care not for. And when it is got, what have you? A vain empty puff of wind. They think much of thee, thou thinkest much of thyself, and, in the mean time, God thinks nothing of thee. Let this scare thee, O my soul, from seeking thyself. 4. Consider that, seeking thy own glory is a dreadful and abominable thing. (1.) In that thou then puttest thyself in God's room. His glory should be that which thou shouldest aim at, but then thy base self must be sacrificed too. O tremble at this, O my soul, and split not on this rock, otherwise thou shalt be dashed in pieces. (2.) In that it is the most gross dissembling with God that can be. Thou pretendest to preach Christ to a people; but, seeking thy own glory, thou preachest thyself, and not him. Thou pretendest to be commending Christ and the ways of God to souls, and yet, in the mean time, thou commendest thyself. Will Christ sit with such mocking of him. O my soul, beware of it; look not for it, but for his glory. Christ will be avenged on self-preaching ministers. (3.) In that it is base treachery and cruelty to the souls of hearers where a man seeks to please their fancy more than to gain their souls, to get people to approve him more than to get them to approve themselves to God. This is a soul-murdering way, and it is dear-bought applause that is won by the blood of souls."

The College of the Propaganda thus writes to its missionaries; for even Rome may be our admonisher here (though certainly Rome's actings are a strange commentary on the admonitions):

"Missionariis nihil est presumptione, inanique gloria periculosius; illa enim, quæ quondam ex angelo diabolum fecit, simul atque missionarii animum invasit, opus Dei in ipso destruit, dum supra quum possit ille, aggredi non erubescit. Hæc vero speratam multorum annorum mercedem uno momento eripit, dum enim gloriam furatur Deo, ad justam indignationem eum provocat, qui suam gloriam alteri non dabit. Quapropter suas omnes diabolus vires adhibet, ut læthalia hæc missionario venena inspiret, quod si unquam potuerit assequi, opus et operarium continuo perdit. Ergo illius ob oculos ponit procurandam majorem Dei Christique gloriam, ingentem animarum omnino derelictarum messem, Christianamque religionem ubique terrarum diffundendum; deinde quibus polleat ille, tum gratiæ, tum naturæ dotes haud contemnendas subblandiendo explicat. Unde deceptus in multa se imprudenter ingerit; paulatim solita orationis, examinum, interiorisque solitudinis exercitia negligit; animo semper vagatur foras, aliisque quam debeat intentus, sui caram penitus abjicit; adeo ut gratiæ, Spiritusque sancti auxiliis uberioribus merito destitutus, inanis gloriæ pateat telis, et continuo ruat in pejora, parva quæque spernat, obedientiæ jugum excutiat, nihilque nisi magnum, et grande meditetur, et affectet. Ex quibus facile conjicere est in quantas anxietates, erroresque, et peccata miserrime provolvatur."*

Monita ad Missionarios sacræ Congregationis de Propag. Fide. Romæ 1840. The whole of this book is well worthy of study. With the substitution of Christ and his glory, for the Church and its glory, it might be a model for any missionary. The writer of this article purchased it lately, in the book-shop of the Sacred College at Rome.

It is very unlike Christ to be a self-seeking minister. He did not seek his own glory, but his Father's. Self was wholly sunk in Jesus. So in the degree in which any minister is like Christ, is self crucified and loathed. It is said of John Flavel, that he always brought with him into the pulpit a broken heart and moving affections. Were there more of this, there would be less of homage to the opinion of man. Did the heart ache more for sin, and the head ache less for mere study, self would have a smaller space left to it in the preacher's soul.

One branch of ministerial self-denial we cannot pass on without noticing. Some ministers there are, who cannot preach to any purpose, except in pleasant outward circumstances. With a large congregation before them—a well-filled church, they get on admirably. But send them to a thin meeting, and they seem like a magician without his wand. Or ask them to go to the streets or villages,-they shrink from the very thought of a thing so very unusual, so very undignified, so very unpleasant? Is this self-denial? Is this like Him who, "wearied with his journey, sat on the well," preaching to one poor woman! Is it like Him who, on the shore of the sea of Galilee, preached to crowds of sinners? Is it like Him who, in Decapolis, preached, in the open fields, to a people so heartless and stiff-necked, that they ended with bidding him away from their coasts? Is it like Him who, in the villages and on the public streets of Jerusalem, preached, amidst the scorn of the respectable formalists of the day, to gatherings of publicans and sinners? Did He deem such work beneath ministerial dignity, or a work at least to be reserved only for certain brethren in the apostleship, who had no character for dignity to lose? The truth is, a man, to fit him for such work, must have his heart full of love to souls; he needs to be baptised from above for it: external helps are very much withdrawn, and so he can encourage himself only in his God. Hence the signal blessing which generally attends this kind of work. It is honouring to God to witness for him, whether publicly or privately, at the cost of self-denial: and those that honour God, he will honour.

