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indifference, unfairness, and selfishness, go unrebuked. On the contrary, the more saintly the man, and the higher the position to which God has called him in the church, the heavier will be the punishment. "You only have I known," says God," of all the families of the earth; THEREFORE I will punish you for all your iniquities." He that knew his Lord's Iwill and did it not shall be beaten with many stripes. The rebellious and stiff-necked Israelites of a new generation may go into the land of Canaan, but their great and illustrious leader is denied admission, and pays the penalty of his transgression on the heights of Nebo. And yet the Lord buried the man He thus so severely punished. Here is our consolation, brethren. Though our God thrust us into the fiery furnace, He does not take away His mercy from us, nor withhold His sustaining hand. His will is our sanctification and the salvation of the world, and when He chastises us for our transgressions let us bear it joyfully, remembering not only our deep desert and the finer issues of spiritual excellence secured thereby, but also that the loving care of our God will be manifested to us most tenderly when He rebukes us, and His pity be the richer in the day of our suffering and trial. So that we may bravely say with patient Job, "Though He slay me yet will I trust in Him."

II. Here is also God's care for the work of His servants when they are gone. One of the chief causes of anxiety to good and useful men is the absolute necessity of leaving their labours half completed, their plans partially executed, and the schemes over which they have brooded for years, and whose development they have made their life work, in such a form that they can with difficulty be understood, and with greater difficulty perfected, by their successors. There is scarcely a more fruitful

source of pain and regret. To be stricken down in the full heat of work before the step falters, the eye dims, or brain weakens, and before the ripe results of years of toil can be gathered, is a source of unspeakable anguish to men who live for the welfare of their fellows and with no stronger passion than that of doing good. For a hero to fall in the thick of the fight, a son of science to elaborate within a few stages a discovery of untold importance, and to die on the threshold of success, for a minister to be thrust into privacy and smitten with weakness just when, like young Alfred Vaughan, he is readiest and fittest for labour, is an inconceivable grief, and drains some of the noblest men of all the grace of submissiveness that is within them. The work has become part of the man. His very life is in it, and to take him from it is like tearing his heart-strings, and fills him with fearful visions of wasted life and useless toil. You see something of this apprehension in the prayer of Moses, the man of God. Filled with the thought of the vanity of human life and the futility of all human labours, he cries out, "Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants, and Thy glory unto their children; and let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish Thou the work of our hands upon us. Yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it."

And that calm strong prayer was answered, if not in the lifetime of the lawgiver, certainly when the Lord buried the good man in a grave, and closed it in such a way that it has been unknown through all the centuries since. God hid the place of his burial, so that His servant's work might abide and be established for ever. He cast a veil of perpetual obscurity over his resting-place, that the seed he had scattered with much painfulness in the desert might not be hindered from yielding a rich and ample harvest in the land of promise. For nothing would have so utterly

blasted with the mildew of decay the labours of Moses for the spiritual good of the children of Israel as converting his burial-place into a shrine of devotion, and the mound that covered his body into an altar for idolatrous incense. As an earthquake lays in ruins a fair and splendid city, so such idolatry would have wrecked the work of this great man. The law that came by Moses was intensely spiritual, frowning on merely material and fleshly worship, proclaiming one God, invisible, but nigh at hand; always seeing, but never seen; always touching us at every part of our being, but never touched by us; always one, but everywhere present. With vehement urgency it forbade art to paint His form on canvass, or carve out His figure in stone or wood; and resented the slightest approach to the worship of any creature, however good or great. And, to protect and preserve His servant's work, to establish and crown his labours, God buried Moses, and kept the people in ignorance of his grave.

