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We are about to commit all that ere the affecting tidings reached was mortal of a beloved brother us of the equally sudden deand father in the ministry to the parture of our dear and honoured silent tomb. Many of us cannot brother, to whom we are now forbear taking up the lamentation paying the last sad tokens of of David over his deceased friend respect, in attending his mortal Jonathan, "I am distressed for remains to the grave. In the thee, my brother; very pleasant death of each, a most serious loss hast thou been to me:" yet, a has been sustained, and a wide consideration of his present hap-breach occasioned, which cannot piness and glorious reward re- fail to be extensively felt throughconciles us to the painful separa-out the whole Israel of God. tion, alleviates our sorrows, yea, May we and all the surviving turns them into congratulation servants of Christ duly regard and joy. Our great loss is his and improve these solemn and unspeakably greater gain. reiterated warnings, knowing that we also must soon put off these tabernacles, leave them in the dust, and appear before the Judge of quick and dead. Our Lord will ere long call upon us to give an account of our stewardship: may he impart grace to

My dear Brethren in the ministry of the gospel, the sudden and affecting stroke which has thus assembled us together will, I trust, prove productive of the most salutary effect on our minds. I need not say to you that we have in it a renewed and power-occupy with fidelity and zeal till ful call to increasing watchfulness and diligence in our Master's work. God has spoken once, yea twice, in the space of a few days: we had but just received the mournful intelligence of the sudden removal of the excellent and eminent Missionary Ward,

he shall come; and whensoever the period arrives, be it more distant or more near, gradual or sudden, may we be found so doing. This was the unspeakable happiness of our deceased brother; though the approach of his Lord was so rapid, yet it did not

* The Editors are much obliged to the Rev. Mr. Coles of Bourton-on-theWater, for his affectionate Address which he has sent at their urgent request; and they regret that, in consequence of various accidents, it could not have an earlier insertion.

VOL. XV.

take him by surprise, but, habi- | and others, who may be justly retually prepared, he was enabled to welcome it,

garded as among the fathers of modern missions, received the most cordial and effective cooperation in all their plans and exertions from our departed brother, who lived to see those efforts, though necessarily feeble and contracted in their commencement, crowned, by the Divine blessing, with a degree of success that has delighted aud astonished the friends of Christ in every quarter of the globe. When, subsequently to the period alluded to, numerous societies were formed for the diffusion of Christianity, both at home and abroad; and when, beyond all others, the British and Foreign Bible Society extended its operations throughout the earth; they all and each met with an able and eloquent advocate in our deceased brother, whenever the ar

I would never wish to be the panegyrist of the dead; but were I to utter half what my heart would dictate, and what truth would justify, I should possibly subject myself to the charge on the present mournful occasion. I am exonerated, however, from now attempting to delineate the character of our departed friend, since that will naturally devolve on a highly-esteemed brother, one of his earliest and most intimate friends, when, in conformity with the particular wish of the deceased, he shall preach his funeral sermon. A few sentences, therefore, may suffice to express what is merely intended as a very brief tribute of the heart felt regret of the speaker, who had the happiness to enjoy his cordial and uninterrupted friendship for near-duous duties of his pastoral office, ly the last twenty-six years of his life; in which tribute, he is persuaded, every heart present will be in unison. The spirit which animated that corpse had just attained the maturity of its powers at the interesting period when so general a movement took place in the British Israel, after a long period of criminal apathy and sloth, on behalf of the rising generation of our native country, her ignorant peasantry, and the perishing millions of the heathen world, which soon evinced itself in the establishment of Sunday Schools, village itinerancy, and foreign missions. If this general movement did not take its first rise, it received its first most powerful impulse, from the heavenly inspired energies of several distinguished individuals of that denomination of christians to which the deceased belonged; and a Carey, a Pearce, a Fuller, a Sutcliffe, a Ryland,

