was able at times to speak much; and most gratifying were the words he uttered. He bore his testimony to the grand truths of religion; gave his blessing to his children individually; and was heard to address himself to his God and Saviour, in a -thankful acknowledgment of past mercies, in earnest petitions for pardon, and in supplication for the continued favour of God. The following expressions are remembered to have been uttered with peculiar fervour :" I thank thee, O God, for thy mereies towards me: thy compassion is infinite: I feel that I have every thing I could wish or desire: thy good ness to me is great. I thank thee for giving me grace to take hold of thy Christ, and thy salvation. I cannot praise thee and pray to thee as I could wish; but thou wilt guide me by thy counsel from all trouble, sin, and infirmity, and at last receive me to glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. Amen."

During the last seven days of his life, he became increasingly incapacitated for speaking; but the patience and submission he exercised, and the calm and happy expression of his countenance, proved that his God, who had guided him through life, had not forsaken him in his last moments. Supported by inward consolations, he waited with pious expectation the good pleasure of the Divine will, to release him from the burden of the flesh, and admit him into the joys of paradise; and his release was as peaceful as his preceding sickness: without any emotion he bad adieu to the world, and gently fell asleep in his Saviour.

to

In briefly describing the character of Mr. Abdy, the writer begs leave to introduce an extract from a sermon preached at St. John's, Horslydown,by the Rev.J.C. Abdy, on taking possession of the office which had been so faithfully filled by his lamented parent. "The points in my father's character," says Mr. J. C. Abdy, which I shall chiefly direct your attention, are such as evince his true undissembled piety: he was a consistent Christian, he did not only preach Christianity in the pulpit, he preached it daily in the uniform practice of his life: he has been to this parish, for more than forty years, a living example of what a Christian should be. During that long period there has been no moral spot or blemish in his character: he has done nothing to tarnish the high reputation he hath justly acquired: his. grand aim, through life, has been to have always a conscience void of offence both towards God and towards man.

"A mild and amiab'e temper was another peculiarity in him that deserves to be noticed he took pains, according to St. Paul's injunction, to live peaceably with all men. He felt a benevolent kindness towards every individual; and if any one counteracted his wishes, or thwarted his designs for their good, or even openly op

posed him (for kind and gentle as he was, he sometimes experienced the pain of opposition and enmity from others), resentment was a passion to which his breast was an entire stranger: he felt the unkindness with which he was treated; but was anxious to prove, even to those who thus acted towards him, that his conduct was not altered towards them, but was as ready as ever to cultivate peace and friendship. This temper of mind was indeed natural to him: his original constitution was formed for the exercise of love and kindness; but it was to Christian principles that he owed the excellency to which it attained: his love to man was not the mere effusion of animal nature, it partook of a divine origin; having the love of God in his heart, it expanded itself into the love of his neighbour. Allowing for the imperfections that belong to the best men upon earth, there most probably never was one who came nearer to that noble model of Christian love which St. Paul has so beautifully described in his First Epistle to the Corinthians: his was a charity that suffered long and was kind; he envied not, he vaunted not himself, he was not puffed up, he did not behave himself unseemly; (as a man and as a Christian, his humility was truly exemplary;) he sought not his own; (indeed no man cared less for himself, was more indifferent to his own ease or comfort, had fewer desires or was less anxious to gratify them; what he sought was God's glory and his people's spiritual good;) he was not easily provoked, he thought no evil, he rejoiced not in iniquity, but rejoiced in the truth; he bore all things, believed all things, hoped all things, endured all things.

"But I go on to state another trait of my dear father's character, which decisively proves the high tone of his religious piety: he was eminently a man of prayer, and of communion with God; his conversation was in heaven: it was clear that his heart and affections were there, by the general bearings of his discourse, and the spirituality of his devotions: like Enoch he walked with God; he was in his fear all day long. Besides an habitual aptitude to give a serious turn to common conver sation, and to deduce (though without any thing of obtrusiveness in the manner) from passing occurrences, some useful remark to lead the mind to the important concerns of eternity, he was regular in the discharge of his family and private devotions. Daily have his children and servants been witnesses of his fervent piety in the performance of the former of these holy exercises; and from my own knowledge I can state it to have been his prae. tice, of late years, to retire three times a day, like the pious Daniel, into his closet, there to hold communion with his God in private, on his knees.

"In addition to the family and personal

Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer. A CORRESPONDENT having animadverted, in your Number for March, upon a statement of the late Mr. Cecil, I should be obliged by your insertion of the following remarks in reply.

The truth conveyed in the running title of the article alluded to, "Moral Virtue not hostile to the Reception of Divine Grace," if not self-evident, is at least so obvious, that it is not likely to be questioned by any well-informed and sober student of the sacred volume. That "moral virtue," properly so called, should not be hostile to the reception of Divine grace," (by which latter term I understand those special influences of the Holy Spirit, by which man becomes a new creature in Christ Jesus, lives by faith, and walks in love),-might, without any further inquiry, be readily inferred, from the character of God, the usual method of his dealings with men, and indeed from the very nature of the case itself. Let us, however, for the sake of clearness, consider the proposition somewhat more largely.

