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THE “EXCELSIOR” PRIZE MEDAL
FAMILY SEWING & EMBROIDERING MACHINES
are easy to operate, simple to learn, and not liable to derangement.
They TUCK, HEM, FELL, GATHER, CORD, QUILT, BRAID, and EM-
BROIDER.

Sews with equal ease on any thickness of material, from two ordinary
spools, and the seam, if cut at every inch, will not rip. Price £6 6s.
Lists free.
W. & M. invite attention to their NEW LOCK-STITCH

MACHINE.
Do to work by Hand, with the latest Patented Improvements.

WHIGHT & MANN.
143, HOLBORN-BARS, LONDON, E.O.

MANUFACTORY-GIPPING WORKS, IPSWICH.

[graphic]

TEATING'S COUGH LOZENGES.- The best 1 TEATING'S INSECT DESTROYING POWA and safest remedy for COUGHS.

A DER, KILLS BUGS.

VEATING'S INSECT DESTROYING POWTEATING'S COUGH LOZENGES relieve the

A DER, KILLS FLEAS. A difficulty of breathing in ASTHMA. TEATING'S INSECT DESTROYING POW

A DER, KILLS BLACK BEETLES. TEATING’S COUGH LOZENGES. -Impor

TEATING'S INSECT DESTROYING POWA tant remedy in cases of INCIPIENT CON

A DER, KILLS MOTHS, and ALL OFFENSUMPTION.

SIVE INSECTS.

TEATING’S COUGH LOZENGES.-A certain I remedy for relieving the IRRITATION of the BRONCHIAL TUBES.

TEATING'S COUGH LOZENGES.—WHICH

A ARE DAILY RECOMMENDED BY THE FACULTY, testimonials from the most eminent of whom may be seen. Sold in boxes, 1s. 1 d.; and tins, 28.9d.

Sold in packets, 1s., and tins, 28. 6d. and 43, 6d. each ; or 1s. packets, free by post, for 12 postage stamps. Also in bottles with bellows, 18. 6d. and 3s. each, by THOMAS KEATING, Chemist, 79, St. Paul's Churchyard, London, E.C. MRS. B will thank Mr. Keating to send

M by post a shilling packet of his invaluable Powder, which effectually drives away moths, etc., etc.

Pembury Road, Lower Clapton, Y.E., June, 1861.

ROM A CLERGYMAN AT DUNSTABLE. T -I am obliged to you for sending me the INSECT DESTROYING POWDER, and enclose 14 stamps for it. I, this morning, rubbed about a dessert-spoonful on a long-haired spaniel, and it certainly had a most surprising effect on the fleas, killing them immediately, without in the least irritating the dog.

TT EATING'S CHILDREN'S WORM TABLETS A -The great remedy for these disorders in Children can now be administered in the form of a purely vegetable sweetmeat, at once agreeable and effective. Sold in tins, ls. 1 d. and 23. 9d. each.

TEATING, Chemist, 79, St. Paul's Church-
A yard, London. Sold retail by all Druggists,

CHILDREN'S WORM TABLETS (KEATING'S). The great remedy for these disorders in Children can now be administered IN THE FORM OF A PURELY VEGETABLE SWEETMEAT, at once agreeable and effective.

Hydrographic Office, Admiralty,

30th September, 1867. Sir,-On Wednesday last my wife purchased at your shop a tin case of your Worm Tablets. She gave only four in three days to my little boy, five and e-half years of age, as he has had a bad cough, and looked ill, with a tickling of his nose, for the last eight months, and on Saturday after noon he voided a large worm eight inches in length, and he appears already a different child.

Your obedient servant,

EDWARD DUNSTERVILLE, Commander, R.N. 32, St. Augustine Road, Camden New Town, N.W.; and Admiralty, S.W.

Prepared and sold in tins, ls. 1 d. and 2s. 9d. each, by THOMAS KEATING, Chemist, &c., 79, St. Paul's Churchyard, London, E.C.; and retail by all Druggists and Patent Medicine Venders in the world.

THE CHURCH.

"Built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself

being the chief corner-stone."

JULY, 1868.

ON SPIRITUALITY OF WORSHIP.

