to the house of God, and endeavoured to train her in the way she should go, and "bring her up under the nurture and admonition of the Lord," and thus the bread cast upon the waters was found after many days. When about ten years of age she attended, for the first time, a class-meeting, and, in after life, in speaking of the circumstance, she said she could not think what she could say when spoken to by the leader; but when he came to her, and asked if she wished to serve God and go to heaven, she answered, yes, because, although a child, such was the desire of her heart. But although she had good impressions, and a pious example, and attended the means of grace on the Lord's day, yet it was not until she had entered the marriage state that she made a full surrender of her heart to God, and became a faithful follower of Him who is the way, the truth, and the life. That which was the turning point in her history, and induced her to yield to the invitation of mercy, was a dispensation of Providence, which often produces similar results, namely, the death of a dear child, which her Heavenly Father called away from the troubles of time, that the mother might be induced to yield to the voice of Divine love. Her husband appears to have been awakened to a proper sense of his lost condition at the same time; and when both were thus converted to God, a family altar was erected, which, from that time to the end of life, was never taken down. When, in after years, she would encourage young Christians to attend to family prayer, she would refer to her own case, and say, when we commenced family prayer, you may be sure our prayers were very imperfect. She determined, from the commencement of her Christian course, to avoid worldly conformity in her personal appearance, and was known by the plainness of her attire. Not that she supposed dress made a person more holy, but she thought that the command "be not conformed to this world," meant something more than many professors of religion suppose it does; and that whatever had a tendency to encourage pride should be avoided. Her desire was to be imbued with " a meek and quiet spirit, which in the sight of God is of great price." When the disturbance arose in Leeds, in connection with the Wesleyan Methodists, in consequence of the arbitrary power exerted by the Conference, in compelling the majority to submit to the minority, in the "Brunswick Chapel Organ" case, the class of the late brother John Hall met in her house, and she refused to close her door against the members, and was consequently expelled with her leader. Afterwards, when the Protestant Methodists were established, she was requested to become a leader of a female class, in which office she was very successful; having had the oversight of at least fifty members. Her conduct as a leader was distinguished by faithfulness and affection, she truly cared for the souls committed to her care; her sound judgment and clear discernment well qualified her for the proper discharge of her duty. She always spoke of the step she took in connection with the separation in 1827, as being providential, believing that she took a right step, and therefore never regretted it. Those who were most intimate with her during the last thirty years, speak in the highest terms of her personal piety, and say she was truly a "Mother in Israel;" that her conversation was always profitable, and such as ministered grace to the hearer. Her illness was short and severe; but while able to converse, her prospect was clear, her faith firm, and she said that she was waiting for her Lord and Saviour to take her home.

Thus passed, from the church militant to the church triumphant, another happy spirit, who had been pardoned, purified, and made meet for heaven through the merits of Him who bore her sins in His own body on the tree. Her death was improved, to an attentive congregation, a few Sabbaths after her decease, by brother Dawson, in Lady-lane Chapel. "Blessed are

the dead that die in the Lord."

Leeds, Nov. 1827.

W. D.

RECENT DEATHS.

DIED, at Gate Bottom, in the Todmorden Circuit, Miss Betty Eastwood, August 20th, 1857, aged twenty-eight years. Consumption removed her finally from us, after a slow and painful progress, through a period of more than twelve months. During this time she was graciously sustained in the midst of her sufferings. She went down to the grave in the full assurance of faith and hope, for she had long believed in Him “who is the resurrection and the life."

Died of consumption at Todmorden, September 29th, 1857, Miss Sarah Hartley, in the twenty-second year of her age. Her affliction of several months' continuance was borne with Christian meekness and resignation. Having yielded her heart to the Saviour in health, she found Him able to sustain in sickness and death. A few days before she expired, she said to a friend-" it will soon be over, and then for the conqueror's song."

PORTRAIT GALLERY.

DR. LIVINGSTONE'S EARLY DAYS.

In the new volume by Dr. Livingstone-the celebrated African Missionary, he gives a brief, but most interesting account of his early days, which every young man may read again and again with profit. It is as follows:

Our great-grandfather fell at the battle of Culloden, fighting for the old line of kings; and our grandfather was a small farmer in Ulva, where my father was born. It was one of that cluster of the Hebrides thus alluded to by Walter Scott:

"And Ulva dark, and Colonsay,

And all the group of islets gay,
That guard famed Staffa round."

Our grandfather was intimately acquainted with all the traditionary legends which that great writer has since made use of in the "Tales of a Grandfather" and other works. As a boy I remember listening to him with delight, for his memory was stored with a never-ending stock of stories, many of which were wonderfully like those I have since heard while sitting by the African evening fires. Our grandmother, too, used to sing Gaelic songs, some of which, as she believed, had been composed by captive Islanders languishing hopelessly among the Turks.

