glorious hopes which the gospel of Christ can alone impart. Previously to his marriage, Mr. Rooker had undertaken the education of the son of one of his earliest friends; and subsequently he consented to receive several other youths under his roof, continuing their education until he had secured for his own children the great advantages of domestic training conjoined with sound instruction. These engagements, however, terminated as soon as the education of his family was completed. In the year 1824, Mr. Rooker lost his eldest son, then only thirteen years old, a lad of rare promise, and, considering his early age, of great attainments. This was a very severe trial, and its remembrance continued fresh to the end of life; a portion, doubtless, of that discipline which God intended as a means of working out for his servant "an exceeding and eternal weight of glory." Until the year 1844 he continued to be the sole pastor of the church at Tavistock, usually preaching four times in the week, and conducting other services in the town and neighbourhood; sometimes preaching in the villages, and often to the poor in the Union Workhouse. This long period of service led to deep attachment between the pastor and his people, indicated on their part by many spontaneous acts of affectionate regard. In 1827 they requested him to sit for his portrait. Ten years afterwards the church and congregation presented him with a handsome tea-service of plate; and on his retirement from the ministry, a general desire was expressed, and realized, to obtain a faithful and admirable lithographic likeness of one who was endeared to so many. In 1844, Mr. Rooker having expressed a wish to obtain the assistance of a co-pastor, the Rev. John Lockwood, B.A., then just leaving Rotherham College, was associated with him in the work of the ministry;-a union which was soon cemented by deep and affectionate attachment on each side; and when, in the ensuing year, Mr. Rooker resigned his charge as pastor of the church at Tavistock, Mr. Lockwood, with his full and cordial approval, was chosen by the church as his successor. His only daughter-Mrs. Edgcombe Parson-having married in the year 1844, and settled in London, and his son being already resident in Plymouth, in 1845 Mr. Rooker left Tavistock, but returned to it again in 1846, for six months, continuing during that period his ministerial services in conjunction with Mr. Lockwood. But in 1847 he permanently settled in Plymouth, where he, at first, frequently preached on the Sabbath; but as health and strength gradually declined, he chiefly confined his labours to the Female Penitentiary, usually officiating on the Sabbath morning. Whilst at Plymouth, he felt a deep interest in its Town Mission, and in other religious institutions,-witnessing that, to the end, his love had not grown cold or his attachment to the Redeemer's cause abated. In the year 1818, symptoms of incipient heart-disease first appeared, and during Mr. Rooker's stay at Cawsand his illness greatly increased. From this attack he partially rallied; but, owing to the natural tendency of the disease, he was throughout its progress occasionally subject to depression, especially at each fresh access of the complaint, inducing much spiritual conflict, and leading to the lowliest views of his condition before God. The last Sunday but one in February of the present year, the weather being very bleak, he undertook his usual service at the Penitentiary. This brought on a severe cold, which, combined with his previous complaints, baffled any effectual measures for relief, and gently brought him, at the age of nearly eighty years, to the close of his long and peaceful life. On Friday, the 9th of April, at two o'clock in the morn ing, without any apparent suffering, he and anxiety is lest I should mistake my fell asleep in Jesus. His friends willingly, during the last few weeks of his valuable life, gathered up at intervals a few of his parting words, as nearly as they could remember them. 66 | official relation to the cause of Christ for a real and personal interest in Him. The great need of the soul is spiritual religion. This, and this only, will do for me now; and oh! may I find, when I come to realize eternal things, that this through life has been my portion. Lord, make me to cleave to Christ with purpose of heart. When I think of standing in the presence of a pure and holy God, my heart trembles within me; but he is a compassionate Saviour. I have been surrounded by those who love Him; some of whom are already gone, and others are on their way, to heaven; and I do hope that, notwithstanding my great-great unworthiness, He will say to me, at last, I am thy rock and thy salvation." One evening he said to his daughter, in reference to his ministerial life, "My In the early part of his illness, reference was made to the pleasure and profit he had derived from uniting in conversation and prayer with a Christian friend. "Yes," he said, "but we must learn to look above these ordinances, and rest in the Saviour's work alone, for salvation." This led him to speak of faith in Christ. "I met," he said, little while since with a striking illustration of faith. A father, standing before his house that is in flames, sees his child at the window, and beckons it to his arms; but it is afraid. He calls again; the child still fears. At length, pressed by the necessity, it obeys-course has not been the calm flow of a casts itself into his arms, and is safe. tranquil stream that many have supAnd if,” said he, "with my ten thousand posed. I have had storms and temthousand sins, I reach heaven at last, it pests in my inner life." He then told can only be through the same unlimited her that at fourteen years of age he protrust in my Saviour." fessed faith in Christ, and at sixteen entered the Western Academy, at Taunton, to prepare for the ministry. "I think, now, I was too young," he remarked; "even if then, as might be the case, I was truly born of God, the blossom had not settled into fruit. It is a very great danger to the church," he observed, "when young men are brought into the ministry on promising appearances, rather then decided evidence of piety. Gifts should never even be valued, without clear evidence of grace. