of all the preachers I ever heard." We think this was a happy expression. His sermons were not skimmed milk, or London sky blue, but were rich in unction, savour, and power, and possessed a fulness and depth such as we find in no other reported sermons that we have seen.

But our limits remind us that we must not dwell too long upon his ministry, and therefore we proceed to drop a few hints on his Christian character, more especially as it came under our personal observation.

1. One feature we have often admired in Mr. Gadsby's characterhis singular humility. Who ever heard him angle for praise? Who ever heard him boasting of, or even alluding to, his popularity as a preacher, his large congregation, his gifts for the ministry, his acceptance with the people of God, his numerous invitations to preach at different places, and the blessing that generally rested upon his pulpit labours? Who ever perceived him, in the most indirect manner, fishing to learn who had heard him well, and dabbling in that wretched love of flattery which, disgusting in all, is doubly so in ministers of the gospel? We have seen him, after some of the grandest sermons we ever heard in our lives, sitting with no self-approving smile upon his countenance, no mock-bashful looks as if waiting to receive the incense of flattery, no self-enthroned dignity of state as king of the pulpit and lord of the vestry, but like a little child, simple and humble, the chief of sinners, and less than the least of all saints. Great as he was as a minister, and deservedly esteemed and loved, there was nothing in him of the great Don. No man was ever more free from priestly dignity or fleshly holiness. It was not with him, "I am the great man to be listened to by my knot of admirers; what I say is law; and all you have to do is to approve." Such parlour priestcraft the honest soul of William Gadsby abhorred.

2. His conduct out of the pulpit, as far as our observation goes, was singularly consistent with all his profession in it. We do not speak here of mere outward consistency. And who in his ministry of fifty years, and what but a lying tongue ever found a visible blemish there? But in the little observances of life, who ever entertained a more courteous visitor than he? Who of the numerous friends who at different places received him into their houses ever saw in him an overbearing, fretful, covetous, selfish, proud disposition? Kindness, and friendship, and courtesy to all, sometimes even to a fault, shone forth in him.

3. And who ever heard him slander and backbite, or retail news from house to house ? Admitted as he was into the bosom of so many families, who ever knew him to talk of what he must have seen and witnessed in so many places? Naturally disposed to humour, what a fund there would have been for his quick and ready-witted tongue! But who ever heard him make any allusion, except to the kindness of his entertainers, or who ever knew him carry tales from one end of England to the other?

4. How singularly free, too, was our departed friend from running down and depreciating brother ministers! We never once heard

him drop an unkind allusion or say a disparaging word against a minister of truth. His hand never carried a secret dagger to stab his brethren with. On the contrary, we have thought him too open-hearted and long-armed, and too ready to receive as men of God ministers whose only recommendation was a sound Calvinistic creed. If he erred, it was that he thought and spoke too well of some professing godliness from whom the mask has since dropped. But of this a minister might be sure, that if Mr. Gadsby received him as a brother, he treated him as such behind his back as well as before his face. He never sought to exalt himself by depreciating them, and was the last to say a word to their discredit, or which, if repeated, would wound their minds.

5. And to this we may add, that, as he was the last to depreciate, so was he the last to flatter. His kindness and brotherly love kept him from the one, and his sincerity preserved him from the other. He neither said rude things to wound, nor smooth things to please; he did not tyrannize with violent temper, nor fawn with canting servility; he neither took liberties nor allowed them; he knew his place and kept it; and whilst, by a calm, courteous demeanour, he preserved the respect due to him as a Christian man and minister, he yet was frank, free, and obliging. In fact, he rather erred now then, as we have hinted, on the side of courtesy. He was desirous of making himself agreeable, and sometimes this led him to repeat the thrice-told tale and tell the well-known anecdote, sometimes humourous, but usually profitable in its intention, and almost always to depreciate himself.

But we feel we must stop. Our limits do not allow us to dwell upon his extensive labours in the ministry, his frequent and long journeyings to preach the gospel, his self-denying and temperate habits of life, his prudence in domestic and pecuniary matters, his kindness and liberality to the poor, the noble manliness of his character, and his entire freedom from cant, hypocrisy, and whine. We highly esteemed and loved him, and revere his memory with growing affection. We consider it a privilege to have known him, and would not be in the ranks of those who despised or slandered him for a thousand worlds. We have scarcely left ourselves room to speak of the works at the head of the present article. A few words must therefore suffice.