Grandfather could give particulars of the lives of his ancestors for six generations of the family before him; and the only point of the tradition I feel proud of is this:-One of these poor hardy Islanders was renowned in the district for great wisdom and prudence; and it is related that, when he was on his death-bed, he called all his children around him, and said, "Now, in my lifetime, I have searched most carefully through all the traditions I could find of our family, and I never could discover that there was a dishonest man among our forefathers. If, therefore, any of you or any of your children should take to dishonest ways, it will not be because it runs in our blood; it does not belong to you. Í leave this precept with you: Be honest." If, therefore, in the following pages I fall into any errors, I hope they will be dealt with as honest mistakes, and not as indicating that I have forgotten our ancient motto. This event took place at a time when the Highlanders, according to Macaulay, were much like the Cape Caffres, and any one, it was said, could escape punishment for cattle-stealing by presenting a share of the plunder to his chieftain. Our ancestors were

Roman Catholics; they were made Protestants by the laird coming round with a man having a yellow staff, which would seem to have attracted more attention than his teaching, for the new religion went long afterwards, perhaps it does so still, by the name of "the religion of the yellow stick." Finding his farm in Ulva insufficient to support a numerous family, my grandfather removed to Blantyre Works, a large cotton manufactory on the beautiful Clyde, above Glasgow; and his sons, having had the best education the Hebrides afforded, were gladly received as clerks by the proprietors, Monteith and Co. He himself, highly esteemed for his unflinching honesty, was employed in the conveyance of large sums of money from Glasgow to the works, and in old age was, according to the custom of that company, pensioned off, so as to spend his declining years in ease and comfort.

Our uncles all entered his Majesty's service during the last French war, either as soldiers or sailors; but my father remained at home, and though too conscientious ever to become rich as a small tea-dealer, by his kindliness of manner and winning ways he made the heartstrings of his children twine around him as firmly as if he had possessed, and could have bestowed upon them, every worldly advantage. He reared his children in connection with the Kirk of Scotland-a religious establishment which has been an incalculable blessing to that country-but he afterwards left it, and during the last twenty years of his life held the office of deacon of an Independent church in Hamilton, and deserved my lasting gratitude and homage for presenting me from infancy with a continuously consistent pious example, such as that, the ideal of which is so beautifully and truthfully portrayed in Burns' "Cottar's Saturday Night." He died in February, 1856, in peaceful hope of that mercy which we all expect through the death of our Lord and Saviour: I was at the time on my way from Zumbo, expecting no greater pleasure in this country than sitting by our cottage fire and telling him my travels. I revere his memory.

The earliest recollection of my mother recals a picture so often seen among the Scottish poor-that of the anxious housewife striving to make both ends meet. At the age of ten I was put into the factory as a "piecer," to aid by my earnings in lessening her anxiety. With a part of my first week's wages I purchased Ruddiman's "Rudiments of Latin," and pursued the study of that language for many years afterwards, with unabated ardour, at an evening school, which met between the hours of eight and ten. The dictionary part of my labours was followed up till twelve o'clock, or later, if my mother did not interfere by jumping up and snatching the books out of my hands. I had to be back in the factory by six in the morning, and continue my work, with intervals for breakfast and dinner, till eight o'clock at night. I read in this way many of the classical authors, and knew Virgil and Horace better at sixteen than I do now. Our schoolmaster-happily still alive-was supported in part by the company; he was attentive and kind, and so moderate in his charges that all who wished for education might have obtained it. Many availed themselves of the privilege; and some of my schoolfellows now rank in positions far above what they appeared ever likely to come to when in the village school. If such a system were established in England, it would prove an ever-ending blessing to the poor.

In reading, everything that I could lay my hands on was devoured except novels. Scientific works and books of travels were my especial delight; though my father, believing, with many of his time who ought to have known better, that the former were inimical to religion, would have preferred to have seen me poring over the "Cloud of Witnesses," or Boston's "Fourfold State." Our difference of opinion reached the point of open rebellion on my part, and his last application of the rod was on my

refusal to peruse Wilberforce's "Practical Christianity.” This dislike to dry doctrinal reading, and to religious reading of every sort, continued for years afterwards; but having lighted on those admirable works of Dr. Thomas Dick, "The Philosophy of Religion," and "The Philosophy of a Future State," it was gratifying to find my own ideas, that religion and science are not hostile, but friendly to each other, fully proved and enforced.

