throw out beautiful thoughts in the most apt and expressive language. His views were free, and his tastes catholic. Naturally his mind was highly speculative, and nothing at times delighted him more than the thoughts that wander through eternity;' but from his warm sympathy with man, and his regard for everything that tended to his benefit and improvement, this tendency had been checked, and latterly he valued authors and men according to the direct practical value of their works. At one time he would say, 'We want such preaching as Flavel's for the common people-plain, yet rich in evangelical sentiment.' There were many of the features of Methodism which he disapproved, and many of Wesley's sentiments which he did not hold with; but he venerated Wesley as, perhaps, England's greatest benefactor, the great missionary to the then neglected people, and one who occupies a very high place in heaven. He rejoiced in the course of Mr. Spurgeon; and though, through want of organic endowments, and from his peculiar order of mind, he himself could have no power as a speaker, there was nothing he more admired in others than this power well cultivated and applied.

"His views of the prospects of our race were gloomy. While doing his utmost for the dissemination of truth at home and abroad, he believed that some great change in the present order of things must take place before the world can be Christianised. Like Foster, he regarded some divine interposition of a very special kind as necessary. He thought that the conversion of the Jews, after their return to Palestine, would be the occasion. I often ventured to object to the notion of the Jews' return, but he was confirmed in these viewsnothing could shake him.

"His own piety was of the most cheerful kind. He never had a doubt of his own safety and his personal acceptance with God."

Cheerfulness, indeed, was a peculiar element of his religious experience. No doubt his sensitive affections gave peculiar poignancy to all that was trying in his lot; and there were moments when "he feared, as he entered the cloud" of some new calamity, but his faith soon shone out with triumphant brightness, and the gloom was gone. "Blessed be the Redeemer," he would say, "loved and adored be his name for what he has done for me.' To a friend who had written to comfort him in one of his darkest afflictions, he afterwards said, "Your letters would have comforted me had I needed comfort; but I really had a fulness of consolation to which nothing could be added by mortal, howeyer tender and pious."

In the spring of 1856, it was too plain to all around him that his frail frame could hold out but a very little longer. His life now seemed yet loftier, and through his speech and manner there breathed the fragrance of a yet more heavenly spirit. "Drawing near to the gates of the city he had a more perfect view thereof." He arranged and labelled his papers, "set his house in order," and waited for the summons "to stand before the King." During this waiting time he wrote with difficulty part of a letter to a friend, and the following words extracted from it were the last his pencil ever traced :

"During the brief remainder of our life, becoming more religiously precious as it approaches its conclusion, may our God and Saviour preserve us from the calamity of living in vain. Let us labour and aspire to make the last stage of our pilgrimage more worthy of our great prospects in the world to come. How soon to us will it lose this mysterious and awful name, and be our present world! I trust, in our compassionate Redeemer, that we have nothing to fear in that change of worlds. If we are living in his service and friendship we are prepared to go, and may be delighted to go to the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, whenever the voice of our Lord shall call us.

The 7th of May, only a few days after this was written, was his last day on earth. 66 It will soon be over," said he; "I have now no power to carry out a thought-I can only ejaculate a prayer-I can do nothing for my soul-or for eternity-that is done." Soon after this he fell into a soft sleep. With a touch so gentle, that the bystanders could not detect it, Death, like the angel of the Lord, smote the sleeping disciple, and in a moment unknown the chains were broken, and the spirit was free!

Dr. Johnson most beautifully remarks, that "when a friend is carried to his grave, we at once find excuses for every weakness, and palliations of every fault; we recollect a thousand endearments which before glided off our minds without impression, a thousand favours unrepaid, a thousand duties unper

'formed, and wish, vainly wish, for his return; not so much that we may receive, as that we may bestow happiness, and recompense that kindness which before we never understood." Even Mr. Rhodes during his life was unappreciated by many of those whom he benefited. To a diseased eye, the lustre of the sun itself, instead of being a cheering light, is an offensive glare; and to diseased moral natures, the beauty of holiness in others is felt to be only a reproachful and exasperating thing; and thus there were some within the circle of his influence who ever tried to defeat his plans and blight his good name. In case after case, however, enmity was melted into love or shamed into silence, and at last only one opponent remained. On the day of the funeral even this one joined the long train of mourners, and went weeping with them to the grave.

The Rev. Richard Allnutt, vicar of Damerham, preached a sermon on the occasion, "esteeming it a privilege," as he declared, "if he could say anything to enhance and perpetuate the respect entertained for this excellent servant of God by every parishioner." The text selected was, "Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." This sermon was printed, and is not only an interesting memorial of departed worth, but of living catholicity.

