on your old friend Box." Young folks, don't be afraid of putting it before your friends. Nobody can take offence at that. Few visitors would refuse you. What did you say, "I don't like?" Then that is a good reason for doing it. It does one a world of good to do things that we don't like. That is how we become brave. Doing disagreeable but right deeds is the very highway to excellence. Where would the world have been now if heroic men and women had not often performed unpleasant duties? Out with the box then. There is no call to be ashamed; quite the other way. Get all that you can for missions. Learn to be a good beggar. God forbid that you should ever wear a ragged coat, ventilating shoes, 'a shocking bad hat,” or a seedy pair of pantaloons, seeking charity from door to door. But God grant that you may have a fearless, loving heart, leading you to plead well for the Missionary Box.-Tract.

66

NOTHING TO GIVE.

So said a member of the - Church to one of the appointed collectors for foreign missions; and yet he professed to be a disciple of Jesus Christ-to be governed by the self-denying principles of His Gospel. Nothing to give!—And yet he talked of the preciousness of the Gospel to his own soul-of the hopes he entertained of his salvation through its blood-purchased provisions. Nothing to give!—And he sometimes attends the prayer meeting, and prays that God will send the Gospel to the ends of the earth. If pounds were as cheap as words, the treasury of benevolence would be full. Nothing to give!-That means the missionaries may starve and the heathen may perish, before I part with any of my money for their relief. Nothing to give!—And he wears decent apparel, lives in a comfortable house, sets a plentiful table, and seems to want for nothing necessary to the comfort of his family. Nothing to give!—And yet he indulges freely in little luxuries, gathers his friends sometimes around a well-stored board in convivial enjoyment, and can well afford the expense. Nothing to give!—And the heathen are stretching forth their hands in imploring petition for the Bread of Life; and warm-hearted Christian ministers, and even Christian women, are standing upon the shores of our own land, and looking across into the darkness, and weeping for the means to carry them there, that they may minister to the spiritual necessities of those perishing millions. Nothing to give!—Yet God, in His providence, is constant and munificent in His benefactions. God never answers to the claims of His creatures upon His daily benevolence, "I have nothing to give."—Selected.

ACCEPTANCE OF CALL.-At a recent meeting of the Markethill Presbytery, Ireland, Mr. Matthew M. Stuart, preacher, Belfast, cordially accepted the call given to him by the congregation in Aberdeen.

SERMONS.-Often have I heard sermons well arranged and well expressed, but one thing was wanting-the preacher did not put his heart into the sermon; and therefore did not put the sermon into my heart.-J. Cooke.

It is easier to declaim, like an orator, against a thousand sins in others, than to mortify one sin in ourselves; to be more industrious in our pulpits, than in our closets; to preach twenty sermons to our people, than one to our own hearts. -Flavel.

THE

ORIGINAL SECESSION MAGAZINE.

MARCH, 1877.

MEMOIR OF THE LATE REV. MATTHEW MURRAY, D.D. THERE is little of a stirring and eventful kind that falls to be recorded in connection with the life of this servant of God. His was the simple and unobtrusive life of an earnest student and devoted pastor.. Of a constitutionally retiring disposition, he took no prominent part in the public movements of the day, and his mental gifts and moral excellence were known within a comparatively limited circle; but to the students who sat at his feet, including almost all of the present ministers of our Church, to the congregation to which he so long and faithfully ministered, and to all who enjoyed the privilege of his friendship, his memory will ever be fragrant.

MATTHEW MURRAY was born at North Berwick Manse, on 12th August, 1804-his father, the Rev. George Murray, being minister of that parish. For several generations the incumbency of the parish. had been in the family of the Murrays, who seem to have belonged to the Moderate party in the Church of Scotland, as they were related to the Hills and Cooks, its well-known representatives. On his mother's side he could trace his descent from one who suffered martyrdom for the cause of truth in persecuting times, and who in his speech from the scaffold bore testimony to those Covenanting principles which his descendant was led warmly to espouse and earnestly to contend for. As a child of the manse he enjoyed many advantages, the fruit of which appeared in his after-life. In apparent contrast to his subsequent disposition and habits, he is remembered as a venturesome, courageous boy, entering with great spirit into the sports and amusements of his companions; but in the further recollection of his thoughtful, inquiring turn of mind, his tendency to ask

NO. II. VOL. XIII.

E

NEW SERIES..

questions which could not readily be answered, we see that in the deeper elements of character, the child was father of the man.

Being the eldest son of his parents, their views and wishes as to his future course would be determined by the circumstances and antecedents of the family, and, discerning his early promise, they doubtless looked forward with pleasure to his entrance on the ministry, and eventually, it might be, to his succeeding to the position of usefulness and comfort which his forefathers had occupied. When fourteen years of age, he entered the University of Edinburgh, with the design of studying for the Church. Devoting himself with zeal to his work, he there laid the foundation of those studious habits, and that accurate scholarship, for which he was subsequently distinguished, and by which he was specially fitted for the work for which he was designed by Providence.

