DEARLY BELOVED.-I had laid aside all thoughts of again addressing you as your Annual Monitor, but the SICKNESS which has so generally prevailed of late, induces me once more to adopt this mode of Pastoral admonition.

Let me then, in the first place, deeply impress upon your minds, that sickness, in whatever form it comes, comes from the Lord: that it is He, who gives the commission to the consumption, and the fever, and the inflammation.

In general, when we are taken ill, we are anxious to trace our illness to some known cause. We were caught, we say, in a shower of rain, we sat in a draught of air, we slept in a damp bed, or we entered some infected chamber, and there imbibed the pestilential taint. These, and such like causes as these, are carefully recollected, and severally discussed: and we seem to ourselves to have made no trifling discovery, when we have at length decided, where, and when, and how the disorder took its rise. But, seldom do we hear it said, "The hand of the Lord is upon me: this visitation is from Him: it is He who in mercy to soul has sent this fit of my sickness. All the circumstances of it were ordered by Him: the damp bed, the shower of rain, the draught of air, the infected chamber, only performed his bidding. When he wills it we escape unhurt from the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and from the sickness that destroyeth in the noon day. Let me then hear the Rod, and who hath appointed it. Let me humble myself under the mighty hand of God, and possess my soul in patience, assured that He who has manifested his love to me in Christ, only chastens me for my profit, that I may be partaker of his holiness."

Let me next remind you, that as

sickness comes, so it departs, only at God's command.

You do well, in calling in the aid of the physician, in following his advice, and taking the medicines he prescribes. You would act disobediently to God, and be criminally negligent to yourselves, if you did not employ all the means He has put in your power, to mitigate disease, and to restore health. But having done all that prudence and skill can suggest, you are to look up for the blessing, and put your case in his hands who has healing in his wings. He alone can assuage the fever's burning heat, and calm the throbbing pulse, and soothe the aching head, and restore to the weary eyelids that rest which had gone from them. If He speak the word, his servant shall be healed.

Not that we are to expect in the present day our maladies to be cured by miracle; but we are to look in the use of means to the Great Physician-our eyes, our hopes, and our hearts art to be directed to Him, who can alone say with power to the disease, when it has fulfilled its commission," Go, and it goeth."

I know these are plain and simple truths-that meet us at the very threshold of Religion, and are familiar to the minds of all, who are but slightly acquainted with the Bible. But I know also, there is a wide difference between professing to believe them, and living under their practical influence. It argues no small degree of faith to trust our health implicitly in the hands of God: to bear in quietness of spirit these trials of bodily suffering—and to realize under them the Sovereign Will, the chastening Hand, the sanctifying purpose of our Heavenly Father. Whence is it, that we discern oftentimes in the children of God, who profess to have resigned themselves to His disposal-that

alarm at the approach of disease, that fretful impatience under it that eager craving for new medicines, and new physicians-that professed trust in God and that secret dependance upon man? What, can they doubt His power, who made them? Can they distrust His love, who redeemed them? Can they not wait the fulfilment of His promise, who has said, "All these things shall work together for good to them that love God." Alas! to many we may say, of whom better things might be hoped, "Where is your faith ?"

1. Are you in health, my brother, and a stranger to pain and sickness? Humbly bless God for the enjoyment of this precious boon, this sugar of life, as the early fathers quaintly termed it. But do not waste it in sin and folly! choose this season especially, when you can be sure of your motives, to love and serve God, to give yourself in solemn dedication to Him, who claims you by the right of creation, and still more by the right of redemption! Go at once, and cheerfully surrender to God that heart, which he condescendingly demands. Go and lodge it in the hands of your compassionate Redeemer, to be cleansed in his atoning blood, and enlightened and sanctified by his Holy Spirit. Behold, now is the accepted time! now is the day of salvation! Consider, if you are only driven to God by the rod of affliction, by the terrors of conscience, or the dread of death, it will be the effect of fear rather than of free will: and then will come the awful question, whether God, who loves a cheerful giver, will accept an offering thus constrained.

Besides, if you put off repentance to a future day, that day may never come: or if it does, it may find you utterly unfit for the great work you have to do; the disorder may have seized the brain; or you may be weighed down by insupportable langour; or racked with fierce pain,

and thus rendered incapable of thinking, or repenting, or praying! Oh then enter into the strait gate, before your feet stumble on the dark mountains. Take up your cross without delay, and follow Christ. Devote the golden season of health to your Saviour. Give him more than the dregs of life. He suffered in the prime of his days for you. Strive then, while you can, to do something in return for Him. Let every day be marked by exercises of piety and labours of love; and resolve, whatever others do, as for me, "I will serve the Lord."