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and the oppressive exertions of a tutor, permitted, which last alone would have been sufficient to exhaust the energies of a common mind. While, as it thus regards the general interests of religion, we cannot but deplore his death; yet it is as a husband, as a parent, as a pastor, and as a member of the Oxfordshire Association of Ministers and Churches, that his loss will be most acutely felt. At every Anniversary of our Association, from its commencement, one and twenty years since, he has been enabled to attend; and he often declared, that nothing but the most imperious necessity should ever occasion his absence till death. He never felt himself more happy, and more at home, than when surrounded by his associated brethren and christian friends, his domestic circle and immediate charge excepted. If this was discovered on any one occasion

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more than another, it was at the deed, yea criminal, if you did not last Anniversary, when, had he lament him, sorrowing that you certainly known it would be the shall see his face and hear his last, he could not have expressed voice no more; but I would have himself more appropriately in his you made sorry after a godly devotional exercises and public manner, that you may receive daaddresses. He spoke with greater mage in nothing: for godly sorpathos than ever, as a dying man row, (whatever the immediate to dying men; and, as if in near and particular circumstances anticipation of the event that was which give rise to it, or prove actually just at hand, he thus the occasion of it,) worketh reconcludes the letter from the pentance unto salvation, not to Christian Society meeting in this be repented of. Blessed, for ever place, to the Association: "We blessed, be his God and yours, wish, when our Lord shall come, you are called to weep, not so to be found so doing. For ano- much for him as for yourselves. ther year, brethren, we bid you Methinks he addresses you as farewell; the returning season, from the grave-from eternityit is probable, will not meet all of from heaven-and says, "If ye us on earth, but if absent from loved me ye will rejoice, because the body, we hope to be present I am gone to the Father; weep with the Lord. Here one gene- not for me, but for yourselves ration to another shall call him and your children." His lamp, blessed; there all shall meet it is true, is extinguished in the around his throne, while the Re-earthly temple, but it shines with deemer pronounces the joyful inconceivable lustre in the temple truth, O Father, here am I, and above. Extinguished, did I say? the children thou hast given me: I am almost ready to recal the of all that thou gavest me, I word; through the riches of have lost none.' The loss of Almighty grace, many of you, his wise counsels, and faithful the fruits of his labours, and the energetic appeals, both in the so- seals of his ministry, have caught cial circle and public assembly, the sacred flame; in a sense, he will be deeply felt at every future still lives and shines in you, even Anniversary. May the Lord here; for once ye were darkness, the Spirit sanctify his death to but, through his instrumentality, all of us who survive in the minis- ye became light in the Lord. try, that we may work while it is Let your light so shine before men, called to-day-that we may be that others seeing your good steadfast and unmoveable, al- works may glorify your Father ways abounding in the work of who is in heaven.-It is natural, the Lord, forasmuch as we know and in a degree allowable, for us that our labour shall not be in to lament that, the period of his vain in the Lord. service and usefulness is closed on earth; but we believe that he is devoted to the same Lord in more glorious services in heaven ; for "there his servants serve him." We enjoyed our dear friend, and you your beloved pastor, as long as God saw fit, and longer than is frequently

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What shall I say on this solemn occasion to you, who compose his bereaved mourning flock? You now attend to the grave a faithful, affectionate, and beloved pastor; it was in his heart to live and die with you, and he has done it. It would be strange in

all the steps you are to take, and to give you, in his own due time, another pastor after his own heart, who shall feed you with knowledge and understanding. Be peculiarly solicitous, as the flock of Christ, now to keep closer together, and beware of dissensions and divisions. Call to mind the doctrines, counsels, and reproofs of your deceased pastor, and continue in the things you have learned of him. Let his name be fragrant, his memory dear to you, and his disconsolate widow and bereaved family have a large share in your sympathy and prayers. May it be her consolation, under the present sore trial, and under the increasing infirmities of advanced years, to feel that the severe loss she has experienced is more than compensated by the enjoyment of His presence, who sustains the cheering appellations of the God-the Judge-the Husband of the widow, and the Father of the fatherless! May your father's virtues live and shine in you his chil

