272 CIRCUMSPECTION RECOMMENDED IN DISTRICT VISITING.

relief of the poor. I do not say oppose them nor refuse to aid them, but watch them. They who have been most intimately acquainted with the operation of all systematic and well-known charities, unite in saying that though they relieve a great deal of actual want which could not have been avoided, yet that the great general result which is produced by them is to lead the mass of the poor, i. e., of the idle, the dissipated, and the vicious, to calculate upon their aid, as a part of their regular resources; and to enable them to carry to a still farther point, their idleness, dissipation, and vice, without being called to account by that stern master, hunger. There is no doubt that the public poor, and the beneficiaries of private charitable associations, both in England and America, calculate in many instances almost as much upon their winter's aid, as a bank stockholder does upon his dividend,-and they make as regular an allowance. for it, in the industry and economy they practise in the working season. We do not see this, we hardly believe it when it is proved, so strong is that mysterious delusion by which we always connect the idea of innocence with that of suffering. But the influence of all well-known and public arrangements for distributing to the necessities of the ablebodied poor, is unquestionably of this sort, and they demand the most careful attention. They may be, in fact, sometimes needed. But they ought not to be needed in any country. There must be something wrong in the state of society, where they are demanded, and statesmen and philanthropists should set themselves at work to discover and correct this wrong, rather than vainly to attempt to remove the symptomatic sufferings which come from it.

[From a Modern Author.]

SEED SOWN BY THE WAY-SIDE.

THE DYING COTTAGER.

A FRIEND, residing on the borders of the New Forest in Hampshire, was providentially directed to the cottage of a poor afflicted woman. He found her resting in her own righteousness. He endeavoured to impress upon her mind the truth, "Ye must be born again," and then left her; the following circumstance took place a few weeks afterwards:

"I hope, sir," said a labourer, who had been shown into the parlour, "you will excuse my making so bold; but would you be so kind, sir, as to come and see my wife? I can't think what's come to her. She is reading her Bible, and crying over it, from morning till night; and talking about you, sir, and Jesus Christ, and the new birth; and yet she says, sir, that she is quite happy, and that all things are all taken away. To my mind, sir, she is down-right crazy; but I should like you to see her, and tell me what you think. And she wants to see you: she has been wishing to send to you ever so many times, only I would not let her; but I found she would give me no peace, sir, and so I promised to come myself."

It was not long before this summons was obeyed. Disease had made alarming progress. The afflicted inmate was now unable to leave her bed. Her kind visitor entered the room where consumption was completing its work, and there, at intervals, as the cough would allow, he heard the following narrative:

with

"I bless God, sir, that ever you called to see me in my affliction. I hope you will forgive my treating you so rudely when you came. I knew no better then; and I was angry you, because you did not think so well of me as I did of myself: but I know better now. I feel myself a poor lost sinner, but I cast myself on Him who is able to save; and I hope I can say, 'In the Lord have I righteousness and strength.' Though I treated you so rudely a fortnight ago, and hardly listened to what you said, there was one thing which I could not forget. You told me about being born again, and told me to read some chapter in the Testament which would explain it. I forgot what chapter it was, for when you told me I had no wish to read it; but after you were gone I could think of nothing else. While I was looking after little matters about the house, and trying to think of other things, I caught myself several times saying, loud enough for any one to hear, 'Have I been born again?" Wherever I went, and whatever I did, it was still the same; the only thing that I could think about was, 'Have I been born again? I then tried to remember what chapter it was you told me to read, but I had quite lost it; and so I took down the Bible, and looked in the New Testament till I found the one I wanted. But when I had found it,

it still seemed very hard to know what it meant; and I was quite down-hearted when I found that a ruler of the Jews, and I suppose a great scholar, seemed to have been as much puzzled about it as I was. I was just shutting up the book in despair, when my eye fell on that precious verse in St. James, 'If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, and it shall be given him.' I thought I would make the trial, and so I prayed in my poor way, as well as I was able, that God would teach me what is meant by being born again; and that if I were not fit to die and go to heaven, He would make me so.

"I had just been praying in this way, when my eldest boy came running into the room, and said, 'Look, mother, see what a pretty book I have got! There were ever so many of us playing at marbles, against the cross road, and some ladies went by in a post-chaise, and when they came close up where we were, they threw a whole handful of little books out of the window; and we had such a scramble for them; but I got one of them, and here it is. I came home directly; and ran all the way, lest any of the great boys should take it away from me."

