north, and has since that time resided, for the most part, near Hexham. After his return, he preached once, and only once, in the place of worship where he formerly administered the word of life. His discourse was founded on the words, "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and for ever;" and was, as one of his hearers observes, "rich in evangelical truth and spiritual unction." For some time he preached regularly at his own house at Quatre Bras, but his declining strength and growing infirmities would not permit him to engage in the onerous duties of a stated pastor; indeed, for the last year of his life, in addition to other afflictions, he was almost totally deprived of the power of vision. He was seized with paralysis on the evening of Monday, the 19th January, and lingered for the most part in an unconscious state till about three o'clock on the following Sabbath morning, when his happy spirit took its flight "To fairer worlds on high," to be associated with the general assembly and church of the firstborn, and with the spirits of just men made perfect, "to be for ever with the Lord." It is but justice to say that in Mrs. Scott, the bereaved widow, the subject of this brief sketch found a suitable helpmeet to minister to his wants and comforts when his strength began to fail, one who most faithfully, tenderly, and assiduously did all that was in her power to lighten the cares and alleviate the sufferings of him who is now beyond the need of any earthly comforter. She has the happy consciousness of having performed the part of a dutiful and affectionate wife to a faithful servant of Jesus Christ. She will remember, with thankfulness to Almighty God, the wise counsels, the fervent prayers, the holy example of her now departed friend and husband; and I trust that she will feel more powerfully the attraction of a Saviour's love, and the glories of that world where "the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed his servants, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." You have been refreshed in the house of mourning with the streams of these living fountains,-may they follow you all the way to your journey's end! and then may the weary traveller be conducted to Canaan's happy land, where no evil is suffered, no pain is felt, no sorrow is endured, but all is peace, and joy, and praise for evermore! You, the children of such a father, will, I am sure, cherish the memory of your dear and honoured parent with the most affectionate reverence. You are children of parents, both of whom I long knew and highly esteemed, for their eminent piety and excellence of character. You were "trained up in the way you should go," and I sincerely hope you will never "depart from it." In your father's house you witnessed the daily sacrifice of prayer and praise, you heard the instructions of wisdom from the inspired volume, you were early taught to keep holy the Sabbath-day, and attend its sacred services. All the lessons of morality and religion were enjoined upon you with all the tenderness and anxiety of parental intreaty and love. I need not tell you that great obligations grow out of these instructions and examples. I trust you are already partakers of the common salvation; or, if there be any wavering in your minds, that you will without delay decide for God and heaven, and then labour to hold fast and diffuse the great principles of the gospel. The church has need of you, that you may be helpers of the truth; the world has need of you, that you may shine as lights therein. May you live to promote that cause in which the excellent of the earth have laboured and suffered, the success of which occasions a new thrill of joy among the redeemed above, and which is destined to fill heaven and earth with the praises of God and the Lamb! May your father's God be your God-your portion and exceeding great and eternal reward! The removal of the faithful servants of Christ from their warfare on earth to their triumph in heaven, should teach us the value of life, and our obligation to employ it in serving our generation, according to the will of God. How desirable that Christians should have the Spirit of Christ; that they should walk in the Spirit, and live in the Spirit, and be filled with the Spirit, that they should shine in the beauties of holiness! If we give way to vain jangling and bitter contention, it will eat out the comfort, the life, the peace, and even the very knowledge which we may possess. Timothy was commanded to charge the peo ple before the Lord, that they strive not Alston, February 22, 1851. A CHRISTIAN PASTOR'S EXPERIENCE IN MISSIONARY ORGANIZATION. THIRTY-SIX years ago, the writer left | society, discussed all the great questions college with a deep and settled-not to say enthusiastic-conviction that Missionary operations were the great demand of the age. That conviction had originated in early training and association, in acquaintance with the striking origin and working of the London Missionary Society, and in a most pleasing and profitable intimacy, during his college life, with Mr. (now Dr.) Philip, that champion of the Missionary cause, then pastor of the Congregational Church, George-street, Aberdeen. College-life had not quenched, but rather fanned the Missionary flame. The Tutors were all Missionary men, attached fervently to the plans and operations of the Society in which Bogue, and Burder, and Waugh, and Wilks, and Hill, and Hardcastle, and Shrubsole, and other honoured men, were spend ing their best energies. Nine-tenths of the Students, too, were earnest in the Missionary cause. They read and conversed about it; held their Missionary associations; and, in their debating which had sprung up in connexion with the rise and progress of the London Missionary Society. They