desirable, or worth the seeking for, but forgiveness, salvation, and everlasting life.

We open another volume. The raging tempest has not yet become a calm, but it has spent much of its fury, and seems to be subsiding. Still a deep gloom seems to have settled over the soul. Its conflict is now with doubts and fears that would scare it away from the resting-place to which it is pointing-towards which it is manifestly tending. It is brooding over self. It is searching out the dark mysteries of its own heart. It is seeking for some dawn of light within; some token for good about itself on which it would fain build its peace and hope. The extracts now are all more or less revolving round the cross. But still there is a cloud between. There is some interposing medium between the soul and a fully revealed Saviour. Owen on the Work of the Spirit, Guthrie's Trial of a Saving Interest in Christ, Baxter's Directions for a Sound Conversion, Life of Fraser of Brae, Edwards on the Affections, these, interspersed with works of criticism, church history, and theological controversy, cover the breadth of the volume. But chiefly, Shepherd's Sound Believer seems to have suited most the state of soul. It has been studied well. Such extracts as these occur: 'Hence are these complaints. What have I to do with Christ? If I were more humbled, more holy, then I should go to him and think he would come to me. O, for the Lord's sake, dishonour not the grace of Christ! Remember that no more sorrow for sin, no more separation from sin, is necessary to thy closing with Christ, than so much as makes thee willing, or rather not unwilling, that the Lord should take it away. And know, that if thou seekest for a greater measure of humiliation antecedent to thy closing with Christ than this, thou showest the more pride therein, who will rather go into thyself, to make thyself holy and humble, that thou mightest be worthy of Christ, than go out of thyself into the Lord Jesus to take thy sin away."

The next volume beams with light. Tranquillity is there. But we must have done with these hasty snatches. We might indeed prolong them indefinitely, were we to take them up minutely and do them justice. In so doing, however, we might tire our readers when gratifying ourselves. One volume more only we refer to. It consists of brief extracts from various sermon writers, especially of the English school. There is Goode-now gone to his reward -brother to the present able opponent of Puseyism-with his volume on The Better Covenant,' able, vigorous, and spiritual. There is Buddicom, with his several volumes, simple but manly, alike in thought and style. There is Maitland (not the Puseyite antiquarian) with his Lectures on the Parable of the Ten Virgins, his Sermons on the Eighth of the Romans, and his volume upon

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Noah's Day,'-solemn and eloquent, appealing to a slumbering world by the realities of coming judgment and coming glory. There is Woodward, full of thought and eloquence. There is Hambletown, clear and spiritual. There is Melville, eloquent, though often turgid, and now far gone into the devious track of Puseyism. Then there are Bridges, and Bickersteth, and Dallas, and other such, who write not for fame but for usefulness,-not for time, but for eternity.

Among these, the author who stands first in the list of names at the head of this article, occupies no medium position. He has long ranked bigh in public esteem, for the elegance, the beauty, the vigour, and the evangelical richness of his sermons. Nor does this volume disappoint us. It is equal to any of his former volumes, and is distinguished by the excellences which we have just specified. The sermons contained in it are sacramental' in their design. As compositions, they are of the most finished and tasteful kind; and as discourses, they are rich in divine truth, and fragrant throughout with the name of Christ. Take an extract from the sermon on Awake O sword against my Shepherd.'

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"We see in it that the sufferings of our Lord were divinely appointed, all ordered and fore-ordained by his Father. The persecuting Jews indeed were willing agents in all they did against him. They did it as voluntarily as ever men did any thing; and they were as guilty in all they did, as though none but themselves had ought to do with it. But what were they? Scripture tells us what they were-instruments to do whatsoever God's hand and God's counsel had determined before to be done.' That sword is mine,' Jehovah says, 'that dreadful sword which is now piercing the heart of my beloved Son. It was I who awoke it. I gave it its commission to strike. You look on those Jews and tremble as you look on them, and well you may tremble; but I want you to look higher; to see my hand guiding the weapon they are so franticly wielding; to see me overruling their madness, and accomplishing by it my own purposes. I have said, the wrath of man shall praise me, and there it is in its fury praising me in the highest. It is laying a foundation for the loftiest praise I shall ever have. Think not that the hand of man could bring that mighty Sufferer to that cross. No; I have sent him there; he is smitten of me and afflicted.'

