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but he snorted and plunged at a strange | at him; and listen to him, while he rate, and at last he fell down, and I was speaks of, and for himself. thrown out of the saddle among the "Since I have been in the ministry I have rocks, but was enabled to scramble on preached much, and written and puba broken piece of a rock, and to catch lished twenty-three different works on hold of the bridle, and somehow or theology, and many of them contain another to get again on my horse's back, from three to four and nearly five hunand so made shift to make landing on dred pages of a duodecimo size. I also the opposite shore; but that I escaped have reprinted several works written by being dashed to pieces on the rocks in other authors. I have seen huge rocks, a fall so violent, was too marvellous for and massy mountains, and frightful me to decipher; only I knew then, and cavities, and extensive lakes, that you I know now, that the eternal God hath have no proper conception of. 1 also determined the times before appointed, have been where the inhabitants raise and the bounds of men's habitation." cotton, tobacco, rice, indigo, figs, and sugar in abundance; and also in places where there are wolves, bears, wild cats, racoons, and opossums. But the worst and most odious place that I have yet seen in all my travels is my own heart; and the worst living creature I have northern region or in southern clime, met with either by day or night in the or at the extreme east or far west, in the summer season or in dead of winter, is James Osbourn. He is complex

It has been a matter of inquiry among the christian folks in England, as to what it was led Mr. Osbourn to visit again his native land? Towards the close of the present edition he says—

and ill-disposed and very refractory. and haughty, and selfish and corrupt, On the other hand, he is mild and humble, and as clean every whit as a new pin, and opposed to all that is wrong. Such then is James-quite complex, and as the poet says,

'To good and evil equal bent,

He's both a devil and a saint.'"

Again, to his brother, he says

"After having travelled far, and passed through many changes in my feelings, and seen many strange places, and people, and things, and another gospel,' and many baneful effects of the same, I returned home to my family and friends, and found all well. And in his make; one part of him is morose when at home my mind would sometimes be exercised about visiting Eng; land, for I was persuaded that the Lord intended I should be his floating lamp. But still I was afraid of coming without some assurance from the Lord of its being my duty there to go, and hence my mind was in a pause concerning this thing. Soon after this I received a short letter from a brother of mine in the flesh, residing at Colchester, in the county of Essex, and concerning whom I had heard nothing for forty years, wanting a few months." In answering his brother's letter, Mr. O. expressed a desire, "to spend a summer in England, and to preach from city to city, Christ and him crucified." From the postcript of this letter, we must make one short extract-which doth in most striking sentences throw out to view the real "complex" character of the man. Many thousands in England are crying out with desire to see and hear Mr. Osbourn. We have been written to, and requested again and again, to invite him to preach in various parts in fact, there has been no man raised up, or brought into this country, for many years past, whom the lovers of gospel truth have been so concerned to see and hear. Well; here he is-look

"I suppose you thought me dead and gone years back, but it is not so; I am yet alive and have entered into the 64th year of my age, and am quite well and hearty, and the weight of my carcase is two hundred and six pounds: but the full weight of my sins is a good deal more than that. I left the famous city of London for America thirty-nine years ago next June, about a year after I was with you last, and I arrived in New York the August following, and left there for Baltimore in the fall of 1815, and this city has been my home from then till now, and here it is likely I shall end my mortal days."

After a rough passage, on the 6th of November, he writes from Liverpool as follows:

We

"Through the good hand of God upon us we have escaped the dangers of the sea. arrived safe in dock last night about ten o'clock, and this morning I came on shore, and I am now snugly housed in a magni

ficent hotel, and intend going to Manchester, which he exercises now, and always has ex

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to-morrow morning by the cars, and there to make myself known. And there in all probability I shall hoist the 'broad pendant,' and also give two or three salutes from the 'strong tower;' and from there go through the whole length and breadth of the land, blowing the great trumpet.' I wonder what the people will think of the stranger from ' over the hills and far away.' The following is to be my motto go wherever I may 'I am determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified. Will this do, think you?

We will only add-this new edition of the Lawful Captive,' being published by Messrs. Groombridge; as also a very handsome portrait of Mr. Osbourn, can be had of any bookseller. We are also authorised by Mr. Osbourn to supply copies of either the work or the por

trait from our own office.

