with his principles, when sectarian passions were calculated to bear him in another direction.

The Rev. John Potts is widely known. Born in 1838, at Maguire's Bridge, County Fermanagh, he early determined to push his fortunes in the New World. A boy of seventeen, he started for the Southern States. Happily for Canada, happily for the Methodist Church, happily for social progress, on his way to "down South," he stopped with some relatives living at Kingston. He could have sojourned nowhere in Canada where he would gain happier impressions. He went south. But so pleasant were the impressions made on him in Kingston that he resolved to make Canada his home, a purpose which he fulfilled, and to which, unlike so many others who seem to think the white tie emancipates them from all the feelings and claims of citizenship and country, he has, notwithstanding tempting offers (may they not merit the name of bribes ?) from the States, persistently clung. On coming here from the South he spent some time in mercantile pursuits. Originally an Episcopalian, the accident that his Kingston friends were Wesleyans, led him, under the spiritual guidance of the Rev. George Douglas to take the step which was to secure for the Methodist Church its brightest ornament. His talents, his power of expression, his seriousness, all seemed to point to a sphere where such gifts would have more play than in mercantile pursuits. His own desires leaned in the direction in which his talents pointed, and he proceeded to the University of Victoria College, Cobourg. Yielding to pressure from outside, before he had completed his arts' course, he entered the ministry.

At the early age of nineteen-surely far too early—we find him making the Markham circuit; then on the Aurora and Newmarket circuit; then at Thorold, where he remained for three years. Meanwhile during those years of probation he applied himself assiduously to his theological studies. Four years after he had been all too early taken away from College, we find him at the age of twenty-three received into full connexion with the Conference.

Having been ordained Mr. Potts was entrusted with the charge of North Street Church, London, whence, after the full term of three years, he was appointed to labour in connexion with the

Rev. E. H. Dewart, then pastor of the Elm Street Church, Toronto. By this time he was a man of acknowledged talent. Eighteen hundred and sixty-six was the centennial year of American Methodism. It was resolved to erect in Hamilton a commemoratory church. In anticipation of the opening of the church, Mr. Potts was invited by the trustees of the new church to become its first pastor. The church being projected on a large scale the Stationing Committee of the Conference hesitated to agree to his taking so important a position; but such was the pressure placed upon them they ratified his acceptance of the offer. Many thought the Centennary Church would be too large, but within a month after the opening-on which occasion Dr. Punshon preached-it was completely filled. The prescribed three years having passed, the congregation Mr. Potts had gathered round him sought to keep him for another three years. But the Conference was inexorable. The Metropolitan Church project was now on foot. Dr. Punshon was the life of the movement. He knew the advantage of eloquence and of having a pulpit filled by an able man. He and the congregation about to change their shell were both anxious to secure Mr. Potts' coöperation. But shrinking from work which was not exactly that to which he had devoted his life, he decided to go to Montreal, where, at St. James Church,he succeeded Dr. Douglas. In Montreal he made a great reputation as a preacher. The three years having expired, again, but equally in vain, was an attempt made by his church and congregation to keep him for three years more. The invitation from the Metropolitan Church was renewed. This time it was accepted, and in the course of his ministry he more than doubled the membership, and each service crowded the church. His success has everywhere been unqualified, partly because of his pulpit power, but also because-like so many of his countrymen-he knows how to oil jarring wheels, and has pondered the philosophy of O'Connell, that you will catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than with a bucket of vinegar. His old Hamilton charge wanted to get him back. He himself would not have been unwilling to go. But there was an impediment in the way. Owing to arrangements as to districts, which had meanwhile taken place, he would have, were he to go to Hamilton, to sever his connexion with the Toronto and join the

London Conference-a step to which he had an objection. He therefore elected to "build up" for this year his old congregation of Elm Street.

Mr. Potts is a man of liberal views, more a pulpit than a platform orator, more a pastor than a manager or a shining light at Congress.

Just as one of the ablest Presbyterian ministers of to-day is a native of Belfast, so some of the noblest figures among pioneers of the Presbyterians was born in the County of Antrim. Here the Rev. Dr. Boyd was born in 1791. In 1820, he came to Canada and commenced his work at Prescott, where he had to teach school to eke out a living. The Rev. William Smart, who preached his funeral sermon, tells how laboriously he cultivated his large field of labour. Dr. Boyd died in 1872, leaving behind him considerable property; a stone dwelling-house and several valuable town lots; all of which he willed, after the death of Mrs. Boyd, to the Church, and when Mrs. Boyd died in 1876, the property was duly conveyed.

