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respects a new and favourable relation on the part of God, but also a new and holy state of the affections on the part of man. In other words, the happiness of a sinner will depend, first, upon the conviction that God has pardoned him; and, secondly, upon the consciousness that he loves the Being who has thus tenderly dealt with him. That God has pardoned him, is a thought which will remove all his fears, hush the tumult of his conscience, cast a brightness over the events of Providence, extract the sting from death, and render the prospect of eternity brilliant. That he loves God, is a consciousness derived from the now accordant state of his feelings with God's benefits; from a delight in the method of God's dealings with him, from a return of gratitude, from an approbation of God's character, from a sympathy with God's views and intentions, from an acquiescence in God's estimate of good and evil, from an internal perception of an intimate communion between God and his soul, whereby he cleaves to him as his Friend, his Father, his Refuge, and his God. The Presiding Power of the universe is thus his shelter; the Almighty Mind is in contact with his own; the eternal attributes of God beam around him, as so many suns to cheer and to refresh him; mercy and purity and love seem to encompass him, and there is no evil which can ultimately wound his peace. He is travelling through a wilderness, but under infallible guidance, and under unassailable protection; and he will soon reach his home, his heritage in the fair regions of eternity. Thus a sense of pardon, and a sense of love to that holy Mercy which has forgiven him, bring him into tranquillity and safety. He is therefore happy.

It is not conceivable that an intelligent, but sinful creature, could be happy in any other way, while living under the administration of a holy God..

Now we find, that the remedy which Christianity brings forward to our view is exactly of this kind. "Jesus Christ came to bless you, by turning away every one of you from his iniquities." God might have left us to reap the harvest of our rebellion. He might have left us to the unchecked operation of our wild and earthly passions; and had any messenger arrived from Heaven, he might well have brought tidings of long and of final calamity. But God's ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts." "He hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ." He sent him to bless, and not to curse; to save, and not to destroy. He sent him to expiate our sin, and to render his mercy lovely in our eyes. He sent us pardon, and he sent us the means of loving the nature and the heart from which that pardon flowed.

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In this complex operation, the means of human happiness are unfolded. The pardon of sin is complete and free, unclogged with any condition or qualification. "Return unto me, for I have redeemed thee." "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thine iniquities as a thick cloud, and as a cloud thy sins." "When we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son." "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have everlasting life."

The guilty offender may now look upwards and read the unequivocal declaration of pardon and redemption. The way is again open to God's mercy-seat. The great

High Priest stands before the throne to intercede for the criminal. "There is no condemnation," but perfect reconciliation and grace.

Now the belief of this truth, under the agency of the Spirit, conveys healing to the heart. The discovery of this act of conciliation to

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any soul, is in the highest degree purifying. It is impossible that the soul should retain its enmity, its reluctance to God's service, in the face of all this holy mercy. Sin becomes loathsome and odious when its consequences are thus made visible in the personal sufferings of Jesus Christ; and obedience to the will and mind of God then becomes identical with peace and happiness., Thus Christ blesses by turning away from iniquity, by procuring at once the pardon of sin, and by healing the disease of sin; by restoring peace in the relations between God and man, and by making God's character the object of attractive imitation.

The necessity for a "healed heart" to produce happiness, may perhaps be questioned. It may be said, that men have found a very large measure of enjoyment without a religious mind. The answer to such an assertion is, however, very apparent. If it pleased God always to withdraw himself from the notice of his creatures, and to encircle them with objects adapted to their lower appetites, a large amount of enjoyment might certainly be found separated from religion. But if God has declared, that the moment fast approaches when he will summon man to his bar, and force his conscience to a tribunal from which there lies no escape, it will then directly follow, that no man can long be happy whose mind is not prepared for such a scrutiny. Supposing that conscience sleeps until the moment of death, it will at least awake at the moment of the resurrection, and the result must be inconceivably dreadful. An infinite force will then surround us, and we shall find ourselves opposed to the direction in which that force acts: we must, therefore, be thwarted and unhappy.

The reluctance of our minds to God's moral government would, in fact, be even as hell to us. "There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." "They are like the trou

bled sea, whose waters cast up mire and dirt." This is surely a very intelligible statement of the ultimate misery of sin, and a statement which entirely justifies the necessity for conversion of heart in order to reproduce happiness, while it corrects the strange delusion of mere notions without works. God is the Governor of the world, and the principles of his government will one day become apparent to all his creatures: we can, therefore, only be happy as our views and affections are conformed to those principles. That man will certainly be happy ere long who loves God, and who loves God's ways; and no other man can, with any pretension

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common sense, expect to be happy. "All things," says the Bible, "work together for good to those who love God;" and the reason is, that all things connected with their destiny will one day be adjusted to the steady operation of his moral government, and their delight will arise from the full accordance of that operation with their own principles. Then sorrow and sin will be for ever removed from them, and they will dwell in the blissful presence of God for ever!

