MINISTERIAL LETTERS.

TO MY BELOVED YOUNG FRIENDS, THE TEACHERS, AND THE MEMBERS OF THE TWO BIBLE CLASSES.

Portobello, Edinburgh, Sept. 5, 1840.

I RECEIVED the kind and very affectionate letter of the female teachers and of the male Bible class, and take it from you all, and as written by you all, and with much love I thank you from my very heart. Your expressions of love and affection were very sweet to me as I read them, and are very sweet as I think of them. I taste His love in them, who is the source, and the channel, and the stream of all the true, and real, and spiritual love that is, or can ever be, in the hearts of His people. It rejoiced my very heart to be told of your meeting together in prayer on my behalf. This is true regard, and is amongst the most costly proofs of it. But, beloved friends, how does this very thought raise us up from the poor and feeble exhibitions of love which we are able to show for each other, to Him whose very name and nature is Love; in whom, as in an exhaustless ocean, all His, all who taste His love, and who love Him, will spend an interminable eternity.

You thank me for our meetings in the Bible class, and tell me that God has been graciously and condescendingly pleased to own and bless them. I have reason to believe this. I thank Him, and lay my mouth low, as in the dust. For, who am I, and what is my father's house, that thus the high and lofty One

should stoop so low as to work by me? And yet, what He gives me makes me covetous and bold to ask that He would give me more, that He would bless me yet far more abundantly to all your souls. In submission to the Divine will, I desire and long for the salvation of you all, that we may meet in glory, that we may rejoice in, and walk with Jesus on earth, and be with and eternally satisfied with Jesus in heaven. My young friends, bear with me, in all affection, in all openness, and with deep feeling for your souls, I write. Some of you are yet unconverted unto God; some of you, though parents have prayed, and warned, and taught, and that with many tears; some of you, though he that now addresses you in much love, has again and again, and again, placed before you that Gospel which welcomes, that Jesus who is able, as willing, to save to the very uttermost all that come unto God by Him; some of you, though the unbidden sigh will sometimes heave, and conscience will sometimes make uneasy, and a sense of unimproved mercies sometimes fill the cup with bitter; yet still, still, you are undecided for God. Is this supposition an unkind return for your letter? The Lord knoweth my heart. I know, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ for the unspeakable mercy, there are many of you to whom the name of the Saviour is as ointment poured forth. You find Him precious. He is your all. You prove that you are His, by obeying His commands, and by real desires to glorify Him on earth. It is not to such of you I now write the solemn admonition, that it is not enough to meet in Bible classes, in exchanges of mutual affection, as in these letters,-yours to me, and this to you; that it is not enough that we meet in the public ministrations of the Gospel, unless we meet in Christ, unless we meet in God, unless we meet in glory. Oh! call not indecision for God by any fair, any smoothly-flowing names! Indecision is only one form of the carnal enmity against God. Have I given pain, that I thus plainly write? Forgive me this wrong. It is my love to yourselves, it is my love to Jesus, that prompts me to it. Only He who knows all things, knows what I sometimes have felt when I have seen so many with their Bibles in their hands, and the

thought has rushed into my heart, "Will any of these perish, O Lord?" One word more,-" By and by," slays its ten thousands; while, "I will not," slays only its thousands. Oh, seek that you may find; seek until you find; seek, and you shall find!

