things so much to be dreaded as unreality, by which word I mean to express the assumption of a certain status, whether as regards fortune, worldly position, or intellectual eminence, to which we may possibly reasonably aspire, yet are conscious we do not actually possess. Such a mental attitude, when it becomes habitual, is fatal to all comfort, dignity, and freedom; and in our supernatural life it is a temper yet more deeply to be dreaded, more persistingly to be shunned. There was never but one on earth who could say 'The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me,' and all of His followers, at one time or other of their appointed journey, will do well to remember a warning said to have been given by a peasant to Francis of Assisi. Having walked by his side for some time in silence, he said to him, 'Art thou he whom men speak of as St. Francis?' and being answered in the affirmative, added simply yet significantly, 'Then, good brother Francis, see that thou be content to be before men that which thou knowest thou art before God."

Man is a being so constituted that he can gain but very partial benefit from the experience of other people. To have rejoicing in ourselves, and not in any other, is one of the great promises connected by our Lord Himself with the coming

of the Comforter; and as it is evident that God, in this our present time, is working in His Church a great effectual work, and has some wondrous design in hand, our part as believers is to be willing in the day of His power, to be prepared and ready to accustom ourselves to believe in great possibilities, to expect much from Him. We have yet to work for the fulfilment of His glorious promises, made not to individuals, but to families, races, and nations. A people shall be born in a day.' 'A little one shall become a thousand, and he that is feeble among you shall be as David.' 'The wilderness shall become a fruitful field,' and the field which is now esteemed fruitful shall be counted but a forest,'—a wild and savage place; and not only upon the chosen hill of Zion, but upon the alien mountains of Samaria, 'the planters shall plant vines; yea, they shall plant them and eat them as common things.'

DORA GREENWELL.

Feby. 9th, 1875.

ON THE BELIEVER'S GROWTH IN

GRACE.

A

LEXANDER KNOX1 writing on the important subject of progress in spiritual life says, 'St. Paul tells us that

salvation is of faith that it may be of grace, meaning that it does not depend upon a slow series of efforts, but upon an inward temper, which when once possessed does the business, and which temper God is ready to work in all who only fix their hearts upon it. We often think, "How shall I be able to do such or such a thing? to bear such an anticipated trial, to maintain a spiritual

1 As the letters of Alexander Knox, full of weight and value, are comparatively little known, it may be well to state that he was an Irish gentleman, who was devoted during the whole of his life to religious thought and spiritual inquiry. Many of his letters are addressed to Mr. Butterworth of Bristol, the friend of John Wesley, with whom Mr. Knox himself as a child had been familiar. The letters chiefly turn upon what Alexander Knox describes as the 'free, warm, soaring piety' of living faith, as distinguished from the comparatively cold and barren aspect of that so-called justification by faith which stops short at the mere acceptance of pardon and consequent salvation through the Saviour's atoning merits.

mind under certain circumstances? to think of so many things without distraction?" Why, of ourselves we never can; the least of these difficulties would overcome us for ever. But let us remember that God can by a little change in the frame of our minds make all these things very easy. A deeper sense of Himself, of the evil of sin, of the misery of inward bondage to corruption, of the infinite value and blessedness of His favour, is that which He soon can give, and when He gives it, the crooked paths become straight, and the rough places plain. And in thus speaking I do not talk at random, having had myself to struggle with weaknesses and temptations1 of no common nature; and here lay my advantage, in feeling that these were not to be overcome by piecemeal (I mean one by one, and by necessarily slow degrees), but that a deepened feeling of heart-religion, an increase of that faith which is the substantiation of things hoped for, the realisation of things not seen, would raise me above them all at once. Every uneasy feeling made me, and still makes me, turn inward to God in the closet of my heart, to entreat Him to deepen within me the sense of Himself; for this, the knowledge of God, and of "Him whom He hath sent," I saw

1 Mr. Knox was during his whole life more or less subject to attacks of constitutional depression, which seem to have unfitted him for the more active pursuits of life.

was everything, the root and principle of spiritual life which God could alone work in me; but this in the covenant1 of grace He has engaged to do. What then remains but to seek daily, hourly, that grace of faith from Him who has said, "Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it"? and let me not be too solicitous about events and consequences. Let me leave these things to God, asking only wisdom to see and strength to do what is right, leaving both particulars and results to Him whose touching of the heart can at once put all in tune, and make all intricacies and embarrassments disappear.'

This extract shows how deeply Knox's spirit had become imbued with that of his beloved teacher in the truth, John Wesley, upon whose knees as a child he had sometimes sat. Compare this with what Wesley writes:-'By salvation I mean not, according to the vulgar notion of it, deliverance from hell, or going to heaven, but a present deliverance from sin, a restoration of the soul to its primitive health and to its original purity, recovery of the Divine nature, the renewal of our souls after the image of God in righteousness and in true holiness, in justice, mercy, and truth. This implies all holy, heavenly tempers, and by consequence all holiness of conversation.

1 Hebrews x. 15, 16.