CHRISTIAN READERS, Having completed the Fourth Volume of our Publication, we think many of you can bear us witness that we have not laboured in vain, nor spent our strength for nought; for we have good cause to believe that your minds have been illuminated, your hearts touched, your Christian affections wholesomely influenced, through the feeble instrumentality of our pages. Therefore we have our reward; and it is one which may well yield us more consolation than if we had built and embellished one of the world's cities: for mind is immortal, therefore proportionately important is any good yielded to the everlasting existence; while the utmost polish of earth's palaces is destined to fade, and but to be found among the crumblings of a departed world. We intend no alteration of the character our Magazine has hitherto displayed; nor need we particularize our peculiarities. If our theology is not what the public taste approves, our answer is, Our standard of appeal is not the idolized feelings nor ignorant partialities of any party, but the Scriptures'; striving also to shew what is legitimately 'Christian experience,' and, as 'guides,' would point passengers to places of interest, lead them up the holy heights until the top is reached, where was declared -It is finished!' Our motto is Peace on earth: seeking to shew the beautiful cords ready to enclose all who love the Saviour in sincerity, and the living credentials already stamped on either Ephraim or Judah. We have no seclusive, miserable interest to serve-no steeple to extol, no chapel-ministers to idolize; but if the plain exhibition of the truth that has come down from heaven be enough to interest readers, then we are sure they may find abundance in our pages; but if not-if a quantity of fleshly excitement is required, let the busy-body know that we shall never descend to satisfy his raking propensities. In the early part of the year a thousand of our readers were startled by our advertisement for Editorial assistance. We take this opportunity of saying, that the present Editor, being so much engaged in the distant counties of England, and travelling not less than seven thousand miles each year, found his inability to give the Magazine that perfect attention which it demanded; and other literary employ claiming much of his time, with but very moderate health to endure all, he was thus induced to endeavour to find an amanuensis. He failed! Although it was offered to guarantee a successor from all pecuniary liability, yet but one competent person answered to the call, whose services were declined, inasmuch as a salary was wanted. We rejoice in the immortality of the truths our pages publish. They must live. A popular Authoress says, Calvinism, in its essential features, never will cease from the earth, because the great fundamental facts of nature are Calvinistic; and men with strong minds and wills always discover it. The predestination of a Sovereign will is written over all things.' We propagate no 'ism,' nor believe in the future life of the distinguishing doctrines of the Gospel, just because the geology or geography of our globe is in favour of them. Thus, while we agree with Mrs. H. B. Stowe, we determine to fix our faith on the almighty fact, that the gates of hell shall never prevail against it-that their truth is immortal as their source-that He that sitteth in the circle of the heavens ensures their life, their progress, their ultimate triumph. Readers! Many of the fingers that will turn over our pages next year, will be turned to corruption ere the period closes. Many that read the early numbers of this year have now shut their eyes to the type of this world! May you all be with your loins girt about with love and truth, and your affections ascending on high, when the message comes-To-day thou shalt be with me in paradise.' London, Nov. 23, 1851. THE EDITOR. FOR JANUARY, 1854. "THE LORD WILL NOT FORSAKE HIS PEOPLE." SAMUEL, the confessor of this precious truth, was "old and grey-headed" when he invited the people to Gilgal to celebrate the coronation of Saul. After the ceremony Samuel rapidly reviewed the principal events of Jewish history, reminding them of God's wonders of old, and warning them of their fate if they ceased to fear the Lord their God. It was wheatharvest; and Samuel's sermon concluded, he called unto the Lord to signify His approval of his discourse, when heaven pronounced its amen in thunders, and sent its flood to bear witness of the truth"the Lord sent rain and thunder that day, and all the people feared the Lord and Samuel." a After the thunder, the still small voice of conviction possessed the peoples' hearts, moving them to make confession of their worldly-mindedness in asking heaven for king. They requested Samuel to pray for them, and he answered, "God forbid that I should cease to do so;" telling them that though the past was shameful, yet they were not to be discouraged from future efforts in well-doing: then came from the prophet's lips those sound and sweet words of encouragement-" For the Lord will not forsake His people, for His great name's sake: because it hath pleased the Lord to make you His people." We will notice I. The peoples' fears. How common to man is fear! How certain the testimony that man has sinned! Adam was afraid and did hide himself. Have not all men the same reason to fear and hide themselves? for it is a fearful thing to sin against the Lord; and when the weight of a man's criminality is felt, when his sin in its greatness is revealed to him, how great is his dread of the wrath of Almighty God! There are feelings inhabiting every heart-the rudest savage or the polished citizen-and these protest that something is wrong within man. The foreigner gives his child to the flames, the Chinese their offspring to the flood, the Papist his pence to the priest, and all this to drive away the great enemy of their happiness-fear. But the creature, of himself, cannot propitiate the offended "high and lofty One:" He is not to be so