venerable pastor supplemented his earnest appeal not to leave him in his old age, young Williams could not hold out." In August, 1802, he was formally recognized as Isaac Price's assistant and successor, at a salary of £15 per annum! "Miserably small!" says the reader. But yet it was £5 more than Daniel Rowlands, of Llangeitho, received as curate of two neighbouring churches when the Bishop withdrew his license.

Williams did not at once give up his business, being resolved to minister to his own necessities as the Apostle of the Gentiles had done. But his fame as a preacher spread far and wide, and multitudes flocked to his sermons, to whom a few miles of mountain and valley were a small thing in comparison with the blessing they received. Many calls from home to minister in destitute or needy districts forced Williams to reconsider the question of continuing in his business. The making of boots and shoes was a matter of conscience with him, little, if any, less than declaring the whole "counsel of God" in his ministrations; and as he could not be sure that his workmen would take quite the same view of things in his absence, he made up his mind to retire from it altogether. This was not done, however, without much prayer, and the making of a covenant with the Almighty after the terms of that of Jacob of old. He engaged on his part to devote mind and body, life and all, to him, if he would in his condescension find him food and raiment, and just money enough to enable him to buy books to help him to feed the people of his charge with knowledge and understanding. This covenant he wrote out and signed on his bended knees, with overflowing emotion. In after-years he loved to encourage his younger brethren by telling them how his great Master had been true to his word, and more than fulfilled the word on which he had rested his hope.

United to a loving people, devoted to the Lord, he yet felt the need of another bond and union. In his congregation there was a certain Elizabeth Davis, the daughter of a farmer; her attractive appearance and manners, and her quiet Christian character, attracted the attention of more than one young minister who was seeking "a help meet for him." The rival claims of these aspirants to the young lady's hand and heart were not submitted to the arbitrament of the sword, but of the pen: each one arguing his suit in rhymes such as his passion inspired. Whether as the best rhymster, or because as her pastor he had the first claim upon her, or because his presence was more inspiring, yet so it was that David Williams obtained the prize.

Elizabeth was twenty-one, David was twenty-four, when, in 1803, the marriage took place. With the one hundred pounds advanced as gift or loan, under certain conditions, by the bride's father, they took and stocked the farm at Tynewydd, or New House. It was a great occasion. The day before the wedding there was the "bidding" of the married women, not one of whom came empty-handed; so that on the day they began their sixty years of married life in the "New House," the meal chests were well filled with bread and other necessaries, besides tubs of butter; the rafters of the kitchen being hung with bacon, hams, and dried beef.

The wedding itself was an imposing affair, neighbours and friends on horses and ponies to the number of about two hundred forming the procession, among whom the wives and daughters were conspicuous.

Tynewydd farm was little better than a common, but "the hand of the diligent" made it smile, and the hedgerows planted by the young pastor are still growing.

After the birth of their seventh and last child, David and his comely wife removed to another place, Tanyrallt. David desired a lease, but as the farm had been exhausted by the last tenant, the landlord declined to give one, but pledged himself in the presence of his son, a boy of fourteen, never to raise the rent while he lived, and the son, as his father's heir, was made to say the same. David Williams was a good farmer as well as a good man and a good preacher, and carried out many improvements, so that the verbal covenant was kept by the old landlord and by his son, as also by his widow and her daughter, who raised the rent to the son of David Williams only when the good man himself had been some time in his grave.

Williams's popularity as a preacher was well sustained through the more than seventy years of his pastorate, and his services were in requisition in all directions. When his Jubilee was held, a deacon of the church stated that he had never been disabled from preaching during the whole period of two thousand six hundred Sabbaths. During that time it was computed he had spent ten years in the saddle riding to his appointments.

Tanyrallt is a lone farmhouse under the shelter of a wooded hill, and a place where many women would feel nervous at even the thought of sitting up for a belated husband when the rest of the family were in bed; but Elizabeth Williams had no such fear: she never went to bed until she saw David home, and home was the place he would make for every night if it were possible to reach it. Elizabeth was a sweet-tempered woman, gentle and kind in no common degree. Her married life was a happy one, though David was a man of great force of character, keenly susceptible, nervous, and subject to times of depression. In the winter of 1867 Elizabeth departed to be with the Saviour she loved, and at whose feet, like Mary, she delighted to sit. David's grief was great; he wept bitterly, though he sorrowed not as one without hope. She had been nearly blind, and almost helpless, but the old man of eighty-eight attended her with a tenderness which bespoke the strong affection for his first and only love.