(To be Continued.)

Our Great High Priest.

BY MR. JAMES EXTRACT FROM A SERMON WELLS, DELIVERED AT THE SURREY TA

BERNACLE, BOROUGH ROAD, APRIL 26,

1846.

"For we have not an High Priest which cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities," &c. Heb. iv. 15, 16.

THE people of God have many infirmities, and among others, they have the infirmity of being more pleased with the things of the flesh, than with the things of God. They have also the infirmity of blindness-spiritual blindness. They have also the infirmity of deafness-spiritual deafness. Spiritual deafness is a dreadful infirmity. Blessed are the people who hear the joyful sound. They have, again, the infirmity of lameness-spiritual lameness; they are brought sometimes that they are compelled to halt, not being able to take one step in the ways of the Lord. And though these things fetter their souls; and bow them down, yet such is their nature, that they are continually going after vanity. The Lord's people, therefore are the subjects of manifold infirmities. If all these hindrances were moved out of the way, if the temptations, the flattery, and the vanity of the world were removed, then, indeed, it would be easy to talk about acting and working. No person can enter heaven with any infirmity to enter heaven we must be free from blindness, from deafness, from lameness, from leprosy, and from every other infirmity. It is infinite condescension in the Lord to call these things infirmities. What a mercy it is, that let there be whatever there may, wrong, as soon as the dear Redeemer comes in and speaks a word to the soul, every thing is immediately put right. The sympathy of Christ's human nature was not a natural sympathy; and the sympathy

ercised over his dear people, is as superior to that sympathy with which he wept over Jerusalem, as infinite Divinity is superior to perfect humanity. If the sympathy of Christ was the sympathy of a man, it would not reach us. The dear Redeemer having walked the path of tribulation before his people, is able to succour them; and though he was tempted in all points, as his people are, yet they are not tempted in all points that he was. If Christ has borne my transgressions, and my sorrows, he must have borne innumerable sorrows, and innumerable transgressions, as far as all human calculation goes; and if he was wounded for my transgressions the wound must be deep indeed. We have an High Priest, bless his dear name, he is HIGH, sitting at the right hand of God; and his mediatorial work has swept the whole surface of the globe, and not left one point either east, west, north or south, untouched,

but extended it to all his redeemed, even to as many as the Lord, our God shall call. There are three senses in which Christ had no sin-He had no sin naturally-it was an impossibility according to what he was. 'In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.' It is impossible for God to lie: all sin comes under the character of a lie: therefore as Hart says

"Let God be true, and every man a liar."

'Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given, and his name shall be called, Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of peace. Christ had no sin practically. What a number of snares were laid for him, and yet he overcame them all. And his sinless life is im

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puted to his people. Christ had no sin objectively; by this I mean that all his purposes and all his objects were holy. had no object in view, but what was holy, just, good, and honorable. His object was glorious-so glorious that devils would be proud to own him. Therefore having such an High Priest, let us come boldly to a throne of grace.' Publicans and harlots enter the kingdom of heaven, while pharisees are ashamed to own that mercy and grace by which they are saved. Boldness is necessary in the ministers of the gospel, to declare these things. Boldness is also necessary to the hearer: therefore, 'Let us go boldly to a throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in every time of need."

"The reason why most men are not troubled about their sins to any purpose, is from a persuasion that God is merciful, and will pardon; when, indeed, none can really, on a gospel account, have that persuasion, but those who have been troubled for sin, and that to purpose."-Owen,

his love, there is a graven image made presently, even a changed god, and a foe-god, who was once, ('when you washed your steps with butter, and the rock poured you out

The Freeness of Christ's Love : FAITH TO BE EXERCISED UNDER A SENSE OF GOD'S WRATH GRACE SUFFICIENT FOR ENDURING OF THE GREATEST TROU-rivers of oil,' Job xxix. 6,) a Friend-God. THE UNCHANGEABLENESS OF

