WALLINGFORD.-Mr. Knifton baptized | EARTHEN VESSEL, to the effect that I intended

three believers, August 7th. The word of the
Lord doth not only shew us the way, but the
Spirit, by that word, constrains us to follow the
Lamb in all His holy ways.

to publish an extended memoir, containing the "Life, Correspondence, and Sermons," of my and your departed brother, to whom I have been very closely united for more than seventeen years, and had the pleasure of encouraging him to speak in the Lord's name, which he did for me SOHO.-Mr. Ball, of Shrewsbury, has been for the first time at Rushmere, Suffolk, in 1849, supplying the late Mr. Pells's pulpit with pleas- and for which I have often blessed God who made ing acceptance. We receive cheering communi-him a great blessing to your souls. The esteemed cations respecting this young man, and wish him Editor of THE EARTHEN VESSEL has published God's blessing. an excellent account, still I have felt that nothing short of all collected that can be gathered in one

CITY ROAD.-Mr. Abrahams' chapel has been closed for repairs, and he has been in the country. He has not fully recovered his wonted health and strength, but he has been enabled to preach Christ's Gospel with much freedom, and it is the earnest prayer of many a living saint in Zion that for many years yet to come he may still unfold the beauties of heaven's glory in the salvation of the church. Whether he will leave any literary monument behind him, of the exceeding grace of God, we cannot tell. We hope he will. Why should not every minister of truth do as Mr. Wells is doing, give the people some of their sermons, which might be handed down to future generations ?

WIMBLEDON.-Thanks for good wishes we can wish too that the two bands could be one, and that one a good strong one. We highly esteem the pastor, and wish him and his people every blessing.

OUR LATE BROTHER

JOHN PELLS.

volume, is a fitting memento to the late highly Soho. I think it can be brought out for 2s. per esteemed, laborious, and God-blessed pastor of volume. Any surplus applied to Mrs. Pells' fund, but must have a good number of subscribers, which I hope to secure in a few weeks. In the interim allow me to express your and my affec tionate regard for the departed, and our hope beyond the azure vaulted skies.

Servant of God, gone up,

Possessing now the promised rest,
Finished thy toils, thy faith, thy hope,
Gone up and fully blest.

Ere long we one by one,
From earth shall pass away,

And meet thee near the sun-girt throne,
Nor dread a parting day.
J. FLORY.

No. 4, Libra road, Old Ford, Bow.

Deaths.

DIED, July 2nd, 1864, aged thirty-eight, MARY, the beloved wife of Mr. JAMES GARRARD, of Stowmarket. Deceased for many years had been a lover of Jesus, which her life and walk fully testified. For several years she was a member with the church meeting at the old Baptist chapel; but when, for conscience sake and for the honour of religion, the majority of them were

"For

At the

WE wish to call special attention to the memorial issued by the friends of the above deceased, whose object is two-fold. First, to perpetuate the memory of one whose sterling worth and usefulness in Zion endeared him to many thou-obliged to leave, she, with her partner, left also, sands; and who will gladly place in their dwel and has been in fellowship with the friends at lings this neat and expressive lithographic re- the new chapel until her death. Her eldest child presentation of a brother beloved. Secondly, the was removed by death a few weeks ago, and now object of the friends who have produced it, is to three small children are bereaved of an affecaid the fund now raising for the bereaved widow tionate mother's watchful care. The funeral took and fatherless babes. Nothing on earth can fur-place on Tuesday, July 5th, in the Stowmarket nish a stronger appeal to the benevolence of the Cemetery, and was attended by many sympaChristian community, than doth this most afflic- thizing friends. Mr. Clark read a part of the ting case. Alas! alas! that our fallen world is 7th chapter of Revelation, and gave a very so full of pitiable cases of this kind. None of solemn address from Philippians i. 21. us know how soon we may be called either to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." leave behind many dear ones, or be left ourselves grave that very suitable hymn was sung.in trials so deep. "Why should our tears in sorrow flow When God recalls His own; And bids them leave a world of woe, For an immortal crown ?" "Farewell, dear sister," her esteemed pastor said, "we here leave thy poor body in the care of our heavenly Father. Only for a short time we bid thee farewell; ere long we shall meet thee again: our fellowship will then be uninterrupted; our sorrows for ever gone; our joy in the Lord continue for ever evermore." Oh, the blessedness of union with Jesus-living with Jesus, and dying in and with Jesus. Earthly ties are snapped asunder: this heavenly bond will never be broken. Union with Christ on earth, by love and faith, with saints' sweet fellowship, is often found; but in heaven there is glorious, full, and uninterrupted communion for ever. Roll swiftly on, ye wearisome days and gloomy nights, and break forth, thou everlasting day, whose sun shall no more go down.

