years to come, for the Church's sake; for, in your own language concerning the writer, he must express it still more strongly concerning yourself "Dear Lord, we cannot spare him yet." May He uphold you to write much more of LIFE'S DEEP HISTORY; and if, my dear brother, I may also express a wish, it shall be that, if I am spared longest, you would leave such material and memoranda at my disposal, that I may be privileged gather up the fragments which remain, that nothing be lost," and hand down to the Church of Christ particulars of a life that peculiarly belongs to her.

to "

The Lord bless you, and, when life's warfare is over, give you an abundant entrance into His everlasting kingdom!

Believe me, as ever, yours in brotherly love and union, Wanstead, Essex, Nov. 2, 1871. GEORGE COWELL. [DEAR BROTHER,-You express a hope as to what we may leave behind us, when it shall please the Lord to call us hence! Well, all that we have to leave are the simple breathings of our heart, as penned from time to time, during the last forty years. We see our first entry is under date April 17, 1831. This diary, as you may imagine, contains a diversity of exercises, penned very much with a view to giving present relief to a burdened heart, and to help, under God, to a more watchful eye upon the teachings of His providence and the dispensations of His grace. The writing thus has ofttimes been found a profitable one; but it has been the re-perusal, it may be years and years afterwards, that has led to the astonishment and the admiration of the Lord's astounding goodness and mercy. Again and again have we said, "And is it possible that we were really in such a state of mind? in such a position? and under such circumstances? And were we sustained? were we delivered? Have we really been brought on and on and on to the present moment? Oh, then, why should we not hope on-trust on-press on; yea, 'hope against hope?'" We have oftentimes been tempted to destroy these simple, unpretending records. Again we have thought they might cheer and encourage our children, when our head is laid low. We desire the Lord's will to be done in the matter, whatever that will may be.

We may only add, that, when it shall please the Lord to call us home (should it be His will, as we trust it may be, that you should survive us, dear brother), it will be no small solace to us to think that you will follow us in this work of faith and labour of love. It would have been a source of great thankfulness to have contemplated our beloved son as our successor in the editing of this work. But we cannot overlook the fact, that he has already a large parish to superintend, which requires all his time and energies. Moreover, although well taught of God (thanks to His great and glorious name!) yet he has not been called to go down into the same depths of distress and anguish, and dark and gloomy experiences, which you and ourselves have, to qualify us for dealing with souls in like circumstances. Although we are bound to testify to divine faithfulness and all-sufficient grace, yet we could not wish any poor soul to be personally familiar with some of those agonizing positions which have fallen to our lot, and without which very many of the cases submitted to us would have been altogether problematical. In fact, it has been in the meeting these cases by a word in season, "" upon the ground of personal experience, that we have been subsequently repaid for the soultravail and mental anguish of which we had previously been the subject. You, dear brother, have again and again known what this satisfaction

was, when, after the intense labour and travail of soul, in order to bring forth, from time to time, what the Lord has enabled you to write, you have had testimonies here and there in proof of the fact that what you had been led to advance had met the cases of the tried, the tempted, the sinburdened, the heavy-laden, and the careworn. Oh, they are wages of full weight and measure, which we thus receive for any previous travail of soul, heaviness of heart, and depression of spirit. All, all tend to the endearing of a precious Christ, and to an admiring all the loving care and discipline He has graciously brought to bear upon us.

We have sometimes been ready to smile, dear brother, at those who have imagined ours has been a smooth path through the wilderness. Why, although we have now completed our threescore years, we never remember any one period in our life in which our path could have been said to be free from care and anxiety. From the veriest dawn of reason we Temember to have become gradually the creature of fear, anxiety, and distressing suspense. Strange as it may appear, we cannot recollect the time when we did not see and feel ourselves to be a poor lost sinner, and to feel, too, that, if we died as we were, without pardon and without hope, where God was we could never come. We felt for years and years, as dear HART expresses it:

"We pray to be new born,

Yet know not what we mean,

We think it's something very great,
Something that's undiscovered yet."

With respect again to bodily health, although there may be the appearance of strength and vigour, yet, as a gouty subject, and suffering intensely in the head, we do not remember to have been scarcely a day altogether free from at least some ailment for the last five-and-forty years. A man, too, that has lost what little means he had, followed two dear wives and six out of fifteen children to the grave-the ages of those children spreading over a period of six-and-thirty years-can scarcely be said to have had a smooth path; and yet (blessed be God!) that man is prepared to justify his kind and gracious Lord and Master through and amid all. He can honestly testify that "He has done all things well," and that He would have nothing whatever in the leastwise altered. Dear brother, "He hath delivered, He doth deliver, and in whom we trust He will yet deliver us." We are looking to Him to fulfil His kind and merciful and loving word, "The Lord will give grace, and He will give glory; and no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly." Yours, dear Brother, in much affection, THE EDITOR.]

