inate the harmless from the hurtful. Advice on these subjects, if it travel beyond the border of a very obvious propriety, is generally unsatisfactory, and therefore seldom invited. It is unsatisfactory because it can proceed on no sure principle: it may chance make its way to the conscience; but as often will it miss the mark. Give yourselves wholly to the Lord. When the heart is absolutely Christ's the judgment is a safe casuist in matters of taste. Everything unholy will be unlovely. Let me beseech you to become the enrolled followers of Jesus. Do not be led astray by the vulgar sophism, that it is safer to show friendship towards religion than to make a profession of it. The unworthiness as well as vanity of this position will be seen at once if you remember that religion is personal attachment to Christ; that He commands His friends to make their attachment an open confession; and that life has neither duties, nor cares, nor pleasures, apart from Him. In fact, when faith joins our spirit to the Son of God, even the body is taken into the fellowship and becomes the outer shrine of the Divine Presence.

There is nothing between this thorough adhesion to Christ and an open rejection of His claims, except that philanthropic patronage of faith which supports its public usefulness and declines to have any personal relations with it. This sentiment is so convenient, exacting from those who affect it neither the trouble of thinking nor the irksomeness of self-restraint, that it has become a creed among us, and passes for religion. Consider for a moment what it amounts to, and what it implies. I will venture to say that no satirist ever found a subject more congenial to the irony and banter of derision than the protecting air which many people assume towards the religion of Jesus. That a life consumed by earnestness and love for mankind should be simply admired; that it should be possible for a man, without being aware of its burlesque, to become the patron of Gethsemane, and the well-wisher of the Cross! I am persuaded that downright hostility, honestly and consistently maintained, is less offensive to God than this nauseous parody of Christian discipleship. I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of My mouth.'* Shun, I beseech you, as you would the infection of a death-sickness, the character of a supporter' of Christianity. Give to Christ mind and heart and life, or give Him nothing. He asks not that His sayings may be quoted, and His name used as the warrant of benefactions and the ornament of charities; He claims a union with us in which there shall be no allotment of partnership; but in which all the action of the two persons shall be absorbed into one movement, while the separate consciousness of each is preserved. 'I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.' 'To me to live is Christ.' Even in these days of scientific scepticism there is no argument against the faith of the Gospel so impressive as the indifference of those who are supposed to hold it; and let this thought never be absent from your mind, that to stand apart from the Church, to hold

* Revelation iii. 15, 16.

† Galatians ii. 20.

Philippians i. 21.

back from a participation in the work, the responsibilities, and the fellowships of a public confession of your faith, is to give their sharpest weapon to the enemies of Christ. He was crucified by stranger hands; but He was delivered into those hands by a ‘friend.'

As I write these words to stir your minds, I remember that impressions are fleeting; and that when we compel them to remain with us until they become the settled motive of resolution, even resolution is frail and is apt to break under us like a reed. Let me, then, lead you to the secret place of strength: Enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.'* The saints of old were accused of unmanly seclusion. In these days, life seems to have no privacy; and piety, like a frightened traveller, snatches both rest and food as it hurries through its duties, as if some danger lurked in reflection and retirement. But if you would make sure of the ground upon which your faith rests, cherish the habit of observing a stated time, day by day, for the study of the Holy Scriptures and for meditation upon God, as well as prayer to God. I have said that Church-work is a remedy for unbelief; but no work can be well done unless the faith and the heart of the worker be refreshed and 'renewed day by day.' You have no enemy more dangerous than the temptation that would filch from you the golden minutes consecrated to your private interviews with God. In everything else judicious solitude is the spring of open success. As a tree attains its strength and loftiness by the unseen and silent ministry of the soil, so great characters are built up in secret. May He Who was wont to withdraw 'apart to pray,' and to continue all night in prayer to God,'‡ put the spirit of His example within you! and then neither the frailty of resolutions, nor the subtle dissimulations of self, nor the snares of thought and passion that waylay you in books and in intercourse, shall be able to move you 'away from the hope of the Gospel.'

