Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

SERMONS TO THE UNCONVERTED. Preached in the autumn of the year 1839. By the Hon. and Rev. BAPTIST W. NOEL, M.A. Reprinted from The Pulpit. cl. bds. lettered. pp. 192. Price 4s.

Sherwood & Co., Paternoster Row.

THERE is a singular charm in this volume, springing from the circumstance that these admirable Sermons were preached extemporally, and are published in the form in which they were delivered. Mr. Noel's easy and flowing sentences present a very favourable opportunity for thus embodying in print that attractive "speaking style," which is so difficult for a writer to attain or even

"But perhaps there may be another objection-one which often rises in the hearts of persons when first convinced of made to sinners, and it is not the amount sin. They see that these invitations are of their sin that makes them dread they shall not be blessed; but they feel, that the invitation is to the thirsty' and they think they do not thirst-and it is made to the willing' and they fear that they are not willing. They imagine that they have not the measure of penitence that is required; and though they do not think that penitence can ever merit mercy, they think that a certain measure of sorrow for sin is necessary before they can obtain Now let me beg you, my dear mercy. harassed by this imagination, to bear in friends, if there are any present who are

makes

allow himself to adopt, though so pleasant to a reader to meet. But it is not of that which is outwardt,hat we wish here for sin which a believer can ever feel can mind, that although the amount of sorrow to speak; it is of the treasure within. never be adequate, and although there is a There is in these discourses a valuable provision in the Gospel for the growth of summary of the great Christian truths, contrition as there is of every other combined with a series of persuasive ap- Christian grace, although we ought to feel peals to the conscience, so that they at our sins more and more deeply in proporonce convey instruction and touch the tion as clearer views of the Gospel open deepest springs of feeling. Few living on us and we have a juster experience of men have committed to them a greater our vileness and the goodness of God, yet power of reaching the heart by the remember that this is the measure of pesimple preaching of God's Word, than nitence which is asked of you that that Mr. Baptist Noel; a remark this, which All the rest will come after. you willing to welcome Christ. Can you, I we do not found upon our own observa- ask again, give yourself up to Christ to tion and experience alone, but which save you by His grace and power? Then we have heard made more than once. that is penitence enough. If you see And we trust this volume, which (as far your ruin, and wish to be saved through as art can do it) makes perpetual that Him, and ask God for His mercy through power of impression, will be of wide and Christ, then that mercy is yours. lasting benefit. The sermons are twenty-only obstacle to the salvation of any soul three in number; and the subjects are here, old or young, is that he will not welcome Christ. And if after this any not arranged with any view to systematic precision, but are allowed to arise one out should perish because they cling to hardof another, and were probably partly love salvation, I assure you, my dear ness of heart and love sin better that they suggested in that way. Mr. Noel begins hearers, that the Lord Jesus Christ will by setting a free salvation before the un- say to you, just as He said to the worst converted; then passes to the needful and most wicked of the Pharisees that change, the present sinfulness, and cer- were around Him-Ye will not come tain punishment of the unconverted; he unto Me that ye might have life.' then introduces some topics calculated to warn them and arouse to instant effort, and passes to others adapted to animate and attract them; he points out the dan-grace but that. ger of mistaking natural emotions for true religion, counsels the convinced but as yet unconverted, and concludes with an earnest and affectionate parting re

monstrance.

The

"And there is nothing else between you and His love than that; as there was nothing between them and salvation through His He said to them, that they would not' come; and He says to every one who still lives and dies in impenitent obduracy-You will not come unto Me that you might have life.'

