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from them to do them good." How does He do them good? Why, He grants them soul-reviving, soul-renewing grace, and then they live afresh, and are enabled to go on their way rejoicing in the Lord. And is it not the experience of God's living family that He grants them upholding grace? What is the secret of continuing in the way of life? Is it their own strength? No! the secret is the upholding grace of Christ. The living family of God have ever felt the need of this grace. David prayed, "Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe;" again, "Hold up my goings in Thy paths, that my footsteps slip not." Depend upon it, my dear friends, without this upholding grace of Christ, the believer is sure to make shipwreck of faith; and therefore says God, "I will not turn away from them to do them good." How does He do them good? By granting to them upholding grace. In all God's dealings with His people He is ever doing them good. To each child in His family He says, as He said to Jacob, "Behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of." "I will not turn away from them to do them good."

III. What God promises to put in the hearts of His people.-"I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me." There is no fear of God in man's heart, while in his natural state; the heart of man is alienated from God. In the natural heart of man there is a slavish fear which hath torment. But the fear which God puts in the hearts of His people is a very different kind of fear; it is a filial fear, it is called “a fountain of life to depart from the snares of death." It is "the beginning of wisdom," it is "to hate evil." In this fear of the Lord there is strong confidence; and then the effect of the fear of the Lord being put in the heart is, "they shall not depart from me." True, they may wander from the Lord in heart, and this they often do to their sorrow, and therefore the exhortation, "Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God." But then, practically, they do not depart from the Lord; God keeps all His people, He keeps them from bringing a disgrace upon their profession, He keeps them outwardly, so that they may adorn the doctrines of God their Saviour; He keeps them inwardly, and therefore they shall never be suffered to make shipwreck of faith, "He will keep the feet of His saints." "The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth in His way. Though he fall he shall not be utterly cast down; for the Lord upholdeth him with His hand." All in whose hearts the Lord puts His fear are united to the Lord, and nothing can sever them from Christ. "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ?" is their question. "I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me." And the reason why the Lord promised to do this for His people is, because He loves them with an everlasting love, and has purposes of grace and mercy to accomplish in them.

Tyldesley, near Manchester.

JAMES JOHN EASTMEAD.

GOD made man holy and righteous, but by his fall in the Garden of Eden, the heart with all the faculties of man became corrupted (Gen. vi. 5), and thus it will ever be whilst we are destitute of the new-creating grace of God. For saith the Prophet, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" (Jer. xvii. 9).

Correspondence.

THE WONDERS OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE.

To the Editor of the Gospel Magazine.

DEAR BROTHER IN THE LORD,-I herewith send for insertion, if you will kindly grant it, an extract from a little work entitled the "Sailor Pilgrim," by the late Dr. Hawker (whose early days were spent in the navy). It contains so remarkable an account of God's providence, as manifested most astonishingly in the preservation of the lives of four poor men, who were cast upon the waters of the wide sea, through the blowing up of their ship, called the Randolph. I think it cannot fail of affording interest to your readers, to those especially, who love to watch the divine hand in their little, their every day affairs; and those who live in the neglect of this privilege, know not how much they lose by it. I doubt not, but the account here sent has long, ere now, fallen under the eye of some of the readers of the GOSPEL MAGAZINE, while the majority of them have never met with it at all. I should therefore be glad to see it brought forth afresh to the light, through the medium of your Magazine. I cannot forget the effect it had on my own mind on the first reading of it, which was many years ago, and here I would say, let those talk of luck and chance who choose to do so. But let the believer, especially, avoid the use of such very objectionable, silly terms.

Fletching.

Yours faithfully in the Lord,

EXTRACT.

H. H.

"The circumstance which I am about to relate, did literally take place during the late American war, and is, perhaps, within the memory of many that are now living. The principal person concerned in this little history, and whose conduct gave bias to the whole transaction, was no less a character than the late Nicholas Vincent, Esq., Admiral of the Red, whose recent death has made a vacancy in the present list of admirals. The writer of this memorandum, has more than once been favoured with the relation of it, in all its interesting particulars, from the admiral's own mouth.

