OF

WAYMARKS IN THE WILDERNESS,

AND

SCRIPTURAL GUIDE.

A Monthly Magazine, designed to bear testimony to the Truth as it is in Jesus, apart from Sectarian ends and connections.

EDITED BY JAMES INGLIS.

The exposition of the prophetic Scriptures is a prominent object of the enterprise, under the conviction of those engaged in it that the coming of the Lord draws near, and that the Church is in her proper attitude when waiting for that event. Since no one can be truly looking for the Lord in the glory of his second coming, who does not truly know him in the love of his first coming to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, the truth regarding the blessed hope of the Christian cannot be taught apart from the doctrines of Christian faith and the lessons of Christian love. The design, therefore, embraces the elucidation of the fundamental doctrines of the Gospel, which will be treated in their Scriptural connections and their bearing on the Christian life and its relations.

The publication is humbly intended to be "CHRIST-EXALTING; " and is specially addressed to those who, in our various communities, are reaching out to an experimental acquaintance with the unsearchable riches of Christ; who, beyond all denominational zeal, love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, desiring to live in separation from the world, as pilgrims and strangers here; not unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again, and to be found like men waiting for their Lord. It is addressed to earnest and prayerful students of the Word of God, and while it will occupy middle ground between the learned and the merely popular periodicals, it will aim to bring the mature fruits of Christian scholarship and critical research within the reach of ordinary inquirers into the mind of the Spirit.

The numbers of the current year will contain a variety of papers designed to open up the field of prophetic inquiry, expositions of the principal parables, illustrations of the earthly mission and the mediatorial work of our Lord, and essays on personal and relative duties; with occasional narratives, reviews, notices of millenarian literature, and of current events as bearing on the main object of our publication.

The numbers of the Magazine for a year will form two volumes, with a suitable title-page and index for each volume.

To Agents, or to Clubs, for four or more subscribers to our address, four copies will be sent for $10.

For the convenience of subscribers, the postage will be prepaid, in consideration of the payment being strictly in advance.

Office, 26 Cooper 'Institute, New-York.

"FAITH COMETH BY HEARING, AND HEARING BY THE

WORD OF GOD.”

THE inspired and the uninspired records of Christian experience, and the history of the Church from the day of Pentecost to the present hour, amply illustrate the tendency of the human heart, even after the Gospel has been known in its power, to obscure the grace of God, and to set up some legal claim to His favor. So that there has been no age in which the Church has not needed, and there is no believer who does not need, the exhortation: "Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”

We do not, at present, propose to trace the almost imperceptible steps in which this tendency is developed, silent and unsuspected in its operation, till we are left to ask those who have begun in the spirit, Are ye now made perfect in the flesh? or to ask, amid the unsatisfied strivings of souls that once knew the peace of God, Where is then the blessedness ye spake of? or to ask, amidst the coldness and languor of those who did run well, Who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth? Only we would in love warn the brethren that the tendency is constant, the influences are subtle, the arguments plausible, by which emancipated souls may be entangled again. When the

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legal spirit has been driven from all its attempts to make good the justification of a sinner, it takes refuge. in attempts to accomplish a sanctification in the flesh; when forced to yield the question of salvation by grace, it will seek to accomplish its end by raising a new question about the evidences of faith; and draw the ensnared soul into a fluctuating confidence in attainments, fruits, and experience, instead of a simple resting in Christ, and an assured belief of the testimony of God.

The operation of this tendency is most distinctly seen in the history of Christianity or of the Church at large. One who had profoundly and lovingly studied that history, says of it: "Periods of revival and decay succeed each other; iniquity abounds, and is allowed to proceed apparently unchecked, as if God had forsaken the earth. A few remain faithful and testify for Jehovah. All in vain. Then suddenly God steps in, makes bare His arm, does His own work, puts aside the instrument, manifests special grace, and reaps special glory to His name. Again barrenness prevails, and desolation covers the land. Then He opens the windows of heaven, and the swollen torrents rush along the valleys, diffusing life on every side. Such are His dealings with the children of men, and such the plan on which the kingdom of grace is administered, having, like that of nature, its seasons and fluctuations, its winter and its spring, its droughts and its floods, all to show forth more clearly God Himself as the doer of the whole, to sink the creature and exalt the Creator, that thus men may not mistake the hand by whose pressure the tide rises, from whose invisible but resistless influence every ripple takes its form and

course. All is God, and God is all; man is the mere subject or spectator of the change."

There is a blessing in the recognition of the divine sovereignty and grace in the revivals, whether on a larger or smaller scale, by which, from age to age, the sad history of decay is illuminated; and doubtless, in the time, manner, and instruments of these revivals, it is most distinctly seen that God is all. But it is not the less observable that every revival is to be traced to a fresh presentation of the simple truth of the Gospel, as every succeeding decay is but the gradual obscuring of that truth under the tendency which we have described as operating so stealthily and steadily to entangle the individual believer in the yoke of bondage.

It is difficult to form an impartial and dispassionate judgment of the age in which we live. Each individual sphere of observation is limited, and so many personal and local considerations influence his view even of that, that we need to be very cautious in the expression of our convictions regarding the religious condition of a whole country, and still more of Christendom. Of the unblushing malignity of the openly antievangelical party who, in our day, prostitute the name of Christianity, we need not hesitate to speak. It is blatant, unscrupulous, and undisguised'; and, sustained by the amplest resources of talent, literary culture, and worldly influences, it courts notoriety, and exults in the alarm its inroads excite among the timid adherents of what it has pronounced an antiquated and obsolete creed. Its exultation is one of many proofs of the feebleness and declension of the so-called evangelical party; and we do not fear the charge of censoriousness from that party themselves, when we express the

conviction that the teaching of the pulpit and the faith of the pew are spoiled through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. They are a small minority who rejoice in the faith once delivered to the saints, who stand unqualifiedly committed to the Apostle's doctrine and the Apostle's position, "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith unto this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God."

Even if the conviction here expressed should happily be proved to be erroneous, we should find a sufficient reason in the perils of the individual believer for returning again and again to the statement and illustration of the fundamental doctrine of our most holy faith. Nor will the doctrine of the Cross and its story ever become tiresome by reïteration to those who know them best. The attention of our readers is once more invited to the Gospel which God has given to be preached and to be believed, as it stands contrasted with the human systems and speculations which have usurped its name and its place. If, haply, among our readers there are any who have been deceiving themselves by a mere form of godliness, or by making fair show in the flesh;" or who are resting in a lifeless assent to an orthodox creed, and the lifeless observances of a hereditary religion, or in frames, and feelings, and a Christless experience; or who, against convictions of the truth, are striving vainly to find peace in these things, their attention is specially invited to the message of God's grace, which, while it exposes their delusion, reveals to them a salvation

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