There is a snare, all too common to-day, to which JL even earnest soul-winners are exposed. It is the too eager desire to hear confessions as to being saved. Some may ask in surprise, What! should we not most earnestly desire and press that sinners confess themselves saved? No; it is not the thing we should most ardently desire, nor press at all. What should be pressed and insisted on is that the sinner see himself lost, utterly undone, repent, and thus believe the precious gospel that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. This is what we find the primitive preachers constantly did, in the Acts. Not once, to my knowledge, do we find any of them urge their hearers to confess themselves saved. They are our models to copy, or learn from, not the present-day successful evangelists, so-called. To repent and believe the gospel is what they urged upon their hearers, and not one word of pleading or inciting them to confess that they were saved. This was left for those really converted, to come out spontaneously in its own due and proper season.

Incalculable harm has doubtless been done, not only to individual souls, but to the cause of the gospel as well, by urging half-convicted or slightly-awakened souls to ''confess" (what, too often, is not true) that they are "saved."

In this connection, the following sober remarks of Mr. William Kelly have a most pertinent application. He says, in his remarks on Lev. 14 :21-32, " Such a Scripture ought also to be a serious guard from that levity which modem revivalism accentuates, though it has ever been the snare of those who are carried away one-sidedly with the freeness of grace to forget its fulness. In reaction of a systematic putting under law as a preparatory course for due reception of the gospel, they confound conversion with salvation, and as it were argue the interested soul to believe and say, 'I am saved! I am saved!' before the soul has any genuine sense of sin before God. Those who are strong have no need of a physician but such as are sick:and if the wounds are deep it is well if they be probed, without haste to cover them up. Repentance is most important, lest a crop of such faith arise as James, ch. 2, refuses to own. Consider the prodigal in Lk. 15; and that indwelling sin be dealt with, as well as sins."

These remarks are as wholesome and timely now as they were in the day they were penned:even more so, for shallowness and unreality have increased to an alarming extent since the close of the last century. Anything like an adequate sense of sin is only occasionally met with, and the passage in Leviticus referred to by Mr. Kelly is a series of ceremonials intended to impress upon the leper, as on all who read it, the exceeding sinfulness of sin. And if this is omitted in our dealing with souls, we are guilty of encouraging shallowness in conversion, if indeed it be conversion at all. We should bear in mind what the Great Jehovah says about "daubing the wall with un-tempered mortar," and healing the hurt of His people slightly, saying, Peace! Peace! when there is no peace.

Why is there such a difference between the character of evangelical Christians of the present generation and those of the past two centuries? Shallowness is doubtless the characteristic of this age and this is naturally reflected in the Church:but this does not account in any great measure for what Mr. Kelly mentions. Have not we of to-day, rejoicing in the liberty wherewith Christ has set us free, swung off to the other extreme, making no lawful use of the law (1 Tim. 1:8), and preached grace before there was any real sense of sin produced in the souls of the hearers. What spiritual depth was wrought in souls by preachers of previous generations when the thunderings of Sinai were sounded in sinners' ears ! And how real the work, and what solid Christian character was produced, even though the freeness of the gospel was only partially set forth.

Long ago, I heard the aged Donald Ross tell of one of Whitefield's converts, whom he knew when a boy. In his emphatic, characteristic way, he said, "And he was converted!" Yes, those mighty evangelists "dug deep," and the thoroughness of their work was seen in the genuineness of their converts; and the influence of their labors remained with the churches both of Britain and America long years after they themselves had entered their rest.

True, greater showings will result by insistent pleadings to "confess," to "come forward," "to rise," or "lift the hand;" or, made easier still, by quietly signing a card as they sit in their places. How different was the apostolic practice from all this; there was nothing of these modern methods with them. They solemnly pressed upon men the truth of their guilt before God, and His gracious provision for sin in the sacrifice of His Son upon the cross; and when a consciousness of need was awakened in souls, they "exhorted them with many other words," and left the "confession" to its own proper time and place.

It is opportune here to say a few words on that much quoted passage in Romans 10:"If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus," etc., which is often made use of to encourage or excite souls to confess that they are saved, or to stand up and say that they will "accept Christ." But this is a misapplication of the passage.

To confess Jesus as Lord, to own Him thus, is not necessarily in a crowded assembly, or even to men at all (though this last will surely be done in its time by every truly saved soul), but it may be in the secret of one's bed-chamber, at the family altar, or in any place where one may "call upon the name of the Lord." It is to sincerely own the man-rejected, heaven-accepted Jesus, as Lord and Christ-my Lord, to whom I submit, before whom I adoringly bow the knee and own Him "Lord of all." It is the soul's attitude toward Christ, rather than an external act; though the "mouth" is mentioned, it is not of necessity external or literal, as so often urged on prospective converts in modern evangelistic meetings. Such a statement might be made, and the Lord Jesus not really confessed at all. The confession is rather to Him, as was the case with the dying thief:"Lord, remember me when Thou comest into thy kingdom." He owned Him LORD, while the higher powers, both political and religious, adjudged Him a criminal, and inflicted upon Him the most cruel and shameful death. So did Saul, at his conversion say, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" (Acts 9:6).

Let us then, as servants of Christ, be slow to urge souls into "confession" of any kind; let con-Diction, as well as "patience," "have her perfect work," and we shall have less cause to mourn over converts going back-if not openly into the world, doing what is almost as disappointing-living on the borderland, linked with Egypt, and keeping the godly in doubt whether they are saved or not!

Let the ability to report "results" be one of the least of our concerns. "Nothing succeeds like success" is the shameless motto of the world; let it not be once named among us. The Lord is the Judge; and, "Judge nothing before the time" is especially applicable to the servant's labors.

In my early life I was on one occasion much cast down by a dearth of apparent results of my labors in the Lord. In my perplexity and distress I wrote to the late Dr. James H. Brookes, of St. Louis, expressing to him my doubts and misgivings. His answer was most beautiful. Though an utter stranger to him, he wrote me long and lovingly, and quoted the words of the Divine Servant in Isaiah 49:4:"Then I said, I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for naught and in vain:yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my work (marg. reward) with my God." I took fresh courage from these words, and they have been a strength and stay to my soul ever since. He, blessed Saviour and Lord, was "tempted (put to the test) in all points like as we are, sin apart." C. Knapp