and Liverpool. The health of our brother had been on the decline for nearly twelve months, and during the time he was confined to his bed he longed to depart and be with Christ. Repeatedly when I have been seated by his bed-side has he said, "Brother Pacey, I wonder my Lord delays his coming." He had no bands in his death, and his end was peace.

W. PACEY.

DIED, Jan. 26th, 1854, at Hanging Heaton, Dewsbury Circuit, SUSAN BAILEY, aged 77 years. Our deceased sister had been a member of the New Connexion for the long period of forty years, and was the last of the aged widows connected with the Hanging Heaton society. She died full of faith, as

of years, exclaiming, a few days before her death," None but Jesus! none but Jesus!" She was peaceable in her temper, steady at the means of grace, and consistent in her deportment. She was highly esteemed by all who knew her, and died much regretted. J. N.

On the 5th of March, Miss E. SCARF, the eldest daughter of Mr. Thomas Scarf, of Bradford, departed this life. Miss Scarf was a very amiable young lady, and was greatly respected by all who knew her. For nearly two years she had been ill, and for several months there seemed to be no hope of recovery. Her end was peace. She rested her faith upon the atonement of Christ. This is a heavy stroke May it be sanctified to the bereaved family.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE METHODIST NEW CONNEXION MAGAZINE." MY DEAR SIR, -The following observations not more startling than true, were addressed by Dr. Duff to a missionary conference called by the Evangelical Alliance, and held in connection with its sittings in London, "with a view to a general contemplation of the missionary efforts made by British Christians, and an interchange of sentiments on the plan and conduct of a future ecumenical conference, on the subject of missions." They apply with peculiar appropriateness to the existing state of things among us as a religious community, and strongly support the views expressed in some of the late numbers of the MAGAZINE And as on such a subject line upon line is needed, their early insertion will oblige, Yours very affectionately,

Z.

CHRIST comes to us, and says, "Go into all the world." But does He ask us to do what He had not done Himself? He came from heaven into this world of sin and woe. Herein is our weakness. We pray, "O Lord, raise up men who shall go forth into the heathen field;" and thousands thus pray without ever thinking that this may concern themselves, and that for aught they can tell their prayer ought to be answered by their saying, "Here am I; send me." Is there a readiness to act out the prayer? It is wanting exceedingly. Others pray in our churches continually,

"Lord, furnish the means by which the heathen shall be converted;" and there may be sitting in those very congregations those who could themselves fur

nish the means. God may have bestowed His gifts, and then people pray, "Oh, bestow thy gifts that the heathen may be converted; ' while there are those bending their knee in prayer who are possessed of the means if they only chose to give them. Yes, there are congregations in this land, on the members of which God has bestowed prodigious means, incomes of immense extent; and, perhaps when many of the members lift up their hands in prayer they have, in vain ostentation, displayed upon them more in the form of jewellery or gems, than they ever gave for advancing the cause of Christ in a perishing world. Is not this mockery? We put up prayers that are mockeries, and yet expect answers. There is something utterly wrong and preposterously inconsistent here. Now, the spirit of missions is not anything peculiar to missionaries, but is, or ought to be, the grand characteristic of every Christian soul. It has been a deadly delusion in the Church of Christ to fancy that there is a set of men called out who are to manifest some peculiar spirit which other Christians may do without. We hold this to be the true doctrine-that the spirit of missions is the spirit of Christ, and that the spirit of Christ is pre-eminently thisa seeking and saving of the lost. We

have in Christ meekness, and gentleness, and every other grace; but we have something more than this. Oh! study His holy life; ponder that phrase, "Went about continually doing good;" He was everlastingly speaking out words of kindness, or doing acts of kindness and benevolence to arrest and arouse. When others slumbered he retired into the solitudes of Judea, went to the mountain tops with locks wet with the dew of heaven, still carrying out His work; for it was His meat and His drink to be unceasingly doing the will of His Father; and the will of His Father, in a high and peculiar sense, is that men should be saved through Him. This, I say, is pre-eminently the spirit of Christ, and we protest in the sight of high heaven that if believers do not manifest at least somewhat of this spirit in kind, they are deceiving themselves, and are not Christians at all. There are degrees of this spirit, and we ought to aim at the highest degree, until the time shall come when it shall be laid down as an axiom or aphorism that no man or woman can be a Christian who has not, in kind at least, this spirit. Now, this being the spirit of Christ, let it be remembered that at the very threshold of Christianity Christ lays it down as an indispensable condition of entrance into His kingdom that men should take up his cross. What does that mean? Is it not the cross of self-denial-a readiness to deny one's self. And what is that? To give up one's favourite tastes and predilections, if need be, and these are endlessly varied-to have done, if need be, with all carefulness about this world's interests and with all that it contains-a readiness to manifest all this, and an actual manifestation of it if God, in the course of His Providence, calls for it. This is the spirit of self-denial-to be unearth-like, to be Christ-like. But we all make reserves; we are ready to deny ourselves in some one thing, provided we are allowed to keep some other thing. Self-denial to one man may be no self-denial to another. Look at the poor; they mistake wherein true comfort lies, and to give up the noxious drugs in which they so often infatuatedly indulge would be selfdenial to them. Some men-to speak plainly-have an exceeding curiosity about books, antiquities, and the like, and, perhaps, all their available means are expended on these things. Ay, but