(4.) He is much alone with God and with his own soul." Three things (said Luther) make a divine-meditation, temptation, and prayer.' "An hour of solitude (writes Coleridge) passed in sincere and earnest prayer, or the conflict with, and conquest over,' a single passion or subtle bosom sin, will teach us more of thought, will more effectually awaken the faculty, and form the habit, of reflection, than a year's study without them."* A time like the present is peculiarly ensnaring, in drawing away the

* Aids to Reflection.

minister from his closet. The stir, and bustle, and demand for outward work, are so engrossing, that the solitude is, by many, scarcely known. This is not Christ-like. Jesus was much alone. Night after night he retired to a mountain apart to pray. It was there he got his tenderness, his zeal, his strength. The Christlike minister must drink at the same fountain. Only thus can "out of his belly flow rivers of living water." The man in the picture had "his eye lifted up to heaven." We pass from this topic, not because it is unimportant-on the contrary, it is all-important, but because, having lately handled it in this publication, we need not reiterate now.

If such, then, be the spirituel of the true minister of Christ, it manifestly follows, that the only method of attaining it is to realise the blessedness of a conscious walk with God. We insist on this point, because we believe it to be all-important. And we must be pardoned, in closing, for pressing upon the brethren the necessity of such a walk. We mean not that you should seek it, because it will make you godly, and spiritual, and useful ministers. There is a snare of the fowler here. Bunyan tells us, how at one period of his spiritual history, his pride was fed by the reputation of being godly. "Now I was, as they said (to use his own account of it given in the "Grace Abounding)" become godly. But oh! when I understood these were their words and opinions of me, it pleased me mighty well. For though, as yet I was nothing but a poor painted hypocrite, yet I loved to be talked of as one that was truly godly." And, even where this snare may be escaped, another is ready, in the temptation to seek deeper spirituality, as a means mainly of attaining that success in the ministry on which the heart is honestly set. But we mean that you should delight yourselves in God "for his own sake,— should frequent, for its own attractiveness, the King's presencechamber, and that then, as a necessary consequence, the odour of the ointment will flow forth; and, your eyes having seen Christ's glory, and your ears having heard his voice, you will be constrained to speak the things you have seen and heard. We remember a dear brother at Geneva remarking the momentousness of the distinction in preaching betwixt (to use the French mode of expression) the venez and the allez. It is a most momentous distinction-the distinction betwixt the preaching of the man who argumentatively, it may be, and with much vehemence, counsels the sinner to make an instant escape from Sodom, yet is so uncertain as to his own position personally that he is able, in honesty, only to utter the cold "go" (a counsel men will be slow to follow, so long as they see the counsellor so unimpressed himself with the danger that he speaks as one still in the city), and

the preaching of the man who, himself dwelling consciously in the tent of the Lord, calls-tenderly and affectionately calls-to the passers-by to come, and he will tell them what the Lord hath done for his soul. We urge upon you such a near and abiding fellowship: it is at once the "life" of your souls and the life of your ministry.

And if ever there was a time when this duty was peculiarly urgent, it is now. The Lord is at hand. It is but a little while -it may be a very little while, and the door, so wide open, shall be closed. There seems arising a conviction in many minds that the Church of God owes a duty to the souls of the perishing masses, which it has not yet even once faced, far less discharged. Another Whitefield, and another Wesley, were lately invoked, and a band of devoted, God-baptised evangelists, who, coming forth from among the masses themselves, should go and preach in every close and alley the glad tidings, so that none shall pass away into eternity from this Christian land, and be able to say they never heard of the great salvation. We sympathise with the longing, not that we believe any great deliverance is to be accomplished now until Jesus cometh, but that the Lord demands it as the means for gathering his little remnant out of every place. Only let us, instead of indulging in any mere fond longings after new sickles, see whether the old sickles may not receive from the Lord a new edge. Let that be given, and the ripened corn shall be reaped.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

Sermons by the late Rev. Nathaniel Morren, A.M., Minister of the First Charge, Brechin; with a Memoir of the Author. Edin. 1848.

