“ENCOURAGEMENT IN THE STATES.”

            “I hope,” saith our friend, “you are getting some encouragement in the states.” We fear we can minister but little to his expectation in this particular. We live in “a cloudy and dark day, when the light and heat of the gospel are almost quenched by the surrounding fog. The gospel of the kingdom is understood as it ought to be by very few; and of this few, it is to be feared, it has captivated more heads than hearts. It is encouraging to perceive that “the kingdom” is a subject much more agitated than before we left the States for Britain; but even those whose minds are speculatively attracted to it, are slow to perceive that it is the pith and marrow, as it were, of that gospel, upon the belief of which Jesus has predicated the salvation of the immersed. Some, however, do see it, and this is “some encouragement;” we shall be still more encouraged if they continue under its genial influences to blossom and bear fruit unto eternal life.

            The ground of our individual encouragement is laid off in Christ’s discourse—Matthew 5: 10-12—on the mountain. We are advocating the righteousness of God for Jesus’ sake, and walking in conformity with it, as the great and primary end of our existence, and subordinating all personal and relative considerations to it. We advocate it, as opposed to, and subversive of, all “orthodox” and popular systems of “piety extant;” not giving place for the twinkling of an eye to the possibility of salvation by any other thing than the gospel of the kingdom preached to Abraham, to Judah, and the nations, by the angel of God, by Jesus, and the apostles. For taking up this position and defending it against the adversary in whatever shape he may present himself, whether in the garb of “piety,” as “an angel of light,” “a minister of righteousness,” or as an open-faced antagonist of the non-professing world, we are made a mark by our contemporaries, to be perforated by the shafts of their abuse. They say “all manner of evil of us falsely;” denounce us as uncharitable, mad, wicked, and fit only to be shot or hanged. “They sharpen their tongues like a serpent;” and sometimes “their words are softer than oil, yet are they drawn swords.” Our motives are misconstrued, and only evil educed from whatever good we do. All this is encouraging, and some of that which is laying up in store on our account for the age to come. We breathe in an atmosphere of calumny, reproach, and execrable tittle-tattle; so that sometimes we are tempted to exclaim, in the words of the prophet, “Wherefore came I forth at my birth to see labour and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with reproach?” But we know ourselves as others seem not to do. They can neither duly estimate our character, nor our motives, for neither of them have any approximation to their own. But we look not at the things which are seen, and temporal; for we walk by faith, and not by sight: therefore, though “troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, yet are we not destroyed.” By this we are cheered, and enabled to “rejoice in hope,” and in the citation of our correspondent, to “thank God and take courage.”

EDITOR.

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