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I approve your going to the fountain when your own cistern is dry a difference there must be betwixt Christ's well and your borrowed water; and why? Because you have need of emptiness and drying up, as well as you have need of the well. Want, and a hole there must be in our vessel to leave room for Christ's art; his well hath its own need of thirsty drinkers, to commend infinite love, which from eternity, did brew such a cellar of living waters for us, You commend his free love; and it is well done. Oh, if I could help you, and if I could be master-convener, to gather an earth full, and a heaven full of tongues, dipped and steeped in my Lord's well of love, or his wine of love, even tongues drunken with his love, to raise a song of praises to him, betwixt the east and west end, and furthest points of the broad heavens ! If I were in your case, as, alas ! my dry and dead heart is not now in that garden, I would borrow leave to come, and stand upon the banks and coasts of that sea of love, and be a feasted soul, to see love's fair tide, free love's high and lofty waves, each of them higher than ten earths, flowing in upon pieces of clay. O welcome, welcome, great sea! Oh, if I had as much love for wideness and breadth, as twenty outmost shells and spheres of the heaven of heavens, that I might receive in a little flood of his free love; Come, dear friend, and be pained, that the king's wine-cellar of free love, and his banquetting-house, so wide, so stately, so Godlike, so glory-like! should be so abundant, so overflowing, and your shallow vessel so little, to take in some part of that love. But since it cannot come in you, for want of room, enter yourself in this sea of love, and breathe under these waters, and die of love; and live as one dead, and crowned of this love. But why do you complain of waters going over your soul, and that the smoke of the terrors of a wrathful Lord doth almost suffocate you, and bring you to death's brink? I know the fault is in your eyes, not in him: it is not the rock that fleeth and moveth, but the young sailor: if your sense and apprehension be made judge of

Either now or never let God work: you had never, since you were a man, such a fair field for faith; for a painted hell, and an apprehension of wrath in your Father, is faith's opportunity to try what strength is in it. Now, give God as large a measure of love, as you have of sorrow: now, see faith to be faith indeed; if you can, make your grave betwixt Christ's feet, and say, 'Though he should slay me, I will trust in him;' his believed love shall be my winding-sheet, and all my grave clothes. I shall roll, and sew in my soul, my slain soul in that web, his sweet and free love. And let him write upon my grave-'Here lieth a believing, dead man, breathing out, and making a hole in death's broad side, and the breath of faith cometh forth through the hole. See now if you can overcome and prevail with God, and wrestle God's tempting to death quite out of breath, as that renowned wrestler did, And by his strength he had power with God,' Hosea xii. 3. Yea, he had power over the angel, and prevailed, (ver. 4.) He is a strong man indeed, who overmatcheth heaven's strength, and the Holy One of Israel, the strong Lord, which is done by a secret supply of divine strength within, wherewith the weakest, being strengthened, overcome and conquer. It shall be a great victory, to blow out the flame of that furnace you are now in, with the breath of faith. And when hell, men, malice, cruelty, falsehood, devils, the seeming glooms of a sweet Lord, meet you in the teeth; if you then, as a captive of hope, as one fettered in hope's prison, run to your strong hold, even from God glooming to God glooming; and believe the salvation of the Lord in the dark, which is your only victory; your enemies are but pieces of malicious clay; they shall die as men, and be confounded.

But that your troubles are many at once, and arrows come in from all points, from country, friends, wife, children, foes, estate, and right down from God, who is the hope and stay of your soul, I confess is more, and very heavy to be borne: yet all these are not more than grace; all these bits of coals, cast in your sea of mercy, cannot dry it up. Your troubles are many and great, yet not an ounce weight beyond the measure of grace he has to bestow; for, our Lord never yet broke the back of his child, nor spoiled his own work. Nature's plastering, and counterfeiting work he doth often break in shreds, and putteth out a candle not lighted at the Sun of Righteousness; but he must cherish his own reeds, and handleth them softly; never a reed getteth a thrust

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with the Mediator's hand, to lay together | sin out, if it were possible, the unchangethe two ends of the reed. Oh, what bonds ableness of a God-head out of Christ, and and ligaments hath our surgeon of broken spirits, to bind up all his lame and bruised ones with cast your disjointed spirit into his lap, and lay your burden upon one who is so willing to take your cares and your fears off you, and to exchange your crosses, and to give you new for old, and gold for iron, even to give you garments of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

