another class that I must address a word to before I cease. And that is the class of babes, who have not yet reached the standing of young men. There are babes who are only just beginning to cry for the "sincere milk" to grow thereby. There are babes who, as the prophet says, are "borne upon the sides and dandled upon the knees," or, as our tender Shepherd observes, are "gathered by His arms and carried in His bosom." Now, you young babes, you are just opening your eyes and crying for mercy to Jesus Christ. Avail yourselves, then, of the experience of your older Christian friends; and above all things cleave close to God in prayer, that you may be recipients of new supplies of grace, so as to grow up in Jesus Christ in all things. If there are any young men here who are yet in Satan's slavery and service, let me remind them that he is a hard master, that he pays bad wages, and always ends by driving his victims to his dreary home. So hard a master that he sets you about impossibilities. Such dreadful wages, that "the wages of sin is death." And so dreary a home is he driving the votaries of sin to, that it is nothing else than the "blackness of darkness" for ever. This word of warning to you I deem indispensable. And let me admonish the young men in Christ now present to retire and pray over the things I have said this morning; and may God be glorified by stirring you up to increased activity for Christ, and His name shall have all the glory. Amen.

HYMN No. 440 OF GROVE CHAPEL HYMNS.

O! THE mercy I've received,
From the covenant of grace;
Call'd in youth-I have believed,
In the morning of my days,
Jesus owns me,

With His ransom'd chosen race.

Early rescued from temptation;

Taught to shun the fowler's snare;
Blest with knowledge of salvation,
And employ'd in praise and prayer:
Jesus owns me,

And His glory I'll declare.

Early conquer'd-melted-pardon'd,
By my Saviour's powerful voice;
Not in love with sin and harden'd!
But, as His eternal choice

Jesus owns me,
And in Him I must rejoice.

Far away, begone for ever,
Vain, beguiling, sinful, mirth:
Lord, uphold me-let me never
Once degrade my heavenly birth.
Jesus owns me,

Let me honour Him on earth.

Delivered in Grove Chapel, Camberwell, Sunday Morning, Jan. 14, 1848, BY THE REV. JOSEPH IRONS.

"For who is God, save the Lord? and who is a Rock, save our God?" 2 Samuel xxii. 32.

If these questions were proposed from the throne of God amidst the surrounding glorified spirits, there would be but a single word of answer echoed through the glorious realm, "None! none is God, save Jehovah. None! none a Rock, save our God." If that echo were caught by the adjacent circle of angels within the sphere of bliss, and they were asked one by one, or in the mass, "Who is God, save the Lord?" the reply would but reiterate the answer which sounds upon the harps of the glorified spirits, "None! none is God, save the Lord!" If the question were put by Beelzebub, in the bottomless pit, among his infernal crew, "Who is a God, save the Lord?" the howling of their despair, the anguish of their spirits, the horror of their damnation, would all echo, "None but Jehovah is God, and we feel his power. Put the question, here upon earth, to the ears of poor, vain, proud mortals, "Who is God, save the Lord?" and we shall find the reply in that solemn Scripture, "There are Gods many, and Lords many," and all owned by poor sinners in rebellion against the Most High God. But put the question in the Church of the living God, to those who stand upon the same ground that David did when he wrote this song (for it was when the Lord delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies, and out of the hand of Saul); put the question to those who have experienced delivering grace by the mighty hand of Jehovah, who have been subdued at the foot of the cross by omnipotent power, and of whose hearts the Holy Ghost has taken possession, and commanded Published in Weekly Numbers, 1d., and Monthly Parts, price 5d.

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them to submit to the sway of King Jesus; and they, with one voice, would exclaim, "The Lord, He is God; the Lord, He is our God." And can the Church of the living God be formal, careless, superstitious, and neglectful in the worship of this glorious being? Oh, Holy Ghost, awe my spirit, and set a watch over my tongue, that every thought and word, this morning, may tend to exalt the glorious self-existent Jehovah.