expected holidays on all great anniversary occasions; and their Professors, without establishing any express law, let their pupils distinctly understand that it would be gratifying to them that Missionary festivals should be attended by those committed to their care. The writer blesses God for these gratifying reminiscences; and can truly say, that he and his beloved brethren did not think the time lost which was devoted to listening to the instructive appeals of distinguished men, from the pulpit and platform, in support of Missionary claims. They always returned from such exercises with invigorated delight and zeal to prosecute their studies for the Christian ministry. Under such auspices, the writer of this paper left College for Pastoral life. He entered on a sphere of unusual difficulty; with little to awaken hope but the vast population by which he was surrounded. Congregational Dis- | iliary was £15, and its last, £279 128.11d; sent was almost unknown; and preju- and of this latter sum nearly one-half dice ran high against everything except was realized in very small payments, a decent and quiet formalism. But his cheerfully contributed by the poor of Missionary predilections never forsook the flock. The Auxiliary is so comhim. He determined that if God gave pletely organized as to invite and secure him a church, by His blessing it should the contributions of all; and the writer be a missionary one. He had a chapel has pleasure in stating, that all the to raise, without any aid from a Chapel- people, with one consent, in their dif Building Fund; and found himself and ferent spheres of life, without pressure his flock soon incumbered with a heavy or effort, are ready with their free-will chapel-debt, with but slender prospect offerings. The Sunday-school Children of its being speedily liquidated. Many and Teachers make their regular weekly came to hear the word; but, for a long contributions;-all the other schools time, they loved a cheap gospel, and connected with the chapel present their did but little to meet existing burdens. regular annual sums;-the collectors Those who were elected to office were are all at work continuously through somewhat timid for the future; and the whole year, some of them raising a expressed anxiety, when foreign objects sum exceeding £30;-Missionary boxes, were named and pressed by the youth- to the number of more than fifty, are ful pastor, lest they should diminish distributed among the families of the the necessary supplies for home objects. congregation, which are called in at the "No," said he, "let us do something proper time;-special contributions are noble for the perishing millions of the solicited for missionary objects peculirace far off from us, and God will help arly interesting to the congregation; us to meet our own domestic claims." and the Anniversary Meetings are always prepared for with the greatest care, and advertized earnestly from the pulpit weeks before their arrival; so that they never have failed, in a single instance, to be well attended and well sustained. Though the last annual meeting was held on a night of heavy rain, the chapel was full, and the service most impressive. As an old friend of the Missionary Society, the writer has thrown these hasty thoughts together for the encouragement of his brethren and the A Missionary Auxiliary was formed. Its beginnings were indeed but small; but it threw new life into all other plans of usefulness; the whole of the Chapel receipts were literally increased by it; and all the thoughtful of the people began to see that the best way to help themselves was to begin to help others. The Chapel was soon filled and enlarged; it was filled a second and a third time, and a second and third time enlarged, at a cost of not less than £4000; the new and the old debts were all discharged; and the Mission-churches at large; and bears this deliary Auxiliary continued steadily to progress side by side with numerous other charitable institutions; and is now, after the lapse of thirty years, in the zenith of its strength, affording shelter and encouragement to every other "work of faith and labour of love" in which the congregation is engaged. The first annual payment of the Aux berate and willing testimony, that the A PASTOR OF THE SAME CHURCH RITUALISM AND RATIONALISM: THEIR FATAL INFLUENCE UPON THE CHURCHES. (To the Editor of the EVANGELICAL MAGAZINE.) SIR,-In your January publication I offered some general observations upon the changes of opinion which are going on in the religious world, and the influences which are at work to produce them; and I proceed now to particularise them under two specific heads; namely― Ritualism and Rationalism; or a taste for what is showy and external, and gratifying to the senses, on the one hand; or for what is speculative and metaphysical, and gratifying to the intellect, on the other: the former attaching undue importance to circumstantials, and merging the spiritual in the external, and that which works upon and excites the imagination; the latter overstepping the bounds of legitimate inquiry-intruding into those things which are concealed from mortal vision, and attempting to bring within the narrow compass of man's finite reason the infinite and deep things of God. These two influences are very different in character and operation, but both exercise a baneful effect upon the churches; and the issue is in both cases similar: loss of spirituality; God's word and the work of the Spirit neglected and despised :-abject superstition in the one case, and avowed unbelief in the other, are the final result. I will briefly follow the course of the former to its deadly consequences. Ritualism exhibits itself in various forms it is adapted to our very nature, which clings to it as the