"Now I do not use this truth, as it is sometimes used (as I think most improWe will now supply the reader with perly), to show the impentent sinner that the means of judging for himself. We he will have no excuse at the last dayextract from the sermon entitled to reduce him to utter silence when he "Christ willing to save the unconverted." stands before his Judge; though assuredly

[ocr errors]

it will do that. But it was not needed to accomplish that; the sinner would have been reduced to silence, if there had not been one invitation in God's Word; the sinner would have been entirely silent before bis Judge, if the Lord Jesus

Christ had never died. Do not think that

the death upon the cross was an act of
justice; it was an act of unbounded and
Divine love, and it was not wanted to
make a
sinful world silent before its
Judge; men will be silent when they stand
before Him. But the use I make of it
is this that if you do not thus give your
hearts to Christ and will not take Him
for your Lord and Saviour, you will feel
when at last you stand before Him (and
He may perhaps make that thought pene-
trate your inmost soul)- You would not
come; you know you would not.' Then
you will feel, my dear hearer, a bitterness
of regret, which neither you nor I can an-
ticipate now. To think that there li-
terally was nothing between you and the
boundless and eternal happiness of the
disciples and the children of God but
this that you did not wish to be happy,
you did not wish to be saved, you did not
wish to be Christ's disciple!

Lockhart's "Memoirs of that distinguished writer, said that Thomas Campbell was "afraid of his own reputation that he came out at once in such great splendour, that he feared lest subsequent efforts should not equal the expectations formed by his admirers; so that he wrote but little, and had not fulfilled the early promise held out by "The Pleasures of Hope." The same cannot be said however of another great poet of our day, James Montgomery; with respect to whom it may be affirmed, that in a poetical sense (and we doubt not in other are his best, for though "The World besenses still more important) his last days fore the Flood" was the delight of our boyhood, we give a decided preference to his last great work "The Pelican Island," in which the absence of an exciting narrative is amply compensated by the easy flow of the blank verse, and the deep tone of religious feeling which pervades the whole. His forte is devotional poetry. But the amiable and excellent author does not confine himself to great “Do not say, you earnestly wish it. You its efforts at the call of religion or phiworks-his pen is ever ready to put forth wish for something else. If you wished lanthropy; and we have here a pleasing it, it would have been yours. If you bad but a hearty desire to be Christ's disciple contribution to the cause of suffering huand a child of God, you would be so. You manity. It consists of Sketches in verse may wish for many other things, but you of Six Miracles of our Lord, written for never wished for this. So that Christ the benefit of the Bristol General Hospimay still say Ye would not come unto tal. The Miracles chosen, very appropriMe, that ye might have life.' For His ately, are those which displayed the SaWord is true; and He has said, If ye viour's power over disease and death, as being evil know how to give good gifts will be seen by the following enumeration unto your children, how much more shall-1. The Leper. 2. The Impotent Man. your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit 3. The Youth Born Blind. to them that ask Him?' And though zarus raised from the Dead. 5. The you may have asked it hundreds of times in words-had you once asked it in reWithered Hand. 6. The Demoniac ality-had you once sincerely wished to dispossessed. be a godly, loving, devoted disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ God was ready to give you that infinite and eternal good. "Oh! that you would believe! that you would see where every difficulty Then, with the voice that quickens death, He lies! It does not lie in any thing God has done. It does not lie in any thing He is unwilling to do. It only lies in your own will. And if that is still perverse and irreclaimable, oh! go and humble yourselves before God, and ask Him by earnest prayer that even that last obstacle may be cleared away (as in so many happy instances He does clear it away), that you may thus receive and find in Him eternal peace."

[ocr errors]

Oh!

4. La

The fourth we consider the best :-
"Before the cave where buried Lazarus slept,
('Behold how much He loved him!')
Jesus
wept;"

spoke

'Lazarus, come forth !'-the grave its bondage

broke ;

The soul in Abraham's boson heard its name,
Rejoin'd the dust, and forth alive he came.
Ah! then, how looked his sisters, when the Lord
Beauty for ashes' to their arms restored!
How to the Lord their brother turn'd bis face,
E'en from the sweetness of their first embrace!
And rests till heaven and earth shall pass away."
Glory came down ou Bethany that day,

These sketches are beautifully printed on coloured paper, each illuminated by a wood engraving, with a general title

THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. By printed in gold. We are glad to hear

JAMES MONTGOMERY.

