been seen to weep; she has been seen to struggle; she has been often heard to express a hope that her change might not be long deferred; but she was never known to murmur or to repine. Every little act of kindness on the part of friends was received by her with sweet and heartfelt thankfulness. In this she set a pattern to all occupants of sick-beds. How different is the case with some! Nothing contents them, they are never satisfied; everything is done wrong. The kind efforts of friends are ever in vain; for discontented looks and murmuring exclamations alone are seen and heard. It is readily admitted that the nerves are differently acted upon in different diseases, and that the irritableness we complain of may be often unavoidable. Still it is not always unavoidable; and if it be the nurse's duty anxiously to minister to the sick, it is equally the patient's duty cheerfully and good humouredly to receive the services rendered. Besides, let it not be forgotten, that whilst a cheerful, contented disposition is so much more pleasant to all around, it is at the same time one of the best aids to recovery. A person of happy temper is likely to recover much sooner than one of a restless, repining, and discontented mind.

3. Her incessant anxiety for the souls of others. This was a veritable feature in her character. Many a powerful and faithful appeal has been listened to in the sick chamber where she lay. Especially when young persons called to visit her would she embrace the opportunity of pleading with them for Christ, and exhorting them to seek an interest in him. She was able on such occasions to refer to herself, and ask, what should she have done without the Saviour? And there is reason to hope that her admonitions and appeals were not made in vain.

As life approached its close, this feeling strengthened within her. She wanted all the

world to love the Saviour, and eagerly was every incident seized upon for this great end. Her friends crowded round her bed, and she exhorted them all to yield themselves to God. As she thus proceeded, her voice became louder and clearer; it was as if the expiring powers of na. ture were re-invigorated for these dying counsels. For one whole hour she continued to declare the power of Christ to save; intermingling her fervent appeals with the most earnest and affecting prayers. At last her breath failed her, she spoke no more; she turned her head, her eyes closed, and without a sigh or struggle she sunk into the arms of Jesus.

Reader,-Are you in health? Defer not the great concern of your soul's salvation. It is too momentous to be trifled with; too precious to be lost unheeded. Your strength and vigour may soon yield to disease and death. In the hour of affliction where will your comfort be? what antidote have you against the "fear of death?" There is but one. It is true religion; genuine piety. The world may furnish opiates, but religion is the only antidote.

Reader,-Are you afflicted? Trust in God. Repose upon Christ. Discard all human devices; all cold formalities; all vain absolutions; all sacramental ceremonies; all pharasaic moralities; all naked creeds and abstract professions. "Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world!" This is your only hope. Lay hold upon it. You may bear affliction then, and by-and-by you shall joyously comprehend its scope and operation. Have you suffered long? Wait God's time. It will be all right. Twenty-two years of heavy affliction is, indeed, a burden here; but even this is soon lost sight of in the enjoyment of the "far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." JOHN H. BARROW.

Benton Park, Rawden, Leeds.

Congregational Union Papers.

INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS.

THE recent Meeting of the Congregational Union, held at Leicester, will be memorable for the number and character of the subjects brought forward, and in part discussed, in the admirable Papers read on the occasion. The nature of the subjects seems to have determined the selection of the writers, which was, in all points, a happy one. The first paper was by Mr. Martin, of Westminster, who, beyond most of his contemporaries of the same years, has earned to himself a good degree as a captivating preacher to the young, and a zealous promoter of Christian education. To him was assigned the wide question of the Sabbath-school, which he has discussed in a clear, animated, and practical manner. Mr. Martin's views of "Separate Services for Children,"-not in schools, but in edifices reared and fitted up for that express purpose,-deserve peculiar notice. The idea has much to recommend it to general adoption in all the more populous districts; but here, as in everything appertaining to the kingdom of God, the present project will be everywhere crippled for want of means. In America somewhat has been attempted, and not without success, in this direction-on the general, not the denominational principle. The erection of such chapels would go far to meet the objections which are made

to Separate Services, on the ground that the children's retention in the school prevents the formation of those early associations on which, in after life, so much depends. As to the importance of Separate Services, if properly conducted, we think the argument in favour of them greatly preponderates; and that what is wanted is, to devise some efficient method of identifying them with public worship. The question is one that—especially in the great towns -merits very serious consideration.