"It was towards the close of the day, in the month of March, 1778, on board His Majesty's ship, the Yarmouth, in the latitude of the island of Barbadoes, and about sixty leagues to eastward, when a man at the masthead called out that he saw several sail to the leeward, and near to each other. Soon after there were discovered from the quarter-deck six sailtwo ships, three brigs, and a schooner, on the starboard-tack. The Yarmouth bore down upon them, and about nine o'clock got very near to the largest of the two ships, which began to fire on the Yarmouth. In about a quarter of an hour after the action commenced, she blew up, being then on the Yarmouth's lee beam, and not above three or four ship's lengths distant. The rest of the squadron, taking advantage of the night, immediately dispersed. It is impossible for the imagination to form any adequate conception of the effect instantly produced by the explosion: from noise, confusion, fire, and smoke, which before was in every direction, there was at once a dead silence, darkness, not an object to be seen; and the consciousness of what had taken place failed not to add to the solemnity. This event happened between nine and ten o'clock, on Saturday

night. On the Thursday following, the Yarmouth being in chase of a ship steering about west, with the wind in the north-west quarter, the man at the mast-head espied something on the water abaft the beam. To account for this appearance was impossible, neither, indeed, could they ascertain what it was. The probability, however, was, that it was some one or more persons in distress; but by what means, or how they came there, surpassed all conjecture. The question, however, arose, what was to be done? If the Yarmouth hauled up to make the discovery, the prize then in pursuit must be relinquished, and all hopes of any future coming up with her be done away with. This was a moment for the display of that gracious government of God in His providence, which I have all along in this little work been directing the mind of the reader to be always on the look out for. And a very blessed and gracious display, indeed, did the Lord make of it, as the sequel of the event proved, in more instances than one.

"None but the captain had to say what should be done, and, though the loss of a prize to seamen could not be pleasant, yet that humanity which formed through life so shining a feature in Admiral Vincent's character, allowed of no hesitation. The Yarmouth hauled up, and very shortly after, by the help of a glass, as they sailed towards the object, they discovered four persons, who seemed to be standing on the water, for what supported them was not visible. In two or three hours she got up to the little float on which they stood, and providentially arrived in time to get them all safe on board. But how astonished were the whole ship's company to find that they had belonged to the ship that was blown up the preceding Saturday, so that they had been five whole nights, and nearly as many days, floating on the waves, and buried alive, as it were, under the vault of heaven.

"Being young and hardy, they did not appear much hurt when brought upon the quarter-deck. They felt no hunger, as they declared, although they had not eaten, but were thirsty and very sleepy. A little tea, however, and a hammock to each, perfectly restored them in a few hours; and, when they arose, the only complaint they had was of their feet being swollen in consequence of having been so long in the water, added to the want of rest. They related that the ship in which they had been blown up was the Randolph, of thirty-six guns, with a complement of three hundred and fifty men. Their destination, at that time, was for an attack upon the island of Tobago, but by what means the ship blew up, they knew not, being themselves quartered in the captain's cabin, from whence, in the explosion, they were thrown out unhurt. Being all of them able to swim, they got hold of some spars and rope which came in their way on the water, and made the raft on which they were found. It was their mercy, also, to pick up a blanket, which served them as a reservoir, and in which they gathered water from a few showers of rain, which they sucked from time to time to preserve life. On the arrival of the Yarmouth, two days after at Barbadoes, the ship's company discovered that the ship they had been in pursuit of, when detained by this call of humanity, was an English merchantman bound for Barbadoes, the master of which came on board the Yarmouth on her arrival and made his report."

But now, having related the circumstance of this event, I would call upon the reader to mark some of the very striking providences in it, which may serve to the illustration of the doctrine in general and lead the mind to contemplate in how many instances the same is every day and every

hour of the day carrying on in thousands of special cases of a similar nature. Here were four men, out of three hundred and fifty, snatched from instant death, and their lives saved by such a concatenation of circumstances as, humanly speaking, were among the most improbable things in nature ever to come together, and yet, had one failed, the whole must have failed and proved abortive. It was night, and a dark one too, when it happened, and, though those men escaped immediate destruction from the explosion, as well as the going down of the ship, yet had they not been thrown beyond the vortex made when she sunk, here again they must have been brought within the power of it. That they escaped, also, every injury from the showers of broken timbers falling down after the explosion and being placed beyond the reach of it, was another singular means of preservation; and when, having survived the dangers of the night, all the while living on the water, to find such materials floating around them as might form a temporary ark for their present safety, and to be blessed with strength in their forlorn condition to be able to work them up into any form while having nothing to tread on but the water, all these were indeed distinguishing providences over them. To continue alive, and even with strength, for five whole nights and more than four days, in this perilous situation, without food, and to have no swell of sea, from wind or storm, and hope against hope still bearing them up when, to all appearance, not a shadow of probability existed for their being saved. These are all so many additional circumstances to make their salvation the more remarkable.