George Davey, Broad Street Bristol.
SIR Walter Scott, as we learn from

that a very large profit has accrued to the funds of the Hospital from their sale.

THE CHURCH OF ROME EXAMINED; or,| prince, and all that concerns him, the Can I ever enter the Church of Rome moment that he is known to be the choice so long as I believe the whole Bible? of her whom God has set over us. A question submitted to the Conscience Englishmen, indeed, have long been acof every Christian Reader. Translated customed to sympathise with their mofrom the French of the Rev. C. MALAN, narchs, whether in weal or in woe, in a D.D., Pastor of the Church of Testi- manner little known to Continental namony, Geneva; by the Rev, JOHN tions; and it is a pleasant thing to forget CORMACK, D.D., Minister of Stow, pp. the strife of party, and join in expres248. cl.bds. sions of affectionate loyalty. This book will accordingly be very acceptable; it WE rejoice to see so many exposures is beautifully got up, and the historical of the errors of the Church of Rome, be- notices of the Prince's ancestors are excause we really believe them to be need-tremely interesting. The accounts of ed in this day and in this land; and look the early years of his Royal Highness ing, not so much at the political results promise much; and we trust the day will of Popish ascendancy, as at the conse-never come, when we shall open this quences of Popish doctrine to the souls of book, and feel that the flower answered our fellow-countrymen, we feel that the not to the pleasant aspect of the bud.

Nisbet and Co., Berners Street.

circumstance that such books are needed is one that imposes a solemn duty upon those, who have entrusted to them the opportunity of declaring the truth, whether by the living voice or the printed book. We cannot forget, when Romanists allege that England is soon to be all their own, that there are involved interests far higher than those which are political; a country can never be their own, except when "the Bible and the Bible only" ceases to be its religion. We wish God speed' therefore to this admirable little work. It bears about it the marks of all that affectionate earnestness and simplicity of mind, which have endeared Dr. Malan to not a few in this land; and there is a raciness and freshness in the arguments, exceedingly interesting to any one accustomed to the ordinary method adopted on the great question proposed in the title Page. The plan of the work is, to contemplate the Romish Church in three aspects. 1. The Revelation of Salvation, or the Holy Scriptures. 2. The administration of Salvation, or the Church upon earth. 3. The possession of Salvation, or the peace of God and holiness. We have not space to extract; but it really is a work of rare interest and value.

PRINCE ALBERT. His Country and Kindred. pp. 96.

Ward and Co., Pateruoster Row.

HOURS OF SPIRITUAL REFRESHMENT.

By Dr. HENRY MILLER. cl. bds., pp. 280.

THE LIFE OF ORIGEN. Pp. 100.
GOODNESS AND MERCY; as displayed
in the experience and death of DEBORAH
CURTIS. By the Rev. WILLIAM MUDGE,
M.A., Ockbrook, Derby. pp. 70. price 6d.

A LECTURE ON INFIDELITY IN ITS
PERILOUS BBARING ON THE PRESENT AND
FUTURE STATE OF MAN. By the Rev.
HUGH STOWELL, M.A., Manchester.
REMARKS ON SOCIALISM. By the Rev.
EDWARD BIRCH, B.A.
pp. 20., price
5s. 10d. per 100.

TALK ABOUT SOCIALISM with an old Shopmate. pp. 8., price 2s. 4d. per 100. THANKSGIVING AFTER CHILDBIRTH; or, An Affectionate Address to a Mother. pp. 8., 2s. 4d. per 100.

JEHOIAKIM'S PENKNIFE.

8d. per 100.

pp. 16., 4s.