Of the Lithographer, Mr. Creswick Nichols, 30, St. Martins Lane, this large and appropriate memorial, both of the life and last moments of Mr. John Pells, can now be obtained. Every friend will use all the influence he has to promote a large sale, as the necessity of soon ascer. taining the result of the committee's labours is, of course, most urgent. Four years ago this very month, that is, on Lord's day morning, August 12th 1860, Mr. Pells preached that reinarkable sermon on "THE DESTRUCTION OF THE VAILS; AND THE REMOVAL OF THE COVERING CAST OVER ALL NATIONS." By a singular coincidence, we had that sermon taken down; and it was published in the" New London Pulpit" for September, We purpose to re-issue that sermon, if his widow consent, for her benefit; and with the view of furnishing the churches with a permanent testimony to the powers, the ministerial powers which were gradually developing themselves, With that sermon it is possible some further notes may be added.

MR. JOHN PELLS. DEAR FRIENDS of the DeparTED,-Last month there was an advertisement on the covers of the

"Arrayed in glorious grace, Shall these vile bodies shine; And every form and every face, Look heavenly and Divine." And Jesus says, "Because I live, ye shall live also." ÖNESIMUS.

The Sanctuary.

BY JOHN WATERS BANKS, CHAPLAIN OF THE CONVICT PRISON, PORTSMOUTH.

“A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary.”—Jer. xvii. 12.

THE context shows that the language of the text is the thankful expression of believers for security afforded them in the object of their confidence. Look at the fifth and following verses. While he that trusts in man is compared to the heath in the desert, inhabiting the parched places in the wilderness, unconscious of good when it approaches, and blasted with the malediction of heaven,-he whose hope is in the Lord is described as a tree planted by the waters, and spreading so her roots by the river, that the presence of heat shall only elicit a greater viridity, perennial fruitfulness, and the husbandman's blessing. The difference in these two pictures is so great that lookers-on can see it; and though the dead in sin may, through being twice dead, be past feeling, they who possess life so abundantly must feel it, and must give utterance to their exultant feeling.

The connection between the context and the text seems to be here: believers are those who have escaped from the innumerable seductions which led them to look for succour in men, themselves, or riches: and have reached a good land beyond these, a good land and a secure one, in which they can rest and fear no evil.

power fled from, and so related to the Asyla of old. The first really of this kind were the cities of Refuge, that merciful provision of the Almighty set forth in thirtyfifth chapter of Numbers, and other parts. Those cities of Refuge were at once a protection for justice and helplessness. Justice was clear when the guilty was condemned; and the unwitting man-slayer was protected in a way to make men reverence the image of God in man, and watch against an accidental as well as a wilful injury to it. Perhaps it is not a great flight of imagination to suppose that Cadmus, King of Tyre, who went into Greece soon after the death of Joshua, had heard of these sanctuaries; and that when he built Thebes there, and granted the privilege of sanctuary to all sorts of criminals, he in some sort imitated the Divine institution, as Romulus in after time imitated him in opening Rome as an asylum for similar refugees. So Canada has for a long time, by the constitution of British law, been a sanctuary for the fugitive slave; long before the exigencies of war compelled the Americans of the North to admit the slave was entitled to the rights of a man.

But let us pass from the historic to the natural idea.

His

The

There are many circumstances in which it seems next to an impossibility not to A sanctuary is the place of refuge from make flesh our arm, or not to lean to our the face of an enemy. So the "hart panown understanding, or not to place some teth after the water-brooks" to escape the reliance on the multitude of riches and teeth of the baying hounds; and so "the yet only he who is delivered from all these high hills are a refuge for the wild goats." confidences can triumph in the excellency This idea has been illustrated and intensified of his refuge as a glorious high throne of by the artistic genius of Landseer. antiquity. picture is familiar to many of you. And then when we consider the tenacity" harbourer" has tracked the "slot" of a with which men cling to things seen "warrantable" stag, and the dogs have and tangible, what chastening they must be the subjects of before all those things, and the systems builded on them, can be looked upon as false refuges! I say, it must be tribulation that uproots men! And through what tribulation must they wade before the refuge named in our text can be so joyfully spoken of? "A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary." I shall begin by speaking of the sanctuary.

