of lords. And when the saints worship Him, they cast their crowns at His feet. To denote His Absolute Sovereignty, on His head John saw many 'crowns. When He comes again, then the Church will say, "How great," &c.

III. Here is a PROPHETIC PROCLAMATION, "Corn shall make," &c. Corn is the truth of God, when it is trodden out, bringing life, and knowledge, and salvation, it makes men young again, and cheerful, because they are born of God, belong to God, and shall live with Him for ever.

The Walls, and the Ways of Entrance

into the City.

A SUNDAY

EVENING AT

FOWN HOPE.

HAVING preached several times at Whitestone, I am now on the wings of the steamer bound for the great city. There is nothing externally grand in the appearance of Whitestone: the chapel, the parsonage, the garden, the little cemetery, the adjacent valleys, the surrounding hills, and the church's position and history altogether, render it (to a secretly sorrowful spirit like mine) a truly interesting corner in the Lord's vineyard. Like myself, it has had its painful changes. There are deep wounds in the hearts of some of its oldest members, and if you ask where they met with them, the answer would be, "in the house of my friends." Nevertheless, as one brother said to me, "the truth is there, and there, we hope, it will long continue, although many, opposed to truth, would like to have the place, and the appointment of the ministers in their own hands; but while such strong and steady trees are permitted to grow in it, as the Tylers, the Goodsells, the Lewises, the Goodwins, the Reeces, the Prices, and some others, the New Testament hedge will not be broken down, although the wild boar out of the wood has made many attempts to destroy it altogether. "The still small voice of the heavenly turtle-dove went with me the first time I went there; and it continued with me at times.

For all Thy mercies, O my God,

May I most thankful be!

And may I live to praise Thy WORD,
Through all eternity.

The last Sunday I was at Whitestone, I was invited to preach at Fownhope in the evening. To this I readily agreed; and as Miss Tyler (the Whitestone organist) was also invited to conduct the praise department, arrangements were speedily made to take a good party from Whitestone to Fownhope, as soon as the afternoon service was closed. Ah! that Sunday was a truly happy one to my soul. If I never was favoured in the house of God before, I was that morning. Our Luther-like brother, Richard Tyler, sen., read that grand hymn whose chorus says,

"Lift up your heads, lift up your voice,
Rejoice aloud, ye saints, rejoice."

That hymn so opened the springs of my soul, and gave me such meltings of

contrition that I thought it would prevent my reading. I was helped. "Underneath are the everlasting arms" was the text; and after sermon, we had the ordinance of the Lord's Supper; and then we retired, until the time for the afternoon service. The text was this, "The Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them; and he went to another village," and so to the mountain-top village of Fownhope we went, as soon as Whitestone doors were closed. In the journey to Fownhope, (and there were about a dozen of us) you have not only to pass the immense convent recently erected in this most lovely country, you have not only to ford a small river, but you must conquer at least half-a-dozen hills, of whose lofty pinnacles the Herefordshire people are never ashamed.

The chapel and parsonage at Fownhope stand conveniently wedded together in a garden of some extent; and well shaded by a large yew tree, cleverly trained and trimmed. Here the pastor, Mr. Mudge, and his pious wife, together dwell in a quiet and peaceful mission to promote the good of their neighbours. Our evening service commenced at six; there was a sweet and holy freedom in singing, reading, and prayer; and when I read my text, the same sweet breeze continued.

"The kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchantman seeking goodly pearls; who when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all he had, and bought it."

The many things said by the Saviour, descriptive of his kingdom, shewed how much his heart was set upon it. It is called, "The kingdom of heaven," because its origin is of heaven, its nature is spiritual, and its grand design is, instrumentally, to carry saved sinners safe home to glory. [The sequel is deferred.]

Lights and Shadows of a Pastor's Life.