But preparation of another and higher kind he also underwent, in the second year of his college curriculum. For one who would serve God in the ministry of his Son, the prime qualification, without which all literary attainments and theological lore are vain, is conversion. This radical change may be accompanied with marked symptoms of its occurrence, or it may take place silently and unconsciously, the reality of it being only evidenced by the future life. In the subject of this memoir the former seems to have been the case. There was a crisis in his spiritual life, to which he ever afterwards looked back with the deepest interest and thankfulness; and though he does not expressly call it his conversion, yet we doubt not, from the account which he has given of it, that then the transition from death to life took place, or at least, that the first conscious experience of that transition was then realized. Long after, in a diary which he kept for recording the dealings of Providence towards him, and his own spiritual exercise, we thus find him referring to it: "Called to remembrance His dealings with myself, particularly the evening when I obtained my first view of Christ being God-man. This glorious mystery shone upon my soul while praying in my bedroom. That is a night never by me to be forgotten. Henceforth, I made a serious profession of discipleship-a course on which I never regret having entered. I only regret I did not follow it out more sistently, and decidedly, and courageously.”

con

On his completing the usual curriculum in the Arts Classes of the University, he entered the Divinity Hall of the Established Church. The design of entering the ministry, at first perhaps formed lightly, or merely in compliance with parental wishes, would have a deeper meaning attached to it from the spiritual experience through which he had passed. Old things had now passed away, all things had to him be

come new.

The transcendent discovery of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus had been made to him, and so his character and life, his studies and aims, had been brought under a new and all-controlling influence.

It was in the course of his theological curriculum that his ecclesiastical views underwent that change which led to his separating from the Established Church, and casting in his lot with that of the Original Secession. As to the means by which the principles that he adopted were brought under his consideration, we have no special information. No personal influence, it is believed, was at work in the change which he made, and assuredly no worldly interest came in to bias his judgment. The writings of Drs. M'Crie and Stevenson-the "Statement" of the former, the "Plea for a Covenanted Reformation" of the latter-were put into his hand, with a recommendation to study them; and the calm, solid reasoning and scriptural arguments which he there found, carried conviction to his mind. He became convinced that the principles for which the small remnant were witnessing, amid much discouragement, were at once the constitutional principles of the Church of Scotland, and founded on the Word of God; that the Covenants, into which the Church and nation in Reforming times had entered, were perpetually binding; and that faithfulness to Christ, and regard to the highest interests of the land, required that a judicial testimony be borne to their obligation. A course of study of the history and principles of the Scottish Church, on which he entered, confirmed the conclusion at which he had arrived. Not hastily or rashly, but after much consideration and earnest prayer, did he resolve to leave the Church of his fathers. This resolution involved not a little pain and sacrifice. The comforts and social position of a minister of the Established Church had to be given up; he had to disappoint the expectations of relatives to whom he was much attached, and who were deeply grieved by his change of sentiment; while in the small connection into which he proposed to enter, there was little outward attraction. But a sense of duty to Christ and loyalty to the claims of truth, overbore all other considerations. He took up the cross cheerfully, and followed his Master; and never did he find cause to regret the step he had taken. The longer he lived, and the more deeply he studied the principles of the Church which he had joined, the more convinced he became of their truth and value. He was, indeed, enthusiastically attached to them, and used to speak of them as having been once the glory of our land, and as destined to be so again, in better times. Amid defections from them among his brethren, he continued faithful to their maintenance; and with his dying breath lifted up a testimony on their behalf. While separating from the Church of Scotland, he ever steadily maintained

the Establishment principle, and prayed and longed for such a reformation in that Church as would warrant him in returning to her communion. He was thus, in a special sense, the gift of God to the Original Secession Church; and his case proves, that if men of candour and judgment and piety could only be disabused of prejudices with which her principles are associated in their minds, and be brought to study them in their scriptural evidence, and in the noble service they have done in past history, these would not suffer the discredit with which they are now generally regarded.

Unwilling to take any step which might have the appearance of rashness, and in deference to the wishes of his friends, he agreed to finish his curriculum of study in the Established Church Hall, on the understanding that, should his views remain unchanged, he should then connect himself with the church of his choice. In 1827 the union between the Constitutional Presbytery and the Protesters was formed, the united body constituting the Original Secession Church; and immediately after the union he was licensed to preach the Gospel by their Edinburgh Presbytery. At the time of his license there was a considerable number of vacancies in the Church, though most of them were small, consisting of remnants who had continued faithful to the principles of the Secession, when the majority of their brethren had deserted these. His popularity as a preacher was shown by his receiving four calls, viz., from Clola, Pitcairngreen, Coupar-Angus, and Glasgow. The competing calls were as usual referred to the Synod; and he declining to express any preference, and devolving the settlement of the case entirely on the Court, it was decided that he should be sent to Glasgow. There accordingly he was ordained, on the 11th November, 1828. The congregation to the pastoral charge of which he was appointed, while small in number, had given ample proof of their attachment to Secession principles. They consisted primarily of those who had refused to accede to the new terms of communion enacted by the General Associate Synod in the beginning of the century, and who accordingly had attached themselves to the Constitutional Presbytery, formed in 1806. From that date they had remained without a pastor, and with only a scanty supply of ordinances; and though their number was considerably increased when the "great union" of 1820 took place, by accessions from the Protesters on that occasion, it was still very small. It was but a humble and slenderly remunerative position to minister to such a people, very different from that which he might have occupied, had he remained in his former connection; but he bravely entered on it, and gave himself up with energy and perseverance to the discharge of its duties, borne up doubtless by the conviction, that he was where his Master had