permitted, by that sovereign and gracious Providence which fixes the boundaries of our habitation, and the period of our existence. God never suffers any of his servants to die a premature or untimely death; to us it may ap pear so, but it is not so in his sight. It has often been justly said, "God's servants are immortal till their work is done;" i. e. he continues their lives till they have finished the work he has given them to do. Many of them, indeed, do not live to finish that work which they designed to do for the glory of his name, and the good of his church; but they finished that which he appointed them, and what they designed, but could not accomplish, shall be accepted and rewarded as if completed. Need I urge you now to keep a steady eye on Jesus, as sustaining the relation of a Shepherd; inferior shepherds, you see, are not suffered to continue by reason of death. Your fathers, where are they? and prophets and pastors, do they live for ever? They do not-dren, and his God be your God! Death oftentimes has this commission, "Smite the shepherd;" and all the tears and prayers of a trembling flock cannot prevail to ward off the fatal stroke. But O what a consolation is it that" Here am I, and the children the great and chief Shepherd lives still! our Jesus is he who was dead, but is alive, and lives for evermore. Though bereaved then of a faithful under-shepherd, you are not left comfortless; though he has left you, Jesus Christ remains, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Be doubly earnest now with Him, to take you under his pastoral care and conduct-to provide ordinances for you while you are destitute of a stated ministry, and to bless them to you to go before you in

May he meet you all at the right hand of Christ in the last great day, and be able to say of you, as he will of so many others never related in the ties of nature,

thou hast given me!" It was the peculiar happiness of your father, while living, to indulge the pleasing persuasion of your conversion, and to receive your affectionate assurances, that his parental and ministerial labours had combined to contribute towards that happy and infinitely-desirable result; to witness the exaltation of one to the church triumphant, to welcome your admission into the church militant, and to hail the introduction of two of your number into the glo

tulation and admonition, must now moulder in the dust;-and that heart which so often beat with ardent longings of desire for your salvation, will beat no more!

Shall the affecting scene

rious yet arduous work of the christian ministry. To you his surviving sons in the flesh-in the gospel-and in the ministry-he being dead yet speaketh what you so often heard him address to you, while he was with you, with of the present hour fail also to all parental affection and ardour, leave any lasting impression ? Hold fast the form of sound God forbid! O let me beseech words which you have heard of you now, at length, to pause and me, in faith and love which is in reflect, ere the grave close on the Christ Jesus. Study to show yourremains of your faithful minister. selves approved unto God, work- There is, assuredly, great danger men who need not to be ashamed, that, after having gone thus far, rightly dividing the word of truth. and continued thus long, careless You have fully known my doc- and indifferent, God, in righteous trine, manner of life, purpose, judgment, should say, “Let him faith, long-suffering, charity, pa- alone." By this very providence tience, and afflictions. Continue he partly does so; you will never ye in the things which you have more hear from his lips the evil of learned, and have been assured sin-your exposure as sinnersof, knowing of whom you have the glories and suitableness of the learned them. Preach the word; Saviour-the kindness and urgenbe instant in season, out of season; cy of the invitations of the gospel reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all-and, O! I tremble at the. long-suffering and doctrine. Be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing them that oppose themselves, if God, peradventure, will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth."

Are there any present who have often attended, or perhaps long sat under the ministry of our deceased brother, and have slighted his message, continued hardened and impenitent, turned a deaf ear to the charmer, charming never so wisely, to whom he was, as was Ezekiel to his hearers, as one who had a pleasant voice, and could play well on an instrument? That tongue which so often faithfully warned you is now silent in death, and will warn you no more;-those eyes which so often shed tears of tender compassion over your perishing condition, are closed in death ;those hands which were so often stretched forth in earnest expos

prospect of that awful interview
which will take place between
you and your minister before the
presence of your righteous
Judge, at that great approaching
day, when, if you continue im-
penitent to the end, he must be a
flaming witness against you, and
you will reflect on all his ministry,
and on this affectionate address at
its close, with unavailing remorse,
and hopeless agony. The Lord
grant that you may
find mercy
of
the Lord in that day! that your
minister's death may prove the
means of your spiritual life, and
that you may also meet around
the throne, and unite in the ever-
lasting praises of God and of the
Lamb! But I am persuaded bet-
ter things of many of you, and
things that accompany salvation,
though I thus speak. I address
many to whom the word of God,
as ministered by him, has proved
a savour of life unto life, even
the power of God to your salva,

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