BY THE REV, JOHN ALDIS. Paul, a servant of Christ, thus describes the true worshipper, “ We are the circumcision which worship God in the Spirit.” These words announce the distinctive law of our Christian life. The present age is the ministration of the Spirit. Our Lord is no longer with us ; we can neither see His face, nor hear His voice. Yet He said, “I will not leave you comfortless," orphans, unbefriended and alone. He promised the Comforter, who should supply His place, and be better to us than His bodily presence. So now all comes to us through Him. Even the teaching, character, and love of Jesus must be by Him revealed and applied. Therefore we sing with gladness and hope

“ Jesus is gone up on high ;

But His promise still is here,
I will all your wants supply,

I will send the Comforter.” Here is the source and rule of Christian worship. We must have a living faith in the person and work of the Holy Ghost. Our prayers and praises and ministrations of the Word must not only be with our own spirit, that is intelligent and hearty, but they must be prompted and purified by the Spirit of God. “ To be spiritually minded is life and peace.” Our minds must be engaged in order to this ; but the real life is implied in the fact that the truths minded are the teachings of the great Enlightener, and that the influences felt are the consolations of the Comforter. If we fall below this standard, we fail of the true grace of the gospel.

The ministry of the Word is an important part of our religious exercises. It seeks the conversion of sinners, the edification of the Church, and the glory of Christ. To secure these same results, the Comforter was promised; and when these are realized, the proof is complete that we have the Spirit. “When He is come He shall convince the world,” ..“He shall lead you into all truth," .. . “He shall glorify me.” The fulfilment of this promise was in part miraculous. On the day of Pentecost the disciples were filled with the Spirit, and spake with tongues. Thus to them Divine truth was supernaturally revealed, and authoritatively enforced. “God hath revealed them to us by His Spirit.” But the fulfilment of Christ's promise equally attended the ordinary ministration of the truth already revealed. “Our gospel came not unto you in word only, but in power, and in the Holy Ghost." The apostle Peter refers evidently to common ministers of the Word when he describes them as those " that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.” This all preachers need, and may expect. They who have it can ask for nothing better, but they who have it not must labour in vain. As in the days of Elijah, it is not the altar nor the sacrifice, but “the God who answers by fire” that must inspire our confidence and command our homage.

The prophet Zechariah was privileged beyond most of the prophets to predict the distinctive glory of our gospel day. He tells us how Joshua the high-priest was vindicated, cleansed, and honoured; how Satan was rebuked and vanquished ; and how the assurance was given that, before Zerubbabel the great mountain should become a plain, the house should be finished, and the head-stone thereof brought forth “ with shoutings, crying, Grace, graceunto it.” But pre-eminently by the symbol of the seven lamps and the two olive trees he illustrated the doctrine of the Spirit's grace, and embodied it in the immortal words: “Not by might, nor by power, but by.my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.” He depicted the vision of the pierced One, and described the true repentance which that vision should produce. He proclaimed the “fountain opened," which we still celebrate in some of our sweetest songs. But he does more, he tells us how all this is attained and enjoyed. “I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication.” When the apostle Paul gives his grand description of the honours and immunities of the saints, he tells us that only by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost can we enter into the possession of them. “Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.” We are always weak and ignorant, but nowhere is this so manifest or so sad, as when we are at the footstool of the Divine throne. This however is our help and comfort. “ Likewise the Spirit helpeth our infirmities.” Our minds are beclouded, and we can only find relief in sighs and inarticulate groans. We need One to give meaning and acceptableness to our prayers. Here the Comforter intervenes. “For the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Jude addressed the Church in one of its darkest days, when all goodness and godliness seemed drowned in a black and shoreless deluge of impiety and corruption. But there was anchorage and rest even then. The faithful had not lost the Spirit: “Ye, beloved, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God.” Here is the central point of all edification. All prayer and supplication must be in the Spirit; and where the Comforter abides, prayer will never fail, and can never be in vain.

