hear him there ;' and impressed with what he had said, they did go, and continued to do so, till the rapid progress of dropsy confined this poor woman to her room. She was once visited by the preacher; but he left the neighbourhood soon after, and she did not again see him ; she was shortly obliged to be removed to the hospital to be tapped. But new views had been given to her, she saw and felt herself to be a sinner, and this was a weight upon her mind, that she knew not how to get removed. She found no one to open her heart to, in the hospital, and returned home, relieved in body, but still burdened in conscience, and it was at this time, that the writer was asked to visit her. She could neither herself read, nor could her young neighbour, who lived in the next room ; and thus were presented two cases of great interest, and demanding much attention. The visits were continued every Sunday, and were most eagerly looked for. There soon appeared the very best reasons to believe, that her sense of sin was not caused by mere alarm, but was a deep conviction, a searching work of the Holy Spirit ; it has never seemed to decrease, but rather to have deepened ; while as the plan of salvation was unfolded to her, and the Saviour's infinite love and mercy more plainly declared, and the duty of believing in the entire freeness of that mercy pressed home upon her; she was gradually brought to trust, and at length to rejoice in a pardoning God; and it has been most delightful and encouraging to watch her progress both in knowledge and feeling. It has only been at intervals that she has been enabled to attend public worship; but she has eagerly embraced every opportunity, although suffering much from bodily pain. At such times, she has received much benefit from attending the Rev. Mr. Hughes' afternoon lecture in Shoreditch Church. Her increase in knowledge and in a clear and full comprehension of the truths of the Gospel, has been really surprising, but she deeply felt and candidly acknowledged her ignorance, eagerly seeking instruction. I am such a poor ignorant, lost creature,' continually mingled with the first complaints of herself, and still there is the same humble seeking for instruction. There has been far less progress on the part of the other female, although her health has enabled her regularly and frequently to attend the means of grace; but she has far less natural comprehension of mind. The illness of this poor afflicted woman seems to be truly sanctified to her; and the way in which she has really profited under it, gives a striking emphasis to the question, · Who teacheth like him ?' She has been indeed taught through it by the Spirit of God; her firm faith and simple trust in God, in painful moments, has been most edifying, and the manner in which she has gone through the operation of tapping at the hospital, has drawn expressions of surprize and admi. ration from the medical attendants. This fortitude she gratefully attributed to divine support in answer to prayer, and from time to time has expressed the liveliest sense of the presence and help of the Lord at such moments, and when keenly suffering at other times. All this experience has tended to give intensity to her love of the Saviour, and made her feel how much she falls short of what she owes him. She remarked on one occasion with much simplicity and emphasis, • What a shocking thing it is, I cannot love the Saviour more than I do !'- Truly it is shocking, that we all do not; such love toward us ! such coldness toward him ! How strong the love of home, be it ever so humble,' is rooted in an English breast. The two last operations upon this afflicted woman have been performed in her own room, at her pressing request. It was doubted at first whether the hospital arrangements would permit this, and she was reminded of the better nourishment and at. tention she would have there, which she could not have in her own place, but she was willing to deny herself all this, though she had been very thankful for it on previous occasions, rather than leave home, if it might or could be avoided; she obtained her request, and certainly was borne as well through it, as if she had had every thing ; she believed she did it from a right feeling, and was willing to trust more simply in God, this confidence supported her, and she has been full of thankfulness for the divine assistance. Yet there was little enough in her home to feed this feeling, -only one neighbour to sympathize at all in her religious feelings,- no children,--and her husband, quiet when sober, but capable of doing little to soothe her in pain, and quite indisposed himself to cultivate serious feelings. Indeed it would need much decision in such a man to do this,- he is a dustman, his companions all debased, therefore, and more or less drunken,—and this makes her case the more trying very often: for often he will come home in liquor, sometimes at the middle of the night, and on some occasions has even ill-treated her : it is to be feared more frequently than she has named. But these men are much to be pitied, from their exposure to temptation whon about their callings, and from the way in which the habit is stimulated by the system of paying them late on Saturday night in public-houses. This man worked for a contractor at Limehouse, and used to have to wait with the others, in public-houses, till sometimes past eleven o'clock; where they were tempted to sit and drink till their turns came to be paid. By such means too, Sunday-trading is encouraged : the woman has said that often they have had nothing to get food with for Sunday, till her husband brought home the remainder of his wages in the middle of the night. The sincerity of her religious feelings has been marked by the intense anxiety often expressed for the salvation of her parents, as well as her husband. She perseveres in kind expostulation and entreaty to them to think about their souls, and attend the house of God, and is often quite dispirited at their continued indifference. Much interest attaches to the case of the other young female who has been mentioned. She was very slow to apprehend truth, yet there were symptoms of much feeling in the attention she gave, when the visits were paid to her neighhour, and her diligence in availing . herself of the means of grace. An unintellectual countenance and a