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week evenings. The chapel at F— on a week evening, with from 70 to 100 persons, looks animating, and our week evening service at T—, with a house overflowing-though a long journey for me always repays for the little service I render and the sacrifice of some comfort. God appoints the place and labour for his servants; may we know what our work is, and do it earnestly and prayerfully!

SUNDAY SCHOOL EFFORTS.

Since I last wrote, our Sabbath School has been steadily increasing in numbers, and we have now on the books, I believe, over 400 children. The order is better, and would be still further improved if we had more efficient teachers. The moral condition of the neighbourhood continues to grow better. Our Sunday or week evening services are scarcely ever disturbed now. One public-house in the district, through lack of trade, has taken to selling sweets; and the landlord of another opposite called me over one day as I was passing, and told me very mournfully, "That he might shut up for the trade he was doing." I attribute these moral improvements chiefly to the influence our Sabbath School is exerting in the neighbourhood, and to the special interest we take in the young.

I do not get so many adults at our services as I used to do; indeed on the week evening they have nearly all dropped off, but the Sabbath School children still cling to us, and about twenty on a week evening, and from eighty to ninety on a Sunday evening, attend the service, and I believe there is a good work going on amongst them. About twenty-four, chiefly of the elder scholars, usually stay to be talked to and prayed with apart from the rest after the Sunday evening service, some of whom I believe to be children of God.

RITUALISM.

The greatest of all hindrances to the work of the evangelist in the rural districts is the ritualism of the High Church. A little book for example, called "The Manual: a book of devotion chiefly intended for the poor, by W. E. Heggate, priest of the Church of England," has reached a twelfth edition, and is circulated by thousands, especially in Dorset and Somerset. A few extracts from that Manual will best show its character, and the need of earnest and persevering effort to carry the Gospel to the poor.

The clergyman who writes the Manual, says in the preface :—

sermons.

"This is not a book to sit down and read through and through like a book of It is not a book to sit and read. There are psalms and hymns to stand up at, and prayers to kneel down to."

The following appears under the heading "Reading":

"A poor man has not much time for reading, . . . neither is he the best judge of what is true or false, or what is good for him. The poor should, therefore, never buy the tracts and cheap prints and songs which are hawked about. The one-half of them is bad, and the other half useless. Nor should the poor man read newspapers, which only trouble and deceive him, unless there is some great news like a battle, or a shipwreck, or a fire. . . . The poor man's books are his Bible and Prayer Book and this Book, and, if he can get them, 'Nelson's Fasts and Festivals,' 'The Imitation of Christ,' and such others as the clergyman of the parish may lend or give."

As to the reading of the Bible, the poor man is to attend to the following:

"They also read in pride who think they can find out the faith by themselves

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the Parish Priest."-p. 183.

"The poor man" is supposed to be incapable of judging what is sin and what is not. In the "devotions" for self-examination he is told:

"Now, if thou findest some things which thou dost not know whether they were sins or not, open thy heart to thy Parish Priest. And if some

great and grievous sins weigh upon thy soul, and thou dost often think of them, tell him even these. Confess to God's minister, for so thou confessest to God.

Thou shalt be absolved. The Priest shall lay his hand upon thee and thou shalt be forgiven by God himself, who looseth men from their sins by His Priests."

It is important for the " poor man to know that

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"When the Priest offers for the people, he stands."—p. 16.

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Submissive reverence to the clergy seems to be the predominating idea. Is it not a sad thing to find such teaching in a Church which calls itself the Church of the Reformation? At Cambridge, mass is said for the repose of the soul of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and not even a complaint from his successor against it! Since 1845 nearly 600 clergymen have gone over from the Church of England to the Church of Rome ! Our duty is to preach the simple Gospel, and seek thus to overcome the evil with good. The poor are crying for bread, and the 'priests" are giving them a

stone.

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OBITUARY: REV.