end, and substitutes it for religion itself. Thus, when God was pleased, for the gradual development of His own great purpose of eternal redemption through the work of His Son, to institute ritual observances and a ceremonial law, prefiguring that better covenant which was after wards to take its place, the people whom He chose as the representatives of this typical dispensation very soon lost sight of the object, and placed their affections on the shadow instead of the substance; and their perceptions of a spiritual religion were so deadened, that, when He came in whom all was fulfilled, they could not discern their promised Messiah, were offended at Him, despised, persecuted, and put Him to death. Here we have one awful example of bigotted attachment to Ritualism and its consequences. Let us pursue another :-The whole system of typical and ceremonial observances was now swept away; -a better covenant was established on better promises;-the temple-worship was at an end;-the ritual and ceremonial was entirely superseded by the real, the simple, and spiritual;-sanctity of place. was no longer to be regarded-" Ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father."They that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." Upon these principles, laid down by the Saviour, the apostles acted. All through the New Testament, we cannot fail to be struck with the disregard shown to externals-to places of worship, and to ritual. There is absolutely not the slightest allusion to either. I need not quote passages to prove that they were held in utter disregard; the diligent student of the New Testament cannot but be alive to it. Simple adaptation of the means to the end in view-the preaching of the word of life, and the worship of God in spirit and in truthis the character of the apostolic procedure; "not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but, by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every man's con science in the sight of God." Look at the tenor of the entire Epistle to the Galatians, to discourage Ritualism and promote the spiritual worship of God; and with regard to places for worship, we hear of an upper chamber, of a place where prayer was wont to be made-in the open air, if most suitable, --and of the church in the house; all indicating perfect indifference as to building. Nothing, then, could be more complete than the total overthrow of ritual, both local and circumstantial, which the gospel dispensation brought with it. It is not much to be wondered at that Jewish prejudice should continue to cling around a ritual system-especially as it bore with it the sanction of God's original appointment, however latterly overlaid with men's inventions -in preference to that which, in its lowliness and simplicity, offered to their unspiritual minds no outward attractions. It required the mighty agency of the Spirit of God to give this spiritual discernment. The wonder seems to be (in the language of the apostle to the Galatians) that, after men had known God, or rather were known of God, they should turn again to the weak and beggarly elements whereunto they desired again to be in bondage; and of such, however plausible appearances might be, the apostle, with prophetic discernment, adds, "I am afraid of you." He foresaw the fatal consequences which were to arise from the baneful effects both of Ritualism and Rationalism. A reference to the prophetic language of the third chapter of the Second Epistle to Timothy, and the second chapter of the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians will suffice. The early history of the Church, immediately after the departure of the apostles, presents to our view a gradual unfolding of both these evil principles. Undue exaltation of the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, under the title of Sacraments, implying an efficacy residing in the ordinances which Scripture nowhere ascribes to them; a superstitious sanctity assigned to persons and places; the establishment of monastic institutions; the erection of magnificent churches, intended to correspond with the temple of Solomon, which Constantine introduced when he took the Church under his protection: the encouragement given by this Emperor to all that was ornamental and sumptuous in public wor ship was so excessive, that all the characteristics of the religion of the meek and lowly Saviour vanished, and before the end of his reign vitality was nearly extinct: vain pomp and ceremonial took its place; and from this time ritualism usurped the place of the simple truth as it is in Jesus. At this period, too, vain speculation upon the person and Deity of Christ, which had shown itself already in a variety of forms, received its most powerful auxiliary in Arius of Alexandria, whose opinion's gave rise to one of the most formidable controversies that ever agitated the Church of Christ, and proved as corrupting to the African and Eastern churches as Ritualism and superstition did to those of the West. New heresies arose from time to time in both, producing confusion and every evil work; but external observances and vain superstitions were doing their work in bringing the churches under the power of Antichrist, which was growing apace in the fifth century, and by the end of the seventh had reached its maturity. The simple doctrines of justification by faith in the work of Christ, and the all-sufficiency of God's word and Spirit for the conversion of man, were lost sight of; and a new species of idolatry was widely spreading wherever the gospel had been made known. Ritualism and superstition had triumphed. The apostasy was complete; and through a long and dreary period of the world's sad history, at which Christianity, nay, humanity, shudders, the worship of the Queen of |