EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR'S FATHER WRITTEN A FEW DAYS BEFORE HIS DEATH-ADDRESSED TO THE LATE BELOVED "FEARFUL.” [The following having been just put into our hands, we publish it with the hope that it may be comforting to some poor dejected soul. "Forty years," reader, is a long time to be kept in bondage; but whilst, on the one hand, it shows the sovereignty of Jehovah, it does, on the other, most clearly prove that our life is one thing, and an apprehension of that life another. You may be as safely based on the rock Christ Jesus as even Peter or Pauland others may be thoroughly established in their conviction of your being grafted into Christ, the living vine; and yet you yourself may be tossed upon the billows of uncertainty, and have a thousand and ten thousand doubts about your security-yet, blessed be God, this alters nothing. Your standing in Christ is as sure and as fixed as if you were conscious of it, but you at present are destitute of the comfort arising from the assurance thereof. But as the time-yea, the set time to favour Zion must come— we would ask the Lord speedily to bring about the auspicious day, and to say personally to the souls of such as are dejected and sorrowful, "I am thy salvation." Be upon the watch for it, for a really spiritual desire after it never fell short of it.-ED.] "MY DEAR Brother, "January 17, 1834. I perceive in your letter this morning the language of sorrowful feelings; but, as you say in your letter, the time will come when the trouble must lose its power. If not before death, you know then the dear believer loses all the unhappy effects of sin. That will be the believer's resting-place-Heaven a sinless state. I have often said to my brother, heaven being a gift to every child of God, gratitude is the happy effect, being all completed before our birth. I love to think over this subject, and even with an overflowing feeling of thanks for the same. When I think of those words, 'I was found of them that sought me not. I was made manifest to them that asked not after me,' what remark shall I make, but that the Lord gives no account of his conduct to any of his creatures-saves whom he will-leaves in nature's darkness whom he pleases? I often think with my brother, of Yarmouth, with wonder and admiration-how our steps were guided, and for what end? To hear the lifegiving word of God, and be brought to feel the Holy Spirit's quickening power from a state of real death; to find out Calvary, with all that scene of the most important benefit to poor self-condemned sinners. I am daily hoping to hear the crucified Redeemer say, 'I will be with thee in the gloomy vale of death: I ever intended to meet thee there; nor will I ever leave thee-no, not to the end of the race.' This is what I have begged for these forty years. I hear your pew-opener [the late Mr. Huntington's] found this Friend in the gloomy vale. Such news gives me a little hope. * * "January 21.-My dear Brother, the past night has been the worst I have passed through, but I seem much revived again at this time. My spirits are very low. I am wanting divine comfort from the God of comfort to help me in the gloomy vale. "I remain "Your affectionate brother, "J. D." [On that day week-the 28th of the month-a friend called, to whom he said, "I am upon the Rock, and all is well;" and to his Son returning from a journey on that same day, he said, "If I am better to-morrow, my dear, I will talk to you about business; if not, I shall be better off." When about to leave his bed the next morning (the 29th) the water suddenly rose to his chest-with a sweet serenity of countenance he waved adieu to those of his family who were about him, and looking upwards, sweetly fell asleep in Jesus.-ED.] THE BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST, HIS SON, CLEANSETH FROM ALL SIN. 1st JOHN, 1st CHAP. 7th v. Castle Cary. CHRIST's precious blood is blood divine, The blood of Jesus, Son of God, Sprinkle my heart, dear Lord, afresh Each day and ev'ry hour I need Of this rich blood that's drink indeed, There I shall ever praise my Lord, And full salvation sing To him that wash'd me in his blood, Then raise your voice and sing aloud, The blood of Jesus, Son of God, JOSEPH. DARKNESS. MANY write and speak to me as if they thought I knew nothing of darkness, dark feelings, and dark fears; whereas I do not believe there is a man in Christendom called to encounter these exercises more than I. It is true, that when the Lord pays me a love-visit, breaks in upon my soul with the sweet whispers of his love, and says, "Fear not 'tis I; be not afraid-I am thy God;" I rise up above all my misery, and sorrow, and care: ah! and in that strength defy both the devil and men to bring me