THE GOURD.-JONAH iv. 6--8. As once for Jonah, so the Lord, To soothe and cheer my mournful hours, Prepared for me a pleasing gourd, Cool was its shade and sweet its flowers. To prize this gift was surely right, But, through the folly of my heart, And soon my joy was chang'd to smart. I trembled when I saw it fade, But guilt restrain'd the murmuring word; My folly I confessed, and prayed, "Forgive my sin, and spare my gourd." His wondrous love can ne'er be told; He heard me, and relieved my pain; His word the threatening worm controll'd, And bid my gourd revive again. Now, Lord, my gourd is mine no more; 'Tis Thine, who only couldst it raise; The idol of my heart before Henceforth shall flourish to Thy praise. Dear young believer, you may, too, To Newton's wise, experienced voice. EDITOR'S ADDRESS TO HIS YOUNG FRIENDS. FLOWERY, Showery, shining, changing April once more opens upon the busy Gleaner, and finds him still gathering ears, binding bundles, and sending them forth in all directions, and still as much as ever interested in his work for the rising generation. The month that has just rolled by has been marked in the GLEANER'S history-first, by the issue on the 14th of the first number of the Gleaner and Sower Lesson Book. We trust by this time a goodly number of our young readers have commenced to study its contents. We are persuaded that this work has been a work of necessity. We know of no other set of lesson books calculated to give to the young a complete body of sound scriptural divinity. It is our hope (D.V.) to go on with the issue, but it is only a large sale (which we hope all our friends will seek to promote) that can insure us against loss. So many wished to see a number before engaging to adopt it, that we have ventured, contrary to our intention, to issue this first number before getting half enough orders to pay for its printing. May gracious Parents and Teachers who may use this lesson book be led to pray for a Divine blessing to rest upon its contents! We have often thought of the sailor boy whose mother earnestly entreated him, upon his leaving her, never to drink rum, and reminded him of the many texts of Scripture that he had learned inculcating obedience to parents, and warning against drunkenness. When the wicked crew of sailors tried to induce him to join them in their drinking habits, he continually refused. One day one of their number was determined to make him drink some rum. As the wicked fellow kept urging the drink upon the lad, the lad kept quoting Scriptures against drunkenness and on obedience to parents. At length his tempter exclaimed, "I can do nothing with him; he's chuck full of the Bible." Now this is our aim in the Gleaner and Sower Lessons. We want to be a means of filling the memories of the young full of the Bible, and especially with a clear, connected apprehension of all the leading essential truths of that blessed book. How many of the young, before being partakers of the saving grace of God, have found the Word of God in their memories a moral protection in hours of temptation! And in this sad age, when hundreds of our clergy are doing their utmost to take England back to the age of mediæval darkness, how important that the Word of God should be abundantly stored in the memories of the rising race! Very near the parish where we are writing this address, how eagerly have the abettors of a sacramentarian religion tried to quench the anxiety of the awakened, who have longed to be partakers of the new birth, by telling them they need be in no soul trouble-they were born again when they were christened, and had only to take the sacrament to sustain their new life and be happy. How fearful the state and destiny of such blind leaders of the blind, and of those who are led by them! Oh that all lovers of the truth may be stirred up to a zeal for the Word of God and the scriptural education of the young, befitting the necessities of this evil age! But, dear young friends, our motive in publishing these lessons for the young widens beyond the bounds of time. You have souls that must be born again, and the Word of God is God's great instrument of regenerating grace. Those who are newborn again, not of corruptible seed, but born are of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever" (1 Peter. i. 23). That they may be the means of your soul's regeneration is our great desire in giving you these lessons, so full of, and, we believe, in such full accordance with, the Word of God. Dear young friends, there are only the righteous and the wicked here, and there are only heaven and hell hereafter. The righteous have all been made to confess and forsake their sins; they are all stripped of their own fancied righteousness; they are all led to fly for refuge to, and build their souls upon, the Lord Jesus, and are all made willing that Jesus, and none but Jesus, shall rule in their hearts and lives. Are you the righteous? If so, a high, happy, holy heaven of endless joy and rest is before you, and the Lord's promise of protection and direction on your way thither. The wicked know no godly sorrow for sin, no casting away their false hopes, and coming to the Lord Jesus, and no willing submission to His easy yoke. Are you the wicked? If so, what a solemn woeful prison of misery is before you! Oh that the Lord would bless the Gleaner and Sower Lessons of Truth, or the truth you learn and read from time to time, to the delivering you from the dread journey of woe that you are travelling! We must, before we close, also tell our dear young. friends what we know they are much interested in: that is, the laying of the foundation of the GLEANER and SOWER Free Homes for two aged Christian widows.* What cause we have to thank the Lord that He should deign thus to honour us and our dear readers, to minister to the necessities of His dear *A more full account (D. V.) in our next. |