of Physicians-showing that science and sanctity, even in the opinion of the best of judges, were not incompatible. But it is of his successor in that capacityDr. Beilby-we have to speak.

Dr. Beilby we knew, and never was it our lot to meet a lovelier man. This eminent individual was not only a Dissenter but a Baptist, and a Deacon of a Baptist Church; that under the care of the much-loved Dr. W. Innes, and, latterly, also of the Rev. Jonathan Watson, his colleague, who has embalmed the memory of the departed in a solid and very valuable discourse. It reflects not a little honour on Medical Society in Edinburgh, to find Dr. Abercrombie at once an Elder of the Free Church and President of the Royal College of Physicians; and Dr. Beilby, Deacon of a Baptist Church, succeeding him in that high office. This is as it ought to be; his friend and junior Pastor, Mr. Watson, who had the means of thoroughly knowing him, and the capacity of forming an intelligent estimate of his true character, has thus depicted him :

The prominent elements of Dr. Beilby's character may be ranged under three heads-the natural, the gracious, and the acquired. The beneficence of his Creator had gifted him with strong intellectual powers, capable of taking large excursions into subjects difficult and profound-of grappling with matters of interesting speculation without weariness, where ordinary men must have speedily flagged and retired. He had great comprehensiveness; he delighted to take what he himself would have called "large views" of a subject; he stopped not, he paused not, where other men were nonplussed, but he would break away beyond the common limit of inquiry, and sweeping round and round it, almost by intuition, he would discover and bring to view most important bearings of the question which had escaped the observation of others. His perspicacity, in matters of church discipline within the church of which he was a member and a deacon, where entangled cases would sometimes be brought forward for adjustment, was often called into exercise in the happiest manner; and to his judgment, in many instances, even wise men and holy felt disposed to defer.

A high and honourable feeling pervaded all that he said or did. He could do nothing mean, nothing that was below the dignity of his station in society, or in the church; hence superficial observers, of limited minds, would sometimes censure his deportment as lofty, when he was, in fact, acting out the holy but high-toned principles which belonged to him, in both relations, as a member of one of the learned professions, and a fellow-Christian in the kingdom and patience of Christ. All who had aught to transact with him, were made to feel that they had to do with a man at once unbending in integrity, uncompromising in principle, yet a model of suavity and gentleness.

He possessed amazing vivacity and energy. His conversational powers were extraordinary. It was scarcely possible to visit our friend, without leaving his company both informed and exhilarated. What he undertook he went through with at whatever expense of trouble to himself; and where he failed, it might be affirmed with truth, that the matter was impracticable.

Akin to his love to the Master was his love to the disciples. His heart, his house, his professional skill were at their service. Far from him was the sourness of bigotry, or the contractedness of party spirit. All, all who loved the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, were to him as his "mother, his sister, and brother;" yet you, my brethren, can well remember the deeper interest he always took in your affairs, how much he loved you, how much he prayed for you, what pleasure he took in your fellowship, and with what regularity, considering the claims of his professional engagements, he attended in his place, morning and evening, every Lord's day; how constant in his attendance in the meetings of the deaconship, and with what anxiety he laboured with them, and with you all, for the comfort, the increase, and the permanence of this church.

His hospitality was most exemplary; and the delight which he evidently experienced in seeing at his table the friends of Christ, especially Christian strangers, was of the purest description.

Towards those who offended him, he manifested a forgiving spirit; he would, with a noble generosity, cast behind him the remembrance of the offence, and treat the offender with all the frankness of original friendship.

How tenderly did the sympathies of his nàture flow towards the afflicted! His professional visits were felt to be an immediate balm to the wounded spirit. He entered largely into the feelings of the patient, as well as his bodily sufferings. The ignorant he would instruct, and yet in such sort as if he instructed not, so delicate, so unpretending was he in his attempts to be useful.

Among his acquired excellences, may be named the self-command he had obtained over the irascible passions, which, in an ardent temperament like his, must in early life have been impatient of control; the result, no doubt, of much self-inspection and earnest prayer. From habits of close and earnest study, on almost all subjects, he had amassed great mental opulence. There is scarcely a department of human knowledge which he had not visited, and he was prepared to sustain his part in conversation or debate equally on every branch. His intelligence was indeed surprising. Pity it was that time could not have been spared from the labours of his profession to encounter the toils of authorship, which must have proved fruitful of advantages to those whom he was well qualified to instruct by his acquirements, his observation, and his experience. The specimens with which his friends were occasionally furnished in the meetings of the church, and at the Royal College of Physicians, in which he honourably filled the presidential chair some time ago, were finished pieces of composition, which left on the minds of auditors a feeling of regret that one so well fitted to convey instruction took up his pen so seldom.