I. The idea of a SANCTUARY is connected

been put on the scent. Forced to quit his lair, the stag has bounded away for his life! O'er hill and plain, through field and flood, he has doubled and distanced them, until his strength fails, and they gain upon him, and his passage seems bounded by bluffs without an opening! With desperate efforts he reaches the summit of a mount, and a succession of leaps brings him to the waters of a lake spread out before him; those waters receive him, and his pursuers are at fault.

with a separated place, a sacred spot; You, too, lose the stag in the wide sacred especially from the grasp of some waters! But,

VOL. XX.-No. 233.

"See where the startled wild-fowl screaming

rise,

And seek in marshalled flight those golden
skies;

You wearied swimmer scarce can win the land,
His legs yet falter on the watery strand!
Poor hunted hart, the painful struggle o’er,
How blest the shelter of that island shore!
There while he sobs, his panting heart to rest,
Nor hound, nor hunter shall his lair molest!'
Landseer called this "the Sanctuary."
But the Christian idea is the one of the text.
The Christian's idea finds no rest until it
finds the Messiah.

66

in order that it may be discovered from all other places, when He says of Himself (Exodus xxxiv. 7), Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty." Psalm lxxxv. 10, is a key to open up that passage: "Mercy and truth are met together, and righteousness and peace have kissed each other." But some may say, All these sayings are most enigmatical; there seems nothing but contradictions where one would have expected the plainest declarations. Let us consider these passages of Holy Writ attentively. God keeps mercy for thousands, yet by no means will He clear the guilty. The person of Christ is the place of sanctuary; there mercy is treasured up; in Him sinners obtain mercy; through His atoning sacrifice they are accepted, and accepted without spot. "By His knowledge," says God in Isaiah liii. II, "By His knowledge shall my righteous servant JUSTIFY many, for He shall bear their II. This brings me to the second thing iniquities." The Psalmist understood this in our text, namely, "THE PLACE." "A when he prayed, "Behold, O God, our shield, glorious high throne from the beginning is and look upon the face of thine Anointed." the place of our sanctuary." There, there is mercy "The place."-Psalm lxxxiv. 9. This is none other than the person of Jesus.

"In vain the trembling conscience seeks Some solid ground to rest upon; With long despair the spirit breaks, Till we apply to Christ alone." The hope of the Christian enters into, and lays hold of, and is secured by Him who was typified by the ark of Noah, and the cities of Refuge, and more mysteriously by the ark of the Covenant, and the mercy. seat, and the over-shadowing cherubim where Jehovah abode.

us.

Christ our Passover sacrified for us shelters
The sprinkling of the blood of Jesus
stamps the mark which preserves from the
devouring sword. Under the droppings of
His blood alone is salvation.
In the pro-

fusion of our ideas of a refuge or sanctuary,
let not this be hidden or hastened over, for
the other places only shadowed, or are em-
blems of this-the person of Jesus the
place of sanctuary! Not the person of Je-
sus either or merely, but the atoning blood
of Jesus. Not the blood shed only, but this
applied to the conscience secures, not the
declaration of the fact that He lived and
died, but the application and declaration by
the Holy Spirit that He loved me, and gave
Himself for me. That beautiful hymn,

"Rock of ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy wounded side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,

Save me from its guilt and power,"
was composed while meditating on the words
spoken to Moses (Exodus xxxiii, 21), "And
the Lord said, Behold there is a place by
Me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: and
it shall come to pass, while My glory passeth
by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the
rock, and will cover thee with My hand
while I pass by; and I will take away my
hand, and thou shalt see my back parts." Mo-
ses saw then His after manifestations, when
the Word made flesh should dwell with men,
that they might have a hiding-place, a covert,
a place of sanctuary. God points as it were
to the latitude and longitude of this place,

with God that He may be feared.

And it was in the same night in which He was betrayed, that merey and truth met together-mercy in the person of Jesus. "That was compassion like a God's, That when the Saviour knew The price of pardon was His blood, His pity ne'er withdrew."

Then there was truth. Inflexible truth
exacting that price from the sinner's
Surety.

"Came at length the dreadful night,
Vengeance with his iron rod,
Stood, and with collected might,

Bruised the harmless Lamb of God."