down. I am as a giant refreshed with new wine. But when in "a darkness that may be felt"-the devil warring-unbelief raging-and perhaps the word, as it seemed just now, point blank against me; for I opened it directly upon these words, "thy way is perverse before me; it strikes like a dagger to the heart. There is not a chapter in the whole word of God that tries me like that 22nd of Numbers. After one of the most blessed seasons with which I was ever indulged, in travelling from Bath about four years ago, I opened my Bible and read that chapter, and the whole seemed to bear so directly against me-that I had some little gift, but it was merely that of a Balaam--that I have never wholly lost the sensation it enkindled. It is a tender—a very tender point-with me still. But when that expression," Thy way is perverse before me," bore down upon me just now, it seemed to bring me to a solemn stand. "Lord is it so? then stop me at once. Don't let me go on in this perverse way; but bring me to book, or make an end of me at once. Thou knowest my trial is the vile workings of the flesh, with the powerful strivings of unbelief, ingratitude, rebellion, and self-will; but, Lord, has the flesh broke out? Is it not my plague-my trial-my sore? Would I have it so? Am I not a sworn enemy against myself?" Well, reader, I took the Bible again, as if to read my sentence once more, and then my eyes dropped upon this passage (Deut. xi. 7), “But your eyes have seen all the great acts of the Lord which he did." Ah! bless him, I have-I have; and if I go to hell, I'll talk about it there, so that I am sure the devil and I shall not agree. He will be for turning me out. So that, reader, I don't think I have lost anything by this trading. Satan meant it for evil, but my God intended it for good; and now, though I have got the devil whispering in at one ear, and unbelief at the other, suggesting they would say nothing to you about it-for I may be tumbled into the mud and the mire yet-I feel disposed to listen to neither, but just tell it out to you, and leave it to the Lord to do both with me and with it as seemeth good in his sight. A PENSIONER. CORRESPONDENCE. CRISPIN TO THE BISHOP OF EXETER. MOST DISTINGUISHED PRELATE, When I last addressed you upon the occasion of your attempt to bring us back to the priest-ridden days of the despicable Charles, and the carnal and flesh-pleasing bishops of those times-times, the blot of which hath never been washed out from the escutcheon of our national Establishment, nor ever can be, so long as her bishops are elected from secular motives, and not from the spiritual grace and gifts which their high office requires them to possess. On this ground alone are we indebted for the whole bench of bishops, into whose hands are delivered for keeping, the mass of the population of this great nation; and the conduct of yourself and your brother of London has fully proved what your views of that keeping are, and, notwithstanding the good sense of a people more enlightened than their bishops, have shown a praiseworthy determination not to be brought under the yoke they had so nobly cast off from them, yet so far as regards yourself there is that restlessness of mind for power, and recklessness of consequences-that nothing appears of equal moment in your estimation; and I was wrong in my expectation that you would profit by the lesson the people of your own diocese have taken the pains to teach you. Thus I have also been disappointed when I considered my last epistle would be final. Much as it could be wished that during the last few months of cessation in which, as regards the major part of both clergy and laity, peace has been restored, you should have cultivated the same spirit, and in the arduous duties of your office, when meeting them, have shown the spirit of one whose study was to show himself approved of God; but alas! desirable as this might be, not the least sign is evident throughout the whole charge you have recently delivered, that you are less intent in enforcing, if possible, the dogma of your own will, which you would have to be considered infallible. I have read and re-read your charge, which, for prolixity, exceeds what bishops are in the habit of delivering, but it is as void of spirituality as bishops' charges always are; for many years have rolled away since I saw even the shade of spirituality in a bishop's charge-by a misnomer so called; nor do I expect yet to see it, while Henry of Exeter is the sample of those we are taught to look up to as our spiritual guides, to whom the language of the reproving prophet is applicable, "Her prophets are light and treacherous persons; her priests (more particularly her carnal and time-serving bishops) have polluted the