of sinners; go, he invites thee;- "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Go, cast thyself upon his mercy, and he "will in no wise cast thee out." "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." And where is the guilty sinner whose eye is fast closed in the sleep of spiritual death;-over whose soul the gathering tempest hangs? Oh "awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." And where is that believer in whose heart still lurks the evil of unsubdued sin ?-who groans to bear the likeness of his Lord, to be "pure even as he is pure?" Let him go to this fountain of purity: for "if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." And where is the man who would give purity and dignity to his benevolent deeds? Let him go and learn of Jesus-follow the Saviour's steps, and learn from him the happy art, and the blessedness of doing good.

"Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise GOD OUR SAVIOUR, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever.

BIOGRAPHY.

Amen.'

MEMOIR OF THE REV. JAMES THOMAS.

To the Editors of the Methodist Magazine.

DEAR BRETHREN-I forward you the following account of our deceased brother Thomas. By inserting it in the Magazine you will oblige his surviving friends, and perhaps confer a favour on many of your readers.

Centreville, Md., Feb. 27, 1828.

JACOB MOOre.

THE Rev. James Thomas was born in Queen Ann's county, Maryland, April 22, 1765. In early life he was awakened to a sense of his guilt and danger by sin, through the instrumentality of the gospel, as preached by the Methodists. When he was about sixteen years of age he embraced religion, and attached himself to what were then the Methodist societies, in connexion with Mr. John Wesley, now the Methodist Episcopal Church.

In 1788 Mr. Thomas was received into the travelling connexion on trial, and was appointed to Fairfax circuit in Virginia, where, -if we may judge from the face of the minutes,-his labours, and the labours of his colleague, were crowned with considerable success, as they returned to the conference an increase of nearly two hundred members. In 1789 he was appointed to the charge of Alleghany circuit in Virginia, and in 1790 to Milford circuit in the state of Delaware. This year he was ordained deacon. In 1791 he was stationed on Queen Ann's circuit, Md., the place of his nativity. Probably about this time Queen Ann's circuit was

formed, as this is the first year that it appears on the minutes. Perhaps it was formed principally from Kent, Talbot, and Caroline circuits. In 1792 he was appointed to the charge of Annemessix circuit, Md. In 1793 he was ordained an elder, and volunteered to go to the Wyoming country, where he was appointed to the Tioga circuit. There were but about seventy members belonging to the circuit, and the county was but newly settled, on which account his sufferings and privations, as a Christian missionary, were, no doubt, very considerable. In this country he laboured two years, and then returned to Maryland. About this time he married a lady by the name of Mary Wright, and located. Some two or three years after he lost his wife, and in 1797 he was again married, to a sister of the hon. Samuel Stevens, late governor of Maryland.

He continued to labour with diligence as a located preacher, till April 1827, when he was readmitted into the travelling connexion by the Philadelphia conference, convened at Smyrna, Del. He received the relation of supernumerary, and was appointed with brothers Warfield and Thompson to Talbot circuit. Brother Warfield's health had so far declined as to make it necessary for him to take some respite and undergo a course of medicine. The charge of the circuit devolved upon brother Thomas, which he filled much to the satisfaction of the people. On the lower part of the circuit the work had broken out the year before, under the ministrations of brothers Reed and Scott, and was progressing rapidly it seemed to increase and spread under the ministrations of brothers Warfield, Thomas, and Thompson, and scores at St. Michaels and on the bay side were awakened, converted, and added to the church. Brother Thomas, though at this time upwards of sixty-two years of age, appears to have entered into the spirit of the work with all his heart. Ordinarily he was deliberate and slow in his ministrations, but not inanimate. During the last year of his life he appeared to have renewed his spiritual vigour, and his soul was uncommonly alive to God

He was a man of great Christian plainness and simplicity, and at the same time a man of much ministerial gravity and dignity. He was remarkably dignified in his personal appearance; so much so, that one of the preachers at the Smyrna conference observed, "that he was very much like, what he had in his own mind conceived, of the personal appearance of the patriarch Abraham." As a minister of the Lord Jesus he was acceptable and useful. He was deeply read in the holy Scriptures, and was able to employ them with skill and success in the service of practical and experimental divinity, subjects upon which he generally discoursed.

