On

Leifchild was the first pastor, and under whose faithful ministry she received her first religious impressions. She was one of his first hearers in Craven Chapel, and one of the first Sunday scholars. Her mother lived and died a member of the same church, so that when her husband accepted the office of its evangelist, she felt as if she were returning home. Lord's-day, Dec. 29, 1839, she was baptized, with her husband, by the Rev. Dr. Burns, of New Church Street, Paddington, and thus became a member of the General Baptist denomination. When, in 1847, her husband accepted the call of the church at Burnley to become its pastor, she willingly acquiesced, and in a spirit suited to her new position, shared its trials and its joys. On the removal of her husband to Sheffield, and on his return to Burnley to take charge of the new chapel, she took great interest in all that concerned the prosperity of the cause of Christ, and, as far as the duties of a rising family would permit, devoted herself to its extension. She was, in principle, what might be termed a union Baptist, believing, that Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer on a personal profession of faith, but holding, at the same time, the opinion that Christian character is the true condition of church fellowship, and therefore all who give evidence that they are the Lord's people, should be admitted to the Lord's table, and to all the privileges of his house. She always considered that there was a manifest inconsistency in admitting to the one and refusing to the other. She rejoiced to know that there are now several General Baptist churches which are open in both respects. Although her death was somewhat sudden, she had suffered annually for many years severe attacks of bronchitis, and it was hoped that she would again recover from the attack which in this instance proved fatal. She was confined to her bed twelve days, and bore her affliction with remarkable patience and perfect submission, She often said, "Thy will be done." When asked if Jesus were precious, she said, "Oh yes! I know in whom I have believed. I never thought I should be so prepared to die." One day, when her attendant was giving her a little cold water, she exclaimed, "You are very sparing of the water, but I shall soon be at the fountain where I shall have it full and free!" When her husband saw she was sinking into the arms of death, he called his weeping family to the bedside, and continued in prayer until the spirit, without a struggle or a groan, took its departure. She died in perfect peace.

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She was interred in Highgate Cemetery in a family grave adjoining that of the late Edward Swaine, Esq., who was one of the first deacons of Craven Chapel, and one of her most cherished friends. Several of the deacons and officers of the Christian Instruction Society attended her funeral, at which the Rev. R. D. Wi'son gave an appropriate address. She had anticipated, with great interest, the intended removal, with her husband, who had recently accepted the call of the church in Broad Street, Nottingham, to be their minister at Daybrook; but God's thoughts are not as our thoughts. He has the consolation of believing that while he is serving Christ in the church on earth, she is serving him in the church in heaven. "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like" hers! J. B.

MEAD-FRANKLIN,-Dec. 5, at Wendover, Bucks, Mr. George Mead, aged 72. He was the oldest member of the General Baptist church at Wendover, having been baptized, April 6th, 1817; and for thirtythree year he honourably and faithfully sustained the office of deacon.-Also, on Dec. 12th, Mr. John Franklin, aged 90. He was member of the same church for thirty-three years, and a valuable deacon for twenty-eight years. For them both "to live was Christ." Their end was perfect peace, and their death eternal gain. "Help, Lord. for the godly man ceaseth, for the faithful fail from among the children of men."

JACKSON.-Dec. 28, at Shottle, Derbyshire, Mrs. Jackson, the beloved wife of Mr. George Jackson, farmer, aged 62. The deceased was a daughter of Mr. William Malin, Brown House, once a leading member of the church at Wirksworth and Shottle. She became converted in early life, and during her long connection with the church was one of its most hearty and devoted members. Her removal is a heavy loss to the cause which she so ardently loved, and so faithfully supported. "A succourer of many, and of me also."

ROGERS.-Jan. 5, at Barrow-on-theHumber, Lincolnshire, Mr. Wm. Rogers, aged 72. He was for fifteen years a worthy member of the General Baptist church at Epworth, Lincolnshire, and had gone to reside at Barrow with his daughter, and there being no place of worship in that town, he usually worshipped with the Wesleyans. On the day above mentioned he and his daughter repaired to the house of God, and during the singing of a hymn he fell down dead in his pew. He was a good man. Many fall as sudden, not as safe.

DUNNICLIFEE.-Jan. 7, at Breedon, Mrs. Dunnicliffe, in her seventy-second year, sister of the late Mr. R. Pegg, of Derby. BARRASS.-January 8, at Peterborough, Frederic, infant son of the Rev. T. Barrass. BAYNES.-Jan. 9, at Bristol, Ann Day, the beloved wife of Rev. Jos. Baynes,

formerly of Wellington, Somerset, aged 69, and mother of the Rev. J. A. Baynes, B.A., formerly of Derby Road chapel, Nottingham.

UNDERWOOD.-Jan. 23, after a short illness, Emma, the beloved wife of Mr. Thomas Underwood.

A VERY IMPRESSIVE SERMON.

