and the breezes of grace were propitious. But an explosion took place; to the astonishment of heaven; and you made" shipwreck of faith, and of a good conscience." Thank God, you have not gone down to hell, like many other backsliders. You have floated out upon the mere fragments of your hopes into the ocean of despair. Öf you it may be well said, "His passage lies across the brink Yes, "Jesus lives to save!" and it is written, "He is able to save unto the uttermost.” The promises have been obscured from the eye of your faith by strong temptation. Again and again you have found yourself unable to reach them; and like the vessels which hovered for a little before the vision of those distressed persons, and then vanished; so have the promises to your apprehension. But the God of the promises is at hand. Fear not, your signals of distress are seen from heaven. There is an end, and your expectation shall not be cut off. The Captain of your salvation has left the skies for your help. He is this hour drawing nearer to your soul. You may say for your own encouragement,"He sees me; He sees me; He is coming towards me!" He is, see! 66 "Lo! on the wings of love he flies, Only believe, and thou shalt see the salvation of God." "All things are possible to him that believeth." Do you not already hear the voice of your great deliverer, "be of good cheer, I will save you." Soon, very soon, you shall be rescued from your distressed situation; and with adoring gratitude, fall at the feet of your gracious Saviour, and confess him 'mighty to save." Ever consider me your affectionate brother in Jesus Christ, 66 LETTER XXXIII. TO THE SAME. J. C. Dear Brother, Dublin, November 30, 1841. Unbelief is ever ingenious in the invention of instruments wherewith to torture the soul; you say, "It was suggested to me the other day; and it stung my soul to desperation; we find in scripture many who were desperately sick, cured by our Saviour; but where do we read in all the gospel of any man's eyes twice enlightened? Of any deaf ears twice opened? Of any tied tongues twice loosened? Of any possessed with devils twice dispossessed? No doubt Christ could have repeated these miracles, but where do we read that he ever did so ?' This may be correct enough; and it is not improper, perhaps, to make it an alarming argument against returning to sin; but to infer that because we do not find a single instance recorded of Christ re-healing any who had relapsed into affliction, that therefore there is no hope for the backslider, is a mere assumption. If none had a second miracle performed upon their person, it was probably because none had fallen again under the power of disease during the remaining period of our Lord's ministry; or, that circumstances had precluded their second application; but it remains to be proved that Christ would not have been gracious a second time to a wretched invalid. To reason thus, is to set up a defective supposition in contradiction to the plainest declarations and promises of scripture,-Jeremiah, iii. 12-14. Hosea, xiv. 4. It is also against matter of fact, and the history of the church, from the day backsliden Peter was restored to the favour of his Lord, down to our own times; in which instances to the contrary are most numerous. If the above sentiment has left a remaining tinge upon your mind, may the following considerations entirely erase it. First.-If the sick are healed in answer to prayer, or by the blessing of God upon medicine, it is Christ still exerting his healing power; but multitudes have been thus raised up, more than twice or thrice in each individual case. Second.The Lord Jesus has lately restored many wretched backsliders in this city. You go on to say, "my sin is ever before my mind, and the constant recognition of it distracts and terrifies my soul." This proves that the mind has a looking faculty, as well as the body. When the eye looks at black or red, the mind is conscious of corresponding sensations. It is the same with the eye of the mind; emotions are produced in the soul in accordance with the object that fixes its regard; whether it be the black and heinous nature of sin committed, or the crimson blood of Jesus Christ, which was the atonement for it. Now, so sure as you have power to command your bodily eyes, you have equal power to control the looking faculty of your soul. The Psalmist said "my sin is ever before me;" but he also added, "I have set the Lord always before me," and you can do the same. think of "Christ and him crucified." My heart was made better several years ago, when reading a most affecting account of an aged christian. It is with some hesitation I insert it in this letter, lest you would consider it foreign to the great end I had in writing to you. But hoping that it may serve to relieve and cheer your mind for a few moments, by turning it off itself, if I may use the expression, I will relate it. An aged American christian had entered upon those few last hours in human existence which God has set apart for the work of dying. A long life of usefulness had drawn the affections of his country around him. Nearly one hundred years had he sojourned upon the earth; but his days were numbered. The lady who related the circumstance tells us, that she stood by his bed-side, when a message of love was conveyed to his ear from a friend, a fellow statesman; one to whom he was united by the strongest bonds of friendship, in years long gone by. But the aged man had totally forgotten the friend of his early years. Those links of friendship once so delicately interwoven with his very being, had all been broken. She endeavoured to restore his recollection; but, alas! a great gulf was between his mind and the remembrance of the past. The name and the image of his friend had fled from his memory, and could not be recalled. A vase of massy silver was brought before him, on which his country had caused to be sculptured the record of his services, and her gratitude. He gazed vacantly upon it; but no chord of association vibrated. The love of honourable distinction, so long burning like a perpetual incense-flame on the altar of a great mind, had forsaken its temple. Her eyes filled when she gazed at the mournful wreck of mental power; feeling doubtless, that no darkness is so great as that which overshadows and extinguishes the glorious light of mind. An individual at that T moment happened to mention the name of God, "the God of all grace;" and his lips, till now so still and motionless, began to tremble; his cold blue eye sparkled through the frost of death; his thin bloodless hand clasped hers, and with a startling energy he repeated the following lines :— "When by the whelming tempest borne, High o'er the broken wave; I knew thou wert not slow to hear, And as she passed down the avenue from the patriarchal mansion, she said, the voice of this aged saint of God lifted up in prayer, fell upon her ear; and she learned the farther lesson, that the spirit of prayer may survive, when intellectual endowments, and the consciousness of high renown have been alike totally effaced from the tablet of the memory. I wish, my dear friend, if the thing were possible, you could in some way be separated from that remembrance of the past, which seems not only to terrify you, but to drive you away from Jesus. I could wish, vain as the desire may be, that the links which connect you with those painful transgressions, were broken off, in some sort, like this aged Christian. At least, that a moment's respite might be afforded you, to turn the distracted eye of your soul to the "Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." I would ask for you, what poor Job so mournfully desired for himself," How long wilt thou not depart from me, nor let me alone till I swallow down my spittle." So that forgetting all past associations; all your past sins; your present unworthiness; loosing yourself, so to speak, in the contemplation of the glories of redemption: so completely absorbed in the adoration of that name, "which is above every name,"-JESUS; as to extin |