It was seven years after this when on the 20th of August, 1874, somewhat suddenly he fell asleep from (as is supposed) the rupture of a small blood vessel in the region of the brain, at the age of nearly ninetysix years, having been a pastor seventy-two.

In that long period he had preached many thousands of sermons, and had ridden tens of thousands of miles, over snow-clad mountains, along dirty lanes, across trackless wastes, and amid wild solitudes, and under all possible conditions of weather and temperature. Calmly to pass away to his eternal rest and reward was a fitting close to such a life of devotedness and untiring labour. He was a man altogether Welsh in his exterior, with massive trunk-measuring within his clothes forty-five inches when in his prime-large head, and a great deal in it, and with legs shorter than his body. He had a voice of rare compass and melody, and equal fulness, and a countenance in which all the changeful emotions of the inner man were freely displayed.

He had a heart big with Christian sympathy, and not less enlarged with all the best principles of a warm-souled catholic Christianity. The day of his death was calm and bright, like his spirit in her heavenly attire; and when he was laid in the grave, the romantic neighbourhood was flooded with sunshine and beauty, and all alive with hundreds of men and women on horseback, and many more afoot, who came to do honour to the man whose name most of them had lisped from infancy. Many a time David had read and sung the well-known hymn of his great namesake, Williams of Pantycelyn

"Guide me, O thou great Jehovah,"

and now the multitude that gathered to pay their respects to his mortal remains could set their seal to the truth, that as the Lord had performed the request of the former part, and had led, and fed, and guided him all the journey through, so, in the closing scene, he had fulfilled its final. prayer:—

"When I tread the verge of Jordan,

Bid my anxious fears subside;
Death of death, and hell's destruction,
Land me safe on Canaan's side:

Songs of praises,

I will ever give to thee."

ROBERT SHINDLER.

A

New Theology.

GREAT inventor is to make bread without flour, and he is preparing the plan of a house which is to have no foundations. Wonderful! Isn't it? We are no longer to eat grapes as they come from the vines-they are so old-fashioned: we are to have them after they have been squeezed in a patent press, and have been fashioned into cakes of mathematical shape. We should not be at all surprised to hear that our steam-boats are all a mistake, and have become things of the past, being in fact superseded by electrified table-cloths, which each man withdraws from his dining-table, spreads on the top of the water, and then uses as an instantaneously-prepared raft, which he steers with his knife and fork. When this comes about, we shall still be found sticking to the unchanged and unchangeable Word of God. There will be no new God, nor a new devil, and we shall never have a new Saviour, nor a new atonement: why. should we then be either attracted or alarmed by the error and nonsense which everywhere plead for a hearing because they are new? What is their newness to us; we are not children, nor frequenters of playhouses? Truly, to such a new toy or a new play has immense attractions; but men care less about the age of a thing than about its intrinsic value. To suppose that theology can be new is to imagine that the Lord himself is of yesterday. A doctrine which is said to have lately become true must of necessity be a lie. Falsehood has no beard, but truth is hoary with an age immeasurable. The old gospel is the only gospel. Pity is our only feeling towards those young preachers who cry, "See my new theology," in just the same spirit as little Mary says, "See my pretty new frock."-C. H. S.

Christian Lobe-the strongest Argument and best Victory.

HE Arminian controversy of 1770-75 was very violent, and degenerated into anger and personalities, which each party must deplore. The two Wesleys were too much employed in diffusing the gospel to waste their time (then far spent) in a polemic strife, which found valiant combatants on either side. The saintly John Fletcher viewed the conflict between brethren in Christ with deep sorrow, and while favouring Arminian views, kindly laboured to promote peace, and soften the asperities of party. He wisely showed the faults of both sides, and also where they could agree, but was especially severe against the hyperCalvinism then gaining ground. He condemned its dangerous errors in doctrine and practice in his "Five Checks to Antinomianism."

A singular proof of the subduing power of love is recorded in the case of one minister who felt himself so checked in spirit upon the publication of "the fifth" or last Check, that he resolved at once to seek out the author in his quiet retreat at the Vicarage of Madeley, and "have it out with him face to face," and so settle the disputed points.

