Leeds; with a Funeral Sermon, by the Rev. P. Thompson, A.M. Jackson and Walford. 7. Letters, &c. by the Rev. J. Jameson, of Methorn; with a Memoir, by the Rev. D. Young, of Perth. Robertson, Glasgow. 8. Memoir of the late Rev. J. Jones, of Bird-bush, Wiltshire. By Thos. Evans, of Shaftesbury. Simpkin and Marshall. As we place these eight volumes before our readers at the same time, they will readily suppose that it is for some other purpose than that of biographical analysis. What these men said is, for our present object, of quite as much importance as what they did, though there is here, at least, one instance of christian effort which is stamped with extraordinary energy and elevation. We may, however, before going farther, and in order to remove a suspicion of indifference to departed worth, candidly confess that several of these memoirs would have been noticed by us sooner, and noticed particularly, but for the frequency with which death assigns us this painful task, and the rapidity with which one messenger follows another to tell us of his devastations. In addition to this, there is a close resemblance in the reflections which are awakened in the mind as it passes from one volume of this class to another, recounting similar facts, and suggesting thoughts almost as similar to the former as are the tears which are shed in succession over energies laid low in the dust, that were once wholly consecrated to the cause of goodness and of truth. It is a thrice-told tale, and requires a new dress and circumstantial variation to produce any effect upon mankind. There is, however, one very solemn thing told in these books. On comparing the ages of Everett, Paterson, and Hague, the oldest of the three was only thirty-seven; and Dr. Nevins-a man of fine abili ties-was not thirty-nine, when, in common with the others, he concluded his personal services on carth. Mr. Hague entered Hoxton Academy in 1821, Mr. Everett in 1823; they were there together, and now, after only a few years of labour in the vineyard of Christ, they are with each other in eternity. Nor are these the only names erased from the list of students then preparing for the work of the ministry in that seminary. Several who were younger were cut down almost as soon as they entered on their course; two had not even undertaken any charge, and five of their brethren, including the subjects of the first and fourth memoirs before us, who were permitted to work a short time, have, at different periods, followed them to the world of spirits. Now the probability is that every one of these young men expected to live longer. Had they thought death so near, the apprehension would, in point of fact, have changed their studies in various ways, or, at least, it would have thrown an awful seriousness over all their ministerial preparations and efforts. We may be assured that what was so often said by them respecting the work in which they were engaged, would not only be their estimate of it, but would assume a living form in action. In every charge that is delivered at an ordination the most solemn and expressive epithets are accumulated to bear with an adequate pressure upon the mind of a young minister, which, if adequate, would undoubtedly hold him to one thing and to one thought, admitting only that diversion which to him must be almost demonstrably necessary to husband in the best way the precious powers which he has to employ. There is not one of these volumes but would furnish words that stand for all that is momentous in this world and the next, and from several of them we might gather enough to compose an address of sufficient solemnity for beings between whom and the judgment-seat there was but a step. "Oh," exclaims Mr. Paterson, 66 what a work is ours! I seem to feel it more awful and tremendous than ever, yet more blessed and exalted." And in this he is joined by all the rest. One and all had this view of the christian ministry. It was not in sickness and at the gates of death that they began to speak this language. They employed it in their letters and in their sermons, as the enunciation of their sentiments on the greatest realities that can affect man. We can form but an imperfect judgment how far human beings acquit or condemn themselves in the use of such phraseology, as a matter of fact, but, as a criterion, we may say that they do well and gain the prize of faithfulness in proportion as they embody these words in deeds commensurate with the prospect of endless blessedness or woe. There is evidence in these memoirs that the full belief of the Gospel is the only thing needful for arming the ministers of Christ with power, and for giving a strong practical force to their exertions. Assuming this to be the case, we deem it of more importance than any thing else that we can do to point out in what way our brethren may clothe themselves in weakness and lull into fatal slumbers the energies that should be awake and on the alert to rescue sinners from destruction. In the first place, then, a young man may begin a useless or injurious existence in the church, when he prefers the accumulation and display of literary information to habits of devotion and to the direct study of the Scriptures. The ministry has a province of its own, just as much as law and medicine. But it differs from every other professional course in this, that skill in handling theological weapons is not one half of the business. In the common affairs of life we often apply to persons for assistance according to their ability. Their character has nothing to do with the case in which we wish their aid or advice. But a merely clever minister is a curse to the cause of Christ. He may be a pleasant companion, the life or ornament of parties; he may tell anecdotes that will shake the sides of gravity and age; he may discuss politics, history, and