[blocks in formation]

We are sorry to be obliged unexpectedly thus to compress our notice of the Tract Society's pu blications this month; but we have contrived to find room in a previous page (p. 86) for an extract from one valuable little tract among the publications above

THIS is a seasonable collection of all that is known of one, whom we have just welcomed to our shores; and we count it no improper pride, to feel a little the circumstance that intense interest is thrown around this youthful mer ated. The three first in our list

enu

would also have well repaid a se parate examination, and will we should hope be extensively circulated. The "Talk about Socialism" is good plain common sense, applied to a system that outrages common sense; telling us that nothing is to be rested upon as true, unless we have so much evidence for it that we cannot help believing it, evidence adapted to a living machine, not to a moral intelligent being; and insisting that our consciousness that we have some power over circumstances and can choose good or evil, is a foolish error, a deceit that our minds practise upon us. This system is tottering; and speedy be its fall! The last named of the above list is an excellent Tract on intemperance; the London City Mission have circulated (we understand) a quarter of a million copies of it this year in London. preceding tract-"Sins going before to judgment" is a cheap re-publication of an affecting narrative, the substance of which we gave in November (ante p 436). Of Socialism Mr. Birch says

The

"THE system is too new to be yet tested by a death-bed trial; but if they have not been already afforded, there soon will be afforded, in such a season, awful and instructive illustrations of the folly of thus fighting against God. Rapidly is time passing away, and rapidly is hastening that period which the Socialist considers as the end of all his pleasures. With Stoical fortitude and indifference he may now philosophize concerning death, and speak of it as a mere 'change of organizations; but even Mr. Owen himself betrays in his writings a consciousness of the impotence of Socialism to deliver its victims from the fear of dying. He represents nine conditions as necessary to human happiness, of which one is a release from superstition, from supernatural fears, and from the fear of death.' If this is a necessary condition of the Socialists' happiness, very few of them, it is to be hoped, will be happy. In many instances it will prove an impracticable condition. While death is apparently far distan and unthought of,Socialism may indeed achieve a temporary triumph. The man may rejoice in his impieties and glory in his shame; but in the season of failing strength and approaching dissolution, his principles will be found as help less as the infidelity of Voltaire, to save the soul from the agonies of remorse and the tortures of desperation. The fear of death, which, on account of the moral and salutary effect it is sure to have on the minds of those Socialists who witness its operations in others, Mr. Owen intimates the necessity of subduing, has ever been one of the most intractable obstacles in the way of infidelity. Mirabeau, the French atheist, is loud in his complaints of the power of the fear of death. Nothing,' he says, is more useful than to inspire men with a contempt for death....... .They can neither be contented

[ocr errors]

nor happy whilst their opinions shall oblige them to tremble.' Thus reflecting infidels and atheists ever regard with unmingled dislike and dread the natural principle of the fear of death; or, in other words, the dominion of conscience in the soul. They confess that there can be no happiness till that fear has been subdued, and they also as much as confess the inability of How wretched, then, even here, in this world, their system of belief or unbelief to subdue it. the prospect of the infidel or Socialist! By his own confession there is an almost, if not quite insuperable hindrance,in his way to happiness.)"

THE CHRISTIAN TRIUMPHANT IN DEATH; a Sermon occasioned by the decease of Mr. David Nasmith, Founder of City Published Missions. By T. LEWIS.

by request, for the benefit of the Widow and five fatherless children.

pp. 40.

Houlston & Stoneman, Paternoster Row. David Nasmith was a man just suited for his day and generatiou; and very many could the church have better spared. But so it seemed not good to Infinite Wisdom. The results of his labours have been already such, as to make one wonder how one man could do what he did: and as yet we see perhaps but little of what shall follow from his efforts. The most valuable and complete record of his life and character is contained in this Discourse; and for its own intrinsic merit (which is considerable), independently of the interesting memoir of this labourer "instant in season and out of season," we heartily commend it to our readers. As for the appropriation of the profits, they go to a fund, of which we will only say that common justice demands a peculiar effort from the Church of Christ. It is theirs to be the means of making good before the world "the seed of the promises of God to

the righteous;" by means He works ; in this instance, reader! let it be by your means, if conscience pronounces it

in

your power.