Great pains had been taken by my parents to instil the doctrines of Christianity into my mind, and I had no difficulty in understanding the theory of our free salvation by the atonement of our Saviour, but it was only about this time that I really began to feel the necessity and value of a personal application of the provisions of that atonement to my own case. The change was like what may be supposed would take place were it possible to cure a case of "colour blindness." The perfect freeness with which the pardon of all our guilt is offered in God's book drew forth feelings of affectionate love to Him who bought us with His blood, and a sense of deep obligation to Him for His mercy has influenced, in some small measure, my conduct ever since. But I shall not again refer to the inner spiritual life which I believe then began, nor do I intend to specify with any prominence the evangelistic labours to which the love of Christ has since impelled me; this book will speak not so much of what has been done, as of what still remains to be performed before the Gospel can be said to be preached to all nations.

In the glow of love which Christianity inspires, I soon resolved to devote my life to the alleviation of human misery. Turning this idea over in my mind, I felt that to be a pioneer of Christianity in China might lead to the material benefit of some portions of that immense empire; and therefore set myself to obtain a medical education, in order to be qualified for that enterprise.

In recognising the plants pointed out in my first medical book, that extraordinary old work on astrological medicine, Culpeper's " Herbal," I had the guidance of a book on the plants of Lanarkshire, by Patrick. Limited as my time was, I found opportunities to scour the whole country-side, collecting samples." Deep and anxious were my studies on the still deeper and more perplexing profundities of astrology, and I believe I got as far into that abyss of fantasies as my author said he dared to lead me. It seemed perilous ground to tread on farther, for the dark hint seemed to my youthful mind to loom towards "selling soul and body to the devil," as the price of the unfathomable knowledge of the stars. These excursions, often in company with brothers, one now in Canada, and the other a clergyman in the United States, gratified my intense love of nature; and though we generally returned so unmercifully hungry and fatigued that the embryo parson shed tears, yet we discovered so many to us new and interesting things, that he was always as eager to join us next time as he was the last.

On one of these exploring tours we entered a lime-stone quarry-long before geology was so popular as it is now. It is impossible to describe the delight and wonder with which I began to collect the shells found in the carboniferous limestone which crops out in High Blantyre and Cambuslang. A quarryman, seeing a little boy so engaged, looked with that pitying eye which the benevolent assumes when viewing the insane. Addressing him with, "How ever did these shells come into these rocks!" "When God made the rocks, he made the shells in them," was the damping reply. What a deal of trouble geologists might have saved themselves by adopting the Turk-like philosophy of this Scotchman!

My reading while at work was carried on by placing the book on a portion of the spinning-jenny, so that I could catch sentence after sentence

as I passed at my work; I thus kept up a pretty constant study undisturbed by the roar of the machinery. To this part of my education I owe my present power of completely abstracting the mind from surrounding noises, so as to read and write with perfect comfort amidst the play of children or near the dancing and songs of savages. The toil of cottonspinning, to which I was promoted in my nineteenth year, was excessively severe on a slim loose-jointed lad, but it was well paid for; and it enabled me to support myself while attending medical and Greek classes in Glasgow in winter, as also the divinity lectures of Dr. Wardlaw, by working with my hands in summer. I never received a farthing of aid from any one, and should have accomplished my project of going to China, as a medical missionary, in the course of time by my own efforts, had not some friends advised my joining the London Missionary Society, on account of its perfectly unsectarian character. "It sends neither Episcopacy, nor Presbyterianism, nor Independency, but the Gospel of Christ to the heathen." This exactly agreed with my ideas of what a Missionary Society ought to do; but it was not without a pang that I offered myself, for it was not quite agreeable to one accustomed to work his own way to become in a measure dependent on others; and I would not have been much put about though my offer had been rejected.

Looking back now on that life of toil, I cannot but feel thankful that it formed such a material part of my early education; and, were it possible, I should like to begin life over again in the same lowly style, and to pass through the same hardy training.'

REVIEW AND CRITICISM.

Earnest Christianity Illustrated with a brief Sketch of the Rev. John Caughey's Life. By John Unwin. London: PARTRIDGE AND Co. Sheffield: JOHN UNWIN.

This is the title of a work containing an account of the ministerial history of Mr. Caughey, one of the most successful ministers that ever lived; combined with a large quantity of matter from his journals, letters, and other writings, illustrative of CHRISTIANITY IN Earnest. Seldom have we seen a production, which, in our estimation, was of higher value-its spirit, its sentiments, its facts, in short every thing in it is adapted-eminently adapted, to inflame the zeal of the Churches. Every preacher, every leader, every Sabbath-school teacher, and every member of the Churches ought to read it. We cannot command language sufficiently strong to indicate our sense of its value and importance: But for the heavy demand on our space this month, we should be disposed to quote largely from its valuable pages in support of our judgment on its merits. As it is, our readers must just purchase the work, in which case they will not fail to endorse our opinion of its value.

Caughey's Letters. 5 Vols. London: 5, Horse-shoe Court, Ludgate-hill. Sheffield: JOHN UNWIN.

These volumes are among the most interesting and instructive works of their class. They were written under various circumstances; they treat on a large variety of subjects, but a vein of deep