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son of God. He teaches us too what is the nature of this belief, and then disposes us to ascertain by an impartial self-examination whether we believe or not. If we ascertain in this manner that we are believers, then the Spirit testifies to us that we are sons of God, which our own spirits are constrained to believe is the truth. In like manner, the Spirit teaches us that every proof that we possess some saving grace, whether it be faith, hope, repentance, love, humility, or godly fear, is evidence of our adoption. That all renewed persons are the sons of God, the Spirit testifies in the word; and then he brings believers to such an examination as convinces them that they are renewed; so that the joint testimony of the Holy Ghost and of their own spirits is this, that there is no condemnation which they need fear; that God is their Father, that Jesus is their Saviour; that the Sanctifier is within them; and that they shall soon be qualified for the enjoyment of Jehovah in heaven.

May the Lord give you all the Spirit of adoption, and the evidence of his inhabitation; and to his name shall be the praise for ever. Amen.

DECEMBER REFLECTIONS.

The end of the year naturally brings along with it many serious and heart-touching reflections. It reminds us that time is hastening on in its course--and that the end of all earthly things, in reference to us, is very rapidly approaching. At such a period as this, therefore, it becomes the mind to indulge those solemn reflections which a view of the progress of time is calculated to produce. Start not hack, Christians, from the exercise; for it will be profitable to your souls if rightly pursued.

Look back on the year then, that is now nearly elapsed, and observe how you have spent it. Have you been living to God, or to yourselves? Have you been preparing for heaven; or have you been merely endeavouring to grow rich in the perishable wealth of the present world? Have you been exercised, in the strength of God, in subduing and destroying your evil desires and corrupt propensities; or have you spent the past year in fostering them by unhallowed indulgence? Be faithful with your conscience, and demand from it an explicit answer to these and similar questions.

If your conscience should condemn you, as we know, if faithful, it must to a certain extent, the lesson which such a sentence of condemnation teaches is abundantly obvious. Repent of your follies--confess your sins to God--and pray that you may be enabled from this date to pursue a course of conduct more becoming the expectants of heaven than that which you have hiVOL. II.-Presb. Mag.

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therto pursued. But you must not rest contented when you may have thus prayed and made your confession; you must rise from your knees firmly resolved, by the assistance of God, to pursue a plan of active improvement. Circumspection and watchfulness must be more cultivated and observed by you in the general tenor of your conduct. Your past errors and wanderings ought to be improved by you for beacons in your future course; that you may not continue always to fall into the same quicksands of corruption and folly, and make shipwreck at last of your faith, and fall short of the enjoyments and comforts of heaven. Those who are always repenting but never improving, show too plainly by their behaviour, that whatever they may think of themselves, or of their plan of life, there is something very wrong and very defective in both. Surely the very acknowledgment of our faults ought to be an argument with us, that it is our bounden duty to endeavour after a thorough change of heart and complete reformation of conduct.

Many professing Christians, when pressed upon this point, have an apology ready for their negligence; that they cannot of themselves do any thing; and, therefore, they appear to wait until some mighty supernatural impulse be given to them to put them in motion. This, surely, is perverting the practical use of divine assistance. God promises us assistance, and tells us of our own weakness; not that we may thereby be encouraged in sloth; but that by his promise, and a sense of our own weakness and imperfection, we may be induced to apply to him for assistance and strength, and then endeavour by these to glorify him in our lives. We cannot of ourselves, we allow, do any thing were God to take away all that from us which he has given; but surely whilst he continues to us our natural faculties, and promises to us, moreover, the aid of his grace and Spirit to help us in the right employment of them, we are bound to exert ourselves in the use of these talents, and not allow them to lie in a state of sinful inaction. But when we have done all, we must not think that we have laid our Creator under any obligation by our services to reward us; for we have, in all our exertions and endeavours, been trading merely upon our Lord's money; and, consequently, if he should reward us, that must be in conformity to his own promise, and not on account of any debt which he owes to us. But this doctrine is still more awfully confirmed, when we view man in his present fallen state. If the reward would have been of grace, even had man continued in innocency, because he had nothing but what God gave him; much more must it now be of grace when man has not only neglected to improve, but has, in fact, positively abused the gifts of his God and Father. Do not suppose then, Christians, that we wish you to imagine yourselves gods, and ascribe all to yourselves, and

say that you are your own Saviours, because, in conformity to the Bible, we exhort you to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, believing that it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of his own good pleasure.

Have you then, in fact and in good earnest, been thus working out your own salvation during that year which is now almost closed? Were your days to end with the conclusion of this year; are you ready to appear before your God? These, Christians, be assured, are questions of a very solemn kind, and should not be treated by you with levity and indifference. For, you must know, that whether you survive the conclusion of this year or not--that year will very soon come in which you must die. And have not many of your own age, and even younger than you, gone before you to the silent mansions of the dead? Have you thus been spared; and do you not consider that the long-suffering patience of God, manifested in your case, ought to lead you to repentance? and to active diligence in preparing yourselves to follow those who have gone before you to the grave? Your life is not more sure to you than theirs was to them. Let the solemn thought, therefore, that you must soon join those who have gone before you to the dust, teach you to number your days and to apply yourselves with all your might to the acquisition of that wisdom which will fit you for the enjoyment of heaven. For, be assured, the honourable name of Christian will not at last avail you, unless you really possess what that name is intended to imply? And, we would ask you, what profit will it be to you, in the day of judgment, that you past in the world for tolerably good Christians; if Christ, whose name you bear, should then profess that he never knew you?--Beware, therefore, of deceiving yourselves with a name to live whilst you are dead in sin; for remember that although you should succeed in deceiving your fellow men; you cannot impose falsehood for truth on the all-seeing God. And let the lapse of another year remind you that you are brought a step nearer the tomb, and of course a step nearer to that solemn trial which will irreversibly fix your eternal destiny. Arouse then your mental energies--and, by a careful examination of yourselves, endeavour to ascertain whether you are really prepared to die.