This notice of Mr. Rhodes would be unfair and incomplete without a closing tribute of respect to the beloved companion of his days, whose name should always be remembered in connection with his own. She was honoured by God in being permitted, in a wonderful degree, to aid his labours and prolong his life. Like him in spirit, she was also like him in afflicted experiences. After his death, she removed to Devizes, and the victim of a torturing malady survived until October 25th, 1857. Some glimpse of her mental character, and also a bright indication of her faith, may be seen in the following lines, dictated from the very rack of mortal anguish a little before her departure:

"Lord, I approach thine awful throne,

A sinner saved by grace alone;

I dare present no other plea,

But that the Saviour died for me.

"I trust his love, so free, so great,
His pity for our fallen state,
His power so boundless to redeem
The feeble saint that trusts in him.

Pity my weak, my dying powers,
Shed o'er my heart the sacred showers

Of thy blest Spirit; till I rise

To high communion in the skies.
"Withhold not, Lord, the grace I plead,
Withhold not, Lord, the light I need;
Pour through my soul thy sacred rays,
And fill my fading life with praise.
"Give me a glimpse of sacred light,
A vision of the Infinite,

That shall light up my sinking frame,
And bring fresh honours to thy name."

Some of the disciples of Jesus content themselves with doing little in the service of their Lord because they are poor, others because they are weak, others because they dwell in the Meshech of some dreary and uncongenial sphere. Some who wear his name are useless on account of certain slight and almost imaginary ailments,-"the subtle and elegant agonies, the fine disquietudes of a gossamer frame." Others, through his grace, are doing what they can, and mourning that they can do no more. Others are out of heart because they appear to labour in vain. All may derive a lesson from this simple story. Unprofitable servants may well burn with confusion, and begin to cry, 66 Lord, what wilt thou have me to do!" while the weakest, the poorest, and the most sequestered workers in the great cause may see that in reality they are frequently most truly advancing it, that they are the men whom "the King delighteth to honour;" and that although they are martyrs, "dying daily," they are like the martyrs of old, shaking the powers of darkness by 'the irresistible might of weakness." If we derive all our motivepower from the cross, and all our inspiration from the Spirit of Jesus, and if we, forgetting ourselves, learn to say, "For us to live is Christ," his strength will be made perfect in our weakness, and our very infirmities will be turned into the means of showing forth his praise.

66

Camberwell.

CHARLES STANFORD.

THE ASSOCIATIONS.

LAST year we entered very fully into the statistical returns of the various Associations, as furnished by the tables affixed to the Circular Letters. We propose this year to present in the briefest possible form these numerical results, and to give extracts from the letters as copiously as our space will admit.

THE NORTHAMPTONSHIRE ASSOCIATION gives returns from 42 churches, the number baptized is 118, the clear increase on the year 56. Brethren Cox, Robinson (of Cambridge), and J. T. Brown preached. The Circular Letter on "The Relations and Duties of the Church to the Congregation," was read by the Rev. JAS. MURSELL, of Kettering. The following are extracts from it :

THE OFFICE OF THE CHURCH.

not

Christ in his own measure and sphere, the mandate of the ascending Redeemer presses with all its weight of obligation, "go ye, and preach the gospel to every creature." The impulse, instinctive and irrepressible, prompted by the holy joy of personal reconciliation with God, should be that whose utterance marks the dawn of returning hope and peace in the soul of the royal penitent, "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free Spirit; then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto

thee."

CHRISTIAN BENEVOLENCE BEGINS AT

HOME.

Such considerations may be beneath the lofty notice of that self-vaunted philanthropy which talks so much that it has no time for action;-whose sympathies are so diffusive that no one ever feels them,

"like a circle on the water,

Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself
Till, by broad spreading, it disperse to nought;"