How stupendous is this mystery of grace! how munificent is this mission of mercy to the guilty! "Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you by turning away every one of you from his iniquities."

The resurrection of Jesus Christ, it may be here observed, is an important part of this statement: "God sent him to bless you, having raised him up," that is, from the dead.

The ultimate blessings of salvation are said to be purchased for man by the sufferings and death of Christ. "He gave his life a ransom for many." Hence he went down, in their behalf, to the grave: but he went down as a Conqueror : "O death, I will be thy plague: 0 death, I will be thy destruction." He rested the truth of all his assurances to mankind upon the event

of his resurrection: "If Christ be not raised, ye are yet in your sins," and the doctrines of hope and of eternal life are fables and a dream! We may safely judge of the actual interest which we ourselves have in the resurrection of Christ, by the moral effect which the belief of it has produced upon our minds. Have we regarded it as the seal which God has affixed to the truth of every doctrine delivered by Jesus Christ to man? And, as such, do we behold in it the pledge to us of eternal mercy, the assurance of forgiveness of our sins, and of our own resurrection to everlasting felicity? Do we connect with it the continual mediation and friendship of the Son of God in our behalf? Do we contemplate him as near to the throne of God exercising uncontrouled power, and this in our favour? "Lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." "I am He that liveth and was dead, and am alive again, and have the keys of death and of hell." "Come unto me, and I will give you rest." "He that believeth on me shall never die." "Let not your heart be troubled: I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also." What influence have these and similar declarations upon our moral and spiritual existence? Religion is not a ceremony or a name. It is a deep sympathy, binding down the soul to allegiance and to love. It is the cure of the heart, the consecration of our faculties and of our affections unto the Benefactor by whose hands we were created, and under whose benignant influence we still live and move and have our being. And as such it is a matter of distinct consciousness. Who doubts of the existence of his affection, and of his fidelity, as exercised towards his fellows? And why shall not this affection, and this fidelity, be as much the subject of certainty and of consciousness when exercised towards God?

It is such; and at this moment, amidst all the shades of human chaCHRIST. OBSERV. No. 293.

racter in Christendom, there are but two classes of men; those who love Christ, and those who love him not. Those who love him act as reasonably towards him as they do towards others. Because they love him they think of him, they study to please him; they draw their strength, their hope, their tranquillity, their purity from his inexhaustible fulness. It is not with them a matter of indifference whether or not his name be profaned, his regulations be set at nought, or his cause on earth be opposed. "Unto you that believe He is precious." Hence with such persons godly anxiety is a reasonable sensation, and the hopes of eternity enter into all their calculations of human felicity.

But with those who love him not, no such godly anxiety exists. They have no sympathy with his views, no delight in his service. To lull the reproaches of conscience, and to throw some rays upon the darkness of the future, they may often appear as his worshippers; yea, they may kneel at his altar, and partake of the emblems of his body and of his blood; but they have no real attachment to his person, and to his cause. They live happily with his foes, they sport with his laws, they make their convenience or their pleasure the standard of their religion! They sometimes say, "Lord, Lord," but they make no heartfelt effort to do the thing which he says. But how fearful is the delusion which such worldly religionists practise upon themselves! What a cruel pang of disappointment will one day fasten upon their souls! "God is not to be mocked, whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap."

If the Bible be the record of God's ultimate dealings with mankind, then the eternal destiny of men rests upon their allegiance and their attachment to their Saviour! It is not an opinion, it is service, it is allegiance, it is loyalty to Christ, which God demands.

If these be yielded, all is ulti2 N

mately safe. Then, amidst the sadnesses of life, our souls may often rise to the tone of grateful and exulting anticipation. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which, according to his

abundant mercy, hath begotten us again to a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away."

MISCELLANEOUS.

Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer. IT must appear strange to every mind imbued with the true spirit of Christianity, that the apologists for slavery should continue to defend their cause, by what you have just ly denominated, in your critique upon Bailey's "House of Bondage," (Christian Observer for 1824, p. 624,) that "unmanly canting, and jesuitical argument," that the system is not contrary to Scripture. In the last Number of the Quarterly Review, in a critique on a very flippant volume, intitled "Six Months in the West Indies," the reviewer takes occasion to observe, that the Abolitionists assert "that the existence of slavery is an absolute violation of the precepts of the Bible," but that "these gentlemen (the Abolitionists) can hardly be ignorant that personal slavery is mentioned or alluded to in almost every page of the Scriptures; and that, from the first verse of Genesis to the last of the Apocalypse, not one text can be pointed out in which its existence is reprobated." And again; "they (Abolitionists) cannot be ignorant, that among the first converts of Christianity, the great majority necessarily consisted of slaves and slave proprietors." They cannot have entirely overlooked the striking, however, according to their view, inexplicable fact, that not one instance of emancipation is recorded in the New-Testament history," &c. pp. 501-503.

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The sophism in these passages consists in endeavouring to prove

that the Scriptures sanction the existence of slavery under the Christian dispensation; and that the silence of Scripture, in not reprobating the practice, is to be construed into an approval of it. It is not the ordinary manner of the sacred writers to comment on the facts which they record; but the absence of strong condemnatory remarks is not to be understood as a tacit approval of the conduct of those whose actions are related. Thus, when the murder of the innocents is perpetrated by the order of Herod," not one text can be pointed out in which" this atrocity is reprobated. So also in the stoning of Stephen (if we except St. Paul's humbling confession of the part which he took in that murder, Acts xxii. 20,) and the murder of James by Herod; and many other instances which might be adduced.

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The assertion, that "not one instance of emancipation is recorded in the New-Testament history," is true in part; that is, no particular instance is related; but if, as was doubtless the case, among the first converts of Christianity, the great majority necessarily consisted of slaves and slave-proprietors," how are we to understand the facts recorded in Acts ii. 44, et seq., where we are told that "all that believed were together, and had all things common," unless we suppose that the slaves were emancipated in order to partake of the common property of the church, according to the peculiar necessity of the times? But if a text be wanted which reprobates the

existence of slavery, we cannot require a stronger one than that which classes "men-stealers," among those who act "contrary to sound doctrine.” (1 Tim. i. 10.) Besides, how are we to observe the golden law of Christ, of doing to others as we would that they should do to us, if personal slavery is to be maintained? We know that the "inspired teachers of our faith never preached any doctrines but those of submission, contentment," &c. to slaves; but they also said to the slave, "If thou mayest be made free, use it rather." (1 Cor. vii. 21.)

With respect to the author of "Six Months in the West Indies," it reflects no credit on him as secretary to a bishop, to speak in so light a strain of the solemn offices of the church, as we find him doing in the case of the baptism of Black children, and the marriage of the Negroes. He talks of mothers "jockeying for the honour of first baptism," and of the " regenerated piccaninnies;" and he borrows his expres sions from the pugilistic ring, when he speaks of the backwardness of one woman to be united to a man, to whom it seems she had promised marriage; he terms this not being willing to "come to the scratch." See also his language respecting the children on the estates, pp. 135137. I have been more than six months in the West Indies; and have seen so much of slavery, that I have long since formed the opinion, that a man retained in personal slavery is justified in the use of any lawful means to recover his liberty, and that British Christians are bound to supply these means to the utmost of their power. I would not debate the subject with any one as to the treatment which the slaves receive: the single question, in my opinion, is, by what right are slaves held in bondage? By what right are they, in the first instance, taken from their own shores? The principle is to be condemned, and not a dispute to be maintained how the slave trade is

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Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer. I READ without surprize, (being well aware of the existence of such rites in the Romish Church,) the form of the consecration of Bells, published in a late Number of your work. But the Romish servicebook is very far from being that mass of absurdity which persons unacquainted with it may thence be induced to suppose. It contains the originals of nearly all the finest Collects which adorn our own Liturgy; and many others, on the subject of fasting, prove that our ancestors in popish times knew (theoretically at least) with what spirit it ought to be practised, and to what ends made subservient, among Christians. My present purpose however is not to transcribe any of these, but to send for your insertion-I will venture to say, for the admiration of your readers-an address to parents and sponsors (not to sponsors only, but to parents and sponsors,) after the celebration of Infant Baptism, ex Rituali Romano, jussu Benedicti XIV edito, extractus." Omitting a few vix tolerabiles ineptias, the exhortation runs thus: "This child is now baptized, delivered from the slavery of the devil," &c.-" You then, father and mother, offer your most fervent acts of thanksgiving, for the singular mercy obtained in this sacrament; and beseech your Divine Saviour, that he may grant you life, to instruct the child in the duties of a Christian. You are bound to exert all your powers, to preserve the baptismal innocence, and prevent the assaults of the evil enemy, who incessantly labours to destroy it. Your example must concur with your instructions; and therefore you are obliged to labour strenuously in the care of your own

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