flushed face, gave her a very unprepossessing appearance. The visitor supposed at first she had been married, but on one occasion, reference being made during a conversation with her afflicted neighbour, when she was present, to some parties living together unmarried, half turning her head away, she said in a subdued tone, · Oh I lived in that way nine years. It also appears she has been a thorough dram-drinker. Once when passing a public-house, where some were drinking gin outside, she remarked to a pious woman who was with her, I have often drunk eight or nine glasses in a day. Her occupation is matt selling, and · ornaments for your fire-stoves.' She has now persevered for upwards of eighteen months in a totally different course of life and habits, amidst many jeers and much opposition : a sense of sin has gradually struck deep its roots in her heart, and her views of the Saviour become also increasingly distinct. Thus affording with the other case, a striking proof of what the grace of God can do for the most despised and lowest amongst us. It is painful to notice on visiting the very low districts, the numbers there are living together unmarried, apparently without any sense of the guilt of it. I painful proof of the wretchedness attendant upon this course of life, was presented to the writer's notice one Sunday morning. He was in the street where the last-named parties lived, when a woman came up, and anxiously entreated that he would at once go into a house to see a young woman who had just taken laudanum. “You might say a few words to the poor thing before it is too late,' she said. He went at once, and found the unhappy creature sitting on a bed, in a miserable room, with her hair all dishevelled, while the neighbours who had come up, were doing what they could to keep her from falling asleep, till she could be taken off to the hospital. The doctor had been in and administered the stomach. pump, and there was just a hope that she had been saved from death. She was calling out wildly, "Where is he? Oh, let me go to him,bring him here,'-and then burst into a fit of crying, till quite exbausted, she sought to lay down. It was explained, that the man who had lived with her had suddenly left her, and on the moment of discovery, she had resolved to put an end to her existence. It is shocking enough to read of cases of self-destruction, but to see a poor creature just swaying between life and death, through her own rashnest and sin, is truly awful. She was taken to the hospital, and was sufficiently recovered to be back again in the afternoon, acting as if nothing had happened. The unhappy woman was too insensible to heed the little that was said on the first visit, and the writer did not succeed in getting another opportunity of speaking to her. When we see vice mingled with such wretchedness, and look round and see thousands so deeply sunk in it, the heart sickens, and when the Christian looks upon them all as immortal souls, and remembers Him who shed his blood to redeem us, there is added to this depressing feeling that of grief that He should be so “ despised and rejected of men.” They, refusing for themselves, eterval joy, and refusing to Him that honour and praise which is his due : and All to the eye of sense looks utterly hopeless; but then we have to labour in faith, and the grace and power of God is from time to time glorified, by snatching from the mass some of the most lost and wretched. No persons would have excited less hope, than the two females whose cases have been detailed, both from their appearance and their ignorance. With regard to the younger one, it is probable that her slowness of understanding has been much increased by the gross and sensual habits of her former life : but now there is the best ground for regarding them both as indeed “ brands plucked out of the fire." We know not in what depths God's people are hid, but going where we have opportunity with the simple Gospel truth, we take that magnet, which will attract and draw them out from their most hidden obscurity, To be continued. Intelligence. CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY. The Forty-second Anniversary Meet template that part of the field which ing of the Church Missionary Society it is very difficult to occupy, without was held in the Great Room of Exeter feelings of deep pain, and, I should Hall on Tuesday the 3rd of May. The add, deep remorse and shame (which Right Hon. the Earl of ChichESTER I do believe many of us have to take in the chair. The Report, after giving to ourselves) that it should be necesa most cheering account of the work sary for the Committee to have made of God at the various Missionary the statement with respect to the stations, referred to the financial finances of the society, which has difficulties of the Society, the receipts been communicated to us this mornof the year for general purposes, ing. I am quite willing, with our being £90,821. 2s. 6d. and the expen excellent and Rev. Friend whom we diture £110,808. 16s. ld. thereby heard last night, (the Rev. H. shewing an excess of expenditure Stowell) to exult in the greatness of within the year of £19,987 13s. 7d. my country, and to thank God for The first resolution, which referred the blessings conferred upon it. I to this painful subject, was briefly am quite able to follow him, to a moved by the Bishop of Ripon, and great extent, in all he has said on seconded by the Rev. J. W. Cun the subject of the Church to which ningham, in the following terms: we have the happiness and privilege I should not,' said the Rev. Gen to belong ; but I'do say, that just at tleman, 'have so readily consented present I feel it difficult to exult either to have placed myself in so promi in the nation or in the Church, while nent a situation as that of endea so foul a blot as the extensive debt vouring to second the motion for the of this society rests upon them. Allow printing of the Report; a situation me now for a moment to direct the which, on a variety of accounts, I am attention of this assembly to the two not in the smallest degree entitled to points respecting the finances, which occupy; but I confess that, as an old have been brought before us to-day. friend of the society, one of the oldest In the first place, there is the evil, almost, at least as long connected and in the second place, there is