And to you, my dear young friends in Jesus, I would now, in all love, address myself. Yes; to you I would express my sincerest congratulations, thanking God on your behalf. Blessed be the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for electing, redeeming, preserving, consoling, sanctifying grace! Oh! the infinite debt that you owe a Triune God, for delivering you out of an evil, wicked, adulterous, foolish, and most false world! Think, oh, think often of the mighty cost of your redemption, the mighty power put forth in your regeneration and continued preservation. Think often, of the mortal conflict to which you are called in your daily struggle with a triple-leagued enemy, of your own weakness and inexperience, of your abundant sufficiency treasured up in Jesus, but a sufficiency to be prayerfully, persever ingly, and holily received, and only thus. Think of the numbers who once made a fair profession of Christ; they talked well, wrote well, and, for a time, lived, in a sense, well; and then, like vessels on the ocean, they dashed on the rocks of pride, selfconceit, worldliness, or gross sin, and now they are carried up and down, like floating wrecks, in the sight of all. Oh! how true is it, perseverance is the fruit of election and the evidence of it; perseverance in the ways.of God. My dear young friends, beware of the world; it is a specious, unwearied enemy; it has a thousand shapes; beware of its first approaches. Ten thousand professors of religion are its slaves, and many a real child of God has been for a time ensnared by it and taken captive. That which has destroyed those who are strangers to the true grace of God may wound and disfigure the real believer. Inexperience betrays, and our carnal nature is always on the enemy's side; therefore, keep no quarters with such an insidious foe. "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world." Beware of the smooth-tongued professor. Cultivate much intimacy with Jesus.

His love enjoyed in the soul is the best preservative

against clay and fleshly idols. Mark narrowly what grieves His Spirit. Be close and deep students of the cross. Let Calvary be your dwelling-place; there study doctrine, promise, precept. Be watchful over known sins, in order unreservedly to avoid them. Mind all known duties; the least, in order to obey the will of Him who loves you, and whom you love, in them. If sin overtake and prevail, remember, "we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous." To go from Him because we have sinned, is another name for going on in sin.

Lord, what I have thus been writing to those whom I love for Thy sake, do Thou write out upon my heart, for Thine own sake, and clothe us with deep humility, and fill our hearts with the spirit of prayer.

Some of you teach in our school; the Lord bless your work and labour of love, and your souls in it! If you would teach well, you must deny self much, study your classes much, exhibit the Gospel much, and pray most of all.

As a feeble token of my love, I mean to dedicate my little volume of sermons on Infidelity to yourselves. You will accept it, as I mean it, in love. It will be something to remind you of the affectionate feelings of one, when he has passed from the desert of this world, who, when he was in it, was

Your faithful pastor and friend,

J. H. EVANS.

TO A DEACON OF JOHN-STREET CHURCH.

Salisbury, March, 1847. MY DEAR BROTHER,-Grace, mercy, and peace, be with you and your's, and much holy assurance of the love of God in Jesus, warming, comforting, and sanctifying your heart and life, to the Divine glory.

Dear brother, we hope, through wondrous grace,-wondrous, indeed, soon to be with the Lord for ever. Oh, may we seek then to be much with Him now, to hold much and tender and soul-searching converse with Him, day by day, and all the day, before its occupations, in them, after them,-if there be any

before or after in that day, which ought to be filled with being occupied for Him and with Him.

I have just received your letter, and lose no time in replying. Give my warm and tender love to the Church, as it meets on Wednesday evening, and tell the people how greatly I long for their deep sanctification, Christ dwelling in their hearts, and their being filled with all the fulness of God. Tell them how much I long to be a more able minister of the New Testament, even for their sakes, much more for my own; this is not selfish, because I can add, most of all for the Lord's, yea, far most of all for His. They are very dear to me, He knoweth. May I be enabled, in body, mind, and in all the displays of Christian principle, to show my love more, and to be a far greater blessing to them than ever I have yet been, and they to me. We are for each other, and Christ for us, and we for Him.

Time is short. There is much to be, much to do, much to suffer, in a short space. But Christ is our strength, and our weakness is as much for His strength as His strength is for our weakness.

Church. I

It has almost

The first to be proposed is Miss S, of S― do not remember much in our conversation. escaped me; but I felt no difficulty in it at the time, neither do I think that you will. Thousands go to heaven with nothing striking in their history; all the precious stones on the breastplate did not glitter.

The next is, dear brother, your son. The good Lord make you very thankful, and keep him very humble, watchful, and prayerful. Would that there were multitudes of young men such as he, warm-hearted, simple, and honest, afraid of sin, resting in Christ as poor sinners. Yet he is but learning his first lessons, and you and I, dear brother, are often placed on the first form with him. But I believe the Lord is teaching him, and He is a good Teacher. You are his double father. May His Spirit, who can alone teach both, teach him many lessons of meek and holy instruction, through yourself and your dear wife!