The first settled Presbyterian minister in Toronto was an Irishman, the Rev. James Harris, who came to Canada in 1820. He was also the first secretary to the Bible Society. Since he commenced to labour here, Presbyterianism has, like everything else made great progress. He lived to see fields wilderness when he first saw them, green with rich pastures, and gold with yellowing harvests. When a young man of thirty, in 1823, he administered the Communion on the second Sabbath of September, Toronto was "muddy York," Knox's Church was a humble building. The congregation, which is now one of the largest and wealthiest in Ontario, numbered only twenty-eight After long years of usefulness, he passed away amid universal respect. Not without sincere sighs, and a starting tear, was the "good gray head" missed from our streets.

Among the Irish Presbyterian missionaries the Rev. Thomas McPherson and the Rev. David Evans, D.D., should be mentioned; while in the field of benevolence, the Rev. William King, who founded in 1849 the Buxton Mission and Elgin Settlement, Canada West, takes an eminent position. Were there space I should dwell on the Rev. William Moore, of Ottawa. Mr.

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Moore's influence in Ottawa, his manly gentleness, the church he has built, the Ladies' College,-I can only give a dim glimpse of it all and pass away.

If it should be said :-" Yes you have given us the gentle beauty of Harris' piety, you have given us the pioneer zeal of Dr. Boyd; but the Presbyterian Church has to go out of Ireland for solid attainments and strong embracement of the severe symmetry of the Calvinistic theology." Not at all. The strongest man, the most thoroughly Presbyterian man at the present moment in Canada is an Irishman. "O yes," says some one, "narrow in culture, he without difficulty looks on the frowning lineaments of a dark theology." By no means. He is perhaps the most highly cultivated man in the Canadian Presbyterian Church. And who is the man for whom Canada is thus indebted to Ireland?

Dr. John Gardner Robb was born in Belfast, on the 27th of June, 1833, and was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and at the Queen's College. He graduated in 1854, with honours in English, having during his academical career swept the college of some of its most coveted prizes.

He took the science scholarship of the first year and won a general prize, and in mathematics a class prize. In his second year he also took the science scholarship, the general prize, and in logic the class prize and first place; in his third year the science scholarship, general prize and first place, class prize in metaphysics and first place and a class prize in natural philosophy. At this time Dr. McCosh was Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the Queen's College, Belfast, and we may feel certain he would be thorough in all his teaching and standards. The following list of honours in the year succeeding that in which he took his degree is therefore of no mere formal significance:-Senior scholarship in metaphysical and economical sciences; class prize and first place in higher logic; class prize and first place in jurisprudence; class prize and first place in common and criminal law; class prize and first place in Constitutional, Colonial and International Law. I venture to say Dr. Robb knows more about the science of law than many a barrister who is making twice his income.

Dr. Robb pursued his theological studies in the General Assem

bly's College, each year taking the highest prizes open to competition, including that for sacred rhetoric. He was licensed to preach the Gospel by the Presbytery of Belfast, at its meeting in May, 1857. After considering the invitations of several congregations, he accepted a call to Clogher, County Tyrone, where he was ordained on the 24th June, 1858.

During his ministry at Clogher, Dr. Robb rapidly rose to popularity, not only among the congregations of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, but in the courts of the Church. He was on its most important committees, and more perhaps than any minister of his standing, wielded an influence in the General Assembly. His course in public matters was always characterized by an honest but firm maintenance of what he emphatically calls "Scriptural Christianity." He took a very prominent part in several discussions-notably those on Education, the Irish Church Act, and Instrumental Music in the worship of God. His speeches on all these questions were able, logical, and so far as the policy of the Assembly was concerned-successful. In 1863, he married Martha, third daughter of the Rev. John Hanna, his predecessor in the pastorate of Clogher.

Resisting frequent solicitations to charges in different sections of the Church, Dr. Robb, in 1874, accepted a call from the congregation of Cooke's Church, Toronto, and was installed as minister of that church in the month of May in that year. Since his settlement in Canada, he has become widely known as an able champion of Evangelical Protestantism.

His speeches and addresses from time to time will be familiar to some of our readers. He received his doctor's degree in 1876. It could add nothing to the weight of a man whose career as a pastor and in the pulpit has borne out the promise of the character and industry displayed, and the solid scholarship acquired in his college days.

At the Pan-Presbyterian Synod, the honours of oratory seem to have been borne away by an Irishman and a Switzer. The following remarks are from an English paper:-" It is not the Englishman, Scotchman, nor Irishman who has walked off with the honours of oratory at the great Pan-Presbyterian Council at Edinburgh, but the American and the Frenchman. Out of the