Had not the man at the mast-head, who first saw them, had his eyes directed that way, or, when seeing this apparently little insignificant float upon the water, had he not regarded it, had he not reported it, or when reported, had the officer upon deck disregarded it, had the account been kept back from the captain, or when he was brought acquainted with it, had his humanity not prevailed over every other consideration, to the giving up as was then thought by every one a sure prize, to the picking up this raft upon the water: in short, in these and many other things to be taken into the account, had not all and every minute circumstance corresponded together, had a single link in the chain given way, the whole had been over, and who but He "whose way is in the sea, and whose path is in the great waters," could have gone by and ordered, influenced, and directed all? Who doth not or will not see a divine hand in the ordination? Is He not, then, through all the departments of providence and grace, in all the multifarious instances of both, continually carrying on the same, to answer the sovereign purposes of His will? The heedless and inattentive see but the body of things in one vast mass, but to an enlightened eye like the skilful anatomist, the dissection of the several parts opens and unfolds the various ramifications of veins and arteries, and every one that will but follow the Lord in the disposition of His providences, will find continual cause as he passes on to cry out in words like the psalmist: "This hath the Lord done; for they shall perceive that it is His work."

I should not be doing justice to this very interesting history of the preservation of those men, if I were not to add that by this providence the seamen and crew of the Yarmouth recovered (what otherwise for want of evidence, had the whole ship's company of the Randolph perished, they would have lost) what is called head-money, and actually received fifteen hundred and seventy-five pounds. So that the ship they were pursuing

when detained by this act of mercy, had they taken her, would have proved no prize, whereas the floating substance on the water where they expected no prize, proved a very rich one, and brought with it money and the "blessing of them that were ready to perish."

"One generation shall praise Thy works to another, and shall declare Thy mighty acts." "They shall abundantly utter the memory of Thy great goodness, and shall sing of Thy righteousness" (Psalm cxlv. 4—7).

THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR.

To the Editor of the Gospel Magazine.

DEAR BROTHER,-We are permitted to enter on the last month of another year-a year of great trials, public and private, to the people of God, and yet a year of great mercies, for as our trials abound so do "our consolations in Christ abound also." Amidst all the din and strife and party spirit, how blessed it is for the true children of God to rest assured their "Father knows" and their Father can control and order the unruly wills of sinful men. Ere these lines appear in print, the issue, as far as the elections are concerned, will have been tried. If we have done our duty as Protestants, as praying Christians, we shall have the satisfaction of knowing that all shall be well for ourselves, and for the glory of our God. On this let us rest. To Him let us ever look, and be more careful to have our own "loins girded" and "lamps burning," than to be peering into the lamps, or looking after the armour of our friends or foes. We need decision-we need to be bold and uncompromising; and, as we have proved the power of God's word for ourselves, let us endeavour to make it tell on others. It is the sword of the Spirit; as such may the Spirit give strength to wield it, and make it effectual. Strange ideas are afloat among those who profess and call themselves Christians. It has been left for this age to develop a race of men under the garb of friends, assailing the integrity of the Christian faith, and so sapping the foundation on which that faith is built-the Scriptures of Truth: while others, going off into an opposite direction, seek shelter in the arms of traditional infallibility, and sell themselves to the Pope of Rome. In my opinion, the only preventive is the careful, prayerful, loving study of God's holy word; and I would urge upon all, and upon myself in particular, to commence the new year, if spared, with a more diligent attention to its sacred contents, believing that it all is given by inspiration of God.

To the kind friend who wrote suggesting that my last month's piece should be printed for a leaflet, I return cordial thanks for the letter; but I think it would be found too lengthy for that purpose. At the same time, it is at the service of your printer, if he would like to try it. Glory be to the Triune Jehovah, for all His mercies through this livelong year.

Believe me, your affectionate Brother,

ALFRED HEWLETT, D.D.

All the good we do is of grace, and the more we do the more grace we must receive; so that the best men have nothing to glory in. Pre-eminence in real usefulness is the most valuable of all distinctions.

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