To the Members of the —— Church

Neglect of the stated means — A remark of Mr. Wesley — An engagement to meet a friend — Who broke it ? — One in three at class — What Thomas lost — All stiong, and all at work — “Begin at my sanctuary” — Six left of three hundred — An estimate — Nursing fathers and mothers.

Were I to mention what I have tliouglit your characteristic deficiencies, I would place among the most prominent your neglect of the stated means of grace. If you regard the church organization, under which you have voluntarily placed yourselves, as a divine institution, you should of course regard its apppointments as heaven-directed. Mr. Wesley says, “In all ordinary matters the voice of the church may be regarded as the voice of God.” If so, then stated meetings, such as preaching, prayer, and class meetings, ought to be regarded as special seasons, at which the Lord Jesus has appointed to meet you. If such an appointment be slighted, does it not prove that you lightly estimate the presence of your Lord and Saviour?

Suppose a dear and influential friend to make arrangements for meeting you regularly, for the purpose of honoring and blessing you with his society: ever truthful, he comes at the hour specified, but does not find you there; often you are wholly absent; at other times you come quite

Too late. The Spirit came, but the church was not there.

after the hour specified. Would this conduct be calculated to assure your friend of your high regard for his friendship? If your repeated sHghts should move him to come to the decision no more to meet you, were the result other than might have been reasonably expected? and if an agreement to meet you should be thus broken, who would be the breaker of the engagement?

For a membership of three hundred not to number more than one hundred out on lecture or prayer-meeting evening exhibits a sad deficiency; yet, were you at your stated meetings to present even this proportion of your membership, it were more encouraging. Now can the Saviour believe that you as a people are greatly desiring the communications of his grace? Were the decree to pass his throne that on one of these stated occasions the Holy Spirit, in his reviving influences, should be poured out in unusual measure, how many of you would be as Thomas, who was absent when his Lord revealed himself to the other disciples!

O, if you really desire a general work of God in your midst, often be in waiting, as were the early disciples, and, with one accord in one place, look for the full baptism of the Holy Ghost. If thus strengthened with the might of the Spirit, you may confidently expect to be called out individually to work in the vineyard.

God’s Ordination. God’s Order. A Startling Question.

Less solicitude will then be felt about finely polished human instrumentalities, but a far more abiding reliance on the power of the Holj Ghost. This full baptism may be regarded as the act of ordination on the part of God, by which he empowers his disciples with the might of his Spirit, in order that they may bring forth much fi-uit, and that their fruit may remain.

The history of the church presents but little fruit of revivals where the order of God has not been observed. “And begin at my sanctuary,” is the voice of God. The disciples were first baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire, and then three thousand were converted in a day.

I may never forget some mstances which have come under my special observation, calculated to confirm my mind in these views. A starthng question presents, and my pen has lingered whether to give it the tangibihty of words. It is this: Does not Satan gain by some church ingatherings? Let me instance. On one occasion, when in a stage-coach, about entering a place which two or three years previous had been favored with a gracious redval, the subject of religion was introduced to a gentleman sitting near me. *’ 0, religion is a very good thing if people would only keep it when they get it,” said he, in a very significant manner. I inqmi*ed his meaning, when he informed me that almost every one in that place had

Disastrous Results of a Revival without Holiness.

professed conversion but two or three years previously; and now scarce an individual of them could be found but had fallen away, and was worse than before. This relation pained me exceedingly, for I had expected to find the place as the garden of the Lord; and I well remembered the temptings of Satan, at the time the revival took place. I had been intimately acquainted with the minister under whose ministrations the revival occurred, and had once and again had earnest conversations with him relative to the order of God being observed; that holiness in the ministry and membership was important as a foundation for a revival. When this extraordinary ingathering was announced to me as having been brought about under his ministrations, the enemy tauntingly suggested that the position I had taken was not to be relied upon, and that the minister in question (who had the reputation of being a revivalist) would be abundantly satisfied that this order, though he at the time acknowledged it to be scripturally correct, was by no means important. But I still hoped that the state of religion in the place might not be quite so. disastrous as represented, and soon afterward called on the minister for further information. I was told that out of the two or three hundred names taken in at that time, he did not think there were now as many as half a dozen on the church record, and he was by no means certain that one

Diminished by Increase. One shall chase a thousand.

remained steadfast. Probably there are but few such strikinjT instances as this; but, alas, how often are scores of worldly minded professors enrolled on the church record during seasons of ingathering, who remain as weights, to retard Zion in her onward movements! One truly Christlike professor would do more for a church than a hundred of such professors; for it is of such that “one shall chase a thousand.” It has been said, one sanctified may be counted upon as equivalent to a score converted. O may heaven speedily

register scores of sanctified ones among the

Church! then will you, as nursino fathers and mothers, receive to your embraces many who, by the power of the Spirit, have been born unto Zion. “Wherefore we pray always for you, that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfill all the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith with power; that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be gloiified in you, and ye in him, according to the grace of our God, and of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.”

Yours, in the faith and hope of the gospel.

A Book. Reading for the Common People.