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"THERE IS NOT A MAN NOR WOMAN UNDER THE CANOPY OF HEAVEN THAT OUGHT TO DESPAIR."

E read these words in Mr. Wells's sermon (entitled "The

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know that John Bunyan once said, "Despair is not for earth, but for hell." Having so much tendency to despair in us, we felt Mr. Wells's words to be encouraging and strong: but when Satan binds a poor sinner, when sin lays heavy on his soul, when the law condemns him, and the fears of death and hell take hold upon him, it is hard work then to believe that ever JESUS CHRIST will pass by him, and leave a blessing behind. With the hope that the following truthful sentences may have heaven's blessing on them they are transferred. "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.' Only imagine it. What doth it say? What doth such a mission say, my hearer? It says this; that there is not a man, nor a woman, under the canopy of heaven that ought to despair. It does not matter if you have been as black as the devil, if you have been the greatest blasphemer, if you have been a murderer, and the vilest wretch that ever walked upon the earth; if the mission is to preach the Gospel in all the world, to every creature, then I say that no one sinner under the canopy of heaven, that is convinced of his state, and feels his need of mercy, ought to despair. And have we not this infinitely precious truth set forth in Peter's vision, the very ONE HALFPENNY,

same truth? What did he see in that vision? Why, he says, 'wild beasts, and four-footed creatures, and creeping things.' And what are creeping things, but worms, and vipers, and serpents? all to represent the awful state we are in. I ask, then, what must be the glory of that Gospel that can commend itself to the whole population of the globe? 'Go ye into all the world." You will never meet a sinner, great a sinner as he may be, so great as My salvation. You will never meet a sinner whose case is so bad that My blood cannot cleanse him. You will never meet with a sinner so sunk in condemnation that My righteousness cannot lift him out of that condemnation, and present him before the righteous Judge, righteous as God is righteous; for it is in the righteousness of Jesus Christ; He is Jehovah our righteousness. Oh, my hearer, how encouraging this is! The Christian that knows what he is in his own heart, says, But for the grace of God I might have been the vilest reptile upon the face of the earth; but, says such an one, had it been my unhappy lot to have been so, here is blood, the blood of our Incarnate God, that hath in it all the excellency of his person; here is the righteousness of an Incarnate God; here is the grace of Almighty God; here is the love of the Great Creator. Why, this Gospel comes with, 'I will,' and 'They shall;' ministers life to the dead, and its language is, 'Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.""

We recommend this sermon to the attention of all kinds of people; although we think some will think the Surrey Tabernacle minister is a "hind let loose" indeed. Yea, we think there is not an unprejudiced Christian in all this world but will read this sermon with wonder and with pleasurable desires that it may be GOD'S MESSAGE OF MERCY to many thousands of hungry, starving, perishing souls. If our brother James goes on at this rate, the old Southwark gun will roar, the bondage people will curse most bitterly, but if the Gospel is not good news to wretched men, and if it is not to be preached freely, if salvation is not to be proclaimed to the miserable, and, so presented, so preached, so illustrated, so enforced as that (the Holy Spirit

carrying it home), men may see and know that JESUS CHRIST is able to save even unto the uttermost, all that come unto God by Him; if it is not thus openly and fully to be proclaimed, of what real good is it to such as are sinners sunk in deep and dreadful woe? The closing up of the Sacred Oracle is proof enough. LOOK AT IT.

Deep Experimental Ministers!
Preceptive, Pharisaical Preachers!
Hell and Damnation Preachers!
Classical and Clerical Genteelists!
Grave and Graceful Theologians-fairly
Broken-hearted Sighers for salvation!
Burdened and hardened consciences!

Satan-hunted and Self-condemned Wretches!
Look?" you say,

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"At what?"

LOOK AT IT.
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LOOK AT IT.

Look at that connecting word, "AND"-the first word in the seventeenth verse of the twenty-second chapter of Revelation. JESUS tells you, first, that He has sent His angel to the churches to testify these things. Then, He declares His two-fold character, that He is the Root and Offspring of David, the FIRST and all the FULNESS of a sinner's salvation; then, pointing to the night of sin and death in which all men lay by the fall of the first Adam, and looking back upon the dark and dreary night of His own sacrificial sufferings, death, and resurrection, He says, I am "the bright and Morning Star." Immediately the Third Glorious Person adds, "AND the Spirit and the Bride say, COME. And let him that heareth say, COME. And let him that is athirst, come And, WHOSOEVER WILL let him take the water of LIFE freely."