"Here is the little book, sir," (putting into his hands the tract ON REGENERATION,) "it has told me just what I wanted to know, and what I was praying to God to teach me. I am sure it was God that sent it. How could the ladies in the chaise know anything about a poor woman like me, living two miles up the forest! and that Thomas would be at the cross-road when they passed! and that out of the dif ferent little books that they threw out, he would pick up the right one! I am sure it was God that sent it.

"This little book, sir, told me, that being born again was the same thing as having a new heart, and being made like Christ. I cannot tell you what I felt when I came to be quite sure that I could never go to heaven without being born again, and just as sure that I had never known anything about it. But I read my Bible again, and I found that there was mercy for the chief of sinners. Then I said, If so, why not for me? And I have found mercy. I feel as I never felt before. I seem to be in a new world. Old things are passed away, and all things are become new. I am not afraid to die, for I believe in Him who is 'the Resurrection and the Life; and therefore, to live is Christ,to die is gain."

Here is presented to the reader but a faint sketch of the change which Divine grace wrought in the heart of this dying cottager. She lived much longer than had been expected. She seemed to be kept alive for the purpose of showing to those around her, the reality of her conversion; and when she died, it was with a hope full of immortality. This is one of the instances which encourages us not to despair or neglect the most desperate cases; but there is nothing in it to encourage carelessness or putting off attending to the concerns of the soul.

FAITH IMPUTED FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS.

ALL manner of imputation seems to be a metaphor, taken from books of account between debtor and creditor. To impute any act of sin, or of obedience, is, therefore, properly no other than to set it down to his account. The great God of heaven and earth is represented in Scripture with humble condescension to our manner of acting and conceiving things, as keeping a most exact book of records and accounts, in which those things are registered concerning every one of us, which He will bring into that solemn review and survey, by which our characters and states shall finally be determined. And as the most exact and perfect obedience is a debt which we owe Him as our great Creator, Benefactor, and Governor; so on the breach of his laws we owe Him some proper satisfaction for it. In this view we are all charged as debtors, poor, miserable, insolvent debtors, in the book of God. Innumerable sins are imputed, or set down to our account; and weren things to go on in this course, we should ere long be arrested by the Divine justice, and being found incapable of payment, should be cast into the prison of hell, to come out no more. But God, in pity to this our calamitous state, has found out a surety and a ransom for us, and has provided a satisfaction in the obedience and sufferings of his Son; which is what we mean by the righteousness of Christ, or his active and passive obedience. It is with a gracious regard to this, to express his high complacency in it, and, if I may so speak, his pleasing remembrance of it, that all who are finally justified and saved meet with Divine acceptance and favour; or, to pursue the metaphor opened

above; the righteousness of Christ is in the book of God imputed or set down to their account, as that by which the debt is balanced, and they are entitled to such favours as righteous persons might expect from God. But then it is an invariable rule in the Divine proceedings, that this righteousness, or this atonement and satisfaction of Christ (for I think it matters little by which of these names it shall be called) be a means of delivering those, and only those who believe. Pursuant, therefore, to the aforesaid metaphor, when any particular person believes, this is set down to his account, as a most important article, or as a memorandum, if I may so express it, in the book of God's remembrance, that such a one is now actually become a believer, and, therefore, is now entitled to justification and life by Christ. In this sense his faith is imputed for righteousness. Yet it is not regarded by God as the grand consideration which balances the account, or indeed as paying any of the former debt, which it is impossible it should; but only as that which, according to the gracious constitution of the Gospel, gives a man a claim to that which Christ has paid, and which God has graciously allowed as a valuable consideration in regard to which He may honourably pardon and accept all who shall apply to Him in his appointed way, or in the way of humble believing, as faith was described above. This appears to me to be a just and easy view of the Gospel doctrine on this head; and it is so important distinctly to understand it, that I hope you will excuse my having represented it in so many words. And this is, on the whole, the sense in which we may be said to be saved through faith. None can be saved without it; and every one who has it is entitled to salvation; but not in virtue of the merit and excellency of faith itself, but entirely for the sake of what Christ has done and suffered; or in other words, by the imputation of his perfect righteousness; the merit of which is graciously applied to this or that particular person upon his believing: so that upon this he is justified; and by the general tenor of the Gospel, is to be looked upon as a righteous person; or as one who shall on the whole be treated as such, and shall ere long be publicly declared righteous before the assembled world, and be freed from all the remainders of that penalty which sin has brought upon us. And though for wise and good reasons, he be for a while continued under some of