There are not a few, even among Christians, who at least act as if that reproof belong to them, "Thou thoughtest I was altogether such an one as thyself." But surely no Christian can cherish such a thought; and yet if I examine my own heart, and take a survey of only one week of my life, I am astounded at what appears in the review of my living and acting. It seems as if I thought Him such an one as myself; having His arm shortened that He could not save; having His ear grown heavy that He could not hear; not having this circumstance, or that circumstance, under His control and government; there being other Gods that could "frustrate His grand designs, and destroy them in type and model," as mammon blasphemously asserts; yea, some other supreme being whose sceptre God could not control, whose power He could not vanquish. The real Christian recoils with horror at such imaginations, and I do not say that we cherish them; but have we not often acted as if we did? Have we not fretted, and grieved, and murmured about feathers, about things that evaporated as they passed by us, as if God could not, or would not, control and order them?

The

I want the questions in our text to be put to your hearts and your consciences, "Who is God, save Jehovah?" and "Who is a Rock, save our God?" that we may exult in the thought that we know, and love, and trust, and claim Him, as the text does, as our God." There are three things presented to our view in the text. appeal; the challenge; and the triumph. The appeal lies in "Who is a God, save the Lord?" The challenge is to all worlds to produce an answer to prove that there is any other. And then the triumph, "Who is a Rock, save our God?"

My hearers, if you and I should retire from the house of God this morning with only those two words, with all their sweetness and savour engraven upon our spirits-" our God"-it cannot be a lost opportunity to us. Only carry these two words with you through the rest of your wilderness journey; and then rough and rugged as it may be, and full of enemies and pitfalls as it may be, these two words—“our God”—will be sufficient to bear you through. If He goes before us as our guide, He will uphold us when we fall. If He is a wall of fire round about us, as “our God,” what enemy can hurt us? If He has control over all worlds, what have I to tremble at in my future steps? I want these points to be fastened upon your hearts; but we must proceed to take them in the order I have mentioned them.

I. First, then, the appeal, which will lead to a few remarks, which appear necessary to make way for the challenge which we shall then take up. Fallen man has made many gods, and, consequently, the wo is full of idolatry. I need not go to the millions of avowed Pagans and Mahometans for examples of idolatry, and of bowing down to stocks and stones. I need not go to what are called Popish countries for examples of unmitigated idolatry. There are cases constantly coming before our notice in wretched Ireland, aye, and in dear

old England too, in which the grossest idolatry is transacted. Men make unto themselves gods of materials. They make unto themselves gods of mortals. They make unto themselves gods of meal. I wonder who, in the possession of the meanest common sense, would worship such gods-gods of mortals; gods of materials, and gods of meal, gods of wafers. These are specimens of the brutish ignorance, the worse than brutish ignorance, into which man has fallen.

We read just now a long account (Isaiah xliv.) of the stupidity of a person cutting down a tree, chopping it into pieces, using tools to shape it as he pleases, burning a part, and then falling down before it, and worshipping the other part and calling it God. Now if we had never learned a letter; never seen a Bible; never been in the company of a civilized human being, one would imagine that the uncultivated intellect of man would recoil with abhorrence at such worse than brutal stupidity; but here we have it before our eyes. Pictures, crucifixes, candles, old rags, and old bones are bowed down to and worshipped; and it was only the other day that a gang of armed priests, and their mob, beset the house of a Protestant in Ireland, and threatened his life, unless he consented to bow down to a picture and worship it. Then if we ask the Papist, "Who is God, save the Lord?" he will answer, "This picture, or this crucifix, or this wafer, or this piece of wood," or some other such material.