2. Are you stretched on the bed of sickness? How then are your time and your thoughts employed? In watching the progress of the disease? in counting the dull hours? in sighing to be well, and in telling to every friend that calls the long and dismal history of your sufferings?

Or are you turning the season of confinement to its proper and profitable account? examining the state of your soul towards God, ascertaining the sincerity of your repentance, the reality of your faith, your unfeigned love to Christ, your unreserved obedience to His will, and your growing conformity to his image? Are you honestly inquiring, what besetting sin remains to be subdued, what evil temper to be corrected, what pride to be humbled, and what pollution to be cleansed ? And knowing the deceitfulness of your heart, do you beg of God to scrutinize it himself, to "search and to know your heart, to try you and to know your thoughts, and to see, if there be any wicked way in and to lead you in the way everlasting." Are you earnestly imploring the help of the Holy Spirit to work out your salvation? Is the Bible safely lodged behind your pillow? Is it the friend of your bosom, your counsellor in difficulties, your comforter in distress? Do you read it with prayer and self-application? Is it wetted with your tears? and as you read,

you

you,

does sin become more hateful, not merely as the cause of your sufferings, but of the agony and bloody sweat, and the Cross and Passion of the Holy Jesus? Do you look on Him, whom your sins have pierced, and resolve to wound and grieve him no more? Do you seek, not so much the removal of your sufferings as the sanctification of them? and do you upon the whole think it far better to depart and to be with Christ?

If this be so indeed, the bitterness of disease and death is past, and these light afflictions, which are but for a moment, are working out for you an exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

3. Are you recovered from sickness? Let your first inquiry be, What shall I render to the Lord for all the benefits he has done unto me? It is the Lord, by whom I have escaped death, who has in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption.'

Oh do not forget the vows and resolutions, that you made in the time of your distress! Suffer not your convictions of sin to become faint, nor your love to the Saviour to grow cool! Return not, with returning health, to sin and to the world, lest a worse thing come unto thee. Remember, the Bible is still as true, sin is still as accursed, the soul is still as precious, and the blood of Christ as needful, as when you saw them in all their vast importance on the bed of sickness. Eternity is no less awful than it was, heaven no less glorious, and hell no less deep and dreadful. Oh let not the world wear out these salutary impressions, and lead you to slacken your pace, and look behind you. Press forward. Do all with a single eye to the glory of your Redeemer. Let every morning and evening find you upon your knees. Let the Bible be often in your hand, and always in your heart. Choose your companions, among those who fear God and love Christ, with whom you can take sweet

counsel and walk to the house of God as friends. In a word, present your body a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, and be not " conformed to this world."

4. I have but a word more to say, and it is to those who kindly attend the sick, and perhaps dying, bed of a relative or friend.

I doubt not, that you employ every effort to sooth and comfort the poor sufferer, that you administer his medicines with your own hand, and eagerly supply his wants, and try to anticipate his wishes. You cheerfully bear with the fretfulness and pettishness of disease; and devise a thousand kind expedients to cheer his spirits, and beguile the tedious hours. But oh! while you are thus kind to his body, be not careless of his soul. His soul must live for ever in happiness or misery, in heaven or in hell. And if this should be a sickness unto death, is he prepared to die and to meet his God? Be faithful here! This is perhaps the eleventh hour with him, and you the only friend at hand to guide him to God! Discharge your conscience! Seize every suitable moment to press upon him the care of his soul! inquire, if he has made his peace with God through the blood of the atonement! urge him to repent, to call upon God, to lay hold of Christ, and to supplicate for a new heart! Tell him of God's boundless compassion to the true penitent, of the fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness, and of the Holy Spirit so freely promised to all that ask! Pray with your friend, and pray for your friend! and lest you be discouraged or dissuaded from this office of Christian Charity, know, that he, which converteth the sinner from the error of his way, shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins." I remain, dearly beloved, Your affectionate minister,

and servant in Christ,

EDWARD WARD.

To a minister of religion, who would ever keep in view the responsibility of that office, which he believes the holy Ghost has moved him to take upon himself, what can be more grateful to the mind, or more animating to the feelings than a belief, justified by experience and facts, that he has, in any wise, been made instrumental in preparing and making ready the way of the Lord, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just? What greater token of the love and approbation of Him, who said unto him, Go ye also into my vineyard," can he possess, than a conviction that there is "a shaking among the dry bones," which indeed were very dry," until he “ prophesied upon them, and said unto them, O ye dry bones, hear ye the word of the Lord,"-that the divine breath has indeed entered into their souls, that they might live before Him. And more especially, when this conviction is entertained not with respect to individuals only, but the present state of a whole parish will afford some reasonable ground of hope, that from the four winds, in answer to prayer, breath hath come into the people, and they live and stand upon their feet."