The subject assigned to Mr. Poore, of Manchester, was a continuance of Mr. Martin's. Here, again, Mr. Poore was the very man to speak to a point which, under his auspices, has been so remarkably illustrated; since Mr. Poore is a David Gunn the second all over, for system, vigour, perseverance, and devotion to scholastic projects;-the preacher, the teacher, the pastor, the man of business,-endowed with a vivacity which never flags, an energy indomitable, a zeal quenchless, with his heart in his head, or his head in his heart—a conjunction which forms a character of extraordinary force for a certain kind of action,-the very action which is necessary for the great and noble work required in the practical realizing of the enterprise assigned him for theoretical discussion. For this work he is prodigally gifted, and his ten talents are very worthily laid out in his Master's service. Nor is this all: the sphere so usefully occupied by Mr. Poore is unusually favourable; and he is sustained in his operations within it in a manner such as falls to the lot of very few ministers. Mr. Morris, to mention no others--whose kindly presence and whose magical explosions contributed so much to the interest of the Leicester meetings—is a host in himself. When the master of two Mills and a thousand men becomes a Sunday-school teacher, it is no marvel to find him surrounded by a class of a hundred people. Where squires preach, peasants are always prepared to hear. Mr. Poore is pre-eminently the man required by the sphere and the circumstances; the sphere and the circumstances are pre-eminently those required by the man; and a conjunction of such exact adaptation could hardly fail, instrumentally, of the admirable results which have accrued, and to which the Chairman, the Rev. Thomas Binney, from personal observation, bore his emphatic testimony. These remarks will, we hope, in some measure, prepare our readers for entering on the perusal of Mr. Poore's most able and elaborate paper, which is greatly calculated to do good; since it is, altogether, a very vigorous dissertation, full of point and practical bearing.

reason.

The next step in the series was ascended by the Secretary, the Rev. Algernon Wells, who made choice of a topic equally important and arduous, and who summoned to it all his resources of observation, experience, and The composition was framed on the principle of suggestion, and intended to stimulate public inquiry into the great subject. Mr. Wells sets himself to search into the obstacles which, on the part of the Independents, may be supposed to operate to repel our artizan countrymen. He assumes not only the general existence, but the great force of such obstacles, from the fact, that there is much connected with the system of Independent church polity which must be considered congenial to the political views of the Working Classes; and yet the repulsion is greater than the attraction. While Mr. Wells rightly finds the primary cause of this mournful indifference in the essential condition of human nature, he submits that there might be minor and circumstantial hindrances which render the gospel of Christ—in itself sufficiently distasteful to the carnal mind-still more offensive. The writer is anxious, if such hindrances exist, to find them out, in order to their removal: to this point, therefore, a large portion of his vigorous dissertation is devoted. After viewing the subject in a variety of lights, and ascertaining and collecting the chief points of specified repulsion in our religious ordinances,

operating to sever the Working Classes from us, the Secretary proceeds to inquire specially into the effect, first, of the Middle Class character of the Independent body; secondly, of its necessarily antagonistic position to systems of error; and concludes with a series of profound, wholesome, and practical suggestions, among which there are, nevertheless, some expressions in which the writer seems, to us, to commit the very mistake which he so properly deprecates, when, referring to the danger of self-sufficiency, he says, "Yet ought we not so to depreciate ourselves as may exceed truth, or damp zeal and spirit." The passage we refer to-and which, although but a very small portion of a copious discourse, is of such moment that we cannot pass it over-is the following; and the expressions against which our caveat is entered, are printed in italics :

"Our energies have been so much directed to testify against evil, that the strength and energy have been thus absorbed which ought to have been employed rather in spreading truth, and strengthening, by increasing, our own body. We have seemed more intent on removing unsound systems than in establishing others truly scriptural. No doubt a further evil has accrued to us from our essential antagonism in its effect upon our spirit, which has been far more perceptible to others than to ourselves. The devout, gentle, and calm temper, so gracefully accordant with our holy religion, has with us suffered damage from our controversial calling. It were well if, as a religious class in this country, at the present juncture, we could see ourselves as others see us; if we could quite correctly ascertain how our buildings and devotions, our churches and discourses, look in the public view; how far they excite reverence, attract regard, command respect, or kindle hope in our on-looking countrymen; in particular, whether we are the people towards whom, by preference and sympathy, the working classes would be chiefly drawn, were their present antipathy to all religion removed; and, if not, what in us admits of such change and improvement as might tend to win the hearts, as well as to convince the judgments, of those that have been so long without.'

