father's house on the Monongahela, and travelled under the presiding elder. In 1794 he joined the conference, and was stationed on the Alleghany circuit, which he travelled two years. The next year, 1796, he was appointed to Pittsburg circuit: in 1797 he was stationed in New-York, and in 1798 in Boston. From thence, in 1799, he was removed to Province Town, Massachusetts: in 1800 he was stationed in Nantucket. local preacher by the name of Cannon had preached in this place with considerable success; and as the prospects appeared flattering, he solicited the aid of the travelling ministry, and Mr. Beauchamp was sent to his help. He had not been in this station more than six months, before a society of between seventy and eighty members was raised up; and before he left the station, a large and commodious meeting-house was built. In the following year, 1801, he located, and on the 7th of June he married Mrs. Francis Russell, widow of Mr. A. Russell, who perished at sea. Her maiden name was Rand. She was among the most excellent of women. Not only her parents, husband, and children, "rise up and call her blessed," but also all that know her. In 1807 brother B. removed from Nantucket where he married, and settled near his father, in Wood county, (Va.) on the little Kenhawa, and the old gentleman, about this time, died. Brother B.'s family, his children and step-children, were small: he had continued at this place, beloved and usefully employed, until some time about the last of December, 1810; when the writer of this memoir, passing through this district of country, for the first time saw him. This first interview will never be forgotten: it was on the Sabbath preceding new-year's day. Having been licensed to exhort, the writer had attempted nearly about the first time, to preach at Marietta the week preceding, with some success; many were awakened, and several professed to get religion. He accompanied the young people to a quarterly meeting at the Rev. Rees Wolfe's, on little Kenhawa, then considered an obscure part of the country. Here he was introduced as a preacher; it was a vain attempt to plead to the contrary, or to insist upon a denial; brother Wolfe called him forth, and informed him that there was an old preacher there of considerable eminence, and that they two must preach, and that the writer might choose whether to preach before or after him, as the circuit preacher had failed to attend. Brother W. was asked to point him out; he did so, when the stranger caught the cast of his eye, and remarked to his friend W. that he was but a stripling in years, and inexperienced, and could not preach after that man. He was followed by brother B. from Romans xiii. 11. "For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed." The masterly manner in which he introduced the subject, the matter and order of his treating it, his fine turned periods, the purity of his language, his extensive and enlarged ideas, his depth of thought, and all brought forth in a strain of eloquence, chaste and sublime, which with the spirit of the man, at once astonished and delighted him. Although at the first view brother B. appeared to possess nothing about him to attract attention, his appearance being that of a remarkably plain and humble man, yet some how or other, the stranger had caught a glance of his eye, that sure index of the mind, and soon proved that this organ of sense was not to be misunderstood. In 1811, brother B. published in Marietta, Ohio, his "Essays on the Truth of the Christian Religion;" a work that would do honour to any Christian author. In the circulation of the work he was aided by some of the travelling preachers, particularly by his worthy and constant friend, the Rev. James Quinn, in whose name the copy-right was obtained. It did much good, and is to be found in the libraries of the most intelligent Christians of different denominations; and in parts where the name of Beauchamp is not known, has the writer found this work read and prized as the production of genius and piety. Some time after this a correspondence commenced between the writer and his friend B. Several circumstances led to this correspondence. The writer of this memoir with a number of his religious friends and acquaintances had long lamented the prevalency of Arian and Pelagian doctrines, with which the Methodist societies at this time, in places, were much infested. The Rev. Samuel Parker, in 1811, 12, and 13, had travelled through the interior of Ohio. The distinguished talents of this minister of grace, connected with the sweet temper and disposition of the man, had enabled him to wield the sceptre of the gospel with such signal success, that those doctrines wherever he went, received a fatal blow to make the victory full and complete, a periodical publication was thought to be absolutely necessary; through which medium the doctrines of the church might be disseminated. Our Methodist Magazine had long since been discontinued, and no disposition appeared to be manifested to revive it. These circumstances had induced the writer upon his own responsibility to issue a prospectus for a periodical religious publication, to be published in Chillicothe, which was designed to batter down those absurd notions, so prevalent at this period. Brother B. was solicited to undertake it, and this, connected perhaps with other circumstances, induced him to remove to Chillicothe, Ohio, some time in the year 1815. The year following, 1816, that excellent periodical work "The Western Christian Monitor," was published monthly. Publications of this kind had sprang up in various parts of the United States, and the name of this forestalled; so that "Western" was added by way of distinction. In this publication brother B. was aided by the writer of this memoir, but more by compilations and selections than in original matter; and at his request brother B. wrote a short commentary on the articles of religion of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which was published in numbers. The Monitor was extensively circulated, has done much good, and the bound volumes are now, and always will be, a valuable acquisition to any library. The infant state of the western country, the difficulties attending the distribution of the work, and worse than all, the very ill state of brother B.'s health at this time, all tended greatly to discourage him in the prosecution of it; and from these and other circumstances, which it is now needless to mention, at the end of the first year it was wholly discontinued. While brother B. resided in Chillicothe, he became extensively known, and to the church in that place very useful; his persuasive eloquence, and his solid piety gained him many friends both among professors and non-professors, who were so generally impressed with a sense of his real worth, that his name is now, and will long be had in remembrance; and but little doubt is entertained that his labours in this place paved the way for that great and glorious revival of religion, which commenced soon after he left