ceremonies of the Christian ChurchBaptism and the Lord's Supper which severally embody the testimony and the doctrine of the water and the blood. The light that is thrown upon man's devious path by divine grace, is that of pardon and spiritual life and strength. And this light is, as it were, held up perpetually in the Church of God by the candlesticks of two permanent ordinances, in which, if rightly observed, the true light shineth.

It would lengthen this paper too much to follow out all the features of the description in Revelation xi. fully; but they who believe the Gospel to be the power and the testimony of God, will readily admit the awful sanctions that wait around the ministry of the word, to bless those who receive it in the love of it; and to "smite with plague" the individuals and the nations that reject, deteriorate, or pervert it. The history of the prophetic earth has been a detail of those influences. Even now the judgments of God are abroad on those who "hurt" the witnesses; and there is great reason to fear at this moment that our own nation, from an unbelieving indifference to the testimony of the Redeemer's broken and bleeding heart, is entangling itself again in the meshes of this awful

curse.

But there is one point here to which our attention must be given. The witnesses are to prophesy in sackcloth during the whole period of the Romish apostasy; and, at the close of that period, when matters are drawing towards the winding up of the whole dispensation, "the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and shall kill them." That must then be slain, whatever it is, which has maintained a testimony in sackcloth for 1260 years. If the view here taken of the identity of the two earthly and the two prophetic witnesses be correct, then what is the kind of event likely to occur which can be considered as the death of the witnesses ?

The testimony of the water and the blood is, as we have seen, a testi

mony to two grand and gracious truths, on which the salvation of men and the glory of God depend. The power of that testimony is in the vouchsafed influence of that Spirit who is at once a heavenly and an earthly witness. "It is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth." Now if, by Satanic or human agency, a great perversion of truth is devised so that the prophesying respecting the water and the blood shall not be the actual truth of our Lord's mission and work; but something only outwardly resembling it, while the characteristic truth of grace is withheld-then the Spirit will not witness by such a perverted and adulterated message. There may be much talking about justification and regeneration; but if, in fact, the grace of God is misrepresented and dishonoured, and fallen man in any way exalted, the witnessing altogether changes its character; while probably the outward formalism remains the same; but no power accompanies this seeming but false Gospel; the Spirit is withdrawn-the witnesses are dead! The olive trees give no oil through the golden pipes! the candlesticks give no light! With all the formalities of the Church remaining as they were, all is dryness, and darkness, and death!

It would not be easy to look away from the close connexion between this statement and the warfare which has been waged in later years against the Gospel testimony. It has not been the open and avowed hostility formerly shown to the great truths of revelation, but it has been an artful, sophistical, elaborate perversion of the truth. Instead of the open resistance to the technicalities of Scripture, which once characterized man in general, there has been a gradual and prominent adoption of them. Men take up the language of Scripture of its most glowing kind-they talk of grace, and faith, and regeneration, and justification; but it is in a way which deprives the truth of its power, and robs God of his glory. It is not Jesus, but the Church. It is not the true witnesses, but the sacraments. It is not the oil, nor

the light, but the candlestick only, in which the light should shine. A perversion of the doctrine of the sacraments, a perversion of the office and use of the sacraments, is the grand feature of Satan's modern warfare. Regeneration, inevitable, invariable, efficacious regeneration in the act of Baptism, and pardon and justification in the act of receiving the Lord's Supper; this is the ruling heresy of the day. The water and the blood are put prominently forward. It would appear almost uncharitable to dream that there was no Christian zeal, and no sincere belief when there is so much talk in the very shibboleth of the system; but in fact it is not the witness of the water and the blood to the sovereign grace of God in Christ; but it is the witness to the power of priestcraft in the administration of ordinances; it is a deep scheme of perversion, having its origin in enmity to the sovereign mercy of God in the Gospel. And wherever this is the case, the Spirit works not, the witnesses are dead-the visible Church is powerless. There may be the semblance of life-much apparent stir and bustle for the Church's interests-but no labouring for Christ. We may see crowds gathering round "the altar" and "the font," but it will be with close and entire association with, and conformity to, the world. The standard of decent outward formalism will be set, from the union of private theatricals and private sacraments in the palace, down to similar habits in lower life; but it all means nothing but a clever contrivance of Satan and his followers to rob the inspired testimony of the Gospel of its life and power.