We had the privilege not only of knowing this invaluable man, but of sharing his hospitality, and receiving his professional services, which, to Ministers of the Gospel, were always gratuitous, and bestowed with a generous frankness, which, while it relieved the oppressive sense of obligation, greatly enhanced the kindness. This, indeed, is a practice which generally obtains, or, at least, which did obtain, in former days, throughout Scotland. We have pleasure, mixed with sadness, in giving currency to the foregoing tribute to a man whom we had once the privilege of calling friend. Honour to his dust; and blessings on the heads of those who bear his respected name!

We embrace this occasion of recording a fact illustrative of the character of Abercrombie, which we had from the lips of the Rev. John Campbell, the celebrated African Traveller, late of Kingsland, London. That excellent man, some years before his death, on being taken with a serious and protracted illness, which induced him to try change of air, proceeded to the vicinity of Edinburgh, where he was attended by Dr. Aber crombie, from whom he received very great benefit. At the close of his sojourn he asked the Doctor for his bill, when he was addressed to this effect: "Mr. Campbell, I am very glad in having met you, and in being enabled, in any way, to contribute to your comfort. From your writings, you have long been a great favourite in my family. I honour you for your services in the cause of God. You owe me nothing; and I wish you a good journey. Good morning!"

SCOTTISH INDEPENDENT CHURCHES. SIR,-You have expressed a wish, in your last communication to me, that I should give you some account of the state of our churches, and of the prospects of the denomination in this part of the island generally. But living, as I do, in a corner of the land, and at a distance from the centre of operations, and having little opportunity of intercourse with our leading men, my information is necessarily imperfect; and I feel myself in the position rather of a looker-on than an active agent in the

scene.

You are aware that our system of church order has, from the beginning, been unpopular in Scotland, where Presbyterianism seems indigenous to the soil,

The

while Independency is regarded, by the great body of the people, as a weakly and unhealthy exotic; and several circumstances have occurred of late, to which I shall shortly advert, which have had a tendency to try the faith and patience of our people, and to put the strength of our principles to the test. The first is, the removal by death of many of our elder ministers, who were honoured to organise most of the existing Congregational churches in Scotland, and had to bear the burden and heat of the day in times of no ordinary difficulty. names of Ewing and Russell are familiar to most of your readers; and to those honoured brethren we may add those of the late pious and devoted John Aikman, of Edinburgh, and his worthy colleague, John Cleghorn; the talented, though somewhat eccentric, George Cowie, of Montrose; the zealous and judicious John Watson, on whom, as Secretary of the Union for many years, "the care of almost all the churches" devolved; and, more recently, his friend and neighbour, the warm-hearted and liberal-minded Knowles, of Linlithgow; who have all been removed from their spheres of labour, and are now gone to their rest and their reward. Dr. Wardlaw, indeed, still survives, full of years and of honours, and is able to do good service to the churches both from the pulpit and the press; and it is pleasing to observe that his later effusions, while they retain much of the acuteness and elegance of his earlier productions, breathe, if possible, a still warmer spirit of piety and love befiting the mellowness of the last ripe fruit, and betokening a growing meetness for that change which awaits us all. And, without any disparagement to the respected brethren who now occupy the places of those who are removed some of whom (whose names will easily occur) would be ornaments to any church for genius and eloquence-they have not yet had the opportunity of acquiring that weight of character and influence which time alone can give, and are destitute of that prestige of success, which some of the founders of the body enjoyed, from their previous connection with the Established Church and other popular communities as ministers or licentiates.

Another advantage possessed by the elder ministers, and now denied to their younger brethren, was the great lack of evangelical preaching in the churches of the Establishment at the period when they commenced their labours, and the

anxious desire of many persons in that communion for a more faithful and discriminating style of preaching, which made them hail the movements of the new sect, and crowd around the first itinerants. Now, however, the country generally presents a very different aspect, in which every sincere Christian must rejoice-there being few towns or villages (with the exception of some remote districts in the Highlands) where the Gospel is not faithfully preached in one or other of the existing denominations. Of course the destitution is not nearly so great, nor the spirit of hearing so general.