Mr. Kershaw's Sermon and Address we consider very much to the purpose, and well suited to the occasion. Both are simple and straightforward, manly and decisive, full and clear, and alike honourable to his departed brother and to himself. Before such a crowd there was a temptation to disguise or wrap up the naked truth. But, fearless of Socialist, Unitarian, Arminian, or motly Calvinist, John Kershaw proclaimed at the grave's mouth, and to the crowds at the funeral sermon, that what Mr. Gadsby was he was wholly and solely by the grace of God. We ourselves prefer the Address to the Sermon, and, indeed, like it so well that it would please us to transfer the whole of it to our pages. But we must content ourselves with two extracts. It opens strikingly thus:

"As it hath pleased Almighty God to call the soul of this his ministering ser

vant and our brother from the body, we commit the body to the ground, dust to dust, and ashes to ashes, in sure and certain hope of a joyful resurrection from the dead at that eventful period when Christ, the great Judge of all, shall descend upon the clouds of heaven; when the trumpet shall be sounded, and the dead shall be raised; when the body which we now sow a corruptible body because of sin, must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality, and be fashioned like unto the glorious body of our Lord Jesus Christ; and the saying that is written be fully accomplished, both in reference to Christ and all his spiritual seed, the purchase of his precious blood, 'DEATH IS SWALLOWED UP IN VICTORY.'

"What I have further to say concerning our departed brother is not to give praise and honour to him as one of the fallen sons of an apostate Adam. This would be decidedly hostile to what was the feeling of him, who, while dwelling amongst us, so often exclaimed, 'Not unto us, not unto us, but unto thy name be all the glory, for thy mercy and thy truth's sake.' What I would say is to exalt the riches of God's grace, that shone so brightly in him as a Christian and a minister of the everlasting gospel, and as a citizen of this great and populous

town.

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By nature, he was no better than the rest of his father's house. He was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did his mother conceive him. Like the rest of the people of God in their Adam-fallen state, he erred and strayed from God like a lost sheep, joining the multitude of the ungodly in the broad and downward way that leads to destruction. Dead in trespasses and sins, at enmity against God in his heart, he lifted up his puny hands and arms in hostility against the God in whose hands his breath was. He had his conversation amongst his ungodly companions in sin in the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and was, by nature, one of the children of wrath, even as others. But, in apostolic language, we would exultingly exclaim, 'But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved him, even when dead in sins, hath quickened him together with Christ,'

"It pleased the Lord, in the riches of his grace, to pluck him as a brand out of the fire, and to put his fear into his heart, which is as 'a fountain of life to depart from the snares of death.' Thus he was called by God's irresistible grace from amongst his ungodly companions in sin, out of the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God and his Christ, out of darkness into God's marvellous light. The Holy Ghost, whose prerogative it is to quicken the dead sinner, and to convince his people of their sins and sinfulness, carried the law (by which is the knowledge of sin) with an almighty power into his soul. He died to all hope of being saved by works of righteousness done by himself. What divines have justly denominated 'a law work in the conscience' was very deep and powerful in him. He felt the thunderings of Mount Sinai in his soul, which made him tremble, fear, and quake. He proved, by heart-felt experience, that Mount Sinai is no hiding place for a poor guilty sinner; and that all that the law I could do for him was to curse and condemn him as a vile transgressor, as it is written, 'Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.' His soul lay as in chains, shut up as in a prison. He felt himself sinking in the miry clay and the horrible pit of guilt and condemnation. He sighed, groaned, and cried mightily to the Lord for help and deliverance."