We might remind you of the ulterior purpose of the Redeemer in the institution of his church. That church was intended by its divine Founder to be a self-contained, exclusive corporation, holding the blessings of salvation by some charter of monopoly for its own especial enjoyment; but to be a band of consecrated heralds and anointed almoners publishing the glorious tidings, and dispensing the rich provision of God's free redemption to all the needy and abject sons of men. It was never designed, in the vigorous phrase of a living preacher, "to be a mere cabinet of saved souls;" but to be itself the grand instrument, in the hand of the Holy Spirit, for saving the souls of others. Its purpose is to diffuse, not to imprison, the light of truth;-not to detain the water of life uselessly pent up as in an idle reservoir, but to lead it forth in fresh and flowing streams, which shall clothe with spiritual verdure and fertility the arid wastes of this sin-blighted world. The attitude it presents, which overlooks the near in its anxiety the appeal it addresses to those without, to reach the distant, and neglects the should be that of the great Hebrew law- individual in its ambition to embrace the giver when, casting his eye over the out- mass;-which contrives at once to gratify stretched encampment of the chosen people, its emotions of benevolence, and to save and pointing in the direction of the itself the expense of effort or the shock of promised land, he turned to the friend who disgust, by sitting at home to weep over was about to leave them and said, "We afflictions which it can never assuage, while are journeying to the place of which the it leaves the tear undried upon the cheek, Lord said, I will give it you; come thou and the wound untended in the heart of with us, and we will do thee good, for the sorrow close by its own door. This, howLord hath spoken good concerning Israel." ever, we scarce need say is not Christian And this great purpose of the existence of sympathy, but a sickly and romantic sentithe church is to be accomplished, not mentalism, forging the name and aping the merely by its public exercise-the "calling mien of that modest and benignant grace. of assemblies," the "solemn meeting," the The compassion which the gospel inspires, stated and official proclamation of the while it aims to reduce to practice the gospel;-but by the diligent and prayerful largest visions of these philanthropic labour of the individual members of the dreamers, seeks to accomplish that object church. It is the activity of individuals by caring for those cases of personal need, which makes up the efficiency of the body. and seizing those opportunities of doing Every Christian should feel himself person- good on the smaller scale which they, in ally summoned to this work of the Lord. their sublime comprehensiveness, despise Not upon the church in some indefinite and neglect. It will not be satisfied, corporate capacity,-not alone upon those indeed, till it has shed its blessings over who are specially set apart to the ministry the whole family of man; but it advances of the word, but upon each servant of to that consummation by endeavouring to

bless the individuals of which that family is composed. Its circumference is the orb of the round world, but the centre from which it works is home. Like every other element, in short, of that character which the gospel is designed to produce in him who receives it, true Christian sympathy finds its perfect model, its loftiest expression, in Him who, while his heart was set upon the work and his soul bowed down beneath the burden of a world's redemption, had yet a ready ear for the cry of the blind beggar by the wayside, a healing word for him who had lingered long and vainly by the pool of Bethesda, a tear of tenderest pity, and a miracle of restoring power for those who wept over a brother's grave.

THE WORD IN SEASON.

But usually such an apprehension will prove an utterly groundless one. The hearts of those to whom you speak, as well as your own, are in the hand of God, “as the rivers of water." When Ananias was bidden to repair to the house of Judas, and inquire there for Saul of Tarsus, he shrank from the task of bearing even the message of God's love to one whom he had known only as the furious persecutor of the saints. But the same Saviour who gave this commission to his servant, had at the same time prepared the heart of the suppliant penitent as he sat in his darkened solitude, to receive his visit. And rely upon it, brethren, that, though he interpose not after the same miraculous sort, what he did for Ananias in respect to Saul, he can and will do for his faithful servants still. Let not the sense of inability for the And even if speech should fail you, either required duty deter you from the attempt from diffidence or want of opportunity, the A single sentence spoken in pen can supply its lack of service, and will weakness and trembling, but in the spirit often do the work more effectually even of real solicitude, has often reached the than speech itself. There are many to heart that has remained impervious to the whom you could write though you could most carefully directed appeals of the not speak to them, and many who would pulpit. Remember, your hope of success feel free to respond to such a mode of comlies not in the intrinsic weight of the words munication whose lips would refuse to your faltering lips may utter, but in the reply to an oral appeal. And the silent but power of that Spirit who can make the eloquent message of your pen may win its feeblest instrument mighty to the fulfil-way where the word of the lip might fail ment of his own purposes of grace. And to gain acceptance. The word is spoken do not hesitate from the fear that your counsels and appeals may meet with rude rejection and repulse. It may perchance be so, but even then an approving conscience will attest that you have not been wanting in the performance of your part.

we urge.

and then passes away, but the letter abides, and, though cast aside perhaps for a time, may be taken up again in some season of silence and seclusion, when, finding the heart prepared to receive it, it may work the result which at first it failed to effect.

THE BRISTOL ASSOCIATION reports the operations of 44 churches, containing 5,965 members, who have received by baptism during the year 284 additions, giving a clear increase of 139. The preachers were Brethren Fuller, Sprigg, Stalker, and Manning. The Rev. H. ANDERSON, of Bratton, read the Circular Letter on "Church Membership: its Privileges and Obligations."

THE DESIRE FOR THE FELLOWSHIP OF

THE CHURCH.

