have always borne a good character with one exception-having that child. I shall admit you to the Holy Communion. Good morning, Sarah; I am rather in a hurry this morning.'

"In this hamlet we have a weekly cottage service. My superintendent preaches one week and I the other. The people told me the other day that the curate had been to see them, and said he was determined that his people (i. e., the Church people) should not go to these meetings. However, we do not fear clerical power much in these parts, and with Paul we can say that these things turn out for the furtherance of the Gospel. The room last evening

(27th instant) was so full that some of the people had great difficulty in finding

even standing room. Text, Mat. xxv. 10, 'And the door was shut.' Tears rolled down the cheeks of several, and all seemed very attentive. Some were there who had never been present before. May much good result from these services."

The foregoing reports will serve to show, to some extent, the varied and important labours which are undertaken by the lay evangelists. The Committee would be glad to multiply this agency, so that those districts of the country where spiritual destitution is alarmingly prevalent may be supplied with the Gospel of Christ. Urgent applications for the appointment of evangelists are being constantly made, but cannot be taken up for want of funds.

MR. SLATE was born in London, on the 10th of July, 1787. His parents were pious, so that he had all the advantages of early religious training. They gave him a good school education, and when he was fourteen years of age apprenticed him to his brother-in-law to be brought up to business. In early life he gave decided indications of love to the Saviour, and in his seventeenth year was received into the Church worshipping in Founders' Hall, then under the pastoral care of the Rev. John Thomas. In the same year he became a Sundayschool teacher in connection with the London Itinerant Society, and shortly after preached for the first time at Ealing, Middlesex, to an assembly of about forty persons. Giving in various ways clear evidence of holy zeal and capability for public usefulness, he was encouraged to think of the Christian ministry. In the year 1805 he withdrew from business, and entered Hoxton Academy, where he remained

until June, 1809, passing through the usual curriculum of study, with satisfaction to his tutors, and great advantage to himself. In the same year he was invited to become the pastor of the Independent Church worshipping in Stand Lane Chapel, near Manchester, and was ordained there on April 19th, 1810. About a month after his ordination he was married at Lewis Lane, Kent, to Miss Ann Watkins, with whom he had a happy union for forty-one years. She died in January, 1851, and of her the sorrowing husband said: “I thank God for her; though she had many trials and afflictions she was a great blessing to me as a man, and a Christian minister."

Mr. Slate laboured at Stand with considerable success for a period of seventeen years. The Church and congregation were largely increased, Sunday-schools were established, and new buildings erected to meet their requirements. By his personal labours

he did much to spread the Gospel in many of the towns and villages around. On the first Sunday of September, 1826, he preached his farewell sermon to the people at Stand, having received and accepted an invitation to the pastorate of the Church worshipping in Grimshaw Street Chapel, Preston. Here he laboured faithfully and usefully for thirty-five years, until increasing age and failing health compelled him to resign his office and retire. Much progress was made, and much good done by God's blessing on his ministry. Large and handsome schoolrooms were erected, and towards the close of his pastorate the old chapel gave place to a new and handsome sanctuary, both attractive and commodious. This work Mr. Slate looked upon in some sense as the crowning labour of his life; and the great esteem in which he was held brought contributions towards the new chapel from all parts of Lancashire, and from regions beyond.

Although he was a decided and unflinching Nonconformist, yet he loved all who loved his Master and Lord, and was ready to co-operate with all for the promotion of the Redeemer's kingdom, or the social and moral elevation of his fellow men. For many years he was the efficient secretary of the local auxiliary to the Religious Tract Society, and the catholicity of the British and Foreign Bible Society was ever dear to him. He was a most amiable, loving, and kindly man, and speedily gained a place not only in the respect but the affection of all who were brought much into contact with him. In all movements for the public good carried on in the town, he was ever ready to afford his active aid. Mr. Slate was a faithful. intelligent, and useful preacher of the gospel. He did not do much in the way of authorship. At the request of his ministerial brethren, made at the annual meeting of the Lancashire Congregational Union, in 1836, he prepared a history of the rise and progress

of that important county association, which was published in 1840. He also wrote a lengthened and valuable memoir of the Rev. Oliver Heywood, comprising upwards of 350 octavo pages, and prefixed to the five-volume edition of the whole works of that eminent Nonconformist divine.

