have often made inroads upon an unsullied reputation, to the detriment of our secular interests.

Our readers, when they take into consideration such disagreeable appendages which belong to our department, need not wonder if we should be weary and faint by the way. A cotemporary, putting out of the account, the prejudice and malevolence of party, well describes our situation, when he tells us, "I know, says he, how a Monthly Periodical will wear down your exertions. In itself it appears nothing, the labour is not manifest, nor is it the labour of itself, it is the continual attention it requires. Your life becomes, as it were, the Magazine. One month is no sooner corrected and printed, than on comes another. It is the stone of Stypus, an endless repetition of toil, a constant weight upon the mind, a continual wearing upon the intellects and spirits, demanding all the exertions of your faculties, at the same time you are compelled to do the severest drudgery. To write for a Magazine is very well, but to edit one, is, as it were, to condemn yourself to slavery."

We have rehearsed these particulars, so that our read ers may be put in full possession of the state of our Publication. And we leave it upon record that it may be known when we are departed, that our superintendence of these pages for Forty-two years, have been purely disinterested, and as the apostle Paul says on a similar matter, that if any man will boast, he will boast also.' And we say with him, We have touched no man's silver, or gold, or apparel. For these hands have ministered to our necessities. Nor shall any one stop us from this boasting. To the religious world we are personally strangers, they neither know us, nor do we know them; we never have received the smallest obligation from them, not so much as a cup of cold water, as an acknowledgment for our voluntary services, our only end and aim have been to proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ. To exhibit man as insolvent, having contracted a debt he never can pay, of original and actual guilt. A load which can never be discharged, unless he is made to see he has nothing to pay, so as to be led to Christ by the Holy Spirit, as the great paymaster of his mystic Israel,

2

Belonging to no party, each party is hostile to us; they do not like spiritual wickedness exposed in high places; the gate is too strait, and the road too narrow, for them to walk with us. Prophecy, they say, smooth things, and deceit is immediately promulgated. As it were in olden times, so it is now; Baal had his prophets, and God had his. It is dreadful to reflect, that the very men who are set up for a defence of the gospel, are many of them the characters, who are doing all in their power to vilify and corrupt it.

Hence it is, that we have truth amalgamated with errors of every kind, by instructors who ought to be instructed. We need not go to the papistical Church of Rome, in Italy, to point out delusions, we have enough in our Protestant Churches in England. Antichrists of every kind, and impositions under the garb of piety and sanctity, are practised with impunity upon the credulous and weakminded. Not only are their pockets disturbed and ransacked, but they are blinded to their immortal interests, and led on to their own destruction.

We well know, the term Religion, is bandied about with impunity on every occasion,-a mere stalking horse, too often made to answer interested purposes. But the phrase as used at the present day, is merely equivocal, for it means nothing. The Mahometan at his mosque-and the Jew at his synagogue, both are deemed religious, though they discard the Lord of Life and Glory. So it is with swarms of sectaries, as varied in their creeds as in their coutenances; one denies the Divinity of Christ and the efficacy of his blood-shedding, he is also religious; so is the declaimer upon the uiversal love of the Deity, universal redemption with its offspring, universal salvation, he is also grouped as a religionist. The host of freewillers, which form the whole cavalcade, under whatever party they may rank, are all religionists. And as with the people, so with the priest, every one speaks in his own tongue wherein he was born-one language, and agree in one general sentiment,-that man, if he pleases, may quicken his own soul, and make himself a new heart, and create a right spirit within him. This is the religion of the day, when we come to sift it, though an

infant might as easy make itself, as a sinful soul beget itself unto God. Angels who never fell, are unable to regenerate the soul of an apostate sinner, how much less than can the apostate sinner recreate himself. How should man do this who is a worm, or the son of man, who by nature in spiritual things, is no better.

Amidst these jarring opinions, let it be remembered, that there is but one faith, the faith of God's elect, which makes known the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God. To the intent, that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places, might be known by the church the ma nifold wisdom of God. And be it remembered upon whom God bestoweth faith, he gives repentance; there is an immaterial principle, so that when the Holy Spirit vouchsafes to shine upon, will give the believer in his own breast the witness to whom he belongs, so as to see his interest in that bliss which is at God's right hand for evermore. He is at anchor within the ark, come what will, he knows his safety is secure.

In closing our annual address, it forcibly reminds us of the years that are gone, and the many veterans who have stood up with us on the walls of our citadel. Death has removed them in succession one after another, that we are left like the pelican in the wilderness. We cannot grieve for them, for they are removed from the burden of the flesh, and are in perfect joy and felicity. We feel those mixed sensations which a traveller feels in retracing on a map a journey, in which sometimes his senses were charmed with fertile vales, and delightful prospects, but never to return. Here busy memory brings up those hours, wherein we have had sweet converse together, being of one heart and of one mind, but the whole is swept away as a blank. We often find a solace in referring to those memorials hung up as trophies in our arsenal, we then talk with one another, but find we are only grasping at a shadow; we look forward to the time, when all these transitory images and fainter emanations shall give place to those unveiled glories of God and the Lamb, and where there will be no more death to cause a separation.

Indeed, every closing year tells us, that all things here

below, even our most desirable comforts are unstable, and hastening to their final dissolution. Day after day brings this earth nearer to its end; all its vanities and pleasures which engross the hearts of men, vanish like the shadow of a dream, being in themselves unsatisfactory and of very short duration. The scriptures in a most beautiful antithesis, represent the world, and the ungodly as passing away, but the servants of God as abiding for ever. Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath, for the heavens shall pass away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, but my salvation, saith the Lord shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished. Here is the believer's standingplace, which shall never be moved. Let him take down his harp from the willows, and tune the song of Zion, singing in the ways of the Lord, that great is the glory of the Lord, until mortality, is swallowed up of life eternal.

We turn to those correspondents who have made a new accession to our ranks, on whom the mantles of our Elijahs have fallen, aad God has blessed with wisdom and knowledge. They have had a combat lately in defending the dignity of our Lord and Saviour, and have done valiantly. They have not only driven the enemy out of his strong holds, but have cleared our ranks of those who have come in surreptitiously under false colours. Let them not drop their weapons, but keep them by their side, and go forth to meet those who would trample under feet the precious blood of Christ, by denying its efficacy, in asserting it was shed for the damned in hell. These rebels of our sovereign Lord the King, bring them forth, and slay them before him. Bear up our hands, and may the God of the armies of Israel strengthen you with might in the day of battle, and crown you with victory, when your warfare is accomplished. Receive our mite of praise, not as an encomium, but as a warm tribute of our hearts, for the readiness in which you have volunteered your services in the best of causes.

We now commit our Readers to the care of our covenant God in Christ Jesus; beseeching him that after they have filled up their appointed place, and run their

allotted course according to the will of God, they may at last ascend from earth to heaven, as a bride adorned for her husband. That they may, in the hour of death, have the celestial gates thrown open, and be admitted in triumph to the city of God, that New Jerusalem, which is above, where Jesus reigns in person, and all his saints with Him. Farewell!

Now, the Lord of Peace himself give you peace always by all means. The Lord be with you all.

Lord's Day, Early Dawn,

Dec. 24, 1837.

THE EDITORS.