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you,' was the apostles' motto, and we ought to make it our rule among ministers." He then proceeded with an account of the labours of his early ministry at Chalford and Chalfont, and afterwards of several invitations he received to various churches, and then to the gracious providence which fixed him with his beloved flock at Tavistock. After he Afterwards, referring to the objection felt by some to recognise the prospect of any joy in heaven excepting such as arises from conscious intercourse with Christ, he said, "This is just the same as if, because the sun is the most lovely object in nature, we were to refuse to see beauty in anything beside; instead of this, we look at the sun and enjoy it, but we see its glory reflected in all the objects that are around us." On the following day, when a friend remarked that it was well for us habitually to look to Jesus for help and strength, "Yes," he replied, "just as I have often said to my people, there are three things at which Christians should aim-to Look, to meditate, and to pray." A few days afterwards, his son having read a hymn to him, as he lay in bed, he said, "I wish you to pray with me. Pray for me that my faith in Christ may be strengthened. My great fear 66 had been there about four years, he people of my charge grew in knowledge and holiness; so that I joyed over them and learnt much from them. I also had blessed seasons at the Lord's table; and sometimes felt, there, that the banner over us was love." He continued his history of a long life, adding, "But looking back, now, on a ministry of sixty years, oh what a poor, useless, unprofitable servant I have been! How little have I been spent for my blessed Redeemer! How little have I had of Baxter's holy passion for saving souls! Over and over again I begin at the lowest place-at the very lowest place, beneath the foot of my dear Redeemer's cross, under the droppings of His blood, and I call God to witness that I come with ten thousand thousand sins, the sins of more than seventy years, and roll them all, personal and ministerial sins, I roll them all upon Christ, asking him to bear the load." At another time: "I have great fear that I shall stagger your faith, and lessen holy confidence in Christ; but it is only my leanness I deplore, my hardened, worldly heart. In Christ all fulness dwells. He is full of grace and truth. In Him I see all I want. O the riches of His grace, the glory of His person, the wisdom of His counsels! There is no want in Him, though I faint and perish;" adding, with pathetic earnestness, 'All over glorious is my Lord, Must be beloved and yet adored; His worth if all the nations knew, Sure the whole earth would love Him too.'" Again, at another time, he said to his daughter," I suppose, my dear child, you expected to have found me in the land of Beulah, or on the Delectable Mountains, with my glass in my hand, telling the towers of the heavenly city, which is just in sight; but no: after sixty years' ministry of the gospel, here is poor old William Rooker just creeping into heaven, if through infinite grace he reaches that blessed place, by stretching ont a trembling hand, and throwing over him the full robe of Christ's righteousness; but I am saved if I only get beneath it." Some time later, when his strength was visibly failing, he observed-" The stream of my life is almost run out: I shall soon receive the summons. I think of the efficacy of Christ's blood, the completeness of His work, the freeness of His salvation; and I trust, guilty as I am, that He will not cast me out." His daughter spoke to him of Jesus going with His people through the valley, but she found that, in this particular, he feared no evil. "I put my hand into Christ's hand," he said, "and if He puts His hand into mine, He will safely lead me through, and all will be well." Then, with deep emotion, he added-"In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace:"repeating it, with growing energy. Often those in attendance on him, in his illness, heard his earnest cries to his Saviour, when he thought there were none to hear; and never can they forget how he ordered his cause before the Lord, and filled his mouth with arguments, pleading chiefly his mighty need and the Redeemer's almighty grace. Those two verses, in a hymn learnt in childhood, seemed most frequently to express his desires:— "Remember all the dying pains That my Redeemer felt; "O may I, then, with joy appear And with the blest assembly there Sing His redeeming grace." He spoke much of the importance of the ministerial work. "O," he said, "if I could have begun my ministry with the knowledge I have acquired here! How I wish our young ministers