And that it was with such an aim is suggested by the fact that under the wise and loving arrangements of God a similar ignorance obtains to this day concerning the sepulchre of the Lord Jesus Christ. As with the greatest man of the Old Testament, so with Him who is the glory of the New-no man can certainly tell the place of His burial. The grave in the garden of Joseph of Arimathæa cannot be traced. God has hidden it. The first disciples went there, but were told not to seek the living among the dead, but to look to the risen Lord; and God has repeated that message ever since, so that He may shield men from the idolatry of place and give permanence to the work of His Son. Fellow-workers, let us calm ourselves; not with the falsehood that our work is unimportant because it is slight and fragmentary, for such an error will stiffen the fibres of our activity; but with

the true and abiding consolation that the work is God's, and that He loves it as well as us, and will therefore take care of it when we are gone from it. Let us toil on. He will perfect that which concerneth us. Men may misunderstand and malign us, and God punish us for our mistakes and sins, but let us be hopeful in Him. He is here when we are gone, and if we do any true work-work that has real spiritual life in it-He will put His great and powerful hand over it and preserve it till the day of Jesus Christ.

III. But this fact has a broader

teaching. It shows God's care for the highest welfare of all His saints, as well as for the work of His servants when they have left it. Such was the ardour of affection felt by the Hebrews to their leader, and such is the pressure given by death to the manifestation of whatever love we have, that if the Lord had not buried Moses in an unknown grave, the valley of Bethpeor would have been crowded with superstitious pilgrims hasting to pay their devotions at the sepulchre of the man of God. Thus his grave would have become a rock of offence and a stone of stumbling. Death, as we well know, lifts every worthy man aloft, dignifies the good, and transfigures with glistening glory our dearest friends. We forget faults and foibles, and see nought but excellencies, and these in magnified proportions, surrounded by a halo of unfading splendours. Their memory is blessed. They live in our hearts as unopposed rulers, dwell before our fancy as glorified angels, and walk along the dusty roads of life with us as most welcome companions; and we say with Tennyson

"So, dearest, now thy brows are cold,
I see thee what thou art, and know
Thy kindred to the great of old,

Thy likeness to the wise below." Now Moses was a man of surpassing ability and of unequalled merits, and the generation that he was leaving was, in its better moments, full of

reverence for him, and therefore the feelings of veneration and homage that ordinarily are sufficiently strong would be likely to exhibit a wild luxuriance in such a case. He was the founder of their nation, and greater than Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The tenderest associations were bound up with his name and woven into his history. Did he not chivalrously adopt their degraded and despised cause in Egypt, risk his life, and fame, and prospects for their deliverance from a killing bondage, and carry them successfully through the Red Sea to the borders of the promised land? Moreover, was ever man so honoured of God as he? Nature had been his servant winds had answered to his prayers and brought meat; hard rocks had become fountains of water at his touch. The future was not without light to his keen glance. There was no prophet like him. Tell me there was no danger of superstitious reverence being paid to the buried body of such a man, and that these half-taught Hebrews, so little spiritual in their desire, feeble in their grasp of principles, would not make his grave a shrine? Think you the regulations of the law as to corpses and graves would be a sufficient barrier against the rush of the pent-up feelings of this crowd in sight of the tomb of their chief? Never. As the over-full river bursts its banks, so their surging emotions would have made Bethpeor's vale resound with the voice of reverent and adoring pilgrims! What became of the serpent of brass? Why was it broken? How did the people treat the ephod of Gideon? Had the body of Moses been discoverable, its fate had been the same. Therefore the Lord in His love, and to keep His children out of the way of such temptation, buried him in a grave that never could be found. So good is He that though we complain against and misjudge Him, yet He keeps us in the dark, simply because

the light would injure us. He hides blessings from us and disappoints our hopes, because if we found them we should only convert them into snares that would lead us further from Himself. Jesus could not tell His disciples all He knew, for they were not able to bear it. When our Father hides anything from us it is because hiding is better than revealing, and ignorance more useful than knowledge.

"O hidden grave in Moab's land,
O dark Beth-Peor's hill!

Speak to these curious hearts of ours,
And teach them to be still.
God hath His mysteries of grace,
Ways that we cannot tell;

He hides them deep, like the hidden sleep
Of him He loved so well."