THE MINISTRY.

MY DEAR BROTHER,-The subject we were discussing this morning is one, the importance of which can scarcely be exaggerated, i.e., the Providential leadings of our covenant God with respect to the sacred office of the ministry, and the position which men hold within the pale of the Church of England, who preach the doctrines of grace. As it is a subject of the deepest interest to myself, and one on which I entertain strong and decided opinions, I venture, with your kind permission, to offer a few remarks upon it. I believe I do not overstate the case in saying * Since this was written, another dear child has been added to the six previously taken home.-ED.

there is a very wide-spread opinion existing among many of our Nonconformist brethren, that the Church of England is little better than a compromise with the great Romish apostacy, and that, consequently, the men who hold and love and fully preach the Gospel of the grace of God occupy an untenable position within her pale! My own assured conviction is, that a more erroneous opinion on any ecclesiastical subject was never held. Many statements I might advance in proof of the truth of this my conviction, but let one, at all events for the present, suffice. It is, I know, a fact, that some of the brethren who hold this adverse opinion the most strongly, are those whose doctrinal views coincide in the main with those of the Rev. A. M. Toplady, and with whose writings they are familiar. Now, I should like to ask these brethren whether they have ever read, marked, and inwardly digested a certain treatise of Mr. Toplady's, entitled, "Historic Proof of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England?" I have that able work now before me. My own humble judgment concerning it might be considered warped when I state the simple fact, that for years I was an enthusiastic student of the whole works of Toplady-that to this day I entertain an unabated love for them—and that I shall, I fully believe, revere the memory of the author to my dying hour. Let, therefore, a more impartial witness speak.

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The Rev. J. C. Ryle, in his work, "The Christian Leaders of the Last Century; or, England a Hundred Years Ago," has the following remarks on Toplady's writings. I think I need not apologise for transcribing such a lengthy paragraph, for I regard it as the more valuable, inasmuch as Mr. Ryle says that he cannot endorse all Toplady says—that he considers his statements often extreme, and that he is frequently more systematic and narrow than the Bible. Still," he adds, "for all this, I will never shrink from saying that the cause for which Toplady contended all his life was decidedly the cause of God's truth. He was a bold defender of Calvinistic views about election, predestination, perseverance, human impotency, and irresistible grace. On all these subjects I hold firmly that Calvin's theology is much more Scriptural than the theology of Arminius. In a word, I believe that Calvinistic divinity is the divinity of the Bible, of Augustine, and of the Thirty-nine Articles of my own Church, and of the Scotch Confession of Faith. While, therefore, I repeat that I cannot endorse all the sentiments of Toplady's controversial writings, I do claim for them the merit of being in principle Scriptural, sound, and true. Well would it be for the Churches if we had a good deal more of clear, distinct, sharply-cut doctrine in the present day! Vagueness and indistinctness are marks of our degenerate condition. But I go further than this. I do not hesitate to say that Toplady's controversial works display extraordinary ability. For example, his "Historic Proof of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England" is a treatise that displays a prodigious amount of research and reading. It is a book that no one could have written who had not studied much, thought much, and thoroughly investigated an enormous amount of theological literature. You see at once that the author has completely digested what he has read, and is able to concentrate all his reading on every point which he handles. The best proof of the book's ability is the simple fact that down to the present day it has never been really answered. It has been reviled, sneered at, abused, and held up to scorn. But abuse is not argument. The book remains to this hour unanswered, and that for the simplest of all reasons, that it is unanswerable. It proves irrefragably, whether men like it or not, that Calvinism is the doctrine of

the Church of England, and that all the leading divines, until Laud's time, were Calvinists. All this is done logically, clearly, and powerfully."

Now, if this witness be true-if this work remains unanswered and unanswerable—if Toplady has demonstrated that the doctrines of grace are the doctrines of the Reformed Church-it follows incontestibly that the men who preach those doctrines and truths are the truest representatives of that Church.

For several years previously to my own ordination, I had embraced the truths which I esteem it my highest privilege to proclaim. I was then perfectly convinced of the doctrinal purity of the Church of England, so that I set out with the Gospel from the day of my ordination-a blessing for which I cannot be sufficiently thankful. I have signed her articles and formularies of faith again and again, and I can in all good conscience say with Toplady, "I do not believe them because I signed them, but I signed them because I believed them," being perfectly persuaded that the doctrines of the Church of England are the doctrines of Christ. At the same time I am free to admit that there are about a dozen words in her occasional services, which I should like to see eliminated, or, at all events, others substituted for them, if it could be done without imperilling the whole-not that I have any difficulty with regard to them, but they require, as someone has observed, "laborious explanation," and it would be well could we be relieved of this, while at the same time a stumblingblock might be removed out of many a brother's way.