THE engagement to which I referred in my last continued some considerable time, in fact, till I obtained another in the literary world, which pleased me better. I one day received a letter from a gentleman, wellknown in the literary world, but whom I knew not personally, asking me to write an article on a subject which he named, for a sanitary journal which was very popular at the time. I wrote the article and sent it to him, it appeared in the next number, and a few days after, I received a letter from the proprietor, soliciting a personal interview. I saw him, and he offered me the editorship of the journal, with furnished apartments at the West End, (near the office) and a liberal salary This I accepted, and so became the editor of the "Health of Towns Magazine." Through this I obtained an introduction to one of the members for Westminster, who offered me the under-secretaryship of a Philanthropic institution, of which he was president. This I undertook in connection with my editorial duties. While holding these offices I was solicited by the commitee of the Western Literary Institution to undertake the management of their Greek and Italian classes, two evenings in the week, for which they offered me two guineas weekly, which I consented to do. It was while holding these three engagements, that I strolled one evening into an hotel, where a meeting was being

held of a well known forensic and debating society. Having obtained permission to speak, I attacked the views propounded by the two previous speakers with some warmth and energy; my convictions on the subject under discussion being somewhat strong; and at the close of the meeting I was asked to take the presidency of the society, and to preside at its meetings two evenings weekly, for which I was offered thirty shillings per week; this offer I accepted.

During all this time I was living without God, without Christ, and therefore without a well founded hope in the world. And in the prosperity which now began to attend me, I burnt incense to my own drag, and proudly thought and said, my own hand hath gotten me all these things.

It was under these feelings and circumstances that I married. The lady whom I married (my present wife) was like myself, the child of godly and praying parents, though we were both of us at that time destitute of vital godliness, and continued some years after our marriage to live in the pleasures and gaieties of the world. But the time for the Spirit to convince of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment to come was at hand, During this time I was engaged largely in building transactions, and at first made money pretty fast, but having through an injudicious mortgage placed myself in the hands of an unprincipled London lawyer, I lost at one fell swoop all that I possessed. I had had by way of mortgage from him, three thousand pounds; he called this in at a week's notice, and threatened to foreclose if it were not paid. Of course I could not pay it in the time, so he foreclosed, and I lost all-some thirty houses being at the time in course of erection. For some few months, he allowed me four pounds per week out of the property, but when he found the thing was tight and fast in his own hands, he dropped this, and I was reduced almost to penury. I said then to my wife, "I cannot stay here in London under these circumstances, where we have known better days, at some distant spot where I am not known, I don't care what menial office I perform, but pride forbids it here." We accordingly sold off our furniture, and with a few pounds in our pockets started for South Wales.

I had, as I have stated in a previous chapter, made a great deal of money by lecturing in Wales some years before, and I hoped to do the same now. We took-I was about to say apartments, but that would have been incorrect, as we could only afford to take one poorly furnished room at Cardiff. I then took the town halls at Cardiff, Abergavenny, Pontypool, Newport, &c., for lectures, and placarded all the towns with bills, but to no purpose; there were not a dozen persons came to them. To me it was inexplicable, the result was that in the course of a very few weeks the few pounds that we had taken with us had melted away. We were nearly two hundred miles away from any friends, among unsympathising strangers, our spirits depressed by a long series of bitter troubles, to the end of which we could not yet see, and reduced to our last half-a-crown not knowing when that was gone where we should get another, and amidst it all, no God to go to, and strangers to a throne of grace. But it was the darkest hour, the hour that preceded the dawn; the time of deliverance, and the "time of love" was at hand,

Almsgiving is the surest and safest way of thriving.

Sects and Heresies of the Christian Church.

NO. 1.-SABELLIANISM.

BY WILLIAM STOKES, OF MANCHESTER.
Author of "The History of Baptists," "Imputed Righteousness," &c.

(Continued from page 173.)

It requires no argument to prove that doctrines so manifestly opposed to the true Gospel faith, could never have been learned from Holy Scripture by any honest interpretation of its teachings. That by torturing its passages and "wresting" them from their obvious meaning, a show of support may be obtained for Sabellianism itself, is neither doubted or denied; but all this and more may be conceded to Satan himself. Granting this, however, the question still remains, will any honest reader of the word of God fail to find the Trinity there, One God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Is it possible that the unbiassed scholar in that Divine school can miss this great truth, and sit down with a denial of the Triune Jehovah of the church? According to Epiphanius, the Bible was not consulted by Sabellius before propounding his heresy to the world, but some loose writings, that were known to be without any authority whatever. That ancient writer says of Sabellius that he "had sucked in this error from some Apochryphal books, and more especially from that called the Gospel of the Egyptians." This explains the whole case by proving that from these corrupt and polluted waters, but not from the Bible, Sabellius drank his poisoned cup. Had he gone to David or Isaiah, to Peter, Paul, or John, instead of wandering away to Apocryphal Egypt, he would never have been numbered among those foolish men who have lived but to work mischief in the church of the living God. The eminent Chillingworth lays down the true rule for dealing with all questions that surmount the human understanding when he says:

"Propose me anything out of this book (the Bible) and require whether I believe it or no; and seem it ever so incomprehensible to human reason, I will subscribe it with hand and heart, as knowing no demonstration can be stronger than this, God hath said so, therefore it is true. In other things I will take no man's liberty of judging from him; neither shall any man take mine from me.'

This is true manly nobility, and one finds it difficult to determine which most to admire, the profound submission to divine teaching, the noble independence, or the equally noble liberality of that distinguished writer. Let the rule of Chillingworth become the law of the religious world, and all heresy will speedily perish from among mankind.

Sabellius was succeeded, or soon followed, by Paul, of Samosata, who also denied the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ, and who brought upon himself the displeasure of a Council held at Antioch in A.D. 264, or 269. His leading sentiments closely resembled those of Sabellius, and were substantially the following:

"That the Son and Holy Ghost exist in God, in the same manner as the faculties of reason and activity do in man; that Christ. was born a

mere man; but that the reason or wisdom of the Father descended into him, and by him wrought miracles upon earth, and instructed the nations; finally, that, on account of this union of the divine Word with the man Jesus, Christ might, though improperly, be called God."

In the above Council he was degraded, and removed from his pastoral office. The sect, however, continued to increase, and at the second General Council, held at Constantinople, in A.D. 381, the very first canon, by confirming the Nicene Creed, condemned Sabellianism and all similar doctrines. This council, called by the Emperor Theodosius, and 150 pastors who were present from all parts of the world, were so entirely opposed to the Sabellians that they resolved to disavow all baptisms administered by men who openly denied the divinity of the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit. So far they were to be commended, and honoured, but they went beyond this when they proceeded to anathematize the holders of these dangerous doctrines. They acted properly in condemning the doctrines, for this was their legitimate province and duty; but they were wrong when they assumed to anathematize the men. Their zeal deserves admiration, but it overstepped its proper bounds by forgetting the Gospel law, "bless, and curse not."

our

As the Sabellian scheme implies a total rejection of the vital doctrine of a Triune Jehovah, and thus undermines the entire superstructure of the Christian faith, it will be perfectly proper to give the views of some distinguished divines on this important point. None have expressed themselves with more clearness and precision than has our own Dr. Gill in his unrivalled body of divinity. He says,

"Though there is but one God, there are three persons in the Godhead, which the Sabellians deny. Our Socinians and modern Unitarians are much of the same sentiment with the Sabellians in this respect. If the Father, Son, and Spirit, were but one person, they could not be three testifiers, as they are said to be (1 John v. 7); to testify is a personal action; and if the Father is one that bears record, the Son another, and the Holy Ghost a third, they must be three persons, and not one only; and when Christ says, I and my Father are one (John x. 30) He cannot mean one person, for this is to make him say what is most absurd and contradictory, as that I and myself are one, or that I am one, and my Father who is another, are one person.

The well-known and most excellent Nonconformist divine John Howe, who was a prince among preachers in the Cromwellian age, expresses himself in these words:

"And He (Christ) concerns the Father also with himself in the same sort of commerce; 'At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, you in me, and I in you.' Thus in another place, we find the Spirit spoken of as the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of Christ; and the inbeing or indwelling of Christ, and of the Spirit, used as expressions signifying the same thing; when also the operation of God is spoken of by the same indwelling Spirit, (Rom. viii. 9-11) which an eminent father observing, takes occasion to speak of the joint presence of the several persons of the Trinity with such, with whom any one is present, because each bears itself inseparably towards the other, and is united most intimately therewith, wheresoever one hypostasis (or person, as by the Latins we are taught to speak,) is present, there the whole Trinity is present. Amazing thing! that the glorious subsistants in the eternal, Godhead, should so concentre in kind, design, influence and operation towards a despicable impure worm !"