venture so to speak, adorned the actings of his piety. While, for example, he stood at the greatest distance from the spirit of ungodliness which relies on an arm of flesh, and fails to recognize the supreme Disposer in all the events of life, he never omitted the use of such means as an enlightened prudence would dictate; and, having done so, his humble reliance on God, his simple trust on his heavenly Father's promise was as complete as though no human agency had been employed. There was, indeed, so to speak, a thoroughly healthy character in his religion: he was strong in feeling, ardent in temperament, in action energetic; but no observer could fail to remark that he was not carried away by excitement. His words and actions emanated from a sound principle of godliness: this preserved his ardour unabated, as well as imparted to it a right and wholesome direction. objects: so far from this, his disinterested-sense which ever accompanied, and, if I may ness shone forth conspicuous, even amidst his many and varied excellencies. The pulpit is not a place for anecdote; I feel myself, therefore, withholden from giving instances, in proof of what I have asserted: nor is it necessary; for some such instances have, doubtless, come to the knowledge of many who hear me this day; but the mention of one it is impossible altogether to omit. Can we look round on this church, reared to the glory of God, in which many have been taught, for nearly twenty years, to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, and in which the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ has been faithfully preached for the same lengthened period, without recollecting whose heart was enlarged by the Spirit of God to erect it at his own expense, to the glory of the ever blessed Trinity, and to the promotion of his Saviour's cause in this important and populous neighbourhood? Can we fail to remember with thanksgiving to the God of all grace who has patiently, diligently, and faithfully laboured here, until his divine Master saw fit, in his inscrutable providence, to remove him from his earthly courts to the eternal temple? On what he was as a minister I scarcely dare venture to speak in the presence of many among whom he has exercised his ministry for nearly twenty years. His burning zeal for God; his faithful exhibition of gospel truth; his unwearied labours; his anxiety to promote the spiritual good of those who heard him, rather than to please their imagination or to attract admiration to himself; his enlightened attachment to the doctrines and discipline of that church of which he was so bright an ornament, unmixed, however, with ought of bitterness towards those who sepa Intimately connected with the last-named feature in the character of the departed, was his spirit of unwearied benevolence; a grace this which showed its genuineness by its endeavour to promote both the spiritual and temporal good of his fellowmen. When I call to mind how largely in-rate themselves from her communion; his stitutions having these distinct objects in view were for a long series of years indebted to his personal exertions, as well as to his bounty, I feel that there is enough to establish what I have advanced, without entering into details unbecoming this place and this occasion, though embalmed, doubtless, in the grateful recollection of some who hear me. But I should fail in doing justice to this part of the character which I have attempted, however imperfectly, to delineate, were I to omit the notice of that wise discretion by which his large and liberal benefactions were guided and directed. Our departed friend was generous; but he was no lavisher. He sought to do the utmost possible good with the means which Providence had given him, and in this, as in other respects, showed that soundness of judgment for which he was distinguished no less than for his kindly feelings and active benevolence. If I may be permitted to mention, under this head, another trait of character by which he was distinguished, and which naturally connects itself with soundness of judgment, I may refer to the good truly catholic spirit, loving all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity; his refusal to follow the meteor lights which have at different times arisen in the church, and to which we would but slightly allude, not desiring that any note of controversy should be mixed with our tribute to his memory; the steadiness with which he adhered to "the old paths"-using that word in its best senseinsisting, with unabated emphasis, on the great truths of man lost and ruined by sin, and man saved by Christ's atoning blood, of the willingness of Jesus Christ to receive all who come unto him in humble faith, of the indispensable necessity for the new creation of the heart unto holiness by the direct agency of the Holy Ghost on the hearts of God's adopted children; the solemn inculcation of these momentous gospel verities, with an energy which proved that the preacher felt all that he uttered, will be long remembered, and the recollection be fondly cherished by many who are now assembled within these sacred walls. I could dwell on this theme, with a mournful satisfaction, at a far greater length; but I must not press too heavily on your powers of at tention here, as I have still somewhat to say in the way of direct application of our subject. Be it remarked, however, and solemnly remembered, that he became what he was by the grace of God, and through the communication to his heart of the great principles of the gospel by divine teaching. His efficiency as a religious instructor arose from his having been so long and so diligent a learner in the school of Christ. I should wholly misrepresent the case if I neglected to point to the grace of the Holy Spirit, and to the evangelical truths which he teaches as the sources of that excellence which