gentle, not only in consoling the sufferer, but in reproving the fallen; striving, with ingenious and affectionate effort, to diffuse peace and pleasantness throughout his dwelling; and sustaining all, enlivening all, enriching and sanctifying all, by that devout dependence on the Supreme good, which is " as the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion," he has bequeathed to his children a legacy of virtues, which, while he lived, excited their fondest admiration; and which, now that he is taken away, will remain an imperishable record on the tablet of their bereaved hearts!

Unwilling to trust my own judgment in so serious a matter as the estimation of my father's ministerial abilities, I have obtained from three of his aged coadjutors the subjoined testimonies, and which will doubtless be perused with deep interest.

The Rev. C. Atkinson writes:

"The venerable Thomas Waterhouse had been in the ministry of the Methodist New Connexion fifty-one years. At the Longton Conference he was appointed to Stockport circuit, but was not permitted to enter upon its duties. His Master met him by the way, and called him home to receive his crown and his welcome: "Well done, good and faithful servant." The two previous years he had laboured in the Macclesfield circuit, which was not the best suited to his energies and declining years; his physical powers were probably taxed beyond their ordinary strength, and his dissolution more speedily hastened. He was held in high and deserved estimation in all the circuits in which he had travelled, and for fifty-one years his ministerial abilities and his moral worth procured him some of the first and best circuits in the Connexion. Nor has there been any deceased brother whose death will be more sensitively felt, or more deeply regretted. He was in the best sense a Gospel preacher;-plain, practical, energetic, and filled with holy zeal. He preached the word, but not in the words of man's wisdom, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth. And that ministry which in his opinion was best calculated to enlighten the mind, to inform the judgment, to penetrate the heart, and save souls from death, had his decided preference.

"Brother Waterhouse was my personal friend. He honoured me with his confidence, and was pleased more than once to express his respect in gratifying terms. He not only preached well, but he prayed with a warmth, a pathos, and a power, that electrified the place. His gift was above the ordinary standard.

"Throughout the protracted period of his ministerial labours, I had never the privilege of his superintendence. Occasionally, and at Conference, we were brought together; and our intercourse was always pleasing and edifying.

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His life had much uniformity. Those who had seen him once, had seen him for the day, the week, the year. He was a thorough New Connexion Minister, and when he perceived the least deviation, he would give his decided negative.

"He left the Wesleyan body from principle fifty-two years ago. While with them he was highly esteemed for his promising talents, his uniform life, and for that vein of deep devotional piety which the Holy Spirit had engrafted. He retained through life the same lovely traits of devotional piety. In all things he adorned the ministerial character.”

The Rev. S. Woodhouse writes:

"My first acquaintance with your revered parent was, when he was

stationed with the late Mr. Driver at Nottingham, in the year 1807. At that time we had the occupancy of Hockley Chapel, where Wesley, Hanby, Kilham, Thom, Mort, and others had blown the Gospel trumpet; and in which Mr. Driver and your father preached the unsearchable riches of Christ to crowded and attentive congregations. I was then only a young disciple, but can remember that both the ministers were earnest in their public ministrations, lively, zealous, and energetic.

"I sat under their ministry with pleasure and profit; and at this distance of time, can recollect more particularly one occasion, when your father preached a sermon from (I believe) Isa. xl. 6-8, to improve the death of a young man who had been a member, and died rather suddenly. The chapel overflowed with hearers, who listened to the Word of Life with the greatest eagerness, a gracious influence appeared to pervade the whole assembly, as if all felt 'The o'erwhelming power of saving grace. It pleased the great Head of the Church to own the labours of his faithful servants that year. At the commencement of their ministry there were 663 members, and at the close of the year, 810. The labours of both have now terminated. My father-in-law was called from the church militant in June, 1831, while his colleague, your honoured parent, survived him nearly twenty-two years, to publish the glad tidings of the Gospel. Well, they are now out of the reach of the Adversary, and have entered the world of happy spirits to join the 'great multitude which no man numbers,' in saying 'Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb; in which multitude will be included many of the spiritual children which the Lord gave to his servants in the ministry; a few being yet left as 'pilgrims here belowHallelujah!

"Your respected father, in the early period of his ministry, as well as afterwards, was methodical in the arrangement of his discourses, while he was energetic in the delivery of them. Neither rant nor rhapsody characterized his sermons. I happen to possess a few sketches of his discourses, which I hastily wrote down during his delivery of them in Nottingham, and they all, by their methodical arrangement, evince previous thought and reflection. After I became an itinerant minister, it was only once my lot (in 1813) to be associated with your father in the same circuit, which was Hanley, before its division into two circuits. We had then with us as our superintendent the late Mr. Styan. In consequence of your father's residence being at Shelton, and mine at Longton, we had not many opportunities for social and religious intercourse; but mutual esteem, I believe existed, and we 'let brotherly love continue. The reason of not being stationed together again, during the space of thirty-nine years, arose probably from the Conference thinking it proper to entrust each of us with the superintendency of a circuit. We often met at Conference, but were never stationed together at the same house, or we should have had more opportunities for intercourse and knowledge of each other. The impressions, however, of my mind in reference to your father as a Christian man and minister are, that the peculiar properties which more especially formed his character, were those of devoutness, integrity, humanity, benevolence, honesty, owing to no man anything but love, diligence in pastoral duties, and punctuality in all his engagements, whether they related to church affairs or otherwise. The last Conference I shall not soon forget, when at the lovefeast, your father, Mr. Allin, and the writer sat together on the platform, without any previous arrangement or design to do so. After the opening of the meeting by the brethren appointed, your venerable parent, as the oldest of the three, rose first to bear his testimony to the value of religion, which he had enjoyed for more than half a century, and also his hope of a better world through the merits of our atoning Redeemer. It was his last public witness for Christ; and his sudden death I take as a loud call to me, his family, and all who knew him, to be found ready at the Saviour's coming to judge the quick and the dead. May