And this leads me to advert to another source of discouragement to our churches in the North-I refer to the great schism which took place in the Establishment six years ago, and gave rise to what is called the Free Church. The singular spectacle of upwards of 400 ministers abandoning their parishes, with all the secular advantages secured to them by law, many of whom had been distinguished for their zeal in the support of the National Church, and were justly esteemed for their piety and eloquence, -and casting themselves on the free-will offerings of the people, had an extraordinary effect on the religious portion of the community, and dazzled the imaginations and captivated the hearts of all who were capable of appreciating the value of such a sacrifice for conscience' sake. The shock was not only felt throughout the bounds of the Establishment, but affected more or less all other denominations. But, perhaps, the Congregational churches suffered more from the change, in proportion to their numbers, than any other body of Christians. The Relief and Secession churches retaining the Presbyterian platform, and holding out more easy terms of admission to their communion, had a greater hold on the affections of our countrymen; and by their more perfect organization, and especially by their subsequent union (which, in the circumstances, was a most politic step), were comparatively little injured. But the rude shock fell with powerful force on our comparatively feeble community, and brought some of the smaller churches into extreme peril. Many of these had derived no small aid from their general hearers, who consisted chiefly of members of the Established Church, and who, from dissatisfaction with the doctrine taught them, had found their way to the Independent

chapels, that they might enjoy a purer ministration of the word of life. But they neither liked our church government, nor our strict discipline, and were especially opposed to our frequent communion; and on the first movement to set up free churches in their own localities, they deserted our places of worship, and naturally attached themselves to a body whose principles were more congenial with their own. Some of our people, especially those who had but recently joined our communion, and were but partially acquainted with our distinctive tenets, led away by the general excitement, joined the ranks of the new party, and even some of our pastors and preachers, despairing of getting on (as the saying is) in the Independent denomination, and promising themselves a more stable source of income from the sustentation fund, abandoned their posts, and rallied round the standard of the Free Church. It is also to be regretted, that the new Secession did not generally show that disposition to fraternise with their elder Dissenting brethren which was anticipated, and which a sense of common interest and common danger ought to have inspired. They were more anxious to extend their line than to limit their exertions to the real wants and felt necessities of the country, and places of worship were opened in thinly-peopled and poor districts of the country, where the ground was already occupied by Evangelical Dissenters. Their great aim seemed to be, to retain the idea of nationality, and to build church for church, and school for school, with the Establishment, through all the parishes of the land. This necessarily trenched on the efforts, and weakened the strength of other bodies, and rendered it more difficult for them to maintain their position. They are already beginning to feel the bad effects of this over-eagerness for church-extension, in the gradual fallingoff of the Sustentation Fund; and the general impression is, that, by multiplying their stations beyond the necessities of the country, they have weakened the main body, and that retrenchment and concentration are necessary to secure the stability of the cause. In the Free Church Magazine, I am sorry to observe a degree of bitterness manifested towards their Independent brethren which seems wholly unprovoked, and which I would fain hope is not sympathized with by the members of the Free Church generally. I refer especially to the Review

of Dr. Wardlaw's work on Independency, and of the recent volume on the Jubilee services. Not content with claiming the preference for his own views of church government, which is quite fair and natural, the writer indulges in a spirit of sarcasm in dealing with Dr. Wardlaw's arguments, unworthy of the gravity and importance of the object, and from which the Doctor's well-known suavity of temper, independently of his years and reputation, might reasonably have shielded him; and such exhibitions of special pleading, not to say of spleen, might have been spared in animadverting on the principles of a body, whose ministers have done so much (our Non-intrusion brethren themselves being judges) for the cause of our common Christianity by their preaching and writings, and who were among the first to open their places of worship, at the time of the disruption, to accommodate the outed ministers and their congregations.

But there is another topic to which it is necessary to allude, in adverting to the difficulties with which the Independent churches in Scotland have lately had to contend. I refer to the unhappy controversy which broke out among them about five years ago, with reference to what have been called the "new views," embracing most of the points that have been long agitated between the Calvinists and the Arminians,-not that the controversy has been confined to our body; for it has extended to the Secession and Free Churches, and has led to the deposition of some of their most popular ministers. It has also occasioned a rupture among the Baptist churches. From a wish to meet the hyper-Calvinism under which many careless persons shelter themselves, pleading, that as they cannot repent and believe without Divine grace, they must wait for it; and that unless they be elected to salvation, they must be content to remain as they are,-a style of preaching was adopted which virtually annulled the doctrine of Divine sovereignty; left out of view the agency of the Spirit in conversion; and resolved the chief, if not the sole efficacy of the Gospel into the power of the Word itself operating on the natural faculties of the human mind. In other words, while men were urged to comply with the Divine commands, it was forgotten to remind them, that "it is God that worketh in us both to will and to do." The abettors of the new views made common cause with Mr. Morrison and other mini