I have attempted, however feebly, to pourtray. That solemn, providential event, which has diffused sadness, not over his own congregation only, but throughout this peopled neighbourhood, speaks with so loud a voice and so distinctly too to our conciences, that it would seem to require little effort in the preacher to direct and apply it; and yet, when I consider it in reference to one portion at least of those who hear me, I am well nigh overwhelmed with the difficult task which I nevertheless must undertake. I fear, then, it is certain that in this, as in every professedly Christian congregation, there are some, perhaps not a few, whose hearts the voice of God, speaking by his minister, has never effectually reached. Not that they have been altogether unmoved by his persuasive appeals, still less that his removal to his eternal rest has been without some effect on their feelings. Perhaps the anxious wish, "Let me also die the death of the righteous," has found a place in every bosom; but I address, for a few minutes, those who have never yet truly mourned over their own sinfulness in God's sight, never come in earnest to the fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness, never experienced the power of Christ's unutterable love, nor known, in their own case, the converting grace of God the Holy Ghost. And yet what argument can I use, what admonitory or alarming topic select, which has not been, to such, practically urged in vain by a greater master in Israel than the preacher who now addresses them? And yet, whosoever thou art who hast not yet found refuge, from the deluge of God's wrath, in the ark provided in the gospel, may this speaking providence be the instrument, in the hands of the God of grace, to bring thee to repentance! Let the thought sink deep into thy mind how vain, how utterly worse than vain, is human life, unless its end be an entrance into peace! Let the startling consideration, that one of heaven's choicest ministers has, so far as thou art concerned, laboured in vain, bring thee to a stand. Let a voice, as it were, from the tomb of him who has so often pleaded with thee in Christ's name, echo in the inmost recesses of thy heart the admonition, "Prepare to meet thy God!" Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work nor device nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest." Awake to a sense of thy momentous need, viz., reconciliation with God through Jesus Christ. Retire from this church to reflect on the value of thy soul, on the love of him who died to redeem it, and on the more than momentous result of the present short and uncertain life. Thou art yet on praying ground. Thy summons has not yet arrived. God is to thee seated on a throne of grace. Draw near to him, in thy closet, and plead with him more earnestly than thou hast ever yet done, for the gift of repentance, a new heart, and reconciliation with him through Jesus Christ his Son. But our subject has a voice to another and a widely different class of hearers. Blessed be God, there are some, I trust many, within these hallowed walls to-day, whose hearts the Lord has opened to receive the truth which his servant faithfully delivered to them. You know, you feel the loss which you have sustained. Your spiritual guide and counsellor has been taken from you; but Jesus Christ "is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." The great Comforter of the Christian church can more than compensate you for the loss which, in God's inscrutable providence, you have been called to sustain. Treasure up in your minds the spiritual instructions which you have already received. Live in the diligent use of all the means of grace. Continue instant in prayer. "Run with patience the race that is set before you, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of your faith." Be frequent and earnest in communion with him, both in the exercises of the closet and in that holy ordinance which himself appointed as the memorial of his love and as a means of communicating new life and vigour to the souls of believers. ye "followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises." Persevere, through grace, in your pilgrimage to the heavenly Zion; and you shall assuredly go from strength to strength until you also shall appear with unutterable joy before your God. When a few short years, at the most, shall have passed away, the kind message of your reconciled Father shall be delivered to you, one by one, signifying his pleasure that you should stand before his throne, and enter the "temple not made with hands," to go out no more for ever. Dare we even attempt to conceive the unutterable joy with which Be you will be welcomed to the general assembly and church of the first-born by the saints of God who have gone before you, by "the spirits of just men made perfect," by him especially to whom it had been once permitted to help you forward on your heavenward way? To those of you who truly love God, and are the called according to his purpose, it is enough to say that there will be a reunion with that beloved minister whose loss you deplore. On its character, on its blessedness, we attempt not to dwell; for these human language was not made to describe, nor finite minds formed to conceive. Finally, Christian brethren, pray for us, the ministers of God's word whom you have known as associated with your late pastor in the sacred office, especially for those most intimately connected with the departed, for one who has shared in the ministerial work in this church and district, for him who now addresses you, for the minister, whoever it may be, whom the providence of God shall call to labour in future in this portion of the vineyard, that an increased measure of the Spirit may be bestowed on us, that we may never forget the example of him with whom we shall no more be permitted to take sweet counsel