The New Year will find many of us overweighted by duties yet to be discharged, by errors yet to be atoned for, by failures which have not been retrieved, even if their sin has been forgiven, and by memories which sadden the felicities of the season. In another sense than that in which the poet meant it, we 'drag a lengthening chain.' But to you the step of Time is light, swift, and joyous. We seem to linger behind in the past: you in your imagination live in the years to come. I would not have the prospect of your hope dimmed by even a thought of gloom. But let me exhort you to meet the New Year with Him at your right hand, 'Whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.' His presence will not mar the festival, but will give a meaning to its congratulations, a reality to its vows, a practical force to its lessons, and a crown to its happiness. There is laid up in the year great store of sorrow, of conflict, and of work for this poor world of ours. May Christ make for us the gladness of the first days, and this

Matthew vi. 6. † 2 Corinthians iv. 16.

+ Luke vi. 12.

shall be our strength for the part that may be assigned to us this year in the never-ceasing advancement of good, and in the slow but inevitable conquest of evil; for the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ; and He shall reign for ever.'

Believe me, in and through Him,

Affectionately yours,

E. E. JENKINS.

MEMOIR OF THE REV. WILLIAM WHITE ROUCH:

BY THE REV. W. B. POPE, D.D.

I HAVE before me a document in which the subject of this memorial traces the good Hand of his God upon him' through a long life spent in the service of the Methodist branch of Christ's Church. The autobiography is a very simple one; and deeply interesting in its simplicity. It describes a course which began, continued and ended well; one of uniform and consistent devotedness to duty, inspired by the love of God and man. There is nothing, indeed, in the general character of the record to mark it out from that of many other Methodist Preachers, especially of the same generation. But in some respects it has a stamp of its own. If it does not describe a career such as men count distinguished and great, it has a certain rounded finish, the symmetry of which is closely allied to greatness and has its own peculiar charm. There is hardly one thing wanting to its completeness.

Mr. Rouch came of a Methodist lineage; his immediate ancestors were familiar with the Wesleys and employed in their work; and he himself was connected from infancy with one of their most venerable Societies. He was brought up in a house the most welcome visitors of which were the Preachers; and received from their kind words and blessing his earliest religious impressions. He rejoiced in the full revelation of God's love in Christ when very young; gave himself up to works of usefulness, which prepared him for the Christian Ministry; and in that Ministry spent more than thirty uninterrupted years, without any flaw in his fidelity or his character. After many wanderings, and service in many Circuits, he returned to Bristol, whence he first came out; and, after twenty-two more years of Supernumerary duty, ended his course in perfect peace, and was gathered to his fathers. The little narrative that fills up this outline, leaves on the memory a feeling of entire satisfaction, such as is not always produced by the memorials of far more gifted men. I could almost wish that the autobiography should speak for itself. But its length forbids that, and I must be content to make a few extracts and comment upon them.

MR. ROUCH was born in the second week of the present century. He received the name of WILLIAM WHITE after his maternal grandfather, 'who was for a long time a member of the Methodist Society, and for ten years

a Steward under Mr. Wesley at the "Old Room" in Broadmead, Bristol -the first Methodist chapel ever built; his house having been the occasional home of the Wesleys during their frequent visits to Bristol.' One cannot help regretting that the narrative does not expatiate at this point. Those who were familiar with the writer of it, will remember his honest pride in Bristol Methodism, in his judgment never surpassed if equalled elsewhere; and the rich store of traditions about it which was at the disposal of any who would listen, and might have added something, if they had been preserved, to the value of the deeply interesting account given by Mr. Pawlyn.