Christians! this is not a season for loose revelry, and licentious indulgence. It ought to be with you rather a time of mourning for sin--than a time of unmeaning mirth, and sinful festivity. Should we not, at such a season, consider that it is our duty to redeem our misspent time--rather than abuse and squander away those few precious hours of our lives that may yet remain? Let us, therefore, use the gifts of our God with temperance; that the creatures of his bounty may contribute, as they were intended, to our real felicity; and not by our own

folly prove the occasion of our eternal ruin. But we shall allow you to pursue for yourselves the train of useful thoughts which a season like the present is calculated to produce, whilst we conclude our remarks in the following words of an inspired apostle: "The time past of our lives (2 Peter, iv. 3.) may suffice us to have wrought the will of the gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries: wherein they think it strange that you run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you who shall give an account to Him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead. For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit. But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober and watch unto prayer." T. G. MI.

EIGHTEENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY.

On Wednesday, May 1, 1822, was held, at the Freemasons' Hall, London, the eighteenth anniversary of the British and Foreign Bible Society.

Lord TEIGNMOUTH, the president, addressed the meeting as follows: “Gentlemen--I have ever looked forward to the recurrence of this day, with anticipated feelings of unmingled gratification, and during the eighteen years in which I have had the honour to occupy the chair of this meeting, have never been disappointed. On the present occasion, however, there is a subject of regret, in which we must all participate, the absence of our respected secretary, the Rev. John Owen; his constitution, for the third time, has sunk beneath the laborious duties of his office, and he is now suffering the consequences of unremitted exertion in the discharge of them. The magnitude and extent of his services, can be estimated by those only who have witnessed them; their value to our society is incalculable. He has reluctantly yielded to a temporary suspension of his labours, and has been constrained to submit to that repose from which only he can hope, under Providence, for the restoration of his health. But his heart is with us, and I am sure that our affections are with him, accompanied by our most cordial wishes for his speedy and confirmed convalescence. "I hold in my hand a letter addressed to me by one of the earliest, most constant, and most respected friends of our institution, the Right Rev. the Bishop of Durham, now in his eighty-ninth year, expressing his invariable attachment to it; and I also present you with a letter to the same purport from the Right Rev. the Bishop of Gloucester, whose episcopal duties in his diocese, have deprived the meeting of the honour and benefit of his presence. They will be heard with deep interest."

(COPY.)

Cavendish Square, April 30, 1822. My dear Lord-A prolongation of life to a period, but rarely the lot of man, must plead my excuse for absence; and calls upon me to repeat to your lordship, and the numerous friends of the British and Foreign Bible Society, at the ensuing anniversary, my attachment to its most important object, in the only way in which a gracious Providence permits me to express it. From the commencement of the institution, to its present wonderfully advanced state, it has

had my good wishes; they remain unaltered, and will so remain during the short continuance of my mortal existence.

I have the honour to be,

My dear Lord,

With the truest regard and esteem,
Your lordship's very faithful servant,
S. DUNELM.

P. S. Your lordship will apply the enclosed draft for fifty pounds to any purpose of the Society, which your lordship may think most requires it.

(COPY.)

Palace, Gloucester, April 29, 1822.

My dear Lord-I am truly concerned to be obliged to decline attending the anniversary of the British and Foreign Bible Society. But indispensable diocesan business, as usual, in the third year, detains me in the country. It may seem almost presumptuous to offer a testimony so comparatively insignificant, to a Society, whose operations are so extensive, and whose character has been so long established. But I cannot resist the temptation of expressing to your lordship what I should have expressed at the meeting, in the most open and decided manner, my continued and increasing regard for the Society, and my full approbation of its conduct; an approbation which cavils triumphantly refuted, could never shake, a regard, therefore, which no interfering considerations, no motives of a worldly nature, could induce me to withdraw. I beg to offer my most hearty good wishes and prayers for the still further progress of the institution, and for a spiritual blessing upon each Bible distributed.

I have the honour to remain,

My dear Lord,

With sincere respect and esteem,

Your lordship's faithful friend and servant,
H. GLOUCESTER.

An Abstract of the Report was then read by the Rev. William Dealtry, Rector of Clapham, from which it appeared that the issues of Bibles and Testaments within the year, from the Depository, have been 118,766 Bibles, 136,973 New Testaments, making, with those issued at the expense of the Society, from foreign presses, since the commencement of the institution, three millions two hundred and fifty thousand Bibles and Testaments.

The Cash Account appeared to stand as follows: Total Net Receipts

Which included—

From Auxiliary Societies' Free Contributions
On Moiety Account subject to the return of
a portion in Bibles and Testaments

For Bibles, Testaments, Reports, and Month-
ly Extracts

Total Net Payments

1. 8. d. 15,622 7 2 43,495 9 9

l. 8. d. 103,802 17 1

S

59,117 16 11

30,789 7 9

90,445 6 4

The Society is under engagements which will become payable within its current year, to the amount of upwards of 50,0007.

The Earl of HARROWBY spoke as follows:

"My Lords and Gentlemen-I rise with much pleasure to move, that the Report be printed; and I am certain that the perusal of it will afford pleasure, not only to the persons now present, but to a large portion of the inhabitants of this country, and to that large portion of the inhabitants of Europe and the world, who take an interest in the proceedings of this Society. It is, indeed, a singular and a gratifying circumstance to perceive, by the abstract of the Report just read, what may be almost called the universality of the proceedings of the Society; some of the very names of the places to which it has extended, are so

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