Our space will permit but one more extract:

"The great and glorious truths of the gospel that he has so faithfully and ably defended, in the face of great opposition, are,-the doctrine of the fall, Adam's great transgression, that "by the disobedience of one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, for that all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;" for we were born in sin and conceived in iniquity; the whole head is sick, and the heart faint, and we are altogether as an unclean thing; sin, that accursed thing, which a holy God hates, being in our nature, in our hearts, in our thoughts, and in all our ways. I never heard a man who was so well qualified by the Lord to lay proud man in the dust and upon the dunghill as was

our departed brother. He deeply felt the depravity of his own nature, and the plague of his own heart, and was well able to describe them, lifting up his voice like a trumpet, to show the people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sin, and pointing out their lost, ruined, weak, helpless, undone state and condition as vile transgressors, and proving the impossibility of justification by their own righteousness. He also ably contended for the doctrine of a Trinity of Persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost unitedly engaged in the salvation and the glorification of the church; the everlasting and electing love of Jehovah the Father; the glorious person of Immanuel our incarnate God, in his covenant engagement, as the Mediator of the better covenant, established upon better promises; the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who came into the world to save the chief of sinners; the perfect obedience of Christ to the law, as the law-fulfilling righteousness of his people, imputed to them as the matter of their justification and acceptance before God; the great atonement made by the shedding of the precious blood of Christ for the sins of his church and people; the removing of the curse of the divine law, Christ having been made a curse for his people; and the necessity of that law being applied to the sinner's conscience by the invincible power of the Spirit.

"It was his highest ambition to exalt Christ upon the pole of the Gospel, as the plague of death, and the destruction of the grave, the power of his resurrection, and the glory of his ascension, and the ever-prevalence of his intercession. Christ, in his offices, characters, and relationship to his people, he blessedly set forth. Finished salvation, all of grace from first to last, was the joy of his heart and the boast of his song, and he often exclaimed, 'Immortal honours crown his brow for ever,' as he expresses it in that precious hymn composed by him.

'Immortal honours rest on Jesus' head,

My God, my portion, and my living bread;
In him I live, upon him east my care;

He saves from death, destruction, and despair.'

The glorious Person and Godhead of the Holy Spirit he constantly and firmly maintained, insisting upon the power of God the Holy Ghost to quicken the dead sinner, to convince him of his sins and sinfulness, and bring him with a broken heart to Jesus' feet, and to begin, and carry on, and complete the work of grace in the souls of his people; and in the personal application of the precious truths of God to the soul with vital power. Thus he constantly vindicated the personal work of the Spirit in the souls of his people, and proved from the scriptures that without this a profession of religion is but a dead form. Nor was our brother deficient in preaching up practical godliness, for as the body without the soul is dead, so faith, if it does not produce good works, is dead also. He constantly enjoined the precepts and exhortations of the gospel upon the household of faith, upon evangelical principles. I hope I shall never forget a sermon that he preached for us at Rochdale, above thirty years ago, from these words: Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me; and to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I show the salvation of God.' In speaking of what it was to have our conversation ordered aright, I never heard practical godliness so preached up by any man, neither before nor since. So, while he preached up the great and glorious doctrines of the gospel, and insisted upon an experimental acquaintance with those doctrines by the unctuous teaching of God the Holy Ghost, he vindicated the practical effects these truths produce."

Of Mr. Watmuff's Elegiac Thoughts we cannot speak very highly We mean as far as the poetry is concerned. The intention is much better than the execution; and whilst we like the sentiments expressed, we could wish that the rhymes were more correct, and the poetry more worthy of the name. The notes we prefer to the text, and think Mr. W. has in some of these very well hit off the chief features of Mr. Gadsby's ministry.

POETRY.

FREE GRACE.

COME UNTO ME?"-Ps. ci. 2.
How oft I go halting along,
And grope for the wall like the blind!
My enemies are lively and strong;
Suspended in doubt is my mind.

My sighs and my groans wilt thou hear,
And tell me they're not hid from thee?
Remove every soul-torturing fear-
"O, when wilt thou come unto me?"
Thou only art life to my heart,
Without thee desponding I lie;
Then mercy, sweet mercy impart,
Through him that was lifted on high:
Do tell me then, Jesus, I'm thine,
From sin and captivity free,
Or still this complaint must be mine,
"O, when wilt thou come unto me?"
T. C.

GLEANING.

To begin with God out of Christ, is rather Babel-work than Zionwork, which men in all ages, since the Apostle's days have been guilty of; for if in all things the Lord Christ was to have the pre-eminence, and God did not take a step without him, what a deviation hath been introduced from the pattern, when men have undertaken to go through the knowledge of God without him! Whereas, in the gospel, the knowledge of God and knowledge of Jesus Christ are closely linked together. It hath all along been the pleasing unhappiness of mankind, to know and serve God by a neglect of the Mediator; their converse