The

That was the meeting of mercy and truth.
"But," as we read again in Isaiah liii. 5,
"But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities, the chas-
tisement of our peace was upon Him, and
with His stripes we are healed.”
chastisement which procures peace for us
was upon Him; and the righteousness which
Christ obtained by suffering and obeying,
and paying all demands against those for
whom He appeared, is reckoned his who
with the heart believes unto righteousness.
And the God of peace is well pleased with
such believers, for His righteousness' sake,
and they are looked upon as all righteous;
and Jesus introduces them as such, and the
God of peace smiles on them, and the peace
of God fills them! And so mercy and
truth are met together, and righteousness
and peace have kissed each other.
God does keep mercy for thousands; and
yet it is true, as you see, that He will by
no means clear the guilty. If we shelter

Then

I say, "Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces." But I say further, "Seek to enter into the King's palace; seek to draw near the throne, to touch the golden sceptre; and lose no time, and take no denial, that ye may tell it to the generation following, This God is our God for ever and ever; He will be our guide even unto death."

"He is before all things, and by Him all admiration.
things consist."—Col. i. 8. The prophets
proclaim it, "Out of thee, Bethlehem, shall
HE come forth unto me, that is to be Ruler
in Israel; whose goings forth have been
from of old, from everlasting."- Micah
v.2. The Psalms repeat the strain (Lxxiv 12),
"For God is my King of old, working sal-
vation in the midst of the earth." Moses
wrote of Christ (John v. 46); the patri-
archs saw His day (John viii. 56); by
faith we understand that the worlds were
framed by the WORD of GOD (Heb. xi.);
in the beginning was this WORD (John
i. 1). And this Word was made flesh, and
dwelt among us that we might shelter in
Him as a sanctuary.

Hence, the language of the text is the language of appropriation: "a glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary." There is an inconceivable weight and value in these little appropriating words in Scripture (Psalm xlvi. i.), “God is our strength;" (xci 2), "I will say of the Lord, He is my Refuge and Fortress; This is the simple truth. Man had sin- MY God, in Him will I trust." And again, ned. The daily sacrifice of lambs had "My beloved is mine." Now I believe failed to take away sin. God so loved the there are some here who would resign all world that He gave His only begotten Son. earthly things to say the same, with the He was the Lamb of God; He was the Spirit's approval; I believe there are some Lamb slain. He paid the penalties incurred here who at this moment are praying with by His people; He ransomed them from the Psalmist, "Say unto my soul, I am thy the power of the grave by dying for them; salvation." Well, that is an acceptable and He rose the mighty Conqueror! He prayer, and if Christ be all your salvation, was ever the Mighty God: now He is and all your desire, this is the accepted the mighty Man! He was ever the glorious time! this day is salvation come to this God: now He is the glorious God-Man! | house-thy house, thou emptied soul-thy And as the Lion of the tribe of Judah He hath prevailed. "And I beheld," says John, and lo, in the midst of the throne, and of the four beasts (that is, in the essence of Deity), and in the midst of the elders (that is, in the essence of humanity) stood a lamb as it had been slain. And he took the book," which but for Him had remained unclosed to all; He took the book, and then that new song issued, and to this hour is sung, "Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof; for Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; and hast made us unto our God KINGS and PRIESTS; and we shall reign on the earth."Rev. v. Hence, the language of our text is the language of admiration, "A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary."

Do you, my brethren, admire this view of the Saviour? If you do, you are not far from an interest in Him. To admire an excellence is near-is the next good thing to possessing it. But the next good thing will not satisfy an earnest soul. There is a great difference between an almost and an altogether saved soul. The difference equals the wise virgins within with the Bridegroom, and the foolish ones too late, knocking at the door without.

I rejoice to find any who can admire the great things of God; any who take a delight to walk about Zion, and go round about, and tell the towers thereof, I encourage such

heart, thou bruised reed. If I should say I did not know Christ thus, and for myself I should speak_falsely, for He was revealed to me as my Sanctuary many years ago, and I long now for such a consummation in your experience, not only for your sakes, but for mine also, for I long for companionship : hence, the language of the text is the language of association-our Sanctuary! Thus those who sow and those who reap rejoice together! Though each must be pursued by himself, and each must enter in by himself, yet the happiness will be increased a thousand fold by communion with others so wondrously saved! See with what joy saved souls congratulate each other while they praise the Rock of their salvation.

We have a strong city! "Salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks!" Seek eommunion with God, and then communion with saints will be sweet. "The promise is to you and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call." Seek to enter into this sanctuary! Lay aside every weight that you may run the faster, looking unto Jesus only. Having by faith entered, seek the welfare of others also. Seek to have your children with you, and your kinsfolk, and your neighbours, and your acquaintance. Then the language of the text will be yours, and it will be the language of admiration, and appropriation, and association, and of thankfulness. "A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary." A grateful appreciation of such a refuge is