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There is, however, reason to fear that the ministers of religion might indulge in such thoughts as these, as expressive of the desires of their hearts, rather than as facts borne out by their experience. Nevertheless, as an individual, situated in a country parish, not very remote from a large commercial city, where the sound of the gospel has for many years been heard, and, it is to be hoped, appreciated, I must bear my testimony to the fact, that, however faithfully the truth as it is in Jesus may be preached in surrounding parishes, there may still be found a central spot, destitute of the light, yea immersed in the

grossest darkness: where, until the ambassador of Christ shall“ join himself to the chariot," and entering into the cottage, proclaim Jesus, who was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb dumb before his shearer opened not his mouth,” parents and children, masters and servants, will pass through the vale of death" without hope,” because they had lived" without Christ in the world.” It has been my happy experience to behold, in a parish, of which I could, at one period, entertain no other feeling than that of dire despair, a change, “a shaking amongst the dry bones,' after seven years' exertions amongst my people: which circumstance powerfully enforces upon my mind, as it should upon the minds of my brethren in the ministry, the Apostolic exhortation, Be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour will not be in vain in the Lord.” My object in this paper will not be so much to describe the general state of my parish, as to point out the contrast between two of my younger parishioners, who died at different periods of my ministry, children of the same parents; together with the alteration which has been produced in the parents themselves, by the preaching of the everlasting gospel, subsequently to the decease of the first child, whose remains I conducted to the tomb, February 6th, 1822.

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I had been spending a few days in the neighbouring city of B; and, on my return to the Rectory, was informed by the servants, that J- M- had been taken suddenly ill during the week, and was then no more. The youth was, indeed gone beyond the reach of ministerial exhortation; but the recollections of his general character and conduct led me into the most painful train of thought, respecting

what must inevitably have been the state of his soul, at that moment, without " repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ; for the exercise of which graces, the space of time which intervened between the first attack of disease and the approach of death, appeared to be very circumscribed. All I could do, then, was to sigh over the recollections I had of poor Jack; and to lament my absence from home, at that particular moment, when, perhaps his mind might have been affected by a faithful exposure to him of his real character and danger, and of the doom which awaits those who die without an interest in Christ, and a hope in the exceeding great and precious promises of the gospel. It is impossible for me to say how many times the dishonest dealings of the youth, which were known to exist up to the week in which he died, his depredations upon my own property, as well as that of other neighbours, under the sanction of the parental smile of approbation, and his almost universal breach of the sabbath, have, since his departure, painfully recurred to my mind.

On receiving information of his removal hence, I hastened to the cottage in which he lived. It stood upon an eminence, by the road side leading to the Rectory, and was, at all times, regarded by me as a nuisance, from its contiguity to my glebe and potatoe ground, out of which the swine, having but little provision at home, continued to satisfy their craving appetites; as did the children, from the apple-trees which grew in my orchard. But this was not the only circumstance which made me to regard the cottage in the light of a nuisance. The unusually narrow road was at all times crowded with donkeys, the use of which was, alas! too evident; and the exterior filth was only an indication of the desultory habits of its tenants, and of that still greater pollution which existed within their FEB. 1826.

hearts, and which the regenerating grace of Christ could alone cleanse and purify.

There were some flags, placed in the form of a flight of steps, leading to the cottage, by which I found it difficult, not to say perilous, to ascend. On entering the habitation of this poverty-stricken family, my eye was instantly caught by the coffin, wherein were deposited the remains of the youth; and which were laid out by the side of a large fire, near which was seated the father of the family, with his hat on, his pipe in his hand, and his mind evidently not much affected by the change which had taken place with respect to his child. The mother was engaged in nursing; and to complete the picture, one corner of the room was occupied by a litter of young pigs.

I instantly directed my attention, and laboured to rivet the attention of the family, on the loss they had sustained-on the uncertainty of human life-on the danger of our dying in an unprepared state-on the lesson which such a spectacle as this was calculated to teach us; and, finally, on the salutary effects, which I trusted would be produced upon their lives, walk, and conversation, by this most solemn warning. Having, in particular, dwelt upon the sin of sabbath-breaking, and exhorted them to attend the house of God, I prayed with and for them, and departed, uttering, as I retraced my steps to the Rectory, Alas, poor Jack! alas, poor Jack! For a few sabbaths after the interment of this youth, I observed that the parents attended the church regularly; but subsequently they declined into a total neglect of the means of grace. Meanwhile one of their children was in the habit of attending pretty regularly at the Sunday School, which is held at the Rectory. The time at length arrived, when the owner of the property, on which the house occupied by his family stood, was desirous, from its dila

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