THE SPIRIT'S CALL. BY A LADY. COME to our home of sapphire light, "Tis decked with glittering gems of night, The gorgeous clouds that deck the west Hang o'er the couch whereon we rest And 'mid the strains that float along Are heard the notes of sweetest song, The loneliest flower that sighs away Is e'en our care when sunny day Has left the fragrant vale: The glittering gems from dewy night Are borne on wings of spirits bright, Then come ye ransom'd souls and dwell It is a bright and holy clime Of calm content and rest, Where far beyond the bounds of time BAPTIZED, BUT NOT IN THE CHURCH. THERE are several classes to whom this sentence is applicable. We shall consider it, however, at present, in reference to but one classthat in which is comprehended persons who have been baptized, but have never joined a church. In every case of this kind, there is something in the individual who neglects or refuses membership, radically wrong. In some instances he may be ignorant of his duty; but in very many instances, it is presumed, the hearts of such persons are not right before God. On the day of Pentecost three thousand were added to the church in one day. And there is no reason upon record, in which the baptized, in the days of the Apostles, did not formally attach themselves to the church. Their love to the brotherhood prompted them to join the church. And their desire to promote the interests of the church by uniting their means and efforts with those of their brethren, and to become themselves the subjects of the watchful care of the bishops and of the admonition and discipline of the congregation, were powerful inducements. The primitive church believed in doing "all things decently and in order." But the being baptized, and afterwards refusing to unite with the church, is a high-handed act of disorder, not only because it is contrary to apostolic example, but because it directly aims a thrust at the vitals of the church. If all baptized persons were to refuse membership, where would be the church? It would necessarily become, and that too in a short time, extinct. When, therefore, the elders, or chief brethren of any congregation, shall have within their districts a case of this kind, they should very promptly admonish the delinquent, and instruct him in reference to his duty. If, however, he shall prove refractory, and more especially, as is often the case, it shall become inanifest that his conduct is immoral, he should be considered by the church as an alien, and even as having broken his baptismal vow, and wholly unfit for the fellowship of the congregation; and if his conduct is injurious to the church, the brethren ought, in self-defence, to let the public know that such disorderly and refractory person belongs not to their communion. Do you ask by what law this shall be done. I answer, by the "royal law"-the law of love! By the law of order. By the spirit of Christianity. Many have yet to learn that Christianity is a religion of principle: and that, therefore, we need not look into the Bible for a written command for every minute step to be taken by the church. Much is to be done by the spirit of the institution according to the reason and fitness of things. A. R. GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT. CHRISTIANS are servants of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have a good and faithful Master, and ought for this reason, if for no other, to be good and faithful servants. Besides, at the last day, when our Lord shall come to reckon with us, we shall not enter into the fruition of the joy of our Master, unless in this probationary state we shall have been good and faithful servants. What are the essentials of a good servant? We shall notice the following: 1. Diligence. A negligent or indolent servant is never a good one. Diligence is inculcated by Christ and the Apostles throughout the New Testament in the most impressive terms. We must "diligently follow every good word and work." "Giving all diligence," we must "add to our faith courage," &c. We must so run as to obtain. Racers, panting for a brilliant prize, do not stop on the course to count the pebbles which they may perceive on the way, or to dispute about the insects of an hour. Their minds are absorbed by objects of infinitely greater magnitude and importance. 2. Cheerfulness. The good servant does his work with cheerfulness. A servant who should manifest reluctance at the performance of every task, would not be counted by men, a good servant. Neither will our Master reckon us to be good servants unless we perform our Christian duties with cheerfulness. This is the love of God, that we keep his K commandments. This love constrains us, and renders the commandments not grievous but joyous unto us. It becomes our meat and our drink to do the will of our Heavenly Father. The servant who is habitually indisposed to the performance of duty, and in consequence, is given to murmuring and complaining, is a wicked and slothful servant. 3. Constancy. The servant who is diligent to day and sleeps to morrow, is not a good and faithful servant. He must be diligent, not only on great or special occasions, but every day and on ordinary occasions. What shall we say of Sunday Christians, who are in a state of spiritual torpor through the week? Or of Christians who burn like straw during a religious excitement, but are as cold as an icicle on all other occasions ? We cannot say, nor will our Master, that they are good and faithful servants. 4. Fidelity and Zeal. A good and faithful servant is zealous to promote the interests of his master. He is honest. He is truehearted. He neither steals nor slights work, because the eye of his master happens not to be upon him. So must it be with the Christian. Zeal according to knowledge may well be required of us, and a truehearted devotion to God. If a man is not honest between himself and his God, there is death and not life at the very heart of his religion! And if he is not zealous in religion it must be because he does not put a high estimate upon it. 5. Perseverance. A servant is required to continue diligent, and cheerful, and constant, and faithful, and zealous through life. No matter how good a servant he has been for a term of many yearsthis will not avail him in the day on which he turns away from his rectitude. That is well which ends well. Our Saviour says, thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life.' "Be Are Brethren, let us examine ourselves. Are we in the faith? we good and faithful servants? Let us bring our hearts and lives to the test. To the law and the testimony. Why should a man be self-deceived? Will a man drown himself in perdition? Will a man murder his own soul? A. R. THE TONGUE.