But to return. After a few pages devoted to special Providences which saved him from sundry kinds of death in boyhood-narrated with the faith of one to whom Providence was more than a mere word-we come to the event from which he dated his religious life. We have a picture of the godly mother taking the boy of fifteen, with a Note of Admission, to the Old Kingswood Love-feast; his softened heart while he listened to Aquila Barber, John Jenkins and others describing their conversion; his crying for mercy in a Cottage Prayer-meeting afterwards. I rose from my knees to praise the Lord Who had redeemed me by His blood and filled me with unspeakable joy and peace in believing. Such was the commencement of my spiritual life. Aquila Barber invited me to meet in Class with him, which I gladly did. On Sunday, June 18th (the very day the dreadful but decisive battle of Waterloo was fought), I received my Note of Admission on trial from the hands of the Rev. John Barber.' Well might he call this the commencement of his spiritual life. Before that day, however, he had been under the influence of the Spirit, the drawing of the Father to the Son: that he had resisted the Spirit's strivings was, he says, the sin which troubled him most as a penitent. And so it must be in the case of all children dedicated to God in baptism. They are heirs of the promised Spirit, and He does not fail to claim them in the name of Jesus. Whatever His influence may be on all the children of the race of Adam, we may be sure that He is specially watchful over those whose parents' obedience and faith have given them to the Lord in His own ordinance. He waits through their infancy and childhood to confirm His grace in them, and form in their souls the Christ of their regenerate life. Men may err deeply as to their rite of confirmation; but the Spirit has a confirmation of His own. Happy the parent and happy the child who both believe the promise. If they agree in this, and use the means, they cannot be disappointed: early grace must mature into full conversion; and this youth was only an instance of the common law of the Christian covenant.

The fruit began immediately to appear. He employed his talents in God's work as a teacher in the Portland Sunday-school; as a Prayer-leader; as a visitor on Sunday afternoons of the Mint Hospital and City Workhouse; and then as a Local Preacher, after trial and examination by the Rev. Walter Griffith. This was for the good of others: one of the first instincts

6

of the new life. But his religion made him anxious also for his own improvement. Being appointed librarian by the Local Preachers, and thus having the charge of many valuable books formerly belonging to Mr. Wesley's library at the "Old Room," I set about the cultivation of my mind in theological studies, rising early before the business of the day for that purpose. I met with several other young men for spiritual exercise at six o'clock on Sunday mornings, and also on a week-evening for theological reading and discussion.' In all this, too, we may mark the hand of the Holy Ghost. This youth was called to be a servant and Preacher of the Word of God, and he was not disobedient to the call. In these early and late hours of self-denying toil he was not simply gratifying that thirst for knowledge which the fear of God always inspires, but he was also, however unconsciously, preparing for the work of his life. Young men had not the advantages they now have. The path into the Ministry was not, in those days, paved and hedged about with theological helps as it is now. Nor was there any Institution to test and crown the qualifications of candidates. It was no easy work for such a young man as he was to make himself ready for the ordeal, and pass it as he did. With very little more time for study than he stole from sleep, and with few besides his young companions to guide him in the use of Mr. Wesley's old books, he so toiled as not to be 'found wanting' by discerning men, and laid the foundation of a very fair superstructure of Methodist Divinity. The picture he draws of those days is a very pleasant one, and very instructive to some who may read these lines. Advantages are now far greater; but no advantages can ever supersede the necessity of that toilsome, painstaking cultivation of the gifts God has bestowed which this true-hearted youth displayed.

In 1823, Mr. Rouch found himself on the President's List of Reserve.' His first Circuit was Taunton, and he made a good beginning. Very much depends, in a Methodist Preacher's course, on the start he makes: the first few years generally determine what manner of man he will be. Our Probationer was associated with the Rev. John Smith, ""a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost"; eminently successful in turning many to righteousness in this and other Circuits where he travelled. We had an increase in the year of one hundred and thirty members. During the time we laboured together my soul was like "a watered garden," and I was determined to be wholly the Lord's.' Well for the young man who sets out on his ministry with such a colleague as this; and well for the young man who is susceptible to the influence of such a colleague. Our probationer was evidently brought into the secret of a passion for saving souls. This never left him, however the outward signs of it might change. Going through the list of his Circuits, and gathering up his remembrances of them, he invariably makes a note of this kind of success or the lack of it. He mentions his colleagues several of whom still survive-and almost always with admiration and love; he has a word for the comfort or discomfort of his surroundings; he recalls the kindness of the friends, or, in the few cases