literature, and then offer up prayer to conclude an evening, during every moment of which he has been betraying his Master into the hands of a foe. One tendency of this state of mind is to destroy devotional feeling. The unhappy victim of his own vanity would not like to appear to disadvantage on points not at all connected with his office, but he can present himself before Omniscience with a heart bereft of all spiritual animation, in which the love of literature has quenched the love of Christ, and at the same time all sensible concern for those whom he died to save. When the social habits of a minister thus approach the convivial, he is turning into the broad road; when he is satisfied with superficial declamation every Lord's day, something sentimental, soothing, fulminatory or metaphysical, as chance may direct, being spouted out for the occasion, he has lost sight of both God and man,—the reverence due to the one, the bondage that enthrals the other;-and when he can quote authors, papers, and reviews on the topics of the day, but knows not at what time St. Paul wrote his epistles or what prophecies have been fulfilled, the current of his mind flows in a wrong direction; or, finally, if knowing both departments, he no more yearns over man, longing for his salvation, he is a formalist or a hypocrite in all his solemnity, and preaches to his own condemnation. Cases of this kind we have known, in which, if the literature of the parties had consisted only in Jewish customs, Old and New Testament history and criticism, and a sound view of doctrinal and practical theology, the same abilities, with the essential addition of an humble and devoted heart, would have been instrumental in diffusing spiritual life over neighbourhoods which they found and left in darkness and death. They were well reported of for cleverness, could tell a tale or crack a joke, but piety and unfeigned devotion drooped in their presence. They spoke of heaven and hell, of the soul and redemption, of time and eternity, in solemn language on the Sabbath, and then passed the rest of the week in literary recreation, without a single effort at the conversion of a sinner, without feeling a single pang on behalf of the immortal spirits, who were hurrying by them, and beneath their eye, to the pit of perdition. We are aware that persons may talk with a great deal of plausibility about ministers being always in advance of their hearers, as to general information, and this is taken up as a pretence to justify N. S. VOL. IV. 3 D what we condemn, but, in fact, it is no justification at all. Our objection is to the acquirement of all knowledge that will occupy the time and evaporate the spirit that should be expended on scriptural studies and ministerial engagements. Moreover, it is a completely false notion to imagine that the Bible does not involve a sufficient variety of questions to sustain any man's reputation. But the fatal delusion, after all, is-supposing, or acting as if it was supposed, that ability to talk about wits, poets, and politicians is of as much value to the minister, and as subservient to the glory of God, as a thorough acquaintance with the sublimities of Isaiah, and a thorough baptism into the Spirit of Jesus Christ. No men more mistake human nature, and no men more insult inspiration, than such as act in this way. We solemnly warn our younger brethren to pause whenever they find this spirit coming over them, and if ancient or modern literature, popular or elegant attainments, damp their devotion and benevolence, they will do well to imitate the early believers, and to burn the "books, which, by magical illusion, would thus draw them from the cross.' We have before our eye, at the present moment, several individuals who conscientiously abstain from quoting either Shakespeare, Byron, or Scott. They do well. No undisciplined mind is the better for its knowledge of these authors, a thousand far worse. The sensual clings more than the sublime. They often set on fire the imagination with a light taken from the altar of Astarte, or if the novelist only destroy the appetite for that food which is the life of piety, we have merely to suppose this general, and the whole moral being of the church would sink into feebleness and death. Mental abstinence is one of the noblest forms of virtue. The men we speak of are more effective for it. They will not eat of what is common or unclean. They live with Butler, Baxter, and Howe, with the authors that shed light on the text of Scripture, and even with these not as ascetics, but as workmen, who have to use their time and talents for the conversion of mankind to God. It was this quality in Mr. Everett, connected with an ever-present sense of his vocation, that gave him so much power over all who had the happiness of his acquaintance. We know nothing more likely to serve the interests of the church than the full study of his character and the imitation of his example. They are equally noble and rare. When sickness had laid him aside from the duties of the pulpit, not from actual and even great exertion-for disease in his case had no common man to deal with-he wrote a pointed and solemn address to the inhabitants of Clifton, visited France and distributed tracts there, was as active in weakness as most men are when in full vigour, and evinced, in every way that offered itself to his notice, and that his mind could devise, the same single unquenchable thirst for the salvation of man. With him the question was, not what will be thought of my attainments, but, what does God expect me to know, and what will he, in mercy, deign to bless. A second habit which we have noticed as destructive of usefulness is the habit of unbridled speculation. In proportion as ministers love knowledge, self-denial becomes a duty, except in tutorships and |