It is true in great part what you write of this Kirk, that the letter of religion only, is reformed, and scarcely that; I do not believe that our Lord will build his Zion in this land, upon this skin of reformation. So long as our scum remaineth, and our heart idols are kept, this work must be at a stand; and therefore, our Lord must yet sift this land and search us with candles; and I know he will give, and not sell us his kingdom. His grace and our remaining guiltiness must be compared, and the one must be seen in the glory of it, and the other in the sinfulness of it. But I desire to believe, and would gladly hope to see, that the glancing and shining lustre of glory, coming from the diamonds and stones set in the crown of our Lord Jesus, shall cast rays and beams of many thousand miles about. I hope Christ is upon a great marriage; and that his wooing and suiting of his excellent bride, doth take its beginning from us, the ends of the earth.

O, what joy and what glory would I judge it, if my heaven should be suspended till I might have leave to run on foot, to be a witness of that marriage-glory, and see Christ put on the glory of his last married bride, and his last marriage love on earth, when he shall enlarge his church, and set it on the top of the mountains, and take in the elder sister, the Jews, and the fulness of the Gentiles. It were heaven's honor and glory, upon earth, to be his lackey, to run at his horse-foot, and hold up the train of his marriage-robe-royal, in the day of his high and royal espousals. But oh, what glory to have a seat in Jesu's chariot, that is bottomed with gold, and paved, and lined over, and floored within, with love, "for the daughters of Jerusalem." (Cant. iii. 30.) To lie upon such a king's love were next to the flower of heaven's glory.

I am sorry to hear you speak, in your letter, of a God angry with you, and of the sense of his indignation, which only ariseth from suffering for Jesus all that is now come upon you. Indeed apprehended wrath flameth out of such ashes as apprehended sin, but not from suffering for Christ. But suppose you were in hell for past sins, and for old debt. I hope you owe Christ a great sum of love, to believe the sweetness of his love. I know what it is to sin in that kind; it is to

to sin away a lovely and unchangeable God. Put more honest honest apprehensions upon Christ; put on his own mask on his face, and not your vail made of unbelief, which speaketh as if he borrowed love to you, from you and your demerits and sinful deservings. O, no! Christ is man, but he is not like man; he hath man's love in heaven, but it is lustred with God's love, and it is very God's love you have to do with. When your wheels go about, he standeth still. Let God be God, and be you man, and have you the deserving of man, and the sin of one who hath suffered your well-beloved to slip away, nay, hath refused him entrance, when he was knocking, till his head and locks were frozen. Yet what is that to him? His book keepeth your name, and is not printed and reprinted and changed and corrected. And why, but he should go to his place and hide himself? Howbeit, his departure be his own good work, yet the belief of it in that manner, is your sin, but wait on till he return with salvation, and cause you to rejoice in the latter end.

It is not much to complain; but rather believe than complain, and sit in the dust, and close your mouth, till he make your sown light grow again; for your afflictions are not eternal; time will end them; and so shall you at length see the Lord's salvation; his love sleepeth not, but is still in working for you; his salvation will not tarry nor linger; and suffering for him is the noblest cross out of heaven: your Lord hath the choice of ten thousand other crosses, beside this to exercise you withall; but his wisdom and his love chose out this for you, beside them all, and take it as a choice one, and make use of it, so that you look to this world as your step-mother in your borrowed prison. For it is a love-look to heaven, and the other side of the water, that God seeketh; and this is the fruit, the flower, growing out of your cross, that you be a dead man to time, to clay, to gold, to country, to friends, wife, children, and all pieces of created nothings; for in them there is not a seat nor bottom for the soul's love. O, what room is there for your love, if it were as broad as the sea, up in heaven and in God, and what would not Christ give for your love? God gave so much for your soul; and blessed are you if you have a love for him, and can call in your soul's love from all idols, and can make a God of God, a God of Christ, and draw a line betwixt your heart and him.