It is written, "A faithful witness will not lie:" but this is not all. A "faithful witness" must not, will not, suffer his brethren, and especially men of mark, the guides of opinion, to err, without an attempt at their correction. The statement of the First Officer of the Congregational Union, made not only in the presence of the Assembly, but actually directed to itself, will be naturally, necessarily, taken by its enemies as not only true, but as tantamount to a solemn deposition; and, on every opportunity that presents, it will be turned against the denomination. Nor will the evil be confined to enemies: among ourselves there are good and gentle spirits, not a few, who, with the best intentions, will use it in a way never intended by the noble-minded and patriotic man who uttered it, to suppress protest, to stifle testimony, to gag and to fetter the apostles of principle, the advocates of right, the men who are "valiant for the truth upon the earth." The great, the general, the just weight which, in our communion, attaches to the views and opinions of Mr. Wells, render it of the very first importance that he should be always correct, especially on matters affecting the spirit, conduct, and character of the Body. What he says, multitudes will deem it safe to swear. Now, amongst those that "know the man and his communication," his generous effusions, candid in excess, work no evil; but at a distance, and among strangers, it may be otherwise. It so happens, that while "the Prince of Secretaries" is the ablest of reasoners, as well as, when he chooses, the most philosophic of thinkers, he is also a most persuasive orator, and in oratory there is always peril, as in its higher flights and impetuous bursts it generally skirts the realms of fancy and exaggeration. Of this a splendid example is supplied by the Rev. John Angell James, many of whose unsuspecting and well-intentioned

utterances have been ungenerously, unjustly, and maliciously turned against himself, his brethren, and the community he so eminently adorns that which, in his brilliant effusions, was only rhetoric garnishing truth, for the purpose of practical impression, has been taken as logic, and converted into pointed missiles, dipped in poison, and hurled against the Nonconformist body; and our fear is, lest the language of the Secretary should be turned to the same purposes. The wonder is, that the passage was allowed to pass at the Assembly; but, amid the excitement of the moment, it seems to have escaped the notice of the most vigilant auditors; and we are the less surprised at this, forasmuch as it in a measure escaped our own: we caught something we did not quite like, but it only struck us in its true light when carefully pondering it in the proofs of the article we now publish. However, this is the less important, as it furnishes an opportunity of entering a general caveat, and also correcting past mistakes. It is time to take counsel of prudence,to select our terms, and to declare things simply as they are.

We mean, then, wholly to dispute the assumptions and assertions of the Secretary, and utterly to deny that, as a rule, the energies of the Nonconformist Ministers have been "so much directed to testify against evil, that the strength and energies have been thus absorbed which ought to have been employed in spreading the truth." We hold, that, as a people, so far from excess, we have been culpably deficient in " testifying against evil;" and that whatever has "absorbed the energies" of the Body, it is not this work of "testifying." It is to be remarked, that the Anti-State-Church Association, whatever its merits, is a thing but of yesterday; and moreover, that only a small portion of the Ministers of our community have become connected with it. Again, we contend that, as a denomination, we have not been half enough"intent on the removal of unsound systems :" if, as is here stated, our zeal for the gospel has been less than our zeal against Church establishments, it has been cold, indeed! We, personally, have had ample meansas ample as those of any living contemporary-of testing this point: forasmuch as we belonged to the "Ecclesiastical Knowledge Society," the "British Voluntary Church Society," the "Religious Freedom Society," the "Church-rates' Abolition Society," the "Evangelical Voluntary Church Association"-all of which perished through inanition-and now belong to the "Anti-State Church Association!" Who amongst our readers can make a like affirmation? Now, these confederacies were just so many experimental processes for testing the zeal of the Nonconformists against "unsound systems;" and what is the report presented by truth? We blush even to think of it! Its preparation would be one of the most mortifying and humiliating exercises to which an enlightened mind and a generous heart could be subjected; and it would constitute an embodiment of the severest reflection conceivable on the zeal and consistency of the Nonconformists of Great Britain! As to the unhappy effect of our "essential antagonism upon our spirit;" as a people it may, we think, be meetly represented by a feather drawn across a flint. Whatever be the character of the spirit of the Independents-and we think, at least, in all that is generous and catholic, it will admit of advantageous comparison with that of any other community-it has not, at any rate, suffered from our antagonism." But more: we submit, that the true gospel spirit is not merely one of "gentleness and calmness,' but also, where duty demands, one of fire, power, heroism, and martyrdom; that it is every way compatible with "antagonism" of all sorts involving wise efforts to spread the truth, and that, in the largest measure, heaped up and running over. For proof and illustration, we appeal to the case of the Prophets, the Apostles, of Luther, of Knox, of Wesley, and of Whitefield. Again, whatever be our "spirit" as a community, we deny that it has suffered

66

وو