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heaven and earth both frown, what can man do! Where men do not know what it is to rest on the Rock of ages, amid their declining years, I wonder not at any thing which befals them. Oh! when we look back, what a world of wretchedness have we gone through; and a world of wretchedness, because of its ungodliness! Men contrive to push on without a guide, and without a blessing from above-living without God in the world-and can we wonder at the issue!

And the thoughts of the future, at this moment, are not just the thoughts of twenty years ago: we advance in life to get upon new ground, and with new prospects and feelings. Our professed and our sincere principles may be the same that they have been; but it is one thing to talk and to think of death and eternity in the buoyancy of youth, and amidst all the fictitious props which the world, more or less, puts under us; and quite another thing when they are very near. Now, we enter into the decline of life with a large accumulation of strange experience; and as we really begin to touch the threshold of eternity, there is a realizing perception which is immensely solemnizing. The lessons that have been learnt of the unmanageable way wardness of human nature-the plague of the heart, which has been so long and so sadly felt, how it tells on the prospect of eternity! And then there comes the thought, "What, if I should miss heaven; what, if I should discover that I have not been sincere in the struggle with my corrup tions, or my desires after holiness, and conformity to the divine image! What, if Christ should not own me for his disciple; and for me should remain nothing but the blackness of darkness for ever!!" I am more and more reminded that I am a stranger upon earth, and all around is fast failing me. Oh! if God should not be the strength of my heart, and my everlasting portion!!

My, dear readers, there are many of you who can enter into these views, and let me now offer to you a friendly word of advice. Dread nothing which feeds a jealousy of yourselves. Dread no. thing which encreases the feeling, that it is an awful thing to die. Dread nothing which fills you with a horror of sin, and which powerfully impress you with the misery of being for ever cast away from God's presence, into a condition where hope never

comes.

But dread the workings of despair. Dread the evil of limiting the Holy One of Israel. Dread the dishonour put upon Christ by

supposing that he cannot multiply pardons upon pardons, and bestow grace proportioned to our utmost wants.

Oh! with all the accumulated experience, in departed years, of your erring and straying from God's ways, like lost sheep, take fuller dimensions of your Saviour's love. Time has aggravated your wants. Think of the length, and breadth, and depth, and height of that love. "O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself!" What more can conscience testify? A soul destroyed, and lying in ruins! Oh! fearful truth! here is our grief and our depravity, in that while God has done all he can to save and to give life, and to build up and to beautify with holiness, we have an evil nature within that is bent upon our destruction, that would mar his workmanship, that would thwart his purposes of mercy, and plunge us deeper and deeper into that ruin, spiritual and eternal, of which the everlasting blackness of darkness is the consummation. You feel this sad propensity. It wrings from you the bitter cry, "Oh! wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?"

Now let all this not drive you to despair; but let it deepen your repentance-let it fill you with self-abhorrence-let it lead you duly to appreciate those blessed words: "In me is thy help." Yes, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thy help. (Hosea xii.) And realize a promised and an offered help, adequate to your destroyed condition. Set against your destruction of yourself, God's salvation in Christ. And here is peace. Here is a holy calm, amid the storms of life. Here is the ray that must gild the dark valley of the shadow of death. Here is a hope that can act as the anchor of the soul, sure and stedfast. And as friends depart, and health and youthful vigour depart, and the world's props, one by one, give way, and declining years bring us nearer to all the awfulness of an untried and unseen eternity, here, in the help of Christ's full salvation, is found that which makes us more than conquerors, and will enable us, when dying, to sing, "O grave! where is thy victory? O death! where is thy sting?"

W.

END OF VOL. XXIII.

ARTHUR FOSTER, PRINTER, KIRKBY LONSDALE.

FRIENDLY VISITOR:

PUBLISHED IN

MONTHLY NUMBERS,

DURING THE YEAR

1842.

BY

THE REV. W. CARUS WILSON, M. A.

RECTOR OF WHITTINGTON,

AND PERPETUAL CURATE OF CASTERTON.

VOL. XXIV.

"Much good may be done this way to considerable numbers at once in an acceptable manner, at a trifling expense."-ARCHBISHOP SECKER.

KIRKBY LONSDALE:

PRINTED AND SOLD BY A. FOSTER.

Of whom may be had single numbers to make sets complete.

SOLD BY L. AND G. SEELEY, FLEET STREET, LONDON;

AND BY ALL BOOKSELLERS.

The profits are devoted to charitable purposes.

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Anecdote of a tract distributor

Anecdote of an Hungarian nobleman

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Anecdotes of the colporteurs, or Bible distributors, in France

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Bible in France

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Blessed results of a prayerful reading of the Bible

Changes in Turkey
Christian's death bed

Church building

Church building zeal

“Come out of her, my people”

Danger of delay

Death-bed scenes
Detached sentences

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Extract from the Report of the Irish Island Society

Extracts
Extracts from the journal of the Rev. A. Brown

13-41-59-93

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Father's meditation upon the anniversary of the death of a child... 197

Feeble disciple

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From an agent of the Prayer-Book and Homily Society

Fulness of Christ

God's promises

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Going to heaven

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