we, at the close of our pilgrimage, have the happiness to meet our departed friend in the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.""

The Rev. T. Allin writes:

"In considering the qualities that distinguished the public character of Mr. Waterhouse, it becomes easy to trace the influence of the circumstances under which he was placed in the commencement of his religious and ministerial life. Residing in the town and neighbourhood of Hull, a part of the kingdom where Methodism had gained some of its earliest victories, and had met with the most cordial reception, and where the original simplicity of Wesleyan doctrine and manners was long more perfectly preserved than in many other places-and brought to the knowledge of the truth before some of the most eminent of the first generation of itinerants were taken to their reward, he received and retained not the substance only, but much of the form also, under which Methodistic doctrines were presented by the singularly powerful and successful preachers of that day. To the truths which he had felt to be all-powerful in the accomplishment of his own salvation, and had seen to be effectual in the salvation of many others, and to the religious ordinances which had been to him and his Christian brethren mediums of the happiest and holiest fellowship, and means of supplying them with the bread and water of life, he attached himself with a firmness which nothing ever shook. Through the whole of his ministerial career he strenuously maintained the importance of those ordinances, and set an honourable example of diligence in the observance of them. The same punctuality characterized his appearing in the pulpit, and his attendance on his class meeting, or at the love feast, and he entered into the distinguishing exercises of both with the same entire approyal of judgment, and warmth of affection. The truths, whose sufficiency to raise from a death of sin to a life of righteousness, and to sustain the spiritual life in vigour amidst the varied and trying scenes of the itinerant ministry he had fully experienced, formed the great themes of his pulpit exercises. The spiritually corrupt and helpless condition of human nature, the all-sufficiency of the sacrifice of the cross, justification by faith alone directly witnessed by the Spirit of adoption, regeneration by the power of that Spirit, entire sanctification as the common privilege of believers, a full, free, and present salvation provided for all and possible to be enjoyed by all, and the eternity of future retribution, were the immutable and inexhaustible topics on which, in their varied aspects, their mutual relations, and their important bearings on the thoughts and feelings of the inner man, and the habits of the external life, he preferred to dwell. They formed the web into which every thing else was woven; and, as presented by him, found a response both in every regenerate heart, and in the consciences of many of the unconverted.

"Much of the success and esteem so happily realized by Mr. W. was doubtless due to that concentration of his powers on the work to which they were best adapted, by which he was so honourably distinguished. In the ministry, as in other walks of life, too many fall into the error of neglecting the talents bestowed in the vain search for others which are withheld, or of substituting the doubtful, the speculative, and the showy for the true, the vital, and the substantial. Either forgetful, or practically regardless of the fact, that the same diversity characterizes the mental as the bodily constitution, and is established by laws equally impassable, they have sacrificed time, usefulness, and occasionally ministerial character and position, in fruitless endeavours to obtain a gift which honourably distinguished another, while that to which they principally owed their introduction into the ministry, and their usefulness in the churches, has been so deteriorated by neglect, that its lustre has been dimmed and its value destroyed; or they have entailed equal evils on themselves, and yet greater evils on the churches, by the pursuit either of some phantom or some minor truth, to which

imagination, under the influence of some passion or interest, has strongly attached itself, and which has thus become the Alpha and Omega in almost every pulpit exercise, and in the general intercourse of social life, eating up, like the lean kine of Pharaoh, every thing goodly, without any augmentation of its own value. These dangers Mr. W. carefully shunned. Having ascertained the most useful department of ministerial labour for which he was fitted, it was made the object of his chief and persevering attention. Having determined what was his work, he concentrated upon it all his energies, leaving others to occupy those other departments to which they might be more particularly adapted. With a mind practical rather than speculative, and powers solid rather than either brilliant or profound, he found in Pawson and Mather, and others of the same class among the Wesleyans, and in Kilham, and Thom, and Donald, and Driver, among the earlier preachers in the New Connexion, models congenial both to his mind and heart, and which, doubtless, had no small influence in the formation of his character. His pulpit exercises were, therefore, neither controversial nor speculative, but experimental and practical, and presented, in happy combination, the duties, dangers, and privileges of the Christian life in the varied stages of its progress, from its first awakenings to its full development in the perfect man in Christ Jesus.