sters of the Secession Church, who had been expelled from their own communion; and many of the students of the Theological Academy in Glasgow were carried away by the stream. These, after fruitless efforts to reclaim them, were excluded by the Committee, and were joyfully welcomed by the new party, and sent through the country to supply vacancies, or to form new congregations; and by their earnestness and zeal in conducting protracted meetings, drew many disciples after them, and occasioned dissension and separation in not a few of the churches. It is to be regretted that, before this schism had assumed so formidable an aspect, no attempt was made to hold a friendly conference, open to all the ministers and members of the churches, with a view to come to a mutual understanding, and to emit a general declaration of their faith in relation to the disputed points, which might have embraced all the moderate men on both sides, and served as articles of peace between them, leaving a certain latitude of expression that would not have entangled the consciences of any, and at the same time compromising no fundamental truth. Had this method been adopted at first, it might, humanly speaking, have prevented the necessity of separation, and restrained the opposite party within reasonable bounds. The Reviewer in the Free Church Magazine, in referring to the printed correspondence between the Glasgow churches and "the new view" party in their neighbourhood, twits the Independents with their settling this grave dispute in a private parlour, instead of freely discussing it in an open court; nor is there anything inconsistent with the principles of Independency in holding a general conference of pastors and brethren, where any suspicion of heresy exists in the body, or any difference of doctrine has broken out, as may be seen in the history of the Arian controversy in England, and as is practised by the Congregationalists of the United States to the present day. A reaction is, however, already taking place in some parts of Scotland, and I do not despair of the two parties coming to a better understanding when they have had time to reflect coolly on the evils of separation, and come to see that their common interest, as well as the success of the Gospel, demands that they should “avoid foolish and unlearned questions (knowing that they do gender strife)," and combine their energies and their prayers

for the advancement of the common salvation. Our churches are too weak to divide, and there are difficulties and discouragements enough to contend with in their peculiar position, without impairing their strength and endangering their existence by internal dissensions. Here, if any where, "union is strength;" and the policy of the enemy is, "divide and conquer.'

Having dwelt so long on the dark side of the question, I must defer other topics of a more cheering or miscellaneous character to a future communication. Meanwhile I remain, yours, &c.

St. Andrew's.

W. LOTHIAN.

HINTS TO THOSE THAT NEED THEM. A CORRESPONDENT has been so kind as to send us the following extract from Hargreave's "History of Ilkeston Church and Congregation." It is a valuable piece of instruction, which will amply repay perusal; and it will reveal, to more than one class, what it is very desirable they should know, although they are averse to instruction, and slow to profit from it. There can be no doubt that much that is put down to the score of imperfect Christianity, or low personal religion, arises from the absolute want of religion altogether. The extract runs thus:

"For the first time in the course of a century, the Independent Church and Congregation were without a stated minister. From December, 1844, to October, 1846, there was no pastor over the people, and they experienced all the disadvantages arising from such a state of things; for a people without a minister are like sheep without a shepherd-many go astray. In observing the religious world, including all denominations, it is distressing to notice the frequent removals of ministers. Some people do not seem to know when they have a good minister they are constantly changing, and yet are never suited. It is to be feared that He who 'spake as never man spake' would not please them; He, even He, would be found wanting, and would have to remove. It will often be found true, that the smaller the place, and the fewer the people, the more difficult are they to suit with a minister; and the larger the place, and the more numerous the people, the more easily are they satisfied. It is also observable, that the people who retain a minister the greatest num

:

ber of years prosper the most, and make the greatest efforts for the welfare of man and for the cause of God; and on the other hand, the people who are continually changing their minister neither do well for themselves nor for the world at large. Such places are generally poor, ricketty concerns. It is, therefore, very desirable that when a Christian people have obtained a good minister, they should endeavour to retain him, that the stability and usefulness of the cause may be promoted.

"And what are the causes of such frequent removals? No doubt, causes are to be found in connection with the ministry, as well as with the people. A minister may have to remove from a limited sphere of labour, because he is called to occupy a more extensive one; or he may have to remove because he has not sufficient income to support him honestly in the world; or he may have to remove because he is not adapted to the particular place in which he happens to be situated. These, with other causes, might be assigned on the part of the ministry; but we think there are few removals comparatively from such causes. Ministers

generally are not so fond of removing as some people seem to think; and were there no more powerful causes than those to which we have referred, removals would be far less frequent than they are.

"It is very evident that if a minister is to labour with pleasure and effect, he must feel at home among his people; he must be attached to them, and they must be attached to him; there must be mutual esteem and respect. In every place there are always a few who aim and endeavour to promote so desirable a state of feeling, and by their attendance, prayers, and efforts, increase the comfort and usefulness of a minister. But there are also those whose conduct tends to the reverse, and produces that state of mind in a minister which leads him to seize the first opportunity which presents itself to remove away from them.

"There is the fickle hearer.-Some people are pleased and satisfied for a time, but they are variable as the wind. You are never sure of them. A new face, a strange voice, a fresh preacher, are their delight.

"There is the lukewarm hearer.Some people are very civil, but very cold. They are kind, but lack cordiality. Their dispositions are so lukewarm, that you might think they were born on Greenland's icy mountains.' They