"And our Lord himself seems to have had this truth ever in his mind. In referring to this very prophecy, he alters it, as though unconsciously, making it declare in explicit terms that it was his Father who should smite him; and just before he came to the cross, be calls the bitter cup he was about to drink on it, a cup which his Father had given him.

"2. Here too we see that the sufferings of our Lord were most severe. "We might infer this from the truth we have just noticed. Man can inflict much misery; it is astonishing how much; but still man's power to afflict is limited. When God therefore calls off our attention from man as the author of our Lord's sufferings, and directs it to himself, we feel at once that our Lord must be a most severe sufferer. He is enduring misery, we see, greater than man ever could inflict, a misery that is the work of a stronger arm.

"But the language of the text conveys this idea yet more forcibly. It is a sword the Lord calls up against his Son; not a rod to scourge or even a rack

to torture, but the magistrate's last, most fearful, his fatal weapon-a sword to destroy. And the command given to this sword is not ' Wound,' but 'Smite;' strike hard; let the blow be mortal.

"And mark that word 'awake.' It seems to imply that up to this hour, the sword of Jehovah had been sleeping; that his justice had never yet been fully called into action; never yet had come forth in its strength or appeared in its greatness. It had cast sinning angels down into hell; for four thousand years it had visited this sinning earth with judgments, turning its paradise into a desert, now raining down fire from heaven upon its cities, and now covering the whole face of it with the waters of the deep; but all this it had done, as it were, slumbering. Now it is to awake, to rise up in its vigour and majesty. An object worthy of it is before it-the man that is Jehovah's Fellow; a man who can bear a blow, and a man who has taken the sins of guilty millions upon him, almost demanding a blow; it is to strike in the greatness of its strength. Awake, awake, O arm of the Lord,' cry the Jews in their captivity in Babylon; and they explain what they mean by the word-they want that arm, they say, to put on its strength,' to work wonders of power for their deliverance. So here, the Lord calls on his sword to awake, to smite with its full force a blow of wonderful vengeance.

Indeed,

"3. And this text represents our Lord's sufferings as surprising. the description it gives us of him, seems given us for the very purpose of exciting our surprise at them. 'Awake, O sword,' the Lord says—against whom? The very Being whom of all others we should have expected him to shield from every sword; the Being who is the nearest and dearest to him; the man that is his Fellow." Pp. 26-29.

Take another from the discourse upon the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

"1. It describes it as a long looked for and much desired hour.

"The blessed Saviour himself desires it. None but himself can tell how ardently his soul is even now looking forward to it. It is the hour that will bring him the consummation of all his wishes, the full reward of all his labour and sufferings. And his church desires it. Before he came the first time into our world, it longed for him to come. Patriarchs and prophets age after age looked for his coming as the greatest thing on this side heaven they could look for. And after he had come and was gone, the church took up again the same position. We want him again,' it said. Scarcely had he disappeared, when its language was, Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.' It has been ever since a waiting church; a church looking for and longing for the appearance of its Lord; a betrothed bride anticipating the coming of her Bridegroom to

take her home.

“2. And this hour when it comes, will be an hour of great love and affection. "No earthly affection is equal to that of a redeemed sinner for his Saviour. There may not at times seem much warmth in it, but when it is real, there is as much strength and depth in it perhaps, as man's nature, in its present state and circumstances, is capable of. But still it is an imperfect love, very much broken in upon by the love of other things, and damped by the cares of life, its business and troubles. It is an unseen object too that we love, and we find it difficult to realize any thing we have never seen. And even in our best moments, we often feel as though we only half loved our Lord. Our love for him seems a desire, an effort, to love him, rather than love itself. Our souls, we say, are straitened within us, as though they had not power enough to love him. We long for a better and higher nature, that we may love him more. At this marriage supper we shall have what we long for. We shall see our Lord, and see him in a form in which we shall know him; and shall have souls within us, that will for the first time feel large enough to love him, and these

souls shall be filled to overflowing with admiration of and delight in him. There will be nothing to distract, nothing to straiten, nothing to impede, our love. Man scarcely knows his own power of affection now; we shall wonder at our power of affection when we are face to face with Christ in his kingdom." Pp. 207, 208.