THE UNION HARMONIST; a selection of Sacred music, consisting of original and standard pieces, Anthems, &c., suitable for use in Sunday Schools, congregations and musical societies. Arranged by Mr. T. Clark, Canterbury. Part I. Price ls. pp. 24. Sunday School Union, 60, Paternoster Row. The contents of this Part are these ; Eternal Mansions-Holy Lord-Canaan Friendship-Sunshine-Denmark. 1t

is the commencement of a work, which is proposed to contain (in about ten parts) sacred music of a superior character. It is very correctly got up, and promises well; and we hope we shall find it sustain our expectations.

MILLENARIANISM incompatible with our
Lord's Sacerdotal office. By G.HODSON.
Nisbet & Co. Berners Street.

We have more to say upon this book, than we can possibly here insert, and must therefore postpone this one review till next month.

Religious Entelligence.

THE COURT.

HER Majesty did not attend Divine Service on the 2nd of February. On Saturday, Feb. 8th his Royal Highness Prince Albert arrived at Buckingham Palace. On the following day her Majesty and the Prince attended Divine Service within that Palace: the Bishop of London officiated. On Monday the 10th her Majesty and the Prince were united in marriage at the Chapel Royal, St. James's. On the following Sunday the Queen and his Royal Highness attended Divine Service within Buckingham Palace; the Bishop of Norwich, clerk of the closet, officiated. On the 23rd both of them attended at the Chapel Royal, St. James's; the Bishop of London preached from Genesis ii. 16, 17.

PARLIAMENTARY.

he regretted it very much; but really
the House was going to present Mr.
Owen a second time, and he thought the
course most unwise as tending to give
strength to the system.-The Duke of
WELLINGTON thought the matter had
gone beyond the point, up to which the
Government might disregard it on the
principle suggested; the magistracy and
the country ought now to know that the
Government were determined to dis-
countenance such proceedings.
Motion was agreed to without further
opposition,

The

The following extract from the Journals details the results :——

"Ordered, by the Lords, Spiritual and Temporal, in Parliament assembled, that an humble Address be presented to her Majesty, praying That her Majesty will be graciously pleased to command that inquiries be made into the diffusion of blasphemous and immoral publications, and especially into the tenets and proceedings of a society, under the name of Socialists,' which has been represented, in petitions to this House, to be a society the object of which is, by the dissemination of doctrines subversive of immora lity and religion, to destroy the existing laws and institutions of this realm.'"

66

Her Majesty's most gracious Answer.

SOCIALISM.-On Tuesday, Feb. 4, the Bishop of EXETER moved an Address to the Crown on this subject; he urged that the Government ought to put the law in force against the public lectures now delivering in all the large towns, teaching blasphemy and immorality. The Marquis of NORMANBY said he doubted the power of the Government to put down Socialism, and he doubted the expediency My Lords,-I will give directions of giving it additional publicity by pro- that inquiry be made into the important secution. The Bishop of LONDON as- matters which form the subject of your sured the noble lord, that no proceedings address; and you may rely upon my deof that kind would give it additional termination to discourage all doctrines and publicity, except among the educated practices dangerous to morality and reclasses, who would thus be excited to ligion." counteract it; among the operative classes, the Socialists had been too in- CHURCH RATES.-On Tuesday, Feb. dustrious, to make any fear of publicity 11, Mr. T. DUNCOMBE moved for leave now worth a thought in the question. to bring in a Bill to exempt from Church Viscount MELBOURNE thought, that even Rates all persons, who would sign a Dethe proposed address would encourage claration that they objected to pay them, the Socialists; he had been blamed for not from pecuniary, but conscientious presenting Mr. Owen at Court, and that grounds: he adduced the case of John presentation was certainly imprudent and Thorogood, who had now been thirteen

« AnteriorContinuar »