The probability is, that this growing evil will spread. It is rising on every side. The old standard evangelical ministers are now dropping every day into the grave, discouraged and disheartened. The deadly wound of Popery has just been healed; and England, Protestant England, with scarcely one word of resistance by our Protestant bishops, has returned into alliance with the Romish beast. The error of the opus operatum of the two sacraments is boldly maintained in

the very teeth of our Thirty-Nine Articles; and at least one of the bishops-he stands as yet in the enjoyment of a peculiar notoriety-has given the serious clergy of the Reformation notice to quit. Scarcely a journal connected with the Church of England, that maintains a full and unequivocal testimony to the doctrine of grace, keeps its head above water; in fact, the time seems to be rapidly approaching—the three years and a

half-in which this insidious warfare against the witness of our Emmanuel by the water and the blood shall be overcome, and the witnesses shall be slain. Outward Christianity will not be abandoned. The sacraments will not be neglected. They will be thronged. The great unbelieving, unsanctified multitude, full of sensuality and sensual indulgence-that mass of worldliness which is at once Sodom, and Egypt, and Babylon, and Rome, and Paris, and Londonas far as they are formally religious and really sensual and ungodly-shall still uphold by outward observances the sacramental form, when they have deprived it of its power as a testimony against their ungodliness. They will not allow the witnesses to be "buried." They will not allow the sacraments to be laid aside in disuse, as if they had rejected them. No! they must carry the outward form of the religion with them as an opiate to their sad and irreligious state; but "they that dwell on the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and send gifts to one another, because these two prophets which tormented them that dwell on the earth are slain !"— The edge of the testimony has been turned and blunted. The stirring of the Spirit by them has ceased. The dead form has become a panacea for all conscientious conviction; and a solemn observance of dead sacraments may be comfortably associated with an absolute devotion to this vain world. There can be no doubt that, in many quarters, this is the secret exultation now rising np. They see the prospect of success in this fearful warfare. In the perverted and fulsome use of the language of Scripture, they hope to succeed in robbing

the awakening, regenerating, sanctifying message of mercy of its convincing and disturbing power. There shall be a baptism and a regeneration without repentance, faith, or holiness! There shall be a forgiveness and justification without grace on the part of God, or humiliation, thankfulness, and renewal on the part of man. The Almighty Saviour will be apparently foiled in the very use of his own weapons-in the seeming preaching of his own word-and the extensive spread of his own ordinances. Conceive the joy of a worldly prelate associated with such a warfare, when he finds no honest opponent remaining to testify to the truth; but all shall be formality, and worldliness, and pomp, and death!

"Lord! how long?" Three days and a half. No more! Then comes the Spirit of life, and the glorious

resurrection of the witnesses, and the renewal of the testimony-and the earthquake, and the third woe, and the sounding of the seventh angel, and the cry of a real victory from the great voices echoing through the empyrean, “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdom of our Lord and of bis Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever."

"Here is the patience of the saints." Let them continue stedfast. It is, and it will be, a sorrowful time-many will lie down in tears ere the dawn of blessing comes. Many will probably live to see the slaying of the witnesses in the visible Church; but in the day of victory-the day of the triumph of the testimony-every faithful follower of the Redeemer shall receive "that crown of righteousness which the Lord hath prepared for them that love him." LATIMER.

THROUGH the mysterious dispensations of Providence, Ireland has long been familiar with scenes of suffering and death. The famine and pestilence of 1846-7, however, seem to have exceeded in horror any previous chastisement of the kind. The ministers of the Gospel, performing their benevolent duties in the abodes of the poor, and toiling to alleviate the miseries which they cannot remove, are necessarily exposed in a peculiar degree to the effects of a common calamity of this description. Even in ordinary times, the pious clergyman, whose natural sensibilities have been rendered keener by Christian love, and who adds to the

sympathy felt for the victims of sickness by every one possessing_common humanity, the heightened concern awakened by a regard for the eternal welfare of the sufferer, finds it no easy thing to face the heartrending spectacles presented in those melancholy spots where "the poor of the earth hide themselves together;" but how far more agonizing does the discharge of his duties become in seasons of famine and pestilence, when his whole parish is a lazarhouse, and the pallid features of the dying or the dead are continually before his eyes! No wonder, even should he escape infection, that both mind and body should soon sink

beneath the demands made upon them, and that to the labours of the pastor should at length be added the crown of the martyr. Of the loss which the Church sustained in the death of her ministers, during the late famine in Ireland, some affecting instances have been given in the Christian Guardian: and in the above-mentioned volume we have the memoir of a pious individual,who, though not indeed within her pale, was devoted, we trust, to the service of her heavenly Master,whose death appears to have been occasioned by his exertions among the suffering Irish.

Mr. Samuel Brown was the son of a merchant in London, and was born on the 16th of July, 1816. Of his conversion, the following account is given by his biographer:

"The first decided manifestations of a work of grace in his heart took place in his twenty-first year. The author will never forget the interview he had with him at that time, in which he first disclosed the state of his mind, and of which he reminded him on his death-bed. On a Sunday afternoon, in 1836, they had both been in the company of some friends, who denied the deity of Christ: this great truth they had both advocated: and afterwards they made mutual disclosures of a change, which had recently taken place in each about the same time; and never will the overwhelming impressions of that interview be effaced from the mind of the survivor."

He soon afterwards became impressed with the idea that it was his duty to dedicate himself to the work of the ministry; and while under the influence of this conviction, he commenced a Diary, in which, for about a year, he recorded his devotional feelings and glad should we be if its perusal were to "provoke" some among the candidates for orders in our own Church, to look into their motives with increased earnestness and fidelity. We will give a few

extracts:

"August 3rd, 1837.