THE remains of this good and muchloved minister of Christ were laid in the grave in Highgate Cemetery, on the 19th November, 1868. From the funeral sermon, preached on the following Lord's day, by the Rev. Joshua C. Harrison, we extract a brief but deeply-interesting account of his life and character :

He was born at Hampstead, in March, 1814, in a house which overlooked the Vale of Health; but when he was only three years old his parents

ALFRED J. MORRIS.

removed to a village in Gloucestershire. That was the first home that he could remember, and to it he ever looked back with fond recollections as the scene of his childhood. Very early in life, when quite a boy, he exhibited the marks of true religion. Probably, as in the case of many who have had pious parents, he received the grace of God with the earliest dawn of intelligence, and began to love the Saviour as soon as he heard of His name. any rate, his mother was accustomed

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to tell how she often overheard his fervent prayers, which were at once the expression and the support of his tender spiritual life; and how he wrote hymns, some of which were of sufficient merit to appear in a periodical of the day, and how delighted he and his brothers were to receive some magazines in return. Before he was nineteen years old he agreed to assist Mr. Edkins, of Nailsworth, in his school, on the condition that he should be aided in the completion of his own education. But Mr. Edkins not only set him to teach, but to preach, not unfrequently three times on the Sunday, which he did with great fervour and great acceptance.

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The work was mcst laborious, but it trained him to habits of independent thought and ready expression. also was a work into which he threw his whole heart, for on visiting London he went into many of the low lodging-houses, and preached Christ to the neglected and perishing inmates. Many of those sermons, carefully written, still remain and testify to the painstaking with which he did his work, as well as to his zeal. After this he went to reside at Painswick, and it was while there that a gentleman, who had become acquainted with his originality and power as a preacher, advised the Church at Warrington to seek his services. He preached first for one month, and then for a second; and then the people gave him an invitation to become their pastor. At first he was quite startled by the request. He had received no special education for the ministry, and he had by no means made up his mind to give himself up to it as his vocation. He, therefore, asked them to allow him to retire from Warrington for six months, and if at the end of that they wished him to return, he promised then to give their request his most prayerful and thoughtful consideration. The

six months passed away, the request was renewed, and he became their pastor. No sooner did he enter upon the oversight of the Church than he threw himself into his work with a zeal which quite overtasked his strength, and issued in an illness which nearly brought him to his grave. He felt that he could not do too much. He had a yearning desire to save souls. Often would he preach five times on a Sunday, and engage in some service almost every evening in the week. He sought to reanimate the Sunday-school-to awaken the slumbering population around-to enkindle new life and zeal in the Church. His desire for the salvation of men was then a consuming passion with him—it was truly the burden of the Lord. After five years of incessant toil at Warrington, where he was married to her who is now his bereaved and deeply-mourning widow, he removed to Salford, Manchester, and continued there four years. But the health of both his family and himself suffered. Commercial panic caused great distress among his people, and at length he was obliged to remove. Thence he came to Holloway, the chief scene of his ministerial labour, where he became widely known and greatly beloved, not only by his own flock, but by many thoughtful persons in different parts of London, who liked, as often as they could, to hear his terse and vigorous expositions of evangelical truth. There he took his position as one of the ablest of our ministers. His congregation increased, and built this beautiful church in which you now worship, with the school-room in the rear. For twenty years he served his Master here, loving and beloved. All his mental characteristics had full play. From the habit of his early life he looked at every subject for himself, saw it sharply and clearly before he

spoke of it to others, and then discussed it in a style equally sharp and clear, of which a dry humour often increased the point and power. His reading was not so extensive as his thinking, for he always chose to examine every doctrine with his own mind rather than learn what others thought of it. Hence, while the substance of his views was by no means original, the tone and colouring were peculiarly his own. He was a quiet but shrewd observer of human nature and social life, admired what was admirable, exposed what was defective, and wrote and spoke with a practical power which none could fail to acknowledge. He held the grand central truths of the Gospel with a tenacious grasp, and yet treated them with a freedom which imparted an air of apparent novelty. But in all he did and said it was clear that he never aimed merely at effect. None could ever doubt that he was absolutely sincere, that he spoke that which he knew, and prophesied that which he had seen. And the same qualities appeared in his social intercourse. Though often very quiet and taciturn, when he spoke he always spoke with deep conviction, shed light-the light of his own thought-on the subject, and left no doubt that he was deeply in earnest. Every one felt that he was thoroughly genuine, and that the sun would as soon swerve from its course as he be turned from principle and honour. Though strangers might suppose that his forte was the pulpit, his own conviction was that his forte was in the room of sickness. His own people would probably agree with him in that judgment, for there the deep tenderness of his heart, which was somewhat hidden in public under a veil of sharp irony or quiet drollery, came to view, and with tears of sympathy and love he sought to bind up the broken heart. His words were