But God did not only purpose to guard his chosen people from the weakness and misery that would result from deifying His servant, but also to lift up their hearts to Himself, and to make them rest in the sweet and ever welcome truths of the Divine Love, the Resurrection from the Dead, and the Life Everlasting. That unfound grave would be discovered truth. They could not look into the sepulchre, and therefore must look into the heavens. absence would thereby become itself a sort of Pisgah, from whose heights the people would see the King in His beauty and the land that lieth afar off. Apparently giving them less, God was really giving them more; for

His

Every cloud that spreads above And veileth love, itself is love;" and the undiscovered burying-place of Moses would teach and inspire far more powerfully than the graves of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob at Hebron, the bones of Joseph at Shechem, or the tomb of Rachel on the way to Bethlehem; just as the empty sepulchre in the garden of Joseph of Arimathæa declares the Son of God in a way that even His marvellous works and words cannot excel.

Nor is it otherwise with us, His children, now. He refuses our super

ficial desires, so that He may meet and satisfy the deeper need. He casts us into the depths of adversity, so that we may from thence cry out for Him whom we had forgotten on the summits of prosperity. He takes the flower that is blooming in our well-kept garden, that we may not forget that yonder is our paradise, and not here. He seems to reject our prayer, but when we put His answer by the side of our real need, rather than by the side of our interpretation of it, we see that He has translated our thoughts and wishes truly, whilst we have erred, and so He has ministered to our wants more thoroughly than ever we anticipated.

Verily we may each say, "Return unto thy rest" in the Divine Love, "O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee."

Brethren, let us more fully and uncomplainingly trust our God, casting all our care upon Him, both as to our bodies and as to our work; and be assured that He cares for our growing purity, our increasing devotion to His service, and more complete resemblance to Himself.

"O Lord, how happy we should be,
If we could cast our care on Thee,
If we from self could rest;
And feel at heart that one above,
In perfect wisdom, perfect love,
Is working for the best."

J. CLIFFORD.

ROBERT HALL'S STATUE.

THE unveiling of the statue of Robert Hall on the 2nd of November, in De Montfort Square, Leicester, is an event in which not only the Baptists of Leicester, but Baptists-and indeed Christians-everywhere, take special interest. He was indeed worthy for whom this has been done, and Leicester has honoured herself in erecting this memorial to her most distinguished son. An acute philosopher, a clever mathematician, an accurate scholar, a marvellous conversationalist, a patient sufferer, a faithful teacher, and affectionate friend and pastor; he was also the most accomplished orator of

his age. And though only removed from us by little more than half a century, yet we of this generation, and specially its younger members, need to be reminded of his worth and work. His writings are little to the taste of this period, and not often seen on the shelves of libraries that have been furnished within the last dozen years. Few young preachers know much of his sermons, and fewer still are acquainted with his literary writings; but that he was a man whom all should know who value Christian manhood, nobleness and symmetry of character, lofty genius sanctified to the highest ends, will be very apparent from the following impressive and beautiful inaugural address, delivered by the Rev. J. P. Mursell, who has so worthily and suc

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We are met to-day to perfect a cherished design, much too long delayed, of erecting a monument in this ancient borough to one who, during a residence of eighteen years within its precincts, enriched its social circles and shed a lasting lustre on its name.

It has been the practice of civilized and advanced peoples in every age to gather up the sentiment of admiration diffused through society towards men of distinguished attributes and of merited renown, and to assign to it a local habitation and a visible shrine; a practice that commends itself to enlightened judgment and elevated taste. It is, in fact, the homage that cultivated nature delights to pay to those high priests who, in their several departments, have worthily ministered at her altars.