-No. II. IN a former article on this subject, we pointed out some of the many evils of which this unruly member has been guilty. The tongue has been imprudently used in telling things that are true, as well as wickedly employed in telling falsehoods. Sometimes persons should refrain from telling things which are in reality true, especially when they are calculated to produce envy and contention, and every evil work. We simply mean, they should not speak at all when such are to be the pernicious results. Sometimes persons are compelled from the necessity of circumstances to perform the painful task of divulging some unpleasant truths by way of self-defence, in order to wipe from their good characters the false and groundless charges some secret or open enemy may have attempted to establish against them. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the human race egregiously guilty of this sinful practice, and peace-destroying course. This number, be it said to the shame of Christian professors, is made up in part from the ranks of those who are the professed advocates of the Holy Bible. If the advocates of Christianity speak at all, they should speak the truth, and nothing but the truth. The cause they have espoused is that of truth: should they not then be influenced by the spirit of truth, to love the truth whether it pertain to things temporal: or things eternal? The actions of men form their character for eternity, whether performed by the hand, the foot, or the tongue. It is true we have frailties and imperfections-great barriers to our upward march to the heavenly country-but God has provided us with ample means for overcoming the difficulties and removing the obstacles Satan may throw in our pathway as we are journeying on to the celestial city. He has given us grace to conquer. If his grace was sufficient for Paul in all the trying scenes through which he passed, even in perils by sea, in perils by land, in perils among the heathen, in perils among false brethren, and also in the great persecutions which he endured for the cross of Christ; surely, then, his grace is sufficient for us whose trials and persecutions are not worthy to be compared with those of Paul, who suffered the loss of all things that he might win Christ. The cause of Christ has been greatly injured by the tongues of Christian professors. Has he forgotten God by foolish talking as did the Romans by foolish reasoning? The Lord is not unmindful of such. He sees and hears us all, whether male or female. His all-seeing eye, that slumbers not, beholds every action we perform. His everlasting ear hears the words spoken by every tongue. No action escapes his notice; no word falls from our lips unheard by him. He is omnipotent. This unruly member has been engaged in the commission of sin from the earliest ages. Satan set the example for the human family. The Saviour branded him as the father of liars, and a liar from the beginning. Even in Eden, midst the rosy bowers of first-born pleasures and holy delights, the archenemy of souls deceived the mother of all living with the words of his mouth. "Ye shall not surely die," was his memorable declaration. She heard the fatal words and yielded to the beguiling influence of his Satanic majesty. No age prior to the Christian was exempt from the sins of the tongue: the Israelites murmured at the dealings of God; they spoke against Moses and even against the Lord, who had by his strong arm emancipated them from Egyptian servitude, and planted their feet upon the shores of deliverance. Their tongues proved the instrument of their death, for he sent fiery serpents amongst them, and numbers of them perished on account of their evil talking. was the Christian age free from its contaminating and soul-destroying influences, even when it was honoured by Apostles and Prophets, miracles, signs, and distributions of the Holy Spirit. We find the great Apostle of the Gentiles writing against the disturbers of the peace of Zion, who both walked and talked disorderly. "Now we hear that there are some who walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies."-2 Thess. iii. 11. Persons seldom exhibit the character of busy bodies without making a bad use of the tongue in the formation of a character so unenviable. The Apostle in another portion of his writings gives us a fair exposition of the foregoing passage. Nor "And withal they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house; and not only idle, but tattlers also, and busybodies, speaking things which they ought not."-1 Tim. v. 13. Are not busybodies talkers as well as doers? Peter also guards us against this character, in connection with some others. "But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evil doer, or as a busybody in other men's matters. Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf."-1 Pet. iv. 15, 16. They who suffer as busy bodies, and not as Christians, deserve to suffer, and if their consciences are not seared as with a hot iron, they will suffer, and that severely. If they are past feeling and their hearts coated as with steel, the Lord will cause them to feel the rod of his ire at the final adjudication. They may stand before him in the judgment with their consciences seared, and their hearts coated without with steel, and lined within with brass, yet he can pierce them with the sword of his justice, and will plunge them into the lake where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. Are there any in Protestant Christendom who have made a profession of religion, that shall fill the character of those wicked sinners mentioned in Rom. iii. 13, 14. "Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness." How shall such characters fare in the day of reckoning! "These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." The tongue cannot be too safely guarded; it is so apt to go astray from the dialect of heaven to the language of Ashdod. We are responsible for our words as well as our actions. "But I say unto you, that every idle word that men (mankind) shall speak, they shall give an account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned."-Matt. xii. 36, 37. This is not the language of some modern revivalist to alarm the conscience and awake the fears of the wicked, but the words of the Great Teacher, the judge of the living and the dead, who has the keys of death and of hell, who can shut and no man can open. We are writing against the sins of the tongue in general. Some persons act on the pharisaical principle, and take nothing to themselves, how well soever "the cap may fit;" such persons are incorrigible; their case is almost hopeless. Hence the necessity of our daily examination whether we are in the faith. If we repudiate the restraints of Christianity even in this one member, we are treading upon dangerous ground, and are hazarding our prospects for a better resurrection. The Apostle James decides this question beyond a doubt. "If any man (or woman) among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain." Persons who are in the habit of talking much are apt to talk too much. Truth is too rare a commodity to engage the entire time of some untiring and indefatigable talkers-and even some who are not so much given to dealing out their" chit chat" by wholesale and retail, even respecting persons and things, are sometimes driven to the disagreeable necessity of denying their own words when brought to the proof. The first falsehood is covered with another, and so on |