Mr. Wells stands in a singular position. Just behind him, to his left, is that warm-hearted clergyman, HUGH ALLEN, to whom, in the sermon we have noticed, Mr. Wells thus refers:

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My friend and neighbour here, Hugh Allen, he might well call me a free Dissenter. I am a free Dissenter; I preach anywhere; down stairs or up; among friends or foes, profane, professor, anywhere and everywhere. And if the place wants consecrating, and the Gospel does not consecrate it, nothing else can; if the man wants consecrating, and if the Gospel does not consecrate him,

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nothing else can; if the building want consecrating, and if the Lord does not consecrate it, nothing else can; and if the building ought to be licensed, if God's record of His name there be not a license, none else can really license it; there will be no liberty in it, no life in it, no blessedness in it, without the presence of the blessed God. See the freeness of the mission, then. "Go forth into all the world." Then, on Mr. Wells's right, a little in front of him, stands CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON, and although he says some things James Wells does not say, yet, touching the Gospel, he speaks to the same purpose. He says, "Preaching is the great weapon of God for pulling down strongholds; it will pull down the hugest blocks of stone the enemy can pile together. Preach the Gospel; the gates of hell will shake! Preach the Gospel; prodigals will return. Preach the Gospel to every creature; it is the Master's mandate, and it is the Master's power, the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth."

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The Borough of Southwark seems full of effort for good. Between such godly men as Hugh Allen, James Wells, Thomas Gunner, Thomas Chivers, C. H. Spurgeon, and others, there are differences of administration, differences of mode, manner, mind, and matter. Hugh Allen is often wild, and all on fire with enthusiasm; and he would be nothing without it. James Wells is sometimes wild against free-willers and duty-faith men, so much so that the people think he will sometimes jump clean out of the pulpit; and as for the poor deluded millennarians, he "will preach twenty sermons some day to explode them and their millennarian views altogether." Ah! that he will, and his devoted people think he will, but we do not think so; albeit, in the Gospel of the grace of God he is a brother highly to be esteemed, and much to be beloved; and if God enables him to preach out more and more of the rich fulness of the Gospel, he will require a tabernacle as large as any other of the great men in our day. Thomas Gunner is frequently wild in sending many of us to perdition, but then, as Mr. Alderson once said, "Thomas Gunner is not to sit upon the judgment throne." No, blessed be God for that. And among all the other men who are sometimes wild,

perhaps some might think the following too enthusiastic in Mr. Spurgeon. He said (October 18), "As for my own soul, God knoweth how I yearn over souls. I work; and if there be any man living who can work more for God than I do, I envy him his strength and endurance. It is not twelve, nor thirteen, nor fourteen, or fifteen hours per day which will satisfy me in the service of my Master; I WISH I COULD BE CUT IN PIECES TO PREACH HIS GOSPEL; and that EVERY DROP OF BLOOD MIGHT TELL HIS GOSPEL TO MY PERISHING FELLOW-MEN." In all these different spirits there may seem undue excitement, but the Gospel is preached-WE DO THEREIN REJOICE. May God give His blessing. Amen.

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Glasgow; Author of "Streams from Lebanon," "Astounding Grace," &c.

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AVID was richly favoured with unction from on high, when he penned the 103rd Psalm. His soul was then bathing in the full ocean of God's rich mercy, and his heart was sweetly tuned as he sung concerning the constancy thereof. He bursts

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forth with jubilant fervour, "Bless the Lord, O my soul; that is within me, bless his holy name." He is not content with the mechanical, passionless soul-lacking utterance of the lip, but calls upon his "soul," all his inner powers, to break forth into rapture, while he contemplates the iniquity-forgiving, the diseasehealing, the life-redeeming, the glory.crowning, and the soulsatisfying mercies of his God. He is conscious that God's "tender mercies" and acts of "loving-kindness" are numerous beyond the powers of his memory to retain them ALL; but, nevertheless, is desirous to remember SOME, and for them to "bless the Lord" with all his heart, soul, and strength. And, believer in Jesus, does not the mercy of Jehovah, which is from everlasting to everlasting unto you, demand that you likewise "bless the Lord?" Can you not join in singing,

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