Moreover, men have made to themselves gods of mortals, else why do they call the very head of Antichrist, "Our holy lord god the pope?" (which is the appellation they use concerning him) and bow down to him as such? Else why do they call her who was a mortal, but now glorified in heaven as a Christian, I mean the Virgin Mary, why do they call her a deity, and worship her, except to dethrone the great Eternal, and worship the creature instead of the Creator? We will go a little further, and mark the stupidity of taking a little flour and water, and forming it into a little cake or wafer, and then, after some strange ceremony of hocus-pocus among an Infidel priesthood, telling us that they have made a god of it! But this is not the whole stupidity of the thing; for having made his god, the next thing the man does is to eat him, and then he makes another and eats him, and makes another and eats him. Why is it not strange that the human intellect, apart from all education, can be so grossly dull, that there should be, even at this day, millions in the British empire who are doing that and bowing down to it? My soul has the utmost loathing to dwell upon this obnoxious subject, even for five minutes; but it is necessary that it should be exposed, in order to make way for the challenge we shall produce that there is no God but ours.

But let us not lose sight of the fact that, with the Popish priesthood, these are marketable articles, and that they are constantly adding to them what they call relics brought from different places. It was only this week that I read an account of the worship of the donkey's tail, a common practice in Popish countries, the poor deluded people being told that is the tail of the identical donkey on which Christ rode into Jerusalem! Now the thing may be smiled at, but it is awful beyond ~11 description that human beings should be so employed, and yet tem themselves Christians! Ask the question, then, "Is there any God, save Jehovah ?" and the answer is, "Yes, animals, wafers, stocks, stones, and trees;" all may be made gods of, in the idea and superstition of millions that live in Christendom. And of this sort of awful

idolatry, the priests have made a market for acquiring wealth, and as long as they can fill their pockets by such means, and by penances, and offerings, and fees, so long will these things go on multiplying. Oh, my God, when wilt thou arise and avenge thy holy name, and show to men that thou alone art God?

One word more. There is a rebel, a notorious rebel, an old greyheaded rebel, that seems determined to outvie them all. He says, "I will be God." He has travelled the world over. He has brought millions upon millions to bow down at his shrine. He is exercising the most awful tyranny to the present hour. He has crept into what are commonly called Christian Churches, and lives in multitudes of houses in England, the inhabitants of which are termed Christians. If you ask me his name, I tell you it is old Free-will. He says, "I will be God. I will not be so brutalized as to how before stocks and stones; but I myself will be God." Where did he learn this from? He learnt it of the devil; for the devil said to our first parents when they were in primeval innocence, "Ye shall not surely die; for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof"-that is of the forbidden fruit—“ then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” Then free-will sprang up from hell, came upon the earth, and took possession of Eve's mind," The very thing I want, to be a God." And the same thing is kept up to the present hour; for free-will says amongst multitudes of professing Christians, "I shall do as I like; I shall believe what I like; and I shall disbelieve what I like. Who is lord over me? I shall embrace what I like. I shall reject what I like, as a god." God permits the old rebel to go on, sometimes, at a great length, until the most fatal consequences present themselves to the poor sinner in the Divine warnings; and, after all, free-will proves himself a notorious liar, for he has promised to repent, to believe, and pray, for years and years, and yet has never set about it in any one instance. Now I ask you, before I quit this subject, whether you can pay any attention to such gods as these? The questions in my text which suggested these things to my mind are, "Is there a God, save the Lord? and is there a Rock, save our God?" And my answer is, "None." But if I were an Arminian I should not say so. Then I should say, "Yes, there is a little one, if not more. Certainly I have a free-will of my own -in other words, "I am a God for myself"—that is the plain English of it. And then he talks about accountability, responsibility, freeagency, and the like; words which are so coaxing to human nature, that they go down sweetly, and bring the soul to the shrine of freewill with an offering to him. Now all this I reject as the basest kind of idolatry, and the grossest superstition; and I come to the language of my text, which I shall next enter upon as a challenge, "Is there a God, save Jehovah?"

II. In speaking of this in the form of a challenge, I would refer you to what our Lord says by the prophet Isaiah. In the 41st chapter of Isaiah the Lord is reproving these idolators, and says, "If ye be gods, show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods; yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together.' If ye be gods, show us the things that are to come. And let these idols-these material gods, these wafer gods, and mortal gods-let old proud free-will, show us "the things that are to come hereafter." Then we will own them to be gods. Now the