to

souls are perishing. When the question is, "Shall I gratify my taste for these gilded books and these antique curiosities, or shall I devote my means to the saving of souls?" self-denial would say, "Away with the perishable! Let me give to secure what is imperishable." There are others whose taste goes in another direction-the pride of life, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, called the trinity of the world, absorb all. Methinks that the Christian Church is at this moment steeped in all the carnal regalements and self-indulgences connected with this awful trinity of the world; steeped-I know not how to express it-saturated therewith! The lust of the eye! God means that the eye should have its own enjoyment, and doubtless there is a time for enjoyment coming; heaven, the place of the redeemed, will have abundance regale the sight as well as the other senses, in purity. But we are not in heaven now; we are in a lost, wrecked, and ruined world; and it is not here that God has promised the Christian his plenary enjoyment in regard to any one taste, or faculty, or power. And so of all other appetences! But now-adays, in the midst of our highly conventional, artificial civilization, men say, "We want to be like our neighbours." An intense worldliness has thus crept into the Christian Churcha secularity and carnality that is most overwhelming; and the only excuse that can be made is, that we are born and brought up in the midst of it, and scarcely ever turn our eyes round to look at it, or put ourselves outside in such a position that we can gaze upon it with impartiality. Is not the world bent upon sensible pleasures and enjoyments? Is it not bent upon building palaces, having them replenished with sumptuous furniture, and surrounded with stately and gorgeous equipages, and all the pomp and blazonry of earthly magnificence? I speak plainly, because I feel this most intensely. I ask you wherein in these respects do the rich professors of Christianity usually differ from the veriest worldlings, except in a few rare cases? Now all this is the very opposite of that spirit of Christ which is to deny itself to the uttermost in seeking and saving the lost. I know not what any Church has to speak of, except in the way of shame and confusion. I have often said in my own country, in mixed audiences, "Would to God that any of you, Presbyterians, Wes

leyans, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, or Baptists, or any others, if you be but evangelical, would rise up and set before us the image of Christ in its unique and burning purity, and thereby arouse all the rest to a sense of their shame with regard to their selfishness and earthliness. Until this is more manifestly realized, so far as we are concerned, the citadel of the nations will not fall." What must be the feelings of the angels of God when they look down on our sacramental occasions, and see thousands partaking of the elements that represent the broken body and shed blood of Christ, amongst whom are tens of thousands that never do anything for promoting the cause for which he died, and the great proportion of whom do nothing but what is a mere wretched apology instead of an actual performance of duty. Oh! do we realize this? Here are tens of thousands, as it were, in the visions of faith representing themselves as at the foot of the cross, and saying, “O Lord, we were hell-deserving sinners, we were suspended half over the bottomless abyss, ready to plunge into it in a moment; but Thou, O Father, in Christ didst manifest Thy glory by sending Him into the world, and Thou, O blessed Saviour, didst lay down thy life and shed thy precious blood to snatch me from the yawning gulf of perdition; Lord I praise and thank Thee; I see the gates of heaven open to me through Thee; I see crowns of glory and palaces of light in Immanuel's land awaiting me; praised be Thy name, O blessed Saviour!" Now, what would you say if such individuals were to sit calmly still and gaze calmly at the spectacle of their fellow-creatures in millionsmillions, not of dead bodies, but of dead souls? Yes, here is one awful, tremendous procession of immortal souls, with the archfiend at their head, carrying

