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on The Death of the Princess Charlotte. All England mourned the sudden death of that estimable lady; and the Methodist people throughout the land strongly expressed their loyalty.

Mr. Naylor's labours in York were not productive of the same spiritual results as had encouraged him in almost every former Circuit. A decrease in the number of members, for the first time, gave him much anxiety. Three contested parliamentary elections took place during his term in York, and political excitement alienated friends, divided families, and the love of many waxed cold. The congregations were undiminished, and he received many expressions of esteem, but he retired from the Circuit depressed.

At the Conference of 1820, when the admirable Digest of Pastoral Discipline, known as the Liverpool Minutes was adopted, he was appointed to Liverpool, and entered upon his work with the full determination to make these 'Minutes' the rule of his daily conduct. And, by the grace of God, he kept to it; and on leaving the Circuit in 1823 was able to write as follows:

'Aug. 26th.-Last night I closed my labours in this Circuit by preaching in Leeds Street Chapel, where I have frequently seen the mighty power of God displayed. After preaching, the Bands met, and God was indeed present. I felt much in parting with this Society, composed of persons generally poor, but rich in grace and in the fruits of righteousness. During the three years now closing, kind friends and good congregations have encouraged us; but there have been fluctuations and instability to try us. In three years we have admitted one thousand five hundred persons into Society, and yet we leave only four hundred and fifty more than we found.'

Mr. Naylor laboured hard in Liverpool, frequently preaching at five o'clock in the morning, and was most industrious in visiting the flock from house to house; he promoted Band-meetings and Prayer-meetings, and gave special attention to the young, by whom he was greatly beloved.

Mr. Naylor served the cause of God and Methodism not a little by his judicious activity during many years, in introducing suitable young men into the Ministry. The late Rev. J. P. Haswell, one of his colleagues in York, was brought out by his means. In Liverpool he found the late Rev. Charles Cheetham and the Rev. John Boyd, whose labours as a Missionary in Newfoundland were greatly owned of God. Mr. Naylor stated that he was directed to the Rev. C. Cheetham by a remarkable dream; and the beautiful course of thirty-four years' usefulness which he accomplished, showed that he was called of God.

The following extract from his note-book describes his progress and experience :

'Sept. 1st, 1823.-Yesterday I began my labours in Macclesfield. £72 were collected for the Sunday-schools. The situation of the house I am to live in is gloomy and damp, but the Lord can preserve us in health. The people appear to be devoted to the work of God, and I trust we shall see good days. O Lord, send prosperity! without this nothing can satisfy me, but with this other things will be all right. Lord, I live not for pleasant houses and grand furniture, but to be useful in Thy Church. O make me more abundantly so.'

At the Conference of 1824 he was appointed for the first time Chairman

of a District; and during the following thirty-eight years his Circuit appointments almost invariably carried with them the same honour, except during his residence in London. Brunswick Chapel, Macclesfield, was erected during his Superintendency, a third Circuit Minister was called out, and one hundred and fifty members were added to the Societies.

(To be concluded.)

TEXTS FOR THE TIMES:

IV. RESTRAINTS AND INCENTIVES OF THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING:

BY THE REV. JOHN BURTON.

The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.'-TITUS II. 11–13.

THE Christian Salvation is not merely a state into which men are entered; it is a life into which they are formed. It creates moral habits, not less than it alters moral conditions. It is a system of morals, quite as distinctively as it is a system of mercy. It teaches us to deny ungodliness, and to live soberly, and righteously, and godly, in this present world, etc.

Here then are two things:

First, What the Christian System teaches.

Second, What it anticipates.

I. What it teaches: 'Denying ungodliness and worldly lusts.'

1. Two lines of divergent but mutually illustrative thought part off from this teaching: the one, putting its interdict on all wrong; the other, making obligatory the right.

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'Ungodliness' is a generic term, and denotes whatever is out of harmony with God. Whatever thing or thought or act contravenes the Divine will, runs counter to His purpose, and so conflicts with the purity of His nature, comes under this interdict of Grace.