pacified; men cannot permanently charm their fears away: the ghost of olden crimes will haunt the soul and exhibit its frightful features, prophetic of the wrath to come; in the gloomy shades, where the soul often sits solitary, the spectre of the night will appear, exhibiting the book of past crimes: and who shall banish the the frightful appearance away? None but He whose smiles are daylight; none but Him before the brightness of whose face every spectre of sin flies away, the darkness is no more, the true light shineth, and the soul is released from its horrid burden of truthful fears. All is fear without Christ; all is gloom without Jesus. Haunted is the soul by the fears of the avenger of blood, till He who triumphed through the blood of His cross stills the enemy and the avenger, and the man glories in the triumph of Christ. The past crimes of the Israelites arose to their view: the great mountain of the nation's guilt in asking a king reared its threatening head to heaven, and they saw themselves the creators of the monstrous pile the barren heights, the frightful precipices of the mount were but the too true types of that barren presumption of heart which asked a mortal monarch, and of the precipice of danger which dictated the cry-" God save the king." Dissatisfied with the King invisible, they sought their satisfaction in a king visible: envious of the court-pomp of others, they lusted after their likeness; they wanted to enter upon a clothing-contest with heathen kingdoms, and to rival the robes of heathen kings. How much sin in all this! How much like the church- crime of the present day! Are not thousands participators in the sin of those Israelites who copied the monarchies and the manners of the people around them? Where is the grand and Godlike line of demarcation between the world and its friendships and the church and its friendships? We mean not the line of congregational discipline-this is important; but we find abroad much idolatrous allegiance to this, the rules of Christian church order, but a wretched lack of practical, spiritual, personal exhibition of that spirit which, where it lives, rebukes the world around it, and asserts its lofty birth, and signifies its Godlike distinctiveness from the friendships of the earth. Have the church no cause to fear for this? have none of us reason to fear for the past; can we look back on the words of our mouth, and the works of our hands, and not fear? Has not the indulgence in those things which are of bad report given existence to a dread which consists not with the peaceful freedom of a believing child with a benevolent Parent? Have no thunderclouds gathered, and these, in terrifying blackness, hanging over us, promising to send down their horrid artillery; and are we such remarkable strangers to ourselves as not to know that the thunder is our just reward? If so, dear readers, we stand to-day among the Israelites at Gilgal; and while the many kings which the perverseness of our own wills have chosen stand before us, ready to impose upon us their cruel laws, and bind us with chains of iron, what have to say but to ask that Samuel to pray who speaks mercifully for us in heaven, asks of the Father for us, and we are rewarded according to the pitifulness of His great mercy. The sense of the sins of the past may well weave for us the captive's chain, and the solitary ray of light piercing our prison walls may justly enable us to read the righteousness of our indictment, the truthfulness of our trial, and the justice of the sentence of the law. Yes! man has nothing to say, from anything in himself, why the uttermost sentence of the law should not be passed upon him: he acknowledges the justice of the thunderpeals, knowing that he has sinned against heaven and in the sight of the Divine Majesty, and is no more worthy of the blessing of a heavenly home. We stand, then, to some among us, fellow-partners of the Israelites' sins. Shall we call these "the peoples' fears?" for they are the fears of all people, at some time of their Christian pilgrimage. Yes! there come those days in the history of the Christian traveller when the cloudless blue is above him, before him; but, looking back, the signs of a storm are fast shewing themselves. He fears not the dark elements, for they are still far away; till, moving with mighty step, they enshroud him, and his memory carries him back in clouds of thunder to the times and places of his past offences: then, like the encamped at Gilgal, he fears greatly, and cries-"Thou makest me to possess (in miserable remembrance) the iniquities of my youth." Then the Christian, made sensitive to the exceeding sinfulness of sin, dreads the fate which he feels preached by the thunder, and fears the arrows of insulted heaven: then he is ready to halt, and cease from pursuing the road to the skies then, benighted, he lifts his eyes to the hills of light from which his hope cometh, but their radiant tops are lost in the rageful storm! What shall he do? "Turn aside from following the Lord?" Not so. To go back is eternal sorrow; to face Sodom again is to inherit her fire and brimstone. No! Hearken to the preacher at Gilgal-he is worthy of your ear and your heart: "Serve the Lord with all your heart," says he. Cheering advice! But will not the sinful past succeed to turn His blessing-giving face away? The Israelites thought so; let not us fall into their desponding mistake, but hear the reasons for hope in these words-"The Lord will not forsake His people, for His great name's sake: because it hath pleased the Lord to make you His people." II. The Lord's faithfulness. It will easily be perceived, that Samuel grounds his encouragement for the Israelites on the permanent excellence of the divine character that though they had done infamously bad in filling up the measure of their earthly-mindedness in asking a visible head, (POPERY!) yet if they turned away from vain things which could not profit, they might rest assured the past would be forgotten in the fathomless |