THE

ANNUAL MONITOR

FOR 1881,

OR

OBITUARY

OF THE

MEMBERS OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

In Great Britain and Ireland,

FOR THE YEAR 1880.

LONDON:

SOLD BY SAMUEL HARRIS & Co., 5, BISHOPSGATE WITHOUT;

AND BY

WILLIAM SESSIONS, 15, Low OUSEGATE, YORK;

ALSO BY

JOHN GOUGH, 12, EUSTACE STREET, Dublin.

-

1880.

PREFACE.

IT is with regret that I issue the Annual Monitor this year with an obituary so scantily furnished with memoirs, and containing the names of some whose lives would have supplied material for much interesting and instructive record, unaccompanied by any memorial. I trust that a future volume may supply the deficiency in some of these cases.

There appears to be a growing disposition to question the wisdom and utility of making public the spiritual experience of departed friends; and if the pages of this little work aimed only at recording the excellencies of those who have passed away, without recalling their frailties and failures, and telling how they found a way of deliverance from them, and of entrance into the glorious liberty of the children of God, its story would be told to little purpose, if indeed it did not tend to discourage the wayfarer on the road to Zion, who often finds himself compassed with

iv

infirmity. But in proportion as its pages paint those "footprints on the sands of time" which past lives have left there, and tell of the way by which those gone before travelled out of darkness into light, and out of the power of sin and Satan unto God, will it help its readers to "take heart again" in the renewed assurance that there is a way of certain hope for every fallen son and daughter of Adam, and that that way is CHRIST.

With a view to supplying the deficiency in other matter, I have prepared sketches which will be found at the end of the volume, of two lives whose records are full of practical illustration of Divine truth, and of encouragement to such as desire to live a life of faithful trust in the Lord.

The account of John M. Whitall I have taken, with the kind consent of the family, from an unpublished biographical sketch by his daughter Hannah W. Smith. The memoir of Thomas Shillitoe is drawn from his Journal, which, though in some parts undoubtedly tedious, will yet abundantly repay perusal. Neither of these men possessed high intellectual culture, yet both had much true spiritual experience, and both knew what it was to be "born of God," and to live a new life of faith in Him.

V

Vital religion requires for its roots a deeper soil than that of intellect only, and reaches further than any mere philosophy. It is attained only as the Spirit of God works upon the soul, and leads' through a new birth, into a changed life; else the Lord Jesus would not have said, "Except a man be born again (from above), he cannot see the kingdom of God; " nor would Paul have written, "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." The promise still lives, "They shall be all taught of God ;" and as His children are willing to humble themselves before Him, and to be taught and guided by His Spirit, they will be made wise unto salvation; they will find that the way of true discipleship is still the way of the Cross; but they will find, too, that the way of the Cross is the way to the Crown.

SCARBOROUGH,

W. R.

Twelfth month, 1880.