them away, exulting in his triumph, and plunging them down into the depths of woe, there to rejoice over them for evermore-another and another, in one long, endless procession, moving on day after day, year after year, through successive centuries! What would you think of the professing disciple that could realize that, and yet turn round and say, "Lord, I thank Thee for having saved my soul, but as for these millions of lost souls that are going down to the pit of destruction, let them perish if they will?" Yet this, practically, is the spectacle presented by myriads in the bosom of the Christian Church at this moment; and is it not cruel selfishness, beyond the power of language to express? Is there not something absolutely fiendish in it? And if this be the spirit, which is greatly prevalent in the Church of Christ, how can we expect the blessing of God upon us and upon our instrumentality? No, brethren, we ought to be up and doing; we ought to be keeping in view everlastingly these perishing myriads and the shame and dishonour done to the great God by the reflected image of Satan in them. We ought to realize what our position is, and what our calling is, as His agents and instruments in accomplishing, through the aids of the heavenly grace, this mighty work and raising up that which would be a spectacle of glory through eternal ages. We ought to act in such a manner that no man or woman within our reach could perish without treading, as it were, upon the very body of Christ, trampling His blood under foot, and crossing over Him in order to reach the frontiers of the burning lake. Oh, if this spirit were in us, we should have a moral and spiritual revolution in our British Churches which would soon extend over the world.

"Infidelity, its Aspects, Causes, and Agencies;" being the prize essay of the British Evangelical Alliance. By the Rev. Thomas Pearson. London: Partridge, Oakey and Co.

This truly excellent work was introduced to our readers by a favourable notice some months since. The present edition is designated "The people's edition," because it is published at an

amazingly cheap rate for the million. We have the matter, which in the former edition filled a thick octavo volume, here published without abridgment, in good type, on good paper, and neatly bound in cloth and gilt lettered, for the low price of one shilling and sixpence. Nor is this all: in any case where 100 volumes are ordered at once, the price is reduced to one shilling each. Thus,

any benevolent individual of sufficient means may, by the trifling sum of £5, dispense one hundred copies among the working classes or the poor of his neighbourhood. The work, from its intrinsic excellence, is worthy of a most extensive circulation, and we shall rejoice to hear of hundreds of thousands being diffused through the population. Such a result would confer an important boon to the churches and the population of this country.

"Rambles among Mountains," a book for the young: with two additional Lectures by N. T. Langridge. Third edition. London: W. B. King.

The title to this book does not adequately express or suggest its true character. It is not, as might be supposed, the narrative of a country stroll in quest of landscape beauty, or nature's wonders, but a description of some of the most momentous events recorded in Sacred Scripture, which have happened to transpire on the sacred mountains, whose names are familiar to every one conversant with Scripture History. Thus, the scenes of Ararat, Moriah, Pisgah, Gilboa, Carmel, Tabor, Calvary, and Olivet, with their instructive memorials, are graphically depicted to the minds of the young. Mr. Langridge has the happy art of expressing important truths in the most simple and engaging style, and of illustrating that truth by analogies and similes which cannot fail to arrest the attention, and impress the heart. The book is quite a treasure for the young. Parents, teachers, or friends, who wish to express a token of pious affection for the children under their care, will find this neat volume a cheap, valuable, and appropriate present for such a purpose.

"Christ glorified in the Life, Experience, and Character of Joseph B. Shrewsbury;" written by his father, the Rev. W. Shrewsbury. Third Edition, carefully revised. London: J. Mason.

This is not an ordinary piece of religious biography, but an embodiment of the most exalted piety and personal holiness. Mr. J. B. Shrewsbury was a

Fletcher in piety, a Bramwell in prayerfulness and zeal. There was no darkness or distance between his soul and God, no compromise of principle, no trimming in duty, but thorough, earnest, and unreserved devotedness to God. He walked with God; and whilst rejoicing daily in the light of his countenance he clearly and steadily reflected the lovely radiance of his image in all holy conversation. At the early age of twenty-one he finished his earthly career, being suddenly called to his eternal reward while in the act of administering spiritual instruction and comfort at the bedside of suffering humanity. Thanks to his father for giving to the church this precious memorial of his devout and sainted son.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

"The Teacher's Offering." London : Ward and Co.

"Scripture Teacher's Assistant; with explanations and lessons designed for Sunday-schools and families. By Henry Althans. London: E. Butt.

"Lectures to Young Men." No. 3. The Sabbath-Its claims and benefits; A Lecture delivered at Trevor Chapel, Brompton, by John Morrison, D.D., L.L.D. London: Ward and Co.

"Christianity in Earnest, as exemplified in the Life and Labours of the Rev. Hodgson Casson." By A. Steele. Second edition. London: R. Needham.

"The Leisure Hour." Part 25. A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation. London: Religious Tract Society.

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Congregational Year Book-1854." Containing the proceedings of the Congregational Union for 1854, and general statistics of the denomination. London: Jackson and Walford.

Monthly Series: "The Field and the Fold." London: The Religious Tract Society.

"A Home Book for Children of all ages." London: Ward and Co.

"The Mother's Friend." Edited by Ann Jane. London: Ward and Co. "The Revivalist:" a Monthly Serial. London: W. B. King.