it to remove to Mount Carmel, in Illinois. Those lucid intervals during the ministry of the writer's friends, Mr. Samuel Parker, and Mr. William Beauchamp, (the one immediately succeeding the other in Chillicothe,) in his associations with them around the country in different places, at various meetings, he now retrospects as the happiest period of his life! The tremulous motions of the late calamitous war had subsided, peace reigned, the gospel spread most astonishingly; and it was his delight to hear at one time Parker as the Cicero, and at another B. as the Demosthenes, of the church in the west. Pleasing, yet melancholy thought! their race is run, and these two ministers of the church have left us to mourn for ourselves! One slumbers in the valley of the Mississippi, the other sweetly (for the present) reposes on the heights of Peoli, in Indiana! "Thus the men Whom nature's works instruct, with God himself [To be continued.] MISCELLANEOUS. LETTER FROM THE DIRECTORS OF THE SCOTTISH MISSIONARY SOCIETY TO PERSONS PROPOSING TO OFFER THEMSELVES AS MISSIONARIES. DEAR SIR.-When our blessed Lord commissioned his disciples to go and preach the gospel of the kingdom, he said to them, "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." With that frankness and honesty which were peculiarly characteristic of him, he proceeds to pourtray the difficulties and dangers which they would have to encounter in the prosecution of this important work; and with these faithful representations he mingles the most solemn warnings, and the most affectionate counsels, to animate them to zeal and activity in his service. The Directors of the Scottish Missionary Society, having received the offer of your services, would, in imitation of our blessed Redeemer, solicit your serious attention to some points connected with the work of a Christian missionary, which they deem it of peculiar importance to bring under your consideration, before you fully make up your mind to engage in this great and arduous, yet interesting work. First, Let us entreat you to reflect on the IMPORTANCE of the work. In aspiring to be a Christian missionary, you indulge in no common ambition. You seek to be employed in an office than which there is not a higher or more honourable upon earth. To go as an ambassador from the mightiest monarch of this world to another of his fellow potentates, and that in relation to affairs of state of the greatest magnitude, shrinks into insignificance in comparison of being an ambassador from God to guilty men. To be a minister of Christ in a Christian country, is, in some respects, even less important than to be a missionary to the heathen for if a minister in a land of gospel light prove unfaithful, the people have other means of acquiring a knowledge of divine truth; but if a missionary is unfaithful, who shall supply his lack of service? Without any to care for their souls, the poor heathen must remain buried in their native ignorance, without God, without Christ, and without hope in the world. To impress your mind with the magnitude of the work, consider what a solemn thing it is to have the charge of immortal souls; to have their everlasting happiness or everlasting misery suspended in some degree on you, a poor feeble worm! If you should be successful in turning some of the heathen from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, you will be the honoured instrument of rescuing them from a greater sum of misery, and of conferring on them a higher degree of felicity than tongue can utter, or heart conceive. But, on the other hand, if through your negligence or unfaithfulness, the souls committed to your care should be lost, how awful will be the consequences! You would shrink at the thought of being accessary to the death of a fellow-creature, whether by your apathy in not warning him of the danger to which he was exposed, or by your violence in pushing him into it: but how much more dreadful the idea of being accessary to the ruin of immortal souls, by carelessly leaving them to go on in sin without instruction and reproof, or by propagating erroneous principles, and encouraging delusive views! You would not choose to be instrumental, either by your supineness in neglecting such means as might have warded off the danger, or by your positive agency, in laying waste your native land, in burning her cities, and towns, and villages, destroying the inhabitants, and involving the whole country in one general ruin: yet, vast as would be the wretchedness of which you would in that case be the author, how does it dwindle into insignificance compared with the misery of a soul, perishing, through your negligence or unfaithfulness, in the world to come,-a soul for ever banished from the presence of God to that place where hope never comes,"where" in the emphatic words of Him whose infinite compassion prompted the impressive warning, "their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched!" How awful the thought that the fate of many souls, each destined to exist through a mysterious eternity in happiness or misery, as incalculable in extent as in duration,-each comprising, in its spiritual and immortal being, the seeds of happiness or misery larger than the whole amount of joy or sorrow felt by the countless individuals of our fleeting race in all the succeeding ages of this world's existence,-that the fate of these souls may be suspended on your fidelity; that if you prove unfaithful, many may be left in impenitence, exposed to that "wrath of God which is revealed against all unrighteousness of men," who, by more faithful and fervent exertions on your part, might have been saved in the day of the Lord! With what holy caution, with what fear, and trembling, should we enter on an office involving such responsibility! Indeed, on your faithfulness will, in some degree, be suspended the everlasting destinies, not only of the present generation, but of generations that are yet unborn. The Missionaries who first plant the gospel in a Heathen country, are not to be considered as the instruments merely of that fruit which it produces during the short period of their life: to them may be traced indirectly the whole of those fruits of righteousness which it shall bear through successive ages, to the end of the world. If, on the other hand, they slumber at their post; if they prosecute their labours in a cold, languid, heartless manner, they will not only have the souls of that generation required at their hand, but the souls of all those successive generations, who, if they had been faithful, zealous, and active in their work, might have had the knowledge of salvation transmitted to them, and have become partakers of divine grace, and heirs of eternal glory. But as the consequences of the faithfulness or unfaithfulness of a missionary are not confined to his own age, so neither are they limited to the country which is the scene of his labours. The extension of the gospel to other quarters of the world is dependant, in no small degree, on the zeal, activity, and success |