Thanksgiving and praise are alike comely in the saints and acceptable to God. The worship of the ancient Church consisted very largely of the "service of song.” The records of Divine mercy and truth were set to music and embodied in psalms. These utterances of joyful gratitude lifted the heart of Israel to a better world, and became prophetic of the blessings of Messiah's reign and of the final glory of the saints. Not much is said in the New Testament concerning the exercise of praise. On only one occasion in the life of our Saviour is singing mentioned, and that we might have thought would have been consecrated to sadness and tears. “When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives." In private life, the Christian, if merry, was taught to "sing psalms." In the epistle to the Corinthians it is implied that some forms of psalmody were as familiar as prayer: “Every one of you hath a psalm.” Among the Colossians this was the appointed method of communicating for mutual admonition and edification. So obvious and 80 striking was this feature of primitive worship, that the heathen philosopher and magistrate described it as a meeting together in order to sing a hymn to Christ as to God. It is the impulse of nature. When men meet together in gladsome fellowship, they betake themselves to sorgs. Grace sanctifies our instincts and our gifts, while it makes the contrast broad and deep betwixt the momentary merriment of fools and the undying gladness of the wise. “Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs : singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” In nothing is the rapt impulse of the Spirit more fully and joyfully manifested ; but our songs must be the prolonged echoes of the voice of the Comforter.

Practically, this subject has an awfully solemn aspect. Haste, flippancy, and mistake are nowhere more perilous than here. We are liable to delusion, and that is bad ; but we may be betrayed into blasphemy, which is yet worse. If we mistake our personal or party crotchets for Divine illumination, and confound the glow of our own passions with the warmth of Divine grace, we not only cheat ourselves, where to be cheated is the greatest calamity, but we insult the Spirit of holiness by attributing to Him that which good men might be ashamed to own. The heats of animal passion, the chafings of theological strife, and the excitement of mere human sympathy, may be set forth as the work of the Holy Ghost. It is sometimes saddening and almost appalling, to hear the confidence and flippancy with which it is asserted that the words, feelings, and actions of religious assemblies are the product of the Divine Spirit. Concerning some of these we might be tempted to conclude that they belong to those disciples of John who had not so much as heard of the Holy Ghost. Certainly we never should imagine that it was plainly written in the great Christian law, “ The blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men,” . . . and,“ Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world neither in the world to come.”

“ Try the spirits.” If it is important to test the spirits of those who teach and preach the Word when they speak to us, it is yet more necessary to test our own when we speak to God. Both tasks are equally possible. Two criteria are supplied. The first is the Bible. As the Spirit is the author of the Word, He cannot contradict Himself; and whatever opposes that Word He disowns and condemns. The second is the character of our Lord. The fulness of the Spirit dwells in Him, and whatever is not Christ-like is not of the Holy Ghost. All true life is lifted up above self-assertion. Invalids discourse much about their health, and the weak deem it necessary to tell you that they are strong; but those who are well and strong forget all about it, while they show that they are both by their cheerfulness and activity. If a man or a community is given to assert that he has the Spirit, he affords the most painful ground of suspicion that he has not. Certainly, if he is proud and self-exalting, dictatorial and censorious, if he is latitudinarian, indifferent to the great truths of the gospel ; if he is indulgent of evil, and deficient in zeal for holiness ; if he is more anxious to enforce the shibboleth of a sect than to propagate the essential doctrines of salvation; if his vocation is rather to make proselytes of the saints than to convert sinners,--then, whatever guise he may wear and whatever pretensions he may put forth, you may rest assured that he is not led by the Spirit of God. But wherever truth and holiness, humility and love prevail, and wherever the supreme desire is to vanquish Satan and save souls, there is the Spirit as certainly as when the dove descended on Jesus, and the voice from heaven proclaimed, “ This is my beloved Son."

To recognise and enjoy the person and work of the Holy Ghost, is an essential mark of the true Church. The doctrine concerning Him is at once both elementary and indispensable. To turn the doctrine into fact is not fanaticism as the world thinks it, but not to do so is a deplorable proof of unbelief. Naturally, this doctrine is the scandal of the unbelieving. They regard it as a pitiful delusion, or a hideous pretence. This should never excite our surprise, much less our resentment. It is rather the proof of natural honesty. These men know nothing of this special grace; then what else can they do but deny its existence ? Our Master taught us to expect this. He described the Spirit of truth as one “ whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him.” But it is otherwise with us. For us to doubt His presence, to neglect His influence, not to watch and hope for His movements, or to trifle and jest in regard to His impulse, is to belie the fundamental principles of our profession, and to cut ourselves off from the fountain of comfort and power.

The Spirit is life. This was the law of the first creation. Man

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