The next volume in our list is Mr Head's Sermons. Mr H. is sufficiently well known to most of our readers by the controversy in which he has been engaged with his bishop for some time past. Whether in all respects he may have acted with perfect discretion we shall not take upon ourselves to say; but this we may safely affirm, that his general position was a noble and a Christian one. We know not yet the issue of the contest; but we do trust that he will be enabled to war a good warfare against prelatic despotism, and like others, in his own Church, maintain an unsullied testimony to the truth of the Gospel, even at the hazard of expulsion from the Establishment. These are days in which no man can hesitate, or be content with mere protests. We have heard of reverend Doctors in our own Church, who, in regard to our present position, think that their consciences are set at rest if they but protest against the encroachments now making on us by the civil arm! They think that they are at liberty to remain in the Establishment; nay, that it is a sort of duty for them to abide at their posts as internal witnesses, in the midst of a corrupt church! Worthy men! We wish them all joy of their internal testimony. But we do trust that men of principle, in every Christian church, in these days will see the necessity, not of speaking merely, but of bold action. In no other way can we stem the flood of error. In no other way can we be faithful to the Master, and hold fast that which we have received, that no man take our crown.

But we are wandering from our author and his volume. His sermons are, in one respect, a complete contrast with those of the preceding author. They are careless in point of composition, and want consecutiveness in arrangement. Still they abound in vigorous thought. With some of Mr Head's propositions we cannot agree, and, therefore, we cannot present these discourses to our readers as faultless either in matter or style; still they will repay a perusal. In quoting we find it difficult to select passages; take one at random from the beginning of the twenty-third sermon, on the restoration of Israel.

"The duty is to be shown to the poor remnant of Israel. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, not merely for the church of Christ, but the literal Jerusalem. Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.

"It is one of the most remarkable features of the present day, that there are to be found among the Gentiles, those who cease to revile the Jew, who 'pray for the peace of Jerusalem,' who say, 'peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces,' and who seek her good.' The truth is, the time of her prosperity is drawing near. As the time of Israel's restoration

approaches, the prophecies begin to be understood.

Thou shalt arise and

have mercy upon Zion, for the time to deliver her, yea the set time is come.' For why? Thy servants think upon her stones, and it pitieth them to see her in the dust. Ps. cii.

"The facts actually transpiring in these our days prove, beyond all question, that an incipient movement of the Jews towards Jerusalem (foretold Isa. xxvii. 12; Jer. iii. 14,) is beginning, and, consequently, that the last days are drawing near. How much of these scenes shall be acted before and how much after the taking the elect from the earth, 1 Thess. iv. is uncertain. The latter event may happen any day or hour, though the precise time is studiously concealed from us! Let the wise virgins, therefore, trim their lamps, watch, and be ready always, for in such an hour as they think not, their Lord cometh! This much is certain, that the direst of the delusions and of the dangers of the last days shall certainly be preceded by the coming of the Lord, and the first resurrection.

"Shall we not, in the mean time, remember the poor Jew? Was Naaman's heart moved towards the Jew when one of that nation had introduced him to the God of Israel? Was Nebuchadnezzar moved towards the Jew, when one of that nation had interpreted his dream? Was even the great Pharaoh moved towards the Jew for a similar cause? Did he not take the royal signet from his finger, and put it upon Joseph, cause him to ride in the second chariot, and declare that only in the throne he should find a superior in all the land of Egypt? And shall not we, who have found that salvation is of the Jews, who have found the Saviour in reading the Jewish scriptures,-shall we not be moved towards the Jew, who so carefully has preserved these inestimable treasures for our use, and who has been so infamously rewarded at our hands?" Pp. 402-404.

The next volume in order is Memoir and Sermons of the late Rev. Dr Ferrier.' Of this we shall say but little. We dare say the author was a good man, but his life is by no means interesting and, as a whole, the volume is poor and less spiritual in its tone than might have been desired. There is nothing that we feel inclined either to extract or to dilate upon.

We next come to the memoir of Dr Macgill. There are some points on which we feel inclined to differ, both from the author and the subject of the memoir, but we are by no means disposed at present to enter into a discussion of these. The volume is a valuable as well as an interesting one; and the church is much indebted to Dr Burns for the labour he has bestowed upon it. Both as a biography of Dr Macgill, and a sketch of the ecclesiastical history of his times, it is worthy to be studied. It would require a separate article to do full justice to it, either in the way of canvassing its sentiments or quoting from its pages. Both of these are at present out of our power. But still, with all the dis

count from the merits of the work which difference of sentiment might dispose us to make, we wish this important biography the success to which it is justly entitled. Might not its tone be more decidedly spiritual?

Our next volume is the Memoir of the Rev. Peter Roe, a name of no inconsiderable note in the church of Christ, and, especially,