the connection of our country with the Christian faith. With nominal Christianity we have: but with "the faith once delivered to the saints,” how does England stand associated? To Him, alone, are we indebted who is light, without the shadow of darkness, for He it is who has caused the day-spring from on high to pour its glory through the mists of error which enveloped the earlier creeds of our land, and in his light enabled us to see clearly. Some of our countrymen may trace the pedigree of their faith to "Augustine and the Roman monks ;" and many who are not "Romans," may take the delegate of Gregory for their model, and call him master. Many do. Some who ran well,

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have gone back to the beggarly elements from whose bondage the gospel had awhile relieved them. They can read the oracles of God only from a "lectern:" they can pray only from a "faldstool:" they can sing only from a golden eagle:" they must have a "credence" and a "piscina," or they cannot worship God acceptably. In these fripperies and formularies they have gone back too, instead of forward. The religion of Augustine, disfigured as it was, was still a portable religion." He could take it into the highways and the by-ways of old England. fathers" were not too proud to follow the grandfathers to the sea-shore, or to the river-side, and preach beneath the open heavens, the knowledge of that God "who made the earth and all things that are therein." But the tractarian of modern times is an anomaly, uniting the ascetic with the pompous prelate ; and locking up the glorious gospel in the dark niches of his own dark haunts. The afflatus of the chancel-the atmosphere of the choir-the sheen of the sacramental plate-must give efficacy to his preaching. He cannot itinerate, and even He who has said, "Lo, I am with you always!" must not follow when he quits the consecrated precincts!

But it ill becomes us to find fault. We should rather feel deeply humbled when we look upon our country and ourselves. The cloud of witnesses who looked down from heaven upon the saints of apostolic times, has been augmented by thousands and tens of thousands, since those days; and their eyes are on us still. How many centuries have been necessary to bring forward to its present pigmy stature, the growth of Christianity in England! Where can be the hindrance? Is it not possible—

probable-certain-that it may, in some degree, at least, be in our own bosoms? What have I done to roll away this reproach from my beloved country. The Bible in the land is not enough: the Bible in the house is not enough: the Bible in the head is not enough :-has it been hidden in the heart as far as you, dear reader, are concerned? Do you never ; do you not daily, pray, "Thy kingdom come!" and have you never given yourself unto the Lord? You must first cast out the beam from your own eye, or you will never see clearly how to apply the eye-salve of the gospel to your brother.

Reader! you and I are Britons, and disposed to say with Cowper

"England, with all thy faults, I love thee still!"'

But should we not love our country far better, had she fewer faults. She has many; and we are, each and all, to a certain degree, responsible for them. Having first given ourselves unto the Lord, can we do nothing for the good of others. Our lips can tell, and our lives can shew, what Christianity is. We can glorify God in our bodies, and in our spirits, which are both his. Our hands can labor for his cause: our feet can carry us about upon our Father's business; our tongues can speak of his glory; our hearts can glow with his praise, and by an alchemy of their own, can influence the hearts of others to go forward in the cause of truth.

But Britain, some will say, is a land of gospel light and gospel love. Nay, she is more. Has she not sent her missionaries and her Bibles to all the countries of the globe. She has; and the very sounds of triumph from emancipated thousands, call on her to do more for herself. "From the uttermost parts of the earth she has heard songs and gladness, even glory to the righteous;" but her cry still is, "My leanness! my leanness!"

Does not the echo of these hallelujahs strike home to every British heart-" Glory to the righteous!" It shall be well with them. But can our land appropriate the lovely epithet-can our hearths and our altars respond to it as to a father's call? Can our closets fix its ownership on us-can my heart, and yours, dear reader, witness to that "glory" which seals it for our own, and tells us we are Christ's, as Christ is God's? SUSAN.

GOD DEPARTING.

(A Sermon by the late Richard Cecil.)

And he wist not that the Lord was departed from him.—Judges xvi. 20.

It is the duty of every Christian to examine the symptoms of a declension from God, in order that we may try and prove ourselves.

Have we lost our love to spiritual things, or, do we want to mix them with carnal things? Do we endeavor to find many excuses and palliations for what God has frowned upon in his word? Do we allow ourselves to lie down in the lap of indulgence, and are we indisposed to be roused when there? Are we apt to be careless, negligent, and off our watch tower? Can we rest upon past experiences? upon what we have been, instead of what we now are? Can we be quiet and easy in this state, without praying and entreating for a revival? These are dreadful symptoms that we are at an awful distance from God, and that we have only the shell of Christianity, but not the reality. God not being present, implies not only the presence of an enemy, but the prevalence of an enemy also. If God be not with us, the Devil is; and he will prevail to our hurt. “Woe also to them when I depart from them." (Hosea ix. 12.)

