LIVE AND LET LIVE;

OR,

THE MANCHESTER WEAVERS.

CHAPTER I.

"For we walk by faith, and not by sight."

ABEL COOPER was about seven-and-twenty, in the full vigour of early manhood. He had a fine manly frame, and stood upright, and looked the man to whom he spoke full in the face; but with such a kind, frank, open countenance, that the first impression which he made on a stranger was a very pleasant one. He was the gentlest and most dutiful son to his slight sickly mother.

Abel Cooper was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. It was the Sabbath

evening; and the Sabbath was a festival day to Abel and his mother; but it was the first evening after the funeral, the funeral of the

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husband and the father. Mother," said Abel (he woke up from a fit of thoughtfulness with a deep sigh), "I can scarcely believe that he is gone when I see all his things, and the things that were about him, and with which he had something to do. Only think, that yon cracked lookingglass should last longer than the face which looked in it! At times, I almost expect to hear his footstep in the passage, and to see the latch lifted, and my father enter. There hangs his hat, so natural like; and his spectacles, upon the open hymn-book! Why, mother! I do believe nobody has touched them since he laid them on the book, and went out that Monday evening. I had not the heart to move them; and I think you felt like me, and have never touched them." Abel," said his mother, "we will sing his favourite hymn together, out of that very book; we will sing and take courage, and not fling the gloom of our grief over the Lord's day. He used to say, in the grand language of the Holy Bible,We must call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, and honourable;' and we must honour Him who is the Lord of the Sabbath, not doing our own ways, nor finding our own pleasure, nor speaking our own words."

My God, how perfect are thy ways!

But mine polluted are :

Sin twines itself about my praise,

And slides into my prayer.

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When I would speak what Thou hast done

To save me from my sin,

I cannot make Thy mercies known.

But self-applause creeps in.

Divine desire, that holy flame,
Thy grace creates in me;
Alas! impatience is its name
When it returns to Thee.

This heart, a fountain of vile thought,
How does it overflow !

While self upon the surface floats,
Still bubbling from below.

Let others in the gaudy dress

Of fancied merit shine,

The Lord shall be my righteousness,

The Lord for ever mine.

"We will attend to his words as if we now heard his voice. Surely, my son, we sorrow not as those that have no hope; and we ought to rejoice, that he no longer groans under suffering or under sin in the body, but is present with the Lord! We ought to rejoice; and I will rejoice, not in myself, but in the Lord."

Abel and his mother were sitting beside a cheerful fire; a Bible and a Prayer-book, and some other volumes, lay upon the table; for Abel had been reading aloud to his mother. "Mother," said Abel again, "do you not believe that our spirits may hold some kind of intercourse with the spirit

of my father? I have been thinking a great deal about these words in the Prayer-book,

the communion of saints;' and I have had some conversation on the subject with Mr. Russell. We had been talking together about my dear father; and when he found I had many questions to ask him, he took me into his study, and pointed out to me several passages in the Bible and in other books; and his words, if I remember rightly, were to this effect,—that the communion of saints is made up of all the disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ in the body on earth, and out of the body in paradise. He did not seem to suppose for a moment, that the communion is only between those in the mortal body and upon the earth; but that a communion, or communication-a holy and heavenly intercourse-subsists between the spirit in the body and the spirit out of the body. He left open no door to unbridled fancies, or vain imaginations of any kind; for he said that those, and those alone, who live in holy communion with our blessed Lord, can live in heavenly communion one with another. Nor is it by sight or by sense that this communion is kept up between the spirit in the body and the spirit out of the body, but by faith; not by any faculties of the body (for to one party there is no bodily frame), but by the intelligence of the spirit. There are, indeed, two senses in which it may be said, that our blessed Lord Christ has become one with his creature man. The first is this: He took

our nature upon Him, and was made man; He was like unto, nay, the very same as a man, in form and feature; in weakness, in suffering, in all but sin and in this sense, He is one with all men, and all men, who are born in the flesh, are one with Him. But, he added, there is a far higher sense in which Jesus Christ is united to man,—a mystical union, a spiritual unity: and no man, who is not born in the Spirit, is thus united to Christ. It is of this union our Redeemer speaks, when he says, 'I am the Vine, and ye are the branches.' It is likened by St. Paul to the union of the members of the human body with the head. But all who are thus united to Christ, are still His, whether in the body or out of the body. And if, in that high and spiritual sense, they are members of Christ, they are also members one of another, and one with another. Not by sight or sense are they united, but by faith. They are persuaded, that though unseen and absent, they can be united, and live in fellowship one with another."

Abel opened an old folio volume, which lay on the table.

*

"This book," he said, "is one that Mr. Russell lent me; for I wished to make a copy of a part that I will read to you.' • The saints of God, living in the church of Christ, are in communion with all the saints departed out of this life, and admitted to the presence of God.

* See Pearson on the Creed, p. 357, edition 1692.