'Worldly lusts' specialize into formal activities the ungodliness that goes before. They deal with the several classes of desires, affections, appetites; the emotional instincts and natural proclivities, all of which, innocent in their normal action, are forbidden in their abuse. Every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving.' The ten thousand woes of intemperance are the penalty written in fire, not on the appetites, but on their prostitution. They are monuments of retributive

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justice set amidst the ruins of Excess. The senses are not traps to ensnare man to his ruin: they are among costliest benefactions of his Creator, and they all connect with a train of sensibilities ennobling in themselves; but they teach moderation; they

necessitate self-control; and they do this under the severest self-inflicted penalties. They are safe only while they are under restraint.

Now this Christian teaching undertakes to govern the whole man-all the inward, where the passionate is engendered; and all the outward, where it is expressed. It makes goodness the highest greatness, and duty the noblest right. It sets us down in a world full of incentives to evil-pleasurable, passionate, ambitious; and, appealing to our higher nature as men, it says: 'Come out from among them, and be ye separate ......touch not the unclean thing.' There are tendencies within you-temperately indulge them. There are possibilities without-sternly withstand them. There are a thousand things cropping up in the usages of life, in its pleasures, places, habits, friendships: 'good for food,' and 'pleasant to the eyes,' and to be desired to make one wise': all of which must be touched with caution, and tasted with moderation, and some that must be utterly ignored. The Christian teaching is one of restraint. It puts its imperative interdict upon all lawless passion.

2. What this grace of God positively enjoins. Having fenced us off from the forbidden, it next teaches how we are to practise. We are to 'live soberly, righteously, and godly.'

'Sobriety' is corporeal piety. It is the setting up of a Divine order in the material polity: the self-government, the regulative principle, by which we balance between what is possible and what is right in sensuous indulgence. 'Righteousness' is to the mind what sobriety is to the body; it is intellectual piety, the presence of a Divine order in the government of the spiritual nature. 'Godliness' is the man in his relation to God. It puts the individual life under the management-the supreme disposal of God, making it a course of simple, voluntary obedience to the majesty of one Supreme Will.

The first of these requirements teaches the sanctity of personal life-the reverence we owe to ourselves. The Christian system assumes, and is founded upon, the inherent sanctity of human nature as the creature of God. It makes the true dignity of a man to consist not in his surroundings, but in himself: not in his wealth or station or outward grandeur, but in what he is. No matter how poor a man may be, how depressed, or downtrodden, or selfdegraded, the essential humanity of the man makes him great in the sight of God. Fires are burning there which no debasement can extinguish. A bond is held by that man on God and the endless future that no madness of crime, and no neglect of our human sympathies, can sever. The inward meanness is not concealed by the outward glamour; the transcendent dignity is not abridged by the apparent meanness. 'In the image of God' made He him. The Christian teaching always seizes on this individuality of man as the object of its solicitude. It knows nothing of nations, of communities, of masses, but through the individual man : and it seeks to deal with each one in the separate dignity, and equal sanctity, and unending awfulness of being which belong to him as a man, created after the similitude of God.' Hence Redemption, with its mystery of Incarnation; Regeneration, with its supernatural agency; the 'Eternal Judgment,' with its personal issues, are so many Divinely affixed

signatures to the worth of a man: and this worth, of which each one of us is the custodian, we are to reverence only less than we reverence its adorable Creator.

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The second branch of this teaching relates to the treatment of our fellowThis rectitude of our inward conviction, this reverence we owe to our own nature, is to declare itself in the humanity of our acts. We are to deal kindly, truthfully, righteously with our fellow-men; to respect each claim that a common brotherhood and community of interest make upon our time, our money, our service; keeping always the great law at its steady balance'All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.' This injunction sweeps the entire circle of social morality. It makes a wrong done to a brother man not a damage to him alone, but a loss to ourselves. It carries over a service done to him not to his benefit only, but also to our own. Finally, it makes impossible all communion and friendly relations with God while practising unrighteousness to our fellow-men.

