apothe church of the living God, who sancti fies and consecrates it for his own temple, is the same. So that we may boldly say, as in the Common Prayer Book, "I believe in God the Holy Ghost, who hath sanctified me, and all the elect people of God."

Thus my friend sees who it is that makes a minister, and what the materials are that constitute a church. And, if all who are in office, and under a profession, were stripped, except such as the foregoing, how few would be the number that have entered the strait gate! But so it is what some in words repeat others enjoy" O God the Holy Ghost, the comforter, have mercy upon us, miserable sinners." So speaks the form of sound words. But the kingdom of God stands. in the power of the Holy Ghost.

Farewell! Grace and truth be with thee. Tender my kind love to Mrs. S. My dame sends the same with her own hand, which is the token in this epistle; so she writes, "Best love to Mr. and Mrs. S."

CCCCIX.

Cricklewood, Oct. 22, 1810.

DEAR FRIEND,

OLD age renders writing a task to me; my right hand forgets its cunning, and a kind of weakness in the muscles turns my pen out of the way of duty. But my tongue may be as the pen of a ready writer when the quill has finished that part of the ministry peculiar to itself. Your first epistle furnished me with a thank-offering. God is no respecter of persons; this is evident, for you are a lawyer; and it is as plain that he is no respecter of places, because he visited the lawyer in a barn. "We walk by faith;" and faith has her mystical footsteps, and does most certainly move forward. But every fresh step has some visit, enlargement, discovery, refreshing, manifestation, love token, indulgence, revival, or renewing, in order to put the feet of faith in motion. Under the influences of the Spirit she receives her activity, and all her springs that move her to act; and, like the moon, moves in concert with the countenance of the Sun of righteousness. The Spirit speaks not of himself; but what he hears, that he speaks; and, as the Saviour moves among

the candlesticks, so the Spirit operates in the lamps. Such sovereign and discriminating visits call for thanks, praise, and every humbling acknowledgment. If you come short in this you withhold the revenues of the empire, and may expect to feel the sensible need of that power in which the kingdom stands.

I am now preaching in a place most disagreeable to me; the way of access, and every thing belonging to it, is unpleasant. Yet there I am fixed, and there I must abide: and by the continual and various exercises which I pass under previous to my preaching, and the uncommon zeal and energy with which I am inflamed in the work, especially on the Lord's day, convince and assure me that God has a work to do in that place: and I suspect that the old chapel was burnt down in order to remove the camp to another spot, where more work, and a fresh soil to work upon, may produce such fruits as shall in due time make this manifest. But we are called to watch and to wait; and, if the Lord's footsteps were always plain, we should follow by sight and not by faith. When I have his presence I am at home, I am full, I am rich, I abound, I am contented, let other matters go how they may. But when this is not the case I have no dwelling nor resting place, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.

Ever yours

THE COALHEAVER,

One branch of the heavenly art is wanting in you you pray and call, and yet rebel. If praying thrice will not remove a thorn in the flesh, yet it is turned into a cross, and grace is sufficient to sanctify it.

CCCCX.

S. S.

Feb. 9, 1795.

MY DEAR FRIENDS,

It is a cold and inclement season, and so violent as to affect the ploughman, if not the soil, which renders it impossible for me at this junc ture to go on with my usual employ of ploughing up the fallow ground, rooting up the briers and thorns, and getting the ground smooth, and fit for the cummin and wheat in season and out of season. Therefore, unwilling to stand in the market-place all the day idle, with the pitiful excuse of saying, "because no man hath hired me," I thought I would spend an hour in asking you how business goes on? The principal business now in hand is threshing the corn from the straw and chaff, and getting the grain pure into the granary. The souls of men are the Lord's wheat, his chief and principal grain, the produce of his husbandry, and all the crop that the angelic reaper will gather out of the field

of this world in the great harvest day. The throngs of sensible sinners, who are alarmed and awakened to a sense of their danger, are the fields that are white already to harvest. The gospel, in the hand of a faithful labourer, is intended to cut down, and gather together, the Lord's crop, that is, to cut them off from the old stock of self-righteousness, self-confidence, and self-dependance, and to gather them out of the world, out of the old covenant, out of their carnal security, and to gather them together to Christ, into the bond of the new covenant; that their souls may be bound up in the bundle of life with the Lord their God; and into the bond of peace and love, (which are the bond of perfection) one with another, and all together. This wheat must be gathered into the Lord's barn; into his house, and into his church, the household of faith; where every faithful preacher, called a threshing instru ment having teeth, is to handle the word faithfully, and so to separate the vile from the precious, and the chaff from the wheat; to bring the soul out from all its false coverts and coverings, and from among those who are light and vain, and who are carried away, like chaff with every wind of doctrine.m While the Master of the grain takes the fan in hand, and by the faithful preaching of the word, by reproofs and rebukes, by judgments