He continued to labour on Talbot circuit until late in the month of September, when he was attacked with the bilious fever, which very soon assumed a typhoid character: his head became very

much affected, and he lost his speech, and apparently his reason, for several days before his death. In this condition he remained until he died, without recovering either his reason or his speech; in consequence of which he left no verbal testimony of his triumph in death. But upon this subject there can be no doubt; for he was a righteous man, and of course died the death of the righteous, and his end was glorious.

He departed this life October 6, 1827, in the sixty-third year of his age. He has left a widow and four children, to mourn his loss. May they follow him as he followed Christ, that finally a triumphant entrance may be ministered to them into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ! Amen.

For the Methodist Magazine.

MEMOIR OF THE REV. GEORGE ATKIN.

GEORGE ATKIN, the subject of this memoir, was born in the town of High Hall, county of Lincolnshire, England, April 16, 1793. His father emigrated to the United States of America, and settled in New-York, when our beloved brother was about seven years of age. He remained a few years, and then removed to the state of Ohio, where he is now living.

From childhood our departed brother was remarkable for his habits of sobriety and correctness; though much more so after his conversion, which took place in his twelfth year.

In the twenty-first year of his age, he removed to Kentucky, where he was profitably employed as an English teacher for three or four years. In this employ, however, he did not feel satisfied. The great Head of the church had called him to occupy a more important field of labour He entered the travelling connexion, as an itinerant preacher, in the year 1818, and was appointed to travel on Lexington circuit. He was not only well received among the people, but was greatly useful in the discharge of his important duties. Many will long remember, with feelings of gratitude, the exertions he made to build up Zion, and promote her dearest interests. At that time, the Holston, Tennessee, and Kentucky conferences, were one; and he was appointed to travel, in 1819, the Knox circuit. Here his health failed him, and he saw proper to change his situation in life, by uniting himself in matrimony to Emily Thatcher; and also his relation to the Methodist Church, by requesting and obtaining a location. His constitution was naturally delicate; and, on experience, was found unable to sustain the arduous labours of a travelling preacher: nevertheless he laboured with success, and much to the satisfaction of his brethren. His soul was too much engaged in the work, to willingly recede from any profitable station, so long as he could perform its duties. He thought it prudent, however, to settle himself in Knoxville. Here he remained, usefully employed, not only as a local preacher,

but as a teacher of the common useful branches of an English education, for seven years.

His health gradually improving, as he thought, he re-entered the travelling connexion in the year 1826. The first year he received no appointment, it being in contemplation to employ him as principal of an English school, under the direction of the conference: the school, however, not succeeding, he was stationed for the next year (1827) in the town of Abingdon, Va. Here he ended his course, as a Christian minister of his piety is always certain to do, in the triumphs of victorious faith, at the house of colonel Francis Smith, August 29, 1827. Though he did not live to see all the fruits of his labours in Abingdon, they have been considerable. He organized the society as a station, and by constant and zealous efforts in public, and in private families, much good was effected, and, we trust, will still grow out of his appointment to that place.

His talents as a preacher were of the argumentative and persuasive kind. In these he excelled most of his brethren with whom we are acquainted. He was affectionate and kind as a husband and father, agreeable as a companion, and benevolent as a Christian, whenever he could be so.

He has left a bereaved companion and six small children to lament his loss. But the sorrows of bereavement are in part assuaged by the consoling thought, that his spirit now rests in the bosom of Abraham. THOMAS STRingfield.

A Letter from James Wadsworth, Esq. of the state of New-York, to Daniel Webster, Esq., Member of Congress.

SIR: I read many years since in a number of the North American Review, an article on the situation of the Indians dispersed over the reservations in the state of Massachusetts. I cannot now lay my hand on the number; I believe it was in 1812 or 1813. The writer takes a rapid view of the Indians from the time of Cotton Mather, when, if I recollect, there were thirty or forty regular churches. From that period to the present, the state has supported one or two clergymen, and several schoolmasters, on each reservation.But notwithstanding the labours

prompted by the pious zeal and benevolence of our forefathers, the Indians have been gradually, but regularly, sinking in moral character; and the reviewer describes them, in 1812, as a miserable race

part negro-part white-and part Indian-too degraded to be described. This, I believe, is a faithful picture of the Indians in Connecticut and Rhode Island; and I have no hesitation in saying, that the Indians on the reservations in this state, are rapidly approximating to the same degraded condition.

The writer, if I recollect, con