"Lively gratitude to my God ought to be the spring of every action of my

life, and that through the whole of it, considering His incessant goodness to me; but upon looking back upon the past day only, I am convinced of the folly of supposing that it has hitherto been so; and yet I cry out from the depth of my soul, what shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits? How sin cleaves to me: so that when I would do good, evil is present with me; I feel humbled that I should at all indulge in a volatile spirit, which I am apt to do; but, oh, blessed Jesus, I implore thy intercession, for thou art my strength and my Redeemer, and my prayer ascends unto thee; teach me to grow in grace and in the knowledge of thee; make me a shining image of thine own adorable character, and let me perfect holiness in the fear of the Lord. Thou wouldst that thy children were not only happy, but useful; O, God, bless me and make me a blessing! I met with a poor blind man to-day, to whom I have spoken more than once before. The first time I saw him, I began to question him about religion: he suddenly interrupted my conversation, and said, 'Once I had two good eyes, and was stone blind, but now I see the Lord Jesus sitting at the right hand of his Father.' To-day he told me that he had been blind thirty-five years, but that 'all the days of his appointed time would he wait till his change came.' I have given him a Bible, from which his wife will manage to read better to him than from one which was of smaller print. He has been in better circumstances, and has brought up nine children, and some in the fear of God; and yet he was begging, but was, he said, contented with Christ for his portion."

"August 15th, 1837.

"While the anticipation of entering on the ministerial office, after a course of study and preparation, presses on my attention, I cannot but have it uppermost in my thoughts; and when I come to examine myself, I find that Satan is busy without, and my original and latent corruptions are busy within, to hurry me headlong forward. Oh, may I take he

lest I stumble in the way and fall! I feel many evil affections, many unholy aspirations after a multitude of acquirements, with which the ministerial office invests itself in my eyes: vain glory has in me a most withering influence on vital godlinees. Oh, may I be as blessed as that servant who watcheth and keepeth his garments! I would most fervently pray for divine grace to fight the good fight of faith manfully, and lay hold on eternal life to finish my course with joy; to have administered unto me an abundant entrance into the kingdom of glory, not for my sake, but because these things are, through Jesus Christ, to the glory of God the Father; nor let these words be the mere ebullitions of the mind; may they be the intense and burning sentiments of a heart and soul full of the love of God; and with all may I be exceedingly humble at the condition of my sinful nature, that has in it no inherent holiness, and at the turpitude of my life and conduct. May I be upheld by the Spirit of the Living God, fired with redeeming love, so will I teach transgressors God's way, and sinners shall be converted unto him."

Having resolved to devote himself to the preaching of the Gospel, the prepossessions of his education (his family having been Nonconformists from an early period,) naturally determined him to minister among the Protestant Dissenters: and having passed through a course of study at the College at Highbury, he was, in 1843, appointed by the Irish Evangelical Society to a chapel at Tralee, Ireland. His congregation was exceedingly small: nor did he meet with the success which he hoped and wished: but "he found a small circle of pious, intelligent friends in Tralee, and his benevolent Christian heart led him to be on terms of friendly intercourse with Protestants of all denominations." He exerted himself to raise the intellectual character of the place by forming a Literary Institution, at the meetings of which the clergyman of the parish presided.

After a residence of about twelvemonths at Tralee, he was seized with an illness, which induced him to spend some time at an Hydropathic Establishment near Cork. In one of his letters written from that place, he says:

"The following morning I went some distance to visit Father Matthew's cemetry, a very convenient place for burying, and crowded with handsome monuments. But I was particularly struck with what is characteristic of every department of the Roman Catholic superstition. I found every nook and corner of the place covered with crosses, and yet in no one instance did I find a single reference to the cross or the atonement in any of the inscriptions. Herein, then, as in every, or almost every, thing else, Roman Catholicism is the sign but no signification; the spirit is absent from the form. How miserable to substitute the cross for the crucified one! The words that

I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life,' the Saviour says.

He soon recovered from this attack; but in the summer of 1846, he had a return of his complaint, which rendered a season of relaxation necessary. After a tour to the Lakes of Killarney, in company with his brother, three Presbyterian ministers, and a Scripture Reader of the Established Church, he made a stay of some months with his brother at Wimborne, during which his health became greatly improved. He hastened to return to Ireland; and on reaching Tralee he found that the famine and pestilence were raging there. Under the trying circumstances in which he was then placed, he displayed an exemplary zeal. "He is said to have worked almost night and day to relieve both the temporal and spiritual necessities of the poor around him, to have done the work of ten men:" and to call the attention of the English people to this terrible state of things, he printed a letter to the Secretary of the Irish Evangelical Society (reprinted in this volume), in which he gives an appalling account of scenes of distress of which he was an eye witness.