then so helpful and so precious that they were often never after forgottenthey were hoarded in the memory as a special treasure gained in sickness. Little children, too, found themselves at home with him, for he had always some pleasant words to say to them; and, indeed, it was very significant that the last publication which he gave to the world was that beautiful little book, "The Shepherd with His Lambs."

Something more than six years ago he left Holloway for Bowdon. That fearful malady which caused him so much bodily suffering, and finally issued in his death, had already begun to trouble him, and probably caused that general derangement of the nervous system which threw the shade of an insupportable melancholy over his spirit, and totally incapacitated him for ministerial duty. What he then suffered in body, and what in mind, none but those around him can possibly imagine, yet he never murmured. But the one burden which pressed on his spirit was, that in the thirty years of his ministry he had preached to so many who are still unconverted and unsaved. Could it be possible that he had been faithful when so large a proportion who had listened to his preaching were still undecided? “Oh," he exclaimed, in bursts of sorrow,

66

they professed to admire my ministry, to prize my ministry, and yet they are unconverted by my ministry; can I have preached as I ought?" And on one occasion, when wandering amidst the lovely scenery of Dovedale, he exclaimed, in an agony of distress, "Oh, if this is so beautiful, how much more beautiful must heaven be; and yet many who have heard me will never see heaven, for they are still unconverted and unsaved." But the cloud was gradually removed. He regained much of his wonted cheerfulness. Friends at Bowdon were

drawn to him as by a new charm, and hoped that soon he might again preach as before; but the bodily suffering was still intolerable. Something must be done. He came to London; he consulted Sir Henry Thompson; he found his own apprehensions confirmed. Nothing could relieve him but a severe and dangerous operation. He prepared to undergo it with calmness and intrepidity, yet not without a secret presentiment that it would be fatal. He had paid a visit to Gloucestershire; he had seen many of his chosen friends in London; he had walked with his son on Hampsteadheath, where he had played as a child, and discussed as a man the grandest subjects with his revered friend Caleb Morris; and he expressed his belief that he had probably only one more journey-the journey to his grave at Highgate. The operation seemed successful. For twelve days his family were sanguine as to his recovery, but on the thirteenth his strength failed; internal hæmorrhage set in; he complained of inability to breathe. His wife said, "Bear up; dont faint." He briefly replied, "I can't; " and when

she added, " Cheer up, for Jesus is with us," he looked up with an expression of ineffable serenity, the calm of heaven on his face, and sweetly fell asleep in Jesus. So lived and died your beloved friend and former pastor. He is gone to that world where there is no more death, neither sorrow nor sigling, nor any more pain; for the former things are done away. "I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth; yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours, and their works do follow them." And now to many of you he, though dead, now speaketh. His living voice pleaded with you in vain; will you resist the voice that speaks to you from his tomb? "I preached to you of Christ, but you are still without Christ: turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die? There is no other name under heaven given amongst men whereby ye can be saved. Oh, look to Him and live! Oh, let the burning wish of my heart be yet accomplished, that by all means I may save some."

Pages for our Young Friends.

A STORY OF THE BROAD WAY AND THE NARROW WAY. WRITTEN AFTER THE SIMILITUDE OF A DREAM.

PART I.

By the Beb. Palmer Law.

ONE Sunday night, wearied with the labours of the day, I retired to rest, and soon falling asleep, I dreamed a dream. I thought that I was on the King's highway, sauntering along, looking now at a fountain, whose waters bubbled up at my feet, and then flowed onwards, ever widening as they went, dispensing gladness, and beauty,

and fertility, through their whole journey, to the far-off ocean. Then I thought, that the trees and flowers bade me welcome, whilst nature spread a carpet of living green on either side. of the road.

Whilst thus musing, my attention was arrested by the galloping of a horse, which came by at a most furious rate. My alarm was increased when on turning round, I saw a lad upon its

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