Godliness expresses in a single word all that is embraced in Religiongoodness, realness, moral purity, obedience to God founded on the regeneration of the man. It is the steady drift, the constant set of the current in which the life of the soul flows outward to God. It is not thought, however wisely regulated; nor feeling, however chastely attempered; nor the impulse of a momentary inspiration, however uplifting; but a habit, the polarity of the soul in the totality of its being, as that is held and interfused by the indwelling Life of God. It is a sentiment of adoring reverence, of loving complacency, abiding in and toning the mind. And this lofty self-denial, this pure morality and this spiritual godliness, the Christian system has to teach.

II. The grace of God in what it anticipates: Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.'

This is Christianity as it enforces its lessons in the sanction of its motives. It secures the present as it anticipates and foreshadows the future. It teaches us to look for Christ's coming.

1. The future of man is the latent postulate of his present existence. Whether he is the product of a special creation, or is derived from some accidental origin: an educated gorilla or the fractured image of a God-the fact that man now exists determines the possibility that he may continue to exist hereafter. The possibility of the continued existence of a being like man is a fore-gleam of its probability. Revelation makes that indubitable which as a conjecture seemed possible and probable. Whatever value we may attach to the notion that the belief in such a state comes naturally to man; that a longing after the eternal future is in some way a part of the instinctive furniture with which he comes into being, the definite conception of that state, and the formal proof of it, belong to the Christian Revelation.

A man may be so immersed in the besotments of sense, so folded up in the hard enswathements of the seen and temporal, that the inward whisper may fail

to make itself heard. He may deny its existence altogether as a phantasy. His reason holds no premises, his conscience no suspicions, analogy has no prophesyings, out of which to formulate the induction of any grand departure out of the present into some nobler future. His mental chronometry is only a cunning piece of clockwork, stopping utterly at death. In such a case, any attempt to embody the inward premonition as a basis of faith, or to make a future state yield to him a revelation out of its vacant silence, may be pronounced, as it has been pronounced and is being pronounced, an incredible dream.

But the Incarnation of the Son of God in human form, His dwelling among men, His teaching, His death upon the Cross, His resurrection from the grave, His session on the throne, and the mystery that overhangs His coming again to judgment, whatever else they may teach, they certainly do not teach that the life we live on the earth is a self-completed cycle. It is not a finished drama as to either its purpose, possibility or results. The evidence is in fact all the other way. Redemption is the climacteric fact in the history of Time, and it logically necessitates eternity as its sequel. It joins on by a law of absolute and predetermined continuity the yonder beginning of man's existence to the fraction of the finished present, or it fractures the whole plan of his history into a stupendous confusion. Here we see through a glass darkly'; and what we do see is but for a moment, and with aching eye and distorted vision. 'Here we know only in part'; a fragment of knowledge washed up from the great sea of things is all that the greatest minds can attain, while the sea itself, with its unfathomed treasures, is all unexplored. The life of nearly all cultured men seems to snap asunder midway between its attainments and its possibilities. Its purposes are broken off.'

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Hence the prophetic eye with which the trained intellect scans the dark scroll of the future. The transition comes with the terminus; a new series commences with the premature finish of the old. As the Ascension comes after the Resurrection, and the Enthronement after the Ascension, so in the pause which death creates in the career of man: it is the first instalment of an unaccomplished whole. It cuts off the mortal as a rudimentary germ out of which a continuity of existence, in a still more advanced form, is everlastingly to unfold itself. We look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body.'

2. The present life of man determines the character of his future. It is the moral seed-plot and training ground out of which the future gets its quality. If, as we have seen, the present life is not itself an end, but only a means conditioning to an end, then a godly life is the only rational way in which a man can work to that end. All other methods must be as futile as they are fatal. So the grace of God teaches, that while we look for the appearing of the Great God, we are to make our anticipation a practice. We are to 'live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world.'

In a purely innocent state, such as heaven presumably is, no aids to virtue

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