A YOUNG man, not very many years since -the circumstance is given in the life of Dr. Waugh-was sent for to preach before the Prince of Orange at the Hague. He had indicated great talent and promise, and the Prince wished to hear him. The young man's father was also a preacher at the court, and he was commanded by the Prince to push his son at a moment's warning into the pulpit, that he might give a fair specimen of his powers; also the text was given to him from Acts viii. 26-40. You remember the passage-the story of the courtier and his meeting with Philip. The young preacher was confounded, but there was no time to hesitate. After a suitable introduction, he told his noble and crowded audience that his subject contained four wonders, four marvels (quatre merveilles), which he should make the four heads of his sermon, and if he should say anything to which their ears had not been accustomed in that place, he hoped his unprepared state of mind from his sudden call would plead his apology, and that they would consider the things he might speak as according to our Lord's promise, "given to him in that hour."

Marvel the first: A courtier reads. Here he deplored the sad neglect in the education of great men in modern times, and the little attention paid by them to books.

Marvel the second: a courtier reads the Bible. Here he deplored the melancholy condition of religious sentiments and feelings in the great, and the impoverished state of a mind so destitute.

Marvel the third: A courtier owns himself ignorant of his subject. Here he exposed the conceit and presumption of petulant ignorance in high places.

Marvel the fourth: A courtier applies to a minister of Christ for information, and follows his counsel.

The Prince was famous for sleeping during the service, but he did not sleep during that sermon.

But our young friend was never asked to preach in the palace again. The Prince and the preacher took their revenge upon each other.

WORDS FROM ANCIENT ORACLES.

Method is the mother of memory. Hope is the only tie that keeps the heart from breaking.

When Dr. Hutton, Archbishop of York, went into any of the schools which he constantly visited, he was wont to say to the young scholars, "Ply your books, boys, ply your books; for bishops are old men.'

The glory of God should be our aim in all our actions; though too often our bow starts, our hand shakes, and so our arrow misses the mark.

We serve not so severe a Lord but that he allows us sauce with our meat, and recreation with our vocation.

A wise man counselled a great man, saying, Read histories that thou dost not become a history: so may we say, Read proverbs that thou mayest not be made a proverb.

Many bare and barren heaths and hills, which afford the least food for beasts, yield the best physic for man.

Philology is preposed to divinity, as the porch to the palace.

Poetry may not unfitly be termed the binding of prose to its good behaviour, tying it to the strict observation of time and measure.

Music is merely wild sounds civilized into time and tune.

THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE CHARACTER AND CONDUCT OF ERASMUS, THE MAN OF EXPEDIENCY, AND LUTHER, THE MAN OF CONSCIENCE AND PRINCIPLE.-Intellectual gifts are like gifts of strength, or wealth, or rank, or worldly power-splendid instruments if nobly used, but requiring qualities to use them nobler and better than themselves. The rich man may spend his wealth on vulgar luxury. The clever man may live for intellectual enjoyment-refined enjoyment it may be-but enjoyment still, and still centering in self. If the spirit of Erasmus had prevailed, it would have been with modern Europe as with the Roman empire in its decay. The educated would have been mere sceptics, the multitude would have been sunk in superstition. In both alike all would have perished which deserves the name of manliness. And this leads me to the last observation that I have to make to you. In the sciences the philosopher leads; the rest of us take on trust what he tells us. The spiritual progress of mankind has followed the opposite course. Each forward step has been made first among the people, and the last converts have been among the learned. The explanation is not far to look for. In the sciences there is no temptation of self-interest to mislead. In matters which affect life and conduct, the interests and prejudices of the cultivated classes are enlisted on the side of the existing order of things, and their better trained faculties and larger acquirements serve only to find them arguments for believing what they wish to believe. Simpler men have less to lose, they come more in contact with the realities of life, and they learn wisdom in the experience of suffering. Thus it was that when the learned and the wise turned away from Christianity, the fishermen of the Galilean lake listened, and a new life began for mankind. A miner's son converted Germany to the Reformation. The London artisans and the peasants of Buckinghamshire went to the stake for doctrines which were accepted afterwards as a second revelation. So it has been; so it will be to the end. When a great teacher comes again to the earth, he will find his first disciples where Christ found them, and Luther found them. Had Luther written for the learned, the words which changed the fate of Europe would have slumbered in

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impotence on the bookshelves. In appealing to the German nation, you will agree, I think, with me, that he did well and not ill; you will not sacrifice his great name to the disdain of a shallow philosophy, or to the grimacing of a dead superstition, whose ghost is struggling out of its grave.-Short Studies on Great Subjects. By J. A. Froude, M.A.