knew, at the outset of life, how solemn and awful a thing it is to be a minister of Christ, a steward for Christ. What a mercy if, for Christ's sake, I, who have deserved to be cast out, should be accounted faithful. It will be for His sake and His alone! It is a solemn thing to look back on sixty years spent in preaching the gospel. God has blest me-I cannot deny it: there have been many at Tavistock who were living epistles of Christ [naming many of the members of his beloved flock, one by one]. I have been honoured to build up saints; but woe, woe, woe is me, that I have not more fully preached the gospel, the glorious gospel of the blessed God, committed to my trust. Ministers little know, they can have no idea, until they stand on the threshold of eternity, with their commission in their hand, just ready to give it up, what that gospel is, or how awful is their trust. It must be either a savour of life unto life, or death unto death."" After making several inquiries respecting a ministerial friend at a distance, his daughter said, "Shall I give him any message from you?" "I have been such an unprofitable servant," he replied, "that I have no right to send messages; yet I will send him a message. Tell him that I ADVISE him, as I advise all ministers who have been some years in the pastoral office, to make a solemn pause, to stop awhile and consider, and devote time to review his work and his plans; to search the heart, and find what is official and what is spiritual in his labours; and then, with prayer and humiliation, to dedicate himself afresh to God, and consecrate to His service all his future days. The exercise will refresh and cheer his own soul, and will, doubtless, be blest to others. I advise him to anticipate a death-bed review, which, while it sets sins and omissions before the mind, brings forth no fruit unto God in its results, in quickening in the work of saving souls. Tell him to anticipate his death-bed experience in middle life. O that I had done so!-would not the Holy Spirit have been poured out more abundantly? Say to our friend that I advise him never to preach a sermon, whatever its subject may be, which has not the distinct aim of setting before sinners Christ and Him crucified. The Lord bless him and his church!" Again, he said, at another time, "How I mourn, as I sit here, the sins of my holy things-that I have not had larger views of Christ's love, and glory, and deeper interest in his kingdom; and yet, as I have grown older, I think I have felt enlarged desires for its prosperity and increase." As illness increased, he was less able to speak at any length. He said, "I feel now as I never did before the value of the promise, of the Comforter, to show Christ to the soul." One day he exclaimed, with appropriating emphasis, "Jesus, to thy dear faithful hand My naked soul I trust; And my flesh waits for the command After having, on one occasion, expressed his deep feeling of self-renunciation, one who was standing at his side (said, "Yet you would not lose your hold on Christ, after all?" "No," he answered, "not for worlds, not for worlds!" To his beloved partner and daughter he said, "I trust we, as a family, are sealed in the everlasting covenant, and shall all meet in one eternal home." To his daughter: "My dear child, how happy for us, if we meet, ALL of us, in the heavenly mau sions, "There shall we sit, and sing and tell The wonders of His grace; One morning, after a night of weakness, and when his mind had felt scarcely above the exhaustion of the body, he said to his son, "It is well that the gospel is so plain, that even in the midst of darkness we can discern its truths. It mattered little to the Israelite whether he could perceive the colour of the brass; all he wanted to know was, that it was the brazen serpent at which he looked." About a week before his death, when in the afternoon he seemed somewhat revived, he said to his son, who was sitting by him, "Oh, to have my will swallowed up in the will of Christ!" And then, a little time afterwards, following up the same train of thought, he added: "To have the will in perfect subjection to the will of God is the greatest happiness on earth, and it is the joy of heaven." To one of his family, who, the day before his death, referred to the love with which he was regarded by them all, he said, "I cannot but feel your love-I do value it; but you can have no idea how little earthly love and joy look, what a dimness creeps over it, as you draw near to the brightness of eternity." And, a little after, “I can do nothing, now, but cast myself into the arms of my gracious Saviour." The last day that he stayed on earth, speech almost failed; but the mind looked clearly through the dissolving tabernacle. As his daughter was standing, supporting him, she breathed, rather for her own solace than for his ear, "Fear thou not, I am with thee.'" He caught the whisper, and his cold hand grasped hers. She said, "There is a passage in the Bible that cheered and sustained dear Lavington [her cousin] at such a time as this." His lips moved: "What is it?" he breathed "Fear thou not, I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God; I will strengthen thee.'" Yes," he said, with the energy of other days. “I will help thee!'" "YES." "Yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.'" "YES." Then, my dear father, you find that these are the faithful words of your faithful God?" With increased emphasis, "YES." But this was not all, for God sealed |