the with it as probably any individual remedy. Now, what is the evil ? At but one in this room-I confess I did the present moment you have spent feel an earnest desire to address this £30,000. which for some time was the assembly on one point which occu- capital of the society. All that is pies a prominent situation in the Re- gone, and you have added to it a port, and upon which I can speak debt of £13,000. You are told with with more propriety at the pre that honesty which belongs to your sent moment than at any other. The Committee and Secretaries, that it is point on which I wish especially to very probable that debt will be inbeg the attention of this meeting is creased. We are here met, as it that very affecting part of our pro- were, as a consultation of physicians ceedings which respects the finances to-day, to consider the disease, and of the institution. It is a great act I think we may fairly say, that the of self-denial, I can assure you, that money for which our Committee I should not stop even for a moment comes before us to-day, is at the very to contemplate and survey the bright least £50,000. Are your Committee and glorious panorama (to borrow to be blamed for the expenditure an expression used by the Bishop of they have incurred? I think not in Chester) of the success of the society, the slightest degree ; and I trust you which the Report of to-day has ex will allow me to give some of the reahibited to this great assembly. It is sons for that assertion-reasons which a very painful thing indeed when affect every man and woman in this one's heart is delighted and ex. assembly ; for all are concerned in panded by the Report made to us, to the integrity of the Committee, and come back to ourselves, and to con- this expenditure may be looked upon JUNE, 1842. 2 H as a disgrace if some honest explanation is not given of it. Now look at their circumstances. If you ask me the first cause, I should say, that your Committee felt they were living under the constraining influence of the love of their Redeemer and an anxiety for the salvation of souls. It is very well for tame men to take their stations in their countinghouses, or in their arm-chairs, and wonder that a body of Christian men could have for one hour stepped over the line, and have given a little more than prudently they were authorized to give. But where there was a burning principle of love for the Redeemer, and anxiety for the salvation of six hundred millions of souls, it is not, on consideration, a matter for surprise that the Committee should have been led into this course. When your Committee and your Secretaries had brought before them those countries which have been mentioned, in a shivering, miserable, desolate con dition, living without Christ in the world, their faith and love may have trespassed upon their discretion, and they might have not only done what they could, but have been tempted to do a little more. I confess that of all the offences in the world the easiest for me to forgive was this. If it were possible that the Committee and this great assembly could be sent for their debt to the Queen's Bench, this would be the issue; the gaoler would stand astonished to see for the first time in the history of the world, a body of men there, not for having done too much for themselves, but too much for the salvation of the world. But here is another of their difficulties. I know how difficult it is to manage business even in my own village, where I can put my hand upon any transgressors. But your Committee have to mạnage bodies of men at the antipodes and in other distant parts of the world, to which access is difficult and occupies long periods of time. Now conceive the difficulty of this. If you write a letter to New Zealand you have often to wait a year before you obtain a reply to it; you must not then wonder that some evil arises in such a case; and one of the great difficulties with which our Committee at home have to contend, is the imperfect accounts they receive from those distant Committees which are stationed at the other end of the earth. Here is another point to be considered. The members of the Committee, with all their excellent qualities and devotion, are not prophets, but they are men of large expectations, and having read and studied their Bibles, and depending upon the promises there held out to them, I know not how they could be anything else. And what were their expectations? They expected last year, when the difficulties of the society were explained in this place, they fully expected that there would be found sympathy in the Christian world, and that when they told you that they must relinquish missions, that they were getting into debt, and were struggling in deep water,-the Committee, when they told you this, fondly, and, I fear, somewhat foolishly, too, indulged in the confident expectation that there would be so much of sympathy aroused throughout the Christian world as would relieve the difficulties in which they found themselves, take them out of the troubled waters in which they were struggling, and place their feet once more on dry ground. I must say, that the just expectations of the society have been much disappointed, and that their friends ought, in many cases, to have done more for them than they have done. Do not suspect me of being ungrateful or ungenerous; I know there are many behind me, and many whom I see before me to-day, who have, in full dependence upon the Spirit of God, done their best for the institution. I know that there is many an attentive ear and many a glistening eye whenever the sorrows of the institution are recounted; and I know, too, that there is many a beating heart to testify to the truth. I now say, that many a pure and simple mind has, for the love of the Lord and Saviour of the world, done his best to lay his contribution on the altar of the institution. I do not utter the smallest reproach to those persons that the difficulties of the society exist; I should be ashamed to do so; for I know that thousands have, according to their means, done a thousand times more than I have done myself to relieve those difficulties; but at the same time I am deeply convinced that the Christian world has not done its duty in the emergency, and I come here now-for I scorn to flatter you-I come here now to charge against you, to charge to the con |