And now my dear brother, having spoken of the doctrinal teaching of that branch of Christ's Church to which we belong, and of our position as her ministers, I trust I shall not occupy more space than you will be pleased to allow me, in speaking of the marvellous way in which I was led to be one of her unworthiest ministers. I do the more cheerfuly write this to you because I know-and I am sure you will permit me to say it—that my antecedents have not been altogether dissimilar to your own. Not only has the hand of the Lord been most manifest in leading me into the ministry, and leading me on from step to step up to the present hour, but I can look back and remember all the way He has brought me in the wilderness, and that long before the Divine Spirit led me, as I humbly trust He has done, to a saving knowledge of the truth. I can only say, and I say it with feelings of admiring and adoring thankfulness, that with respect to my going to College-the incidents connected with my course of study, and residence there-the time and place of my ordination -the selection for me of my first Curacy, without my having any choice in the matter—the way in which I have been led from sphere to sphere up to the present time-have been, each and all, nothing less than one uninterrupted series of special, marked, and remarkable providences; and they leave not a shadow of doubt upon my mind, not only that it was God's will I should enter the ministry of our Church, but also that He had a work for me to do within her borders.

Whatever others may do, I, for one, must preach God's predestinating love, for I am a monument of, and a witness to, its truth. For what is Divine predestination but God's special providence watching over and directing His child in every step of that pathway which He, in His infinite and unerring wisdom, had mapped out in the councils of eternity? Well may the prophet exclaim, "O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps" (Jer. x. 23).

Well may the wise man bear testimony, "Man's goings are of the Lord ; how can a man then understand his own way?" (Prov. xx. 24). I am, my dear brother, yours affectionately in the Lord,

WM. SAUNDERS,

Vicar of St. Silas, Bristol.

A REMINISCENCE AND A TESTIMONY.—THE LATE DR. HAWKER AND MR. A. TRIGGS.

THE following is a statement of the way and manner the Lord brought me into an acquaintance with Dr. Hawker, that highly-favoured servant of the Lord. I long had a desire to hear the doctor preach, and my ever-blessed Lord so ordered it that on Whit-Sunday, May 21, 1820, I went to Plymouth, and in the morning I heard the doctor preach from Acts ii. 33, “Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, He hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear." The truths of God from his mouth flowed into my heart with power and unction, and they were to my soul a sweet savour of Christ and salvation, such as I had not heard before from any man. On the Monday evening following I preached at Rehoboth Chapel (Mr. Denham was then the minister), from Acts xiii. 38, 39. “Be it known unto you, men and brethren," &c. There were a great many people gathered together, and the Lord gave me a door of utterance to speak His Word, and He gave an unction with His Word. This was the way I was brought into an acquaintance with the doctor. The parsons, finding their craft in danger, consulted with a minister who was preaching at Devonport, and who was friendly with the doctor, and he was desired to tell the doctor that I preached damnable heresies, and that I said I learnt them from the doctor. A friend of mine, who had heard me speak of Jesus and the resurrection, contradicted the report; but the doctor said he should like to see me. Thus the links in the chain of events began to be manifested. In the Lord's time the way was opened for me to see the doctor face to face. I entered his room, and, as I thought, he spake roughly, and I trembled; and, in his zeal for truth, and by the true sayings of God, he exposed the heresies which he had been told I preached. When the doctor paused, and seemed to be waiting for me to speak, I said, "Sir, will you allow me to speak?" He said, "Go on." I said, "I shall not attempt to deny one thing I am charged with; but I will tell you what God hath done for my soul." I spake in the simplicity of my heart of what the Lord had done for me, and in me, and what He had taught me, and had given me an heartfelt experience of pardon, and had purged my conscience by His precious blood, redeemed me from all iniquity, saved me from my sins, and justified me from all things, &c. As I thus spoke, I saw the tears running down his cheeks. He arose and took hold of both my hands, and said, "My brother, my brother, an enemy hath done this." That was in reference to what he had been told; and he added, "You and I shall live in perfect peace and friendship on earth." The doctor and I talked together of the truths of God, and rejoiced for the grace shown unto us. We parted for a time; but, when the Lord brought me to Plymouth, I often visited him, and he was very kind to me. As I am only sketching an outline of what transpired, I cannot relate the very many kindnesses to me for the Lord's sake. From