"Next to the correctness and clearness of his doctrinal views, earnestness— truly represented as the great want of the church in its ministry-was his chief characteristic. His zeal was neither a flickering nor an evanescent flame, shining only at intervals, to be again lighted up when supplied by some special means with additional fuel; but a fire constantly glowing on the altar, and sustained by his solemn and ever-present convictions of the immense worth of the soul, its utterly lost condition without an interest in redeeming mercy, the infinite love of God as manifested in the gift and work of his Son, and the glorious privileges involved in the gospel salvation. These, in connection with the consciousness of the great things God had done for him, inspired an ardour which nothing quenched, and which but seldom abated. Appreciating the importance, as well as understanding the design, of the Christian ministry, as the great instrument in the world's conversion, he entered on and prosecuted the work with correspondent earnestness. This pervaded every religious exercise, whether in the family or in the pulpit-his supplications and his thanksgivings, his appeals to the sinner and to the saint, and was seen and felt both in the subjects selected and the modes of their discussion. It spoke out in his language-tones-gesture-and obliged even the careless and sceptic to feel, however they might treat his message, that the messenger was duly impressed with the importance of his mission, and deeply anxious for its success. The whole counsel of God was fearlessly declared. Men were addressed as personally responsible for their principles as well as their actions, and as ripening for the glorious and tremendous retributions of eternity. His pulpit exercises were not essays dull and tame, or by refinement and polish rendered powerless for good; nor were they philosophic disquisitions elaborately and logically constructed; much less were they agglomerations of beautiful or gorgeous figures hung upon or concealing some weighty truth; but they were vigorous sermons on subjects relating to the soul and eternity, expressed in a style simple and without ornament, but correct and expressive, which embodied much of the language of the sacred oracles, and spoke plainly and powerfully both to the understanding and the heart. Some of those exercises combined a propriety in the matter, and an effectiveness in the delivery but seldom equalled, and scarcely ever surpassed, in public speaking. One of those occasions the writer of this article can never forget. Two young men having offered to serve as missionaries in Canada, the charge to them, prior to their departure, was delivered by Mr. W.; who, as though baptized with living fire,-filled to overflowing with the vastness of his subject, and with mingled feelings of deepest

solemnity, melting tenderness, and burning zeal,-delivered an address, every sentence of which seemed instinct with vitality, and alternately enlightened and aroused, melted and awed. The interests of eternity, in the immensity of their magnitude, the preciousness of immortal souls, and the duties and responsibilities of the Christian ministry, were set forth with a vividness which brought them as living realities before the understanding, and with a pathos which gave them the entire control of the heart; while the tenderness with which he addressed the young men - encouraging, exhorting, and cautioning them, and assuring them of the sympathies and prayers of the churches, together with his own,-appealed with equal power to the softer passions. The alternating feelings of the speaker forced an entrance into every heart, or rather were welcomed there as into a temple prepared for their reception, and subservient to their purposes. An effect not greatly dissimilar was produced by his prayer in connection with the ordination of the young ministers at the last Conference. Having risen in the hallowed visions of his mind, and the ardour of sanctified affections, to a just appreciation of the same realities, he poured out his full soul with a copiousness and unction that penetrated, solemnized, and delighted all.

"The earnestness which so strikingly marked the public ministry of Mr. W. was conspicuous in every sphere of duty, giving activity to exertion, and carrying him onward to success through difficulties under which less ardent minds would have sunk. As a pastor he watched over the flock with vigilance and tenderness, and was an example to it both in attendance on those means of grace by which Methodism is distinguished, and in the virtues that adorn the Christian character, while as a superintendent, the varied interests, whether temporal or spiritual, of the circuits in which he laboured were attended to with the utmost punctuality and the most patient perseverance. Nor were the institutions and general welfare of the community either lost sight of or practically disregarded by him, but shared as fully his watchfulness and active labours as the interests of his circuit or his home.

"The high and holy principles that sustained the ardour of his zeal, secured uniformity in his general character. The same order, punctuality, diligence, and perseverance continued to mark his daily walk till within a short time of the closing scene of his long and useful life, enabling him, but two years previously, and at the age of seventy, to discharge the arduous duties of president, in addition to the ministerial, pastoral, and other claims of an extensive and laborious circuit.

"It must be expected that, generally at least, such labours would be crowned with success. And they were so. In some cases, especially, formidable difficulties were surmounted, crushing burdens were removed, and churches, found by him feeble, fainting, and almost ready to die, were revived, multiplied, and established.

"As a member of Conference and of connexional committees, his disinterestedness and integrity-discretion and candour-his willingness to yield in matters of mere expediency, and firmness when vital principles were involved, the cheerfulness with which he undertook, and the diligence with which he performed, public duties,-together with a kindness that instinctively shrunk from giving pain unnecessarily to any one, secured for him a high place in the confidence and esteem both of his brethren in the ministry and the friends of the Connexion throughout our circuits. His memory is, and will be, blessed."

Before proceeding to describe the last scene of all, it may be well to advert to the few more remarkable periods and events of his history. In his ministerial and social capacity, he always enjoyed the boundless confidence and affection of the brethren. He was three times, at Sheffield, Manchester, and Ashton, raised to the Presidency of the