THE SCRIPTURES BETTER THAN THE FATHERS. If these Doctors, who had scarce half the light that we enjoy, who all, except two or three, were ignorant of the Hebrew tongue, and many of the Greek, blundering upon the dangerous and suspectful translations of the apostate Aquila, the heretical Theodosian, the Judaized Symmachus, the erroneous Origen; if these could yet find the Bible so easy, why should we doubt, that have all the helps of learning and faithful industry that man in this life can look for, and the assistance of God as near now to us as ever? But let the Scriptures be hard are they more bard, more crabbed, more abstruse than the Fathers? He that cannot understand the sober, plain, and unaffected style of the Scriptures will be ten times more puzzled with the knotty Africanisms, the pampered metaphors, the intricate and involved sentences of the Fathers, besides the fantastic and declamatory flashes, the cross-jingling periods which cannot but disturb, and come thwart a settled devotion worse than the din of bells and rattles. We do injuriously in thinking to taste better the pure evangelic manner, by seasoning our mouths with the tainted scraps and fragments of an unknown table; and searching among the verminous and polluted rags dropped overworn from the toiling shoulders of time, with these deformedly to quilt and interlace the entire, the spotless, and undecaying robe of truth, the daughter, not of time, but of heaven, only bred up here below in Christian hearts, between two grave and holy nurses, the doctrine and discipline of the Gospel.-Milton.

SMALL CHURCHES AND INADEQUATE INCOMES.-Both Independents and Baptists mourn over small and feeble churches and inadequate incomes. But if it be admitted that these small interests, as they are called, are often the only gleams of light amidst moral darkness, is it incumbent that each should have a pastor thrown entirely on its own resources? Congregationalism takes

pride in its flexibility-its freedom to adapt itself to surrounding circumstances. Surely the problem in question, difficult as it is, could be solved apart from a Sustentation Fund, which is liable to grave abuses. The grouping together of small churches under one pastor would do much to mitigate the evil, and the multiplication of evangelists would do more. If, however, small churches are to exist, increase, and multiply, there will be an urgent need that the example of Paul the tent-maker shall be more generally followed.-Nonconformist.

HAS THE CHURCH FAILED OR SUCCEEDED? If she has failed, she has failed only as civil society has done so. If the objects of civil society be the security of life and property and increase of prosperity through a division of labour, civil society is not a success. Men are robbed and murdered, and whole classes live in pauperism, insecurity, slavery. A sufficient reason for dissatisfaction-a good ground of complaint! But not a sufficient reason for dissolving civil society, and relapsing into a nomad state. In like manner, if the church has failed, let us reform it, but we can ill afford to sever the strongest and most sacred tie that binds men to each other. -New Preface to "Ecce Homo."

A CANDIDATE FOR CHURCH MEMBERSHIP. The benediction was pronounced, and the people were crowding out by our narrow aisles, when a man, dressed in blue pilot cloth, with a great shaggy head and a rough weather-beaten face, one eye hopelessly disfigured as if by some terrible blow, came up, with his large blue bonnet in his hand. "I want to be admitted," he said. "But you have not been attending the class, and it is too late for this time, as I have just intimated." "I want to be admitted for a' that." "What makes you press forward to-night?" 'Seeing sae mony press into the kingdom and I'm like to be left oot." I turned to my elders, and said, "The Lord may see fit to send us this man, and we must not make classes and other such arrangements the only rule." So, turning to him, I engaged to see him next night, and to report to the session on Saturday. We met. He was the Briggate Flesher-Bob Cunningham,— a noted character on the Wynds, wild, reckless, drunken; a man who had been accustomed to the ring and had lost one

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eye there; who had been in gaol for homicide and narrowly escaped hanging, -yet here he was, suing for admission among those whose feet were washed before supper, and were "clean every whit." I soon discovered he knew nothing of ordinary religious phrases and the terms in which familiar doctrines were usually stated; but he had got to know the things themselves and had his own way of putting them, some of them in language borrowed from the slaughter house. "I'm a changed man," he said; "the devil guide us, but noo it's to be drooned by the floating on the tap. Hoo am I changed? Jesus Christ did it. I was the lame man at the gate of the temple, and faith in his name has healed my ancle bones and made me stand and walk. I was covered o'er wi' sin; but Christ took me, and

washed my bluid and cast a' my filth away." He sat down with us next Sabbath morning.—Among the Masses, by Rev. D. Macoll

MR. SPURGEON LEADING HIS SINGERS. -An American, describing the singing at the tabernacle, says, "The second hymn was announced to be, 'Jesus, lover of my soul.' The preacher said, 'Let us sing this precious hymn softly to the tune of Pleyel's Hymn.' When the first verse had been sung, he said, 'Sing it softly. With a countenance uplifted and beaming with fervour, his books in both hands, keeping time involuntarily to the music, he sung with the congregation. When he had read the third verse, he said, 'You do not sing it softly enough.' They sang it softly. It was as though some hand had dammed up the waters of the Falls of Niagara, leaving a thin sheet to creep through between two fingers and make soft music in its great lap, and plunge into the great basin below. Then when he read the fourth verse, he said, 'Now if we feel this we will sing it with all our souls. Let us sing with all our might!' The outburst of the great congregation was as though the Great Hand had been suddenly uplifted, and the gathered waters were rushing on their united way in awful grandeur."

AN AMERICAN'S IMPRESSIONS CON CERNING THE SERVICES IN LONDON CHURCHES.-The services in the Established Church are all sung or intoned, and to those unacquainted with them they might as well be in Syriac. And