If your deliverance come not, Christ's presence and his believed love must stand as surety for your deliverance, till your Lord send it in his blessed time; for Christ hath many salvations, if we could see them; and I would think it better borne comfort

and joy that cometh from the faith of deliver- | within us-'the Lord dealeth hardly with ance, and the faith of his love, than that us; and death is stamped upon all that we which cometh from deliverance itself. It is are pursuing;' and here I have felt bound not much matter if you find ease to your af- up in hardness, and blindness, and deadness, flicted soul, what be the means, either of without any real feeling to cry unto God; your own wishing or God's choosing; the for I have proved again and again, unless latter I am sure is best, and the comfort the dear Lord is pleased to bring the soul strongest and sweetest: let the Lord abso- and make him acquainted with his own conlutely have the ordering of your evils and dition; and to grant him a little softening, troubles, and put them off you by recom- and a feeling of his soul, we have no right mending your cross and your furnace to him conception of our true state, and here we who hath skill to melt his own metal, and truly need the quickening influences of the knoweth well what to do with his furnace: Holy Ghost put forth in the soul, and faith let your heart be willing that God's fire have which is the gift of God, to enable a poor your tin, brass, and dross. worm to come; and from his inmost soul to sue for mercy, for pardon, and forgiveness: and here we have to sigh and cry till the set time is come, for I have proved that the Lord hath a set time to favour his people, to grant them their souls' request, and that request is, that pardoning love and blood be realised to the cleansing of their guilty souls, to assure their hearts that they are one with him; nothing short of this will satisfy their guilty, sin-bitten consciences, to enable them to stand upright; and this a poor worm has been brought in some small measure to; to a rejoicing of the soul; but I still find I am in the wilderness, and I have a bad old man to grapple with, and a mighty foe (that is unbelief,) and this foe shakes the poor soul to its centre, and causeth the soul to call in question every step of the way; it turns things up side down, and oh, the sighs and cries and searchings of heart for an evidence clear; and, oh, the accusations that are brought against a soul, and he cannot return one answer, and here he has to prove that nothing short of coming in mercies, can enable him to return an answer, and this is how a vile, sinful, base, ungrateful, hard, blind and sinful wretch, hobbles on in the wilderness.

To consent to want corruption, is a greater mercy than many professors do well know; and to refer the manner of God's physic to his own wisdom, whether it be by drawing blood, or giving sugared drinks: that he cureth sick folks without pain is a great point of faith; and to believe Christ's cross to be a friend, as he himself is a friend, is also a special act of faith; but when you are over the water this case shall be as yesterday, past a hundred years ere you were born; and the cup of glory shall wash the memory of all this away, and make it as nothing. Only now take Christ in with you under your yoke, and let patience have her perfect work; for this haste is your infirmity. The Lord is rising up to do you good in the latter end. Put on the faith of his salvation, and see him posting and hasting towards you.

RUTHERFORD.

[If spared, perhaps we may give in a future number, some of the last words of Mr: Rutherford; hoping that the Lord may bless them to the comforting of some poor soul who might be in bondage, through the fear of death. Heb ii. 15.]

A COMFORTING

Word from Brother Ephraim.

DEAR BROTHER, AND COMPANION IN TRIBULATION:-You may think it strange that I have not fulfilled my promise before, but God, who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will, has been pleased to make himself known unto a vile, base, and sinful wretch, as a kind and gracious, merciful, covenant-keeping God, in preserving, upholding, and appearing as a God of providence, to a base wretch, to the astonishment of his poor rebel, notwithstanding all our wanderings, baseness, and proneness to choose our own way; for we are, sometimes, permitted to choose our own way, and as we are suffered to choose out paths for ourselves, the Lord is pleased to hedge up our path with pricking thorns, and here we fret, murmur, and complain: there is something saying

Dear brother, may the God of hope, and the God of all comfort strengthen, establish, confirm, and build you up in the truth, prays A Poor, Sinful Worm, E. NUNN. Walpole, March 25, 1847.

A BRIEF OUTLINE OF

Mr. James Osbourn's Sermon, Preached in the Independent Chapel, Horsham, On Wednesday-evening, Feb. 24, 1847.

As soon as this venerable weather-beaten, faithful champion of truth, arose and shewed himself in the pulpit, his singular gravity and solemnity of appearance, put me in mind of the old prophet Elijah. In prayer, he evidently was favored with sweet and close communion, and fellowship with the Lord, as a man with his friend. His text was Exodus xxv. 22. 'And there I will meet

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