sanctuary; they have done violence to the law. The vituperation and splenetic character of your late charge will not fail to gain for you all that contempt such conduct fully deserves, and will, beyond doubt, add to the well-earned notoriety of that bishop who is thought worthy to be enrolled amongst the denizens of Madame Tussaud. What might have been the feelings of the clergy during the pain inflicted upon them while called to listen to the delivery of this charge, is not for me to say; yet I hope that even in the diocese of Exeter, there are a few who would even dare to repudiate the vague and empty creed in which the bishop prides himself, although delivered from the foot of the altar of our national Church; and who are no less feelingly awake to the solemn state of that man who, upon the confines of an eternal world, is found so ignorant of the first principles of Christianity. And could it have been possible for the spacious cloisters of the venerable cathedral to have re-echoed the charges of those truly grace-taught prelates of by-gone days, they would have hushed into silence your meagre and unmeaning production, which, even now, will leave no further impression upon the mind, than the bishop's sonorous voice in the delivery of this majestic ephemera. Permit me to say, that amidst all your boast and ostentation of adherence to the undiluted and unperverted doctrines of the Church, you have made a sad and fatal mistake about what those doctrines are; and with all respect both for your years and learning, I am bold to tell you that the Church maintains no one of those Utopian absurdities which you assert, and which have been so proved again and again by those of your own diocese. Think me not an enemy to the Church, within whose pale I was born and new-born, and of whose doctrines, as far as they are in unison with the word of God, I am still tenacious, but will never admit that the cardinal point of Christianity is "spiritual regeneration in baptism," though enforced with vehemency by the most learned Dr. Phillpotts. The channels of my furrowed cheeks are filled with the flowing tide of sorrow while reading the avowed creed of a bishop of the nineteenth century, and that bishop one whose voice was lifted against the school of Maynooth, while he himself imbibes the most pernicious tenets of that anti-christian school; for, admitting, by way of argument, the first article of Dr. Phillpott's creed, how will he admit apostolical succession-his favourite thesis-without the connecting link of the Romish Church? Of this the history of our own nation will afford ample information, and the absurdity of which seals its own destiny, with all who a re not left in the leading strings of a usurping and lordly priesthood. Plainness of speech would be well for bishops to use, and not that darkening of council so prevalent when speaking of things of the greatest importance as concerns the immortal soul. But what shall we say of the orthodoxy of that man-be he bishop or deacon-who, in defiance to the testimony of holy writ, and the experience of all regenerated men, asserts that the spiritual new birth is given by God in baptism, and ordinarily in baptism alone. That this is a prominent feature in your creed, you by no means wish the clergy of your diocese to be ignorant of; yet a more fatal and soul-deceiving error hath never been propagated. It has been the gangrene that has preyed upon the vitals of our once Protestant Church-the subterfuge for the carnal and ungodly men who have desecrated her altars, and is now silently infusing its venom amongst all ranks of Dissenters, under the far-fetched soothing syrup of parental interest in the covenant. How solemn the thought that the Bishop of Exeter should be the Nicodemus of the present age, without a desire of being more fully instructed by the great Master in Israel. The evidence of these things is plain from your tenacity in enforcing your favourite tenet upon every opportunity. But alas! how vast a difference is seen between what you call "spiritual regeneration," and what the Scriptures of God make known as such. The one you are so much in love with, and the only one, I fear, you are interested in, is so flexible in its nature, as to allow of expansion during the greatest period of life, and when its carnal pleasures can be indulged in no longer, it recedes, from necessity, within the Church bounds of receiving what you call "the real though mystical communion of the body and blood of Christ,-by which they are entitled to all that belongs to baptismal regeneration. Thus a Gibbon could spend his whole life in the one act of defying the Lord, and a Byron, with his blasphemy, contaminate the morals and principles of thousands; yet being, as |