Whatever part of God's character we consider, we must never forget he is a holy God. He seems to say, "Observe, Samson does not go on in sin, and I stay with him. I am a jealous God, and will not bear testimony to sin in any of my children." See the case of the disobedient prophet. To belong to God is a high, but a very serious thing.

We should be much in the contemplation of the deceitfulness of sin; how it beguiles, how it creeps in, and how it transforms a man. It comes like Jael's present; "she gave him milk, she brought forth butter in a lordly dish:" but she concealed the hammer and the nail. Samson thought to prosper as he had done before, but the Lord was departed: his strength was gone, and he must now 66 'grind in the prison house." He that will meddle with sin, and go into the way of temptation, will fall by it. There is in sin not only an infinite damage done, but an infatuation also that surpasses all description. When the heart declines from God, and loses communion with Christ, such a man resembles one in a consumption, who is at death's door,

and yet talks of a speedy recovery. So it is also, both in the case of ministers and people, whom Satan hath desired to have, that he may sift them as wheat: like Ephraim, there has perhaps been a death upon their spirit, which has been marked and felt by all around them; yet when their affectionate friends have attempted to expostulate with them, they have proved not only insensible, but obstinate and stout-hearted.

We have a striking picture of this in the famous champion of Israel; "I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself:" but 'he wist not that the Lord was departed from him." Strangers had "devoured his strength," but he knew it not. He that lays his head in the lap of temptation, will very rarely take it up as he laid it down.

All earthly enjoyments have a tendency to darken the mind; and such is the power and energy of sin, that if but the least thought of it be cherished in the heart, it will spread ruin and devastation on every hand. It is like a spark of fire, which if it fall upon combustible materials, will burn down a whole town. See Samson, though so great a man, yet involving himself, through a vile propensity, in the most ruinous consequences and, at the same time, insensible and unconscious of the deep infatuation. "He wist not that the Lord was departed from him." To destroy the soul's union with God, is what the world, the flesh, and the Devil aim at.

How weak he

Let us, from this subject, take a view of man. is. If God depart from him, he is crushed as a moth nothing is too insignificant to chastise and alarm him : and this is not all, but whenever any Christian is suffered to depart from God, he makes sport for the wicked wherever he goes.

In the darkest and most afflictive dispensations of God's children, we may read grace and mercy. While Samson was bound with fetters of brass, and made to grind in the prison house, "the hair of his head began to grow again;" which was a sign of his returning strength. There is mercy when God sends stroke after stroke upon the man who has departed from him when he makes the heart to bleed, and the eyes to run down with tears, in order to bring a wanderer back again. "Before I was afflicted," says David, "I went astray, but now I keep thy word."

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Many a man has kicked against his dispensation, and said, “I will be comfortable, I will go and shake myself as at othe

times;" but he will never find comfort or healing, or recover his strength, till he seeks it by the blood of Jesus. "In that day thou shalt say, O Lord, I will praise thee: though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and THOU Comfortedst me:" thou shalt have ground to say, and disposition to say, "I will praise thee.”

If we would wage war successfully with hell, it must be under this impression, namely, that God is a friend. Nothing repels sin like it. When the heart feels the loving-kindness of God in the gospel, and experiences a nearness of approach to him, when it feels a forgiveness and sweetness in Christ, there is not only a seven-fold shield against sin and Satan, but heaven is begun in the heart. What is sensibility of conscience, but the first mark of God's good will towards us? (See Hosea xiv. 1, 2.) “O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity. Take with you words," &c. The best sign that we can have that God is renewing our spiritual strength, is, the gift of a broken heart. We must return to the Lord by faith, hope, prayer, repentance, and obedience; and he will undertake for all consequences.

When God chooses to imprison a man, any place will serve for a dungeon; it signifies little whether it be a palace or a pit. He can make a single idea passing through the mind, a fetter to lock up the soul in prison. "He shutteth up a man, and there can be no opening." On the other hand, let every believer remember, that there is no state that sin and Satan can throw a man into, but God can bring him out: there is no place, nor state, but admits of prayer-hell only excepted. Therefore David prays, "Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name." We must plead with God: it is a good symptom when we desire enlargement. Imprisonment is often for correction, humbling, improvement. Satan at such a time is a preacher of despair : but the gospel holds out hope. We must wait God's time for deliverance, but we must wait in prayer: the promises teach us how to pray there are promises that speak to our case as much as if they were written for us alone: Christ is a faithful High Priest, who can have compassion. (Heb. ii. 2.)

Nothing can separate us from God but sin; and an alarm sounding in the conscience, and calling us to return to him, is the first step to Peace.