He set out on his long journey on horseback, furbishing, we may suppose, as he pursued his lonely route, his armour and best controversial weapons for the decisive attack. Having put up his horse, he knocked early in the morning at the door of the laborious and studious Vicar, and on the appearance of a female servant inquired somewhat sternly: "Is Mr. Fletcher at home?" On being answered in the affirmative, he said, "Will you tell him that Mr. R, of Taunton, wishes to see him?" Whether to "the gentleness of the dove" to which the Saviour exhorted his disciples, the Lord had given "the wisdom of the serpent" to discern the object of this unexpected visit; or whether he had resolved to vanquish and disarm his visitor by love, instead of long and fruitless argument, the reception accorded by Mr. Fletcher was a complete surprise to the traveller on the door-step, when he saw the holy master of the house hurrying downstairs with outspread arms, exclaiming: "Come in! come in! thou blessed of the Lord! How is it that I am so honoured this morning as to receive a visit from so esteemed a servant of my Master? Come in! Wherefore standest thou without? Mary, prepare some refreshments, and, meanwhile, let us have a little time in prayer." The two ministers then entered freely into close Christian conversation, and so enjoyed each other's society that there was no room for either Calvinism or Arminianism, and Mr. R-found himself unable even once to hint at the object of his call. To their mutual delight and profit, he was easily persuaded to prolong his stay at the Vicarage for three days, and ever after was known to refer to this journey, and declare that never in his life had he so realized the true communion of saints on earth as he had done in heavenly intercourse with John Fletcher. E. H.

Gleanings in the Great Harbest-field.

"I could not do the work the reapers did,
Or bind the golden sheaves that thereby fell;
But I could follow by the Master's side,
And watch the marred face I loved so well!
Right in my path lay many a ripened ear,
Which I would stoop and gather joyfully.
I did not know the Master placed them there,
'Handfuls of purpose' that he left for me."

EVA TRAVERS POOLE.

the glory of our gracious Lord and Master, to the praise of the Holy Spirit through the "glorious gospel of the blessed God; and praying that the Lord would bless the perusal to the help and encouragement of others of his gleaners, we record the following incidents we have met with. In that part of the harvest-field wherein it is our privilege to labour, we meet with two great obstacles, namely, ignorance and drunkenness; from these a third naturally follows, and that is indifference. Before the passing of the Factory Act large numbers of children went to work at the tender age of six and seven years, and were kept at work ten, twelve, fourteen, and even sixteen hours a day. It is not a matter of surprise, therefore, that many of the men and women are unable to read or write. This cuts them off from many sources of mental and moral improvement, and closes many paths of profitable enjoyment and pleasure. Some months ago we were led to visit from house to house a short street of not very good repute. To every one we put the question, "Have you a Bible, or any part of a Bible, in this house?" Of course, in some instances, we had to give explanations for putting such a question. Members of twenty families were at home, and twelve out of the twenty replied to our question in the negative. Gentle reader, think a moment: in one short street twelve families out of twenty without a copy of the Holy Scriptures! What wonder that homes are wretched and miserable, that lives are blighted, blasted, wrecked, ruined; and that children grow up in vice and ignorance. We had been sent for to visit a poor man in the last stage of consumption; his was a deplorable case; no provision made for sickness or death, the home showed unmistakable signs of want, wretchedness and misery, brought on by improvidence and sin. We were able to administer to his bodily comfort, and to speak to him of Jesus the Saviour of the lost. We trust he found mercy.

Leaving the house one day, we were beckoned by a woman standing at a door on the opposite side of the street. Passing over to her, she said, "Sir, I want to ask a favour of you. If you will be so kind, come in, sir." "Oh, yes; if I can do anything for you, I will willingly." "Thank you, sir; I have a baby in here very ill, and I am afraid it will die; and I wanted you, if you would be so kind, sir, to baptize it for me." "Most willingly, if you will find the passage in the Bible where it says babies are to be baptized." "All right, sir." Then, turning to another woman who was in the house, and handing her a Bible, she said, "Here, Mrs. find the place for the minister while I get a basin and some water." After fumbling over the leaves in a vain search, and the mother having returned, we told them there was