on earth, but whom we desire to follow as he followed Christ. Brethren, I commend you to God and to the guidance of his grace. May you know, by happy experience, the blessedness of a life of faith, and enjoy in the near approach of death a hope full of immortality. There is a joy, of which the world knoweth nothing, which may be attained by the humble believer before he enters on his heavenly rest, while yet a member of that portion of Christ's church which is militant here on earth. "There is even now no condemaation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." "To be spiritually-minded is life and peace." "THE pterodactyles," says Dr. Buckland, "are ranked by Cuvier among the most extraordinary of all the extinct animals that have come under his consideration. We are already acquainted with eight species of this genus, varying from the size of a snipe to that of a cormorant. In external form they somewhat resemble bats and vampires; most of them having the nose elongated, and armed with conical teeth. Their eyes are very large, and adapted for enabling them to fly by night. Fingers projected from their wings, like the claw on the thumb of the bat; and they were thus enabled to creep along, or suspend themselves from trees. They probably were able to swim, like the pteropus pselaphon, or vampire bat of the island of Bonin." Pterodactyles have been found chiefly in the quarries of lithographic limestone of the Jura formation at Aichstadt and Solenfen; a stone abounding in marine remains, and also containing libellulæ, and other insects. They have also been discovered in the lias at Lyme Regis, and in the oolitic slate of Stonesfield, in Oxfordshire. All attempts to identify them with birds are stopped, by their having teeth like those of reptiles. Cuvier pronounced them to be lizards; but Dr. Buckland says that lizards possessing wings are to be found only among the dragons of romance and heraldry, while a moment's comparison of the head and teeth with those of bats shews that they cannot be ranked among the flying mammalia. With regard to their food, Cuvier supposes that they fed on insects, and, from the size of their eyes, may have preyed by night. The enormous size and strength of the head and teeth of the P. crassisostris would have enabled it to catch fish. "The entire range of ancient anatomy affords few more striking examples of the uniformity of the laws which connect the extinct animals of the fossil creation with existing organized beings than those we have been examining in the case of the from their minuteness should seem insignificant, pterodactyle. We find the details of parts, which acquiring great importance. In such an investigation as we are now conducting, they shew, not less distinctly than the colossal limbs of the most gigantic quadrupeds, a numerical coincidence and a concurrence of proportions which it seems impossible to refer to the effect of accident, and which point out unity of purpose and deliberate design in some intelligent First Cause from which they were all derived." "The pterodactyle of Cuvier," says sir Charles Bell, in his "Bridgewater Treatise on the Hand," is an animal which seems to confound all our notions of system. Its mouth was like the long bill of a bird, and its flexible neck corresponded; but it had teeth and jaws like those of a crocodile. It had the bones of the anterior extremity prolonged, and fashioned somewhat like those in the wing of a bird; but it could not have had feathers, as it had not a proper bill. We see no creature having feathers, without a bill to dress and trim them. Nor did this extremity resemble in its structure that of a bat; instead of the phalanges or rows of bones of all the fingers being equally prolonged, as in the bat, the second finger only was extended to an extraordinary length, whilst the third, fourth, and fifth had the length and articulation of those of a quadruped; and they were terminated with sharp nails, corresponding with the pointed teeth. The extended metacarpal bones and phalanges reached to double the whole length of the animal; and the conjecture is, that there was extended upon them a membrane resembling that of the draco fimbriatus. In the imperfect specimens which we have to found our reasoning upon, we cannot discover, either in the height of the pelvis, the strength of the vertebræ, or the expansion of the sternum, a provision for the attachment of muscles commensurate with the extent of the supposed wing. The humerus and the bones, which we presume to be the scapula and coracord, bear some correspondence to the extent of the wing; but the extraordinary circumstance of all is the size and strength of the bones of the jaw and vertebræ of the neck, compared with the smallness of the body and the extreme delicacy of the ribs, which make it altogether the thing the most incomprehensible in nature." "We are the 'wicked servants,' if, when our heavenly Father forgives us thousands of talents, we stand with our brethren for a hundred pence. For there brother offends us. And, therefore, we have no excuse, is no proportion between the offences wherewith we offend God, and the offences wherewith our hath our brother wronged us never so often, never so much, never so heinously, if we do not pardon him; for, whatsoever it be, or how unworthy and unde served soever, our sin and our ingratitude to Almighty God is and hath been infinitely greater, even as ten thousand talents to one hundred pence" (J. Mede). to love not only our friends, but also our very Prayer. "Thou, O Lord, hast commanded us enemies; to forgive them that offend us, to bless them that curse us, to do good to them that hate us, to pray for them that do us wrong and perseif he thirst, to give him drink. But our corrupt cute us; yea, if our enemy hunger, to feed himnature, which ever striveth against thy blessed will, seeketh