In the intercourse of, society we not unfrequently hear the designative phrase, "That's a remarkable man"one, that is to say, distinguished from the crowd. But the late Robert Hall stood alone in unassumed but solitary grandeur. In him, those attributes which, in the order of an infinitely wise Providence, are usually distributed, were beautifully and marvellously combined. The higher and the attendant faculties and properties of our common

nature dwelt with him, as in a stately temple; while they were devoutly consecrated to the service of God and to the best interests of men. Well might a celebrated divine-the late Rev. Wm. Jay, of Bath-in placing a funereal wreath on the bier of his departed contemporary, announce from the pulpit as a text the language of the ancient prophet, "Howl, fir-tree, the cedar is fallen."

As a preacher and Christian orator, he whom we seek to honour was confessedly unrivalled. His discourses

were always thoughtful, beautiful, and impressive, and deeply imbued with evangelic life; while, on special occasions, he would show himself at home amidst the profoundest depths of thought, or with seeming unconsciousness conduct his hearers to dazzling heights, from which they might catch glimpses as of horses and chariots of fire. His published discourses on "Modern Infidelity," on "The Duties Proper to the Present Crisis," on "The Death of the Princess Charlotte," and on the demise of the venerable Dr. Ryland, might be cited in support of this position.

John Foster, the celebrated essayist, in a sketch of Mr. Hall's character as a preacher, speaking of men of advanced judgment, piety, and taste, who were familiar with his ministry, says :-" By such persons, its loss is reflected on with a sentiment peculiar to the event -never experienced before, nor to be expected in any future instance. An animating influence that pervaded, and enlarged, and raised their minds, is extinct. While ready to give due honour to all valuable preachers, and knowing that the lights of religious instruction will still shine with useful lustre, and new ones continually arise, they involuntarily and pensively turn to look at the last fading colours in the distance where the great luminary has set.'

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Whilst few men paid more respect to elevated station and distinguished rank-especially when these were accompanied by the virtues that should adorn them-Mr. Hall was wont to listen to the sigh of the destitute, and to turn his footsteps to the habitations of woe. He seemed to have contracted none of that heartlessness which too frequently encrusts us in passing through the chilling atmosphere of life. "When

the ear heard him, it blessed him; when the eye saw him, it gave witness to him; because he delivered the poor that cried, and him that had none to help him."

Honoured and favoured with the acquaintance and friendship of Mr. Hall in the earlier stages of my public life, I contemplate him in musing review, with mingled emotions of delight and awe. The mists of intervening years have mellowed, but not obscured, those radiant hours. A social morning spent with him in his happier moods was a rich intellectual treat, and seemed like a transient approach, under his guidance, to the precincts of the invisible and the abiding. I bear testimony before this assembly and beneath these heavens, that not only no wiser, but that a holier man, has seldom consecrated these sublunary scenes.

As a shield from the suspicion of grandiloquence and extravagance, let me fortify my position by testimony that indifference cannot weaken nor malice contravene or misconstrue. "Mr. Hall," says the celebrated Dr. Parr, the late learned vicar of Warwick, "like Bishop Taylor, has the eloquence of an orator, the fancy of a poet, the acuteness of a schoolman, the profundity of a philosopher, and the piety of a saint."

Though a man of profound erudition and of life-long research, his active mind disported itself in the regions of polite literature, whether of his own or of foreign climes, while he watched with admiring interest the expanding range of science. The penetrating judgment, the chastened imagination, the Attic wit, the withering sarcasm, that distinguished his critical writings, indicate at once the versatility of his powers and the purity and breadth of his sympathies. In defending the celebrated Dr. Priestley from an unwarrantable attack on his cherished principles and his public course, he writes, in his treatise on "Christianity Consistent with the Love of Freedom :"-" The religious tenets of Dr. Priestley seem to me erroneous in the extreme; but I should be sorry to suffer any difference of sentiment to diminish my sensibility to virtue or my admiration of genius. From him the poisoned arrow will fall pointless. His enlightened and active mind, his unwearied assiduity, the extent of his researches, the light he has poured into almost every department of

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