On Mr. Slate's retirement from the active duties of the pastoral office, a public tea meeting was held in Preston, at which his old friend, George Hadfield, Esq., M.P., presided, and presented a beautifully-illuminated address to the aged minister, with a purse containing nearly £400, cheerfully subscribed by friends in the town, and throughout Lancashire, and elsewhere, as a token of their high estimate of his Christian worth, and of his holy, useful, and consistent life. After resigning his pastorate, he continued occasionally to supply the pulpits of the churches around; and up to the very last found pleasure in visiting the afflicted, and ministering consolation and counsel to the destitute and suffering. It had been an engagement between him and his old friend, the Rev. J. Dyson, of Farnworth, that when one of them died the survivor should conduct the funeral service, or see to the interment of the remains. Mr. Dyson was summoned first to his rest; and on the 5th December last Mr. Slate went to Farnworth to fulfil the engagement which had thus been made. Either during the journey or at the funeral he caught cold, and on his return home his illness assumed a serious form. His end was near. Even amidst much weakness and suffering his unvarying courtesy and unselfish care for others were remarkable; and his soul rested triumphantly, with a calm, firm trust in the promises of his God and Saviour. He sank gradually, and early on Tuesday morning, December 10th, "he fell asleep." It may be mentioned as a significant fact, illustrating the affectionate esteem in which he was held, that during his last illness public

that one loved Name should be evil spoken of, or offence given to the meanest subject of his Master's kingdom. He is willing not only to be defrauded of the honour of his labours, and superseded in the affections of his converts, but to be absolutely nothing, provided he can get men to make neither him nor others the rivals of his Master in single-minded admiration of the only Excellence, he wishes them to think "Paul nothing, and Apollos and Cephas nothing, but ministers by whom they believed." In a word, this single feeling was the pulse of his whole life; as no other man ever did, he lived in selfoblivion, and might say with truth, "To me to live is Christ." No matter what his theme, he is sure to come back to Him as the centre of every thought and affection. Like the star which " opens the day," and "shuts the night," he is never seen more than a few degrees from the luminary about which he revolves, and like that too, is for the most part absolutely lost in its beams.-Henry Rogers.

How CHRIST GIVES VALUE TO THE VILE. By going to the lowest stratum of human nature Christ gave a new idea of the value of man. He built a kingdom out of the refuse of society. To compare small things with great, it has been pointed out by Lord Macaulay that in an English cathedral there is an exquisite stained window which was made by an apprentice out of the pieces of glass which had been rejected by his master, and it was so far superior to every other in the Church that, according to tradition, the envious artist killed himself with vexation. All the builders of society had rejected the “sinners," and made the

painted window of the 66 righteous." A new builder came; his plan was original, startling, revolutionary; his eye was upon the condemned material; he made the first last and the last first, and the stone which the builders rejected, he made the head stone of the corner. He always specially cared for the rejected stone. Men had always cared for the great, the beautiful, the righteous; it was left to Christ to care for the sinners. -Ecce Deus.

TACT THE SERVANT OF LOVE.

Love swings on little hinges. It keeps an active little servant to do a good deal of its fine work. The name of that little servant is tact. Tact is nimble-footed and quick-fingered-tact sees without looking -tact has always a good deal of small change on hand-tact carries no heavy weapons, but can do wonders with a sling and a stone-tact never runs its head against a stone wall-tact always finds a sycamore tree up which to climb when things are getting crowded and unmanageable on the level ground-tact has a cunning way of availing itself of a smile or a nod, or a gracious wave of the handtact carries a bunch of curiously-fashioned keys, which can turn all sorts of lockstact plants its monosyllable wisely; for, being a monosyllable itself, it arranges its own order with all the familiarity of friendship-tact (sly, versatile, diving, running, flying tact) governs the great world, yet touches the big baby so coaxingly as to leave the big baby under the impression that it has not been touched at all-tact is the wife's best friend, and the children's best protection.-Springdale Abbey.

two years old. The gipsy, who was in league with a band of robbers, carried the poor little infant to a dark, underground cavern beneath a mountain where they had lived concealed for a long time, and which formed part of a used-up mine. There was no way of entrance into this