all means possible to be revenged, to require tooth for tooth and eye for eye, to render evil for evil, when ". vengeance is thine, and thou wilt reward." By this means we grievously offend thee, and break the bond of charity revenged, but to forgive one another, even as God and the bond of peace, which seeketh not to be for Christ's sake hath forgiven us. may merciful, of thy bountiful goodness, to forgive our May it please thee, therefore, O Lord most enemies, and not to lay to their charge those things that they have unjustly committed against old, corrupt, and cankered nature, by taking away us. O, may it please thee so to mortify in us our that we, through the grace of thy Holy Spirit, our stony heart, and by giving us a heart of flesh, commandment, and after the example of thy Son be content, according to thy blessed will and Jesus Christ our Lord, and of that blessed martyr, St. Stephen, freely and even from the very grounds of the heart to forgive our enemies. Set a watch over our lips, O Lord, that we may speak well of them, and fulfil us with thy love, that we may love them and pray for them and return good for their evil by whatsoever lieth in our power. "Bringing forth such fruits of peace and charity, may we thereby show ourselves to be thy adopted children, who causest the sun to arise on the evil and on the good, and sendest down the rain on the just and the unjust. By this, thy divine example, teach us, O thou, the well-spring and source of all love, to go and do likewise, showing ourselves ready to do good in our generation, not only to those who are dear to thee, but also to the wicked and the ungodly, who are far from thee and thy love; that so we may allure even the enemies of thy truth to speak well of them that confess thee and thy gospel before men, and to glorify thee, our heavenly Father, which fashionedst us according to thy divine working, through the mighty regeneration of thy Holy Spirit, to whom with thee, O Father, and thy only-begotten Son, be all honour and glory world without end. Amen." (Becon, a.) The Cabinet. MINISTERIAL STUDY AND PRAYER.-I would offer to my younger brethren one watchword in conclusion-study and prayer; for" study without prayer is atheism, and prayer without study is presumption." Full and foremost in pastoral duties, blameless and harmless in private walk; then, with prayer, draw freely from the reformers of the Anglican and the fathers of the church universal, but more freely still from those ever "fresh springs," the fountains of eternal truth itself; for never can you draw too much from thence. In consulting every human composition, learn to separate "the precious from the vile ;" and, in "submitting to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake," rather than for its own inherent excellence, above all things fly from those fictions, shall I call them? or rather mockeries of Christian devotion and divine judgments, which are indeed too easy to nature, and too congenial to the low, rank soil, and wide-spread flats of Romanism; to be even, as we trust and pray, in God's good time, eradicated there, but not to be transplanted into our own pure protestant enclosures. Superstitions imported from Judaism, or from paganism, even into apostolical churches-for in them there were "many anti-christs"-have long since budded and fruited in their native bitterness, in all the heresies and malversations, the tyranny and the bloodshed of more than a thousand years. Other harvests have, for our instruction, intermediately, it is true, and collaterally, sprung up from the stock of independency of unwarrantable innovation and causeless separation. Now, then, that the roots are fast withering, we trust, in the ground, let us gather up no scattered seeds with any view to fresh revival. Let us not "glean the blunted shafts that have recoiled, and aim them at the shield of truth again."-Archdeacon Hoare's Charge, 1841. CHRISTIAN LOVELINESS.-Every virtue enjoined by Christianity as a virtue, is recommended by politeness as an accomplishment. Gentleness, humility, deference, affability, and a readiness to assist and serve on all occasions, are as necessary in the composition of a true Christian, as in that of a well-bred man. Passion, moroseness, peevishness, and supercilious self-sufficiency, are equally repugnant to the characters of both who differ in this only, that the true Christian really is what the well-bred man pretends to be, and would still be better bred if he was.-Soame Jenyns. Poetry. (For the Church of England Magazine). "Why art thou so full of heaviness, O my soul? and why art thou so disquieted within me?"-Ps. xlii. 11. WHENCE Come the deepening shadows now? Whence rise the clouds that sway With icy power the fervent glow Of hope's enchanting ray? Whence rise they? Can the spirit feel FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. Garrison Chaplain, Nassau, New Providence, (For the Church of England Magazine.) "Then said David to the Philistine, Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield; but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied."-1 SAM. xvii. 45. WHY tremble ye warriors of Israel with fear, He's as chaff who comes not "in the name of the 'Ere the tops of Azékah and Shócoh be dressed vale : The weapons of faith and of meekness prevail. From the height of her boasting Philistia is hurl'd; Let the harps of thy maidens, O Sion, be strung, hung; And the voice of thy gladness in praises be heard Feb. 18, 1845. Goliath is called Galut, or Jalut, by the Arabs (see the Koran); and the tradition of this remarkable combat is still preserved by them. London: Published for the Proprietors, by EDWARDS and HUGHES, 12, Ave Maria Lane, St. Paul's; J. BURNS, 17, Portman Street; and to be had, by order, of all Booksellers in Town and Country. PRINTED BY JOSEPH ROGERSON, 24, NORFOLK STREET, STRAND, LONDON. |