We do not think that a Memoir of the Reverend Nathaniel Morren could have been entrusted to a more appropriate biographer than the Rev. Alexander Turner. Had Mr Turner declined the task, we should have expressed no surprise, but rather have commended him for the exercise of a sound discretion, even though others might misrepresent it as timidity and misgiving. Perhaps, too, had the uncandid shown a disposition to blame him, we could have suggested several points connected with the biographer and the subject of his memoir, which would have set the reluctance of him who once was editor of our Review, and a contributor too, in a not unreasonable light. However, no sense of awkwardness, or embarrassment, it seems, has been felt; or if felt, it has been braved. As a contribution to the history of the Forty by one of the Forty, this Life will be read with curiosity, if not interest, and may one day assist in the formation of a volume similar to Reid's "Divines of the Westminister

Assembly," or Walker's "Biographia Presbyteriana." It is clear, at least, that Mr Turner would not hesitate to rank Mr Morren alike among the martyrs of the latter, and the theologians of the former. "This singularly accomplished man" has secured our friend's most devout admiration, and we are not positively assured whether the church has suffered more by the loss of Morren, or of Chalmers. We must say that we can perceive nothing that bears out this estimate, and that we are not aware of a single profitable lesson taught by all that Mr Turner has recorded of his brother, unless it be the solemn truth, that we can never calculate the sunset from the dawn. Did we imagine it possible that Mr Turner would cast his eyes over the pages of that Journal which once he rejoiced to support, and with whose principles he once as cordially sympathized as its present Editor can do, we would ask him earnestly, as once we could have done face to face, if the time was not, when he would have spoken of conversion in language less allied to the dialect of Moderatism, which once he, we believe sincerely, abhorred, than this, "the light of heaven burst through the gathering cloud"? And would he not have talked simply of holiness, rather than "the devotional sentiment of the youthful Christian"? Quantum mutatus! Let us ask again, what does Mr Turner mean when he relates with equal astonishment and delight, that Mr Morren visited 30 families in a day? Upon any scale we doubt whether the feat were practicable. But admitting that it was indeed achieved, would Mr Turner tell us if the time was not, when he would have denounced such a style of visitation, as not dealing, but trifling with souls? Of course Mr Turner writes as a partizan, and we would make the largest allowance for one who can be but ill at ease amid all his emoluments and honours, dissevered alike from the principles and friends of his youth, a youth that gave large promise both of talent and piety. But when we find him stating "that adherence to the veto law prevented the redress which was sought," that "the Non-Intrusion Committee's negotiations might have resulted in harmony without the smallest sacrifice of principle," that "the movement of the Forty brought harmony to the church,"that" Lord Aberdeen's Bill has secured the people's privileges unimpaired," and "that they who had for a time withdrawn, are now returning to enjoy their unimpaired privileges," we are obliged to view him as one who is bringing a wound upon his own conscience, and judgment upon his soul; and because we cannot but retain a lingering fondness for an individual once esteemed so truly, let us remind him how it is written, "thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit; I will reprove thee, saith the Lord."* Mr

In the first volume of this Journal (sixteen years ago, Nov. 1831, p. 530,) when, under Mr Turner's editorship, it commenced a career of bold assault upon all abuses in the Church, and led the way in the non-intrusion and anti-patronage controversy, the following pointed paragraph occurs: "We know that our Church is not perfect; we shall not hesitate to express at the proper time the opinions which we have formed of her future prospects, and of the battle she may soon be called upon to engage in, and neither are we afraid of the issue. If she be true to herself, and to her own interests; if she attach to herself the people, which she can easily do by granting to them their just rights; if she can fling away adventitious aids, and purify herself from accidental error; and if her ministers stand forth, as they did of old, the intrepid and undaunted champions of civil and religious liberty; and in their lives and