Church membership, though entered into by man's free choice, is of Divine appointment. It meets a want that is early felt by the young Christian. When his heart is first pierced by a sense of his sin he retires like the stricken deer to bleed alone. He mourns apart. He weeps in

instinct.

secret places. He dreads the intrusion of the stranger upon his heart's own bitter- "Hinder me not, ye much-loved saints, ness. But soon as he believes the record For I must go with you." that God hath given us eternal life, and And He who knoweth our frame and pities this life is in His Son, he gives vent to the with a father's love those that fear Him, joy of faith by calling on his fellow-believers has devised means to supply this want, to to rejoice with him. "Come and hear, all gratify this desire. This he has done by ye that fear God, and I will declare what forming them into groups of fellow-travellers He hath done for my soul." "O magnify on their way to the General Assembly the Lord with me, let us exalt his name above,-that, walking hand in hand as together." He draws toward those who heirs together of the grace of life, they

might be helpers of each other's faith and
joy, mutually receiving, in no mercenary
spirit, a full equivalent for all that they
impart. As our new life in Christ enlarges
and purifies the heart, inspiring those
virtues which at once adorn and bless the
social circle, so the social principle, in its
cultivation, provides a field for the exercise
of all the graces of a Christian life.

THE DUTIES OF MEMBERS OF THE
CHURCH TO THEIR PASTORS.

have no intention to daunt or depress your pastor's mind, but many things tend to produce that effect of which you may be unconscious till you apply the golden rule and place yourselves in their stead. Wait on their ministry,-despise not their teachings,-turn not away sullenly from their reproofs,-pray for them, but not at them, -put a generous confidence in their sympathy, tell them your sorrows,-make them acquainted with your difficulties,make them also partakers of your joys,Your obligation to them, brethren, is let them become familiar with your housesimply to give them the fullest and freest holds, and feel that they are no strangers opportunity of discharging their obligations | there,—meet them not with cold respect to you; to afford them the means of instead of hearty kindness,-never speak making full proof of their ministry. "See disrespectfully of them to others, especially that they be among you without fear." before your children,-if you have not By unkindness or neglect you may frustrate called the elders of the church, wonder not all the designed blessings of the ministry that they come not immediately to your among you. Churches constituted as yours sick bed-they are not omniscient,-let are have been reproached by the advocates them not lie under the fear of any want of for national establishments with having love or sympathy on your part,-raise pastors who, being dependent on them for them, if possible, above the fear of want,— support, live under constant fear of giving let the support which the Lord has offence. This reproach, by your conduct, ordained, which the Spirit has enjoined, you may either confirm or confute. It is and which proverbial wisdom has dictated, only by unreserved confidence you can be measured out with a grateful heart and place them above the ensnaring influence generous hand. By your united conflict of the fear of man. They are subject to with the powers of darkness within, and like passions and influenced by like motives with the kingdom of Satan without, by with yourselves; and though by grace your enjoyment of the ordinances of sufficient they may not shrink from duty Christ, and profit from the ministry of or faint under trial, you cannot render that His word, see that your pastors "be among duty more irksome or that trial more you without fear," and "show ye before all severe without suffering correspondingly the churches this proof of your love and of in your fellowship as a church. You can our boasting on your behalf."

THE BERKS AND WEST MIDDLESEX ASSOCIATION give reports from 11 churches, with a total of 1,002 members. The additions are 70, the clear increase 42. The Association Sermon was by the Rev. J. Aldis. The Circular Letter by the Rev. J. DREW on "The American Revival." It was objected to by the Rev. S. Edgar, on the ground that the Revival is not ameliorating the condition of the coloured population, either enslaved or free. It was, however, accepted "with thanks" by the Association.

THE PROMISING CHARACTER OF THE

MOVEMENT.

So far as the proximate causes of this movement have been ascertained, they seem to augur well for its continuance and consequences. These appear to have been a deep sense of self-abasement amongst church members on account of the avarice and worldliness which have been lying like a nightmare on the religion of America for many years; an earnest spirit of prayer, exhibiting itself in frequent and immense gatherings of Christian persons for the purpose of united supplication to God, great tenderness and compassion for souls living and perishing in their sins, and deep solemn attention to the Word of God as the announcement of pardon to the guilty, and as the law of life and duty to those

who have obtained the pardon of their iniquities. The immediate antecedent of these manifestations was the commercial panic which so recently passed over most of the cities of the union, by which scores of wealthy families have been stripped of all their comforts, and precipitated into the depths of poverty, and by the influence of which God has been teaching the people the uncertainty of all earthly possessions, the fallaciousness of the hopes which have no better foundation than these, and the baseness and turpitude of those passions which the worship of mammon brings into existence and fosters. So far as the churches are concerned, then, this revival seems to have sprung out of repentance, and the humiliation of heart in the sight of God which is an unfailing element and effect of repentance.