"Moral virtue," when placed, as here, in opposition to "Divine grace," (though indeed every degree of moral virtue is to be traced to Divine grace or favour in one way or other,) I conceive to be such a practice of that which is right, laudable, and useful towards man, and in his view, as proceeds from other principles than those which God is pleased to implant, when he renews the soul; which CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 269.

principles are the fruits of his Spirit, and are maintained, strengthen

ed, and excited by the same blessed Sanctifier, in the use of what are emphatically called "the means of grace." Now, the great spring of this moral virtue, I take to be the force of natural conscience. But, suppose it to be heightened in any particular case by great evenness and amiability of temper; by. a very strict, judicious, and perhaps even religious education: or let us suppose it, in other cases, to spring in a great measure, from a mind particularly penetrating, sober, and well-ordered, and at the same time deeply impressed by a sense of the excellence and expediency of that which is morally good: or, once more, let us imagine it to proceed from great honesty and inflexibility of natural disposition, which 18 often to be seen where no good evidence is given of the presence of the love of God in the heart. In all these cases, and many others might be mentioned, to say that such qualities, in themselves considered, render a man less disposed to receive Divine grace, than if he were under the influence of more questionable principles, would, I presume, be worse than absurd.

But, to come to the more immediate object of these remarks, I must fairly confess, that this does not appear to me to be the question to be grappled with. The direction which your correspondent has given to the inquiry seems to miss the very point at issue. The real matter to be discussed is left untouched by Indignissimus; and throughout 20

his whole communication he is fighting with a shadow.

Let us then briefly take up the subject in some such shape as the following. May there not, at least to all appearance, exist a certain degree of moral virtue, (such as has been already described), where at the same time pride, prejudice, and other evils so preponderate, that men shut their eyes against the clearest light; alter the Gospel to suit their own views and purposes; resist the strivings of God's Holy Spirit; and thus continue without repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ: while others, far less promising in many respects, are brought by Divine grace to a better mind, and eventually enter the kingdom of heaven; the former characters being for ever excluded? Of this I conceive no dispassionate inquirer, who, is well read in Scripture, can for a moment doubt. But what is the actual impediment, in the case of such persons, to their reception of Divine grace? Undoubtedly not moral virtue, but that prevailing corruption of the human heart which renders them averse from every thing that has a tendency to humble pride, and which is actually opposed to all that is holy and spiritual.

Still, however, we have not arrived at that which I believe to be the real question to be agitated. Allow me then to make one more inquiry. Is not a self-righteous dependence upon the practice of moral virtues hostile in the extreme to the reception of Divine grace? I cannot for a moment suppose that Indignissimus will deny this; and to me it is not a little surprising that he should not have clearly seen, that what Mr. Cecil intended by the language he has animadverted upon, was, in fact, nothing more or less than this. The sentences brought forward by your correspondent are taken from that part of Mr. Cecil's works entitled his "Remains," and seem to have been

spoken by him in the course of free and familiar conversation. "The man of virtue," says he, with evident irony, (not the "virtuous man, as your correspondent continually quotes it), " is seldom reached," that is, by the preaching of the Gospel, and its humbling truths, "because the man of virtue disdains to descend." Mr. Cecil, doubtless, was giving the result of long, and by no means inattentive or inaccurate, observation. He had probably seen and conversed with many who prided themselves on their virtues, who practically, if not professedly, impugned the doctrine of justification by faith, and set up the merit of good works in its stead: he had marked the spirit of such men, and witnessed their actual fruitlessness in all that is really acceptable in the sight of God; and these he calls "your men of virtue."

Now, Mr. Editor, I myself am acquainted with many individuals of this description; and personally I have a great regard for them, and I am ready to give them all the credit that is really due to them; but I entirely agree with Mr. Cecil, that, in his sense of the term, they are "seldom reached." If we speak of friendly dispositions, of a high sense of all that is upright and honourable between man and manand many other social virtues might be mentioned-just as our Lord, in the Gospel, is said to have loved the young man who shewed so much that was truly amiable, not to admire them so far would give first suspicion of a captious, uncharitable disposition; and not to praise them would be unjust. But look at them, in reference to "the one thing needful:" of spiritual religion they have no conception, because trusting, partially at least, in a righteousness of their own, (however frankly they may confess that they are sinners as all other men are,) they have never effectually felt their entire need of a Saviour, and are not truly humbled before God.

Now these, so far as my experience goes, are of all men the most difficult to be dealt with in respect to really spiritual religion; and when I say this, I refer not only to ordinary converse, or to discourses from the pulpit, but to such communications as a minister occasionally has with them in times of the deepest affliction, and on the bed of death. My earnest and very frequent prayer for many such is, that they may be brought to see their danger; but were I to say, that they are persons of whom I entertain considerable hopes, I should contradict what I believe to be the concurrent experience of all ages of the church, as well as the plain intimations of the word of God.

There is another misapprehension of your correspondent, which I cannot refrain from noticing. When our blessed Lord said to the chief priests and elders, "The publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you," He was evidently contemplating an extreme case. He did not mean to say that publicans and harlots were those who formed, after conversion, the great mass of his disciples; but that, even among those, more frequent instances of repentance occurred, than among such persons as were puffed up with a vain conceit of their supposed wisdom and goodness. Now what has Mr. Cecil said, that is not strictly in accordance with this interpretation of our Lord's own words? "Even the murderer and the adulterer sometimes become subjects of the grace of the Gospel; because the murderer and the adulterer are more easily convinced and humbled; but the man of virtue is seldom reached," &c. Yet throughout his paper, Indignissimus comments on these words, as though Mr. Cecil had been laying down what he believed to be the general rule of the Divine procedure; namely, that murderers and adulterers are usually the persons who are called by his grace. That your correspondent

meant nothing uncandid and unfair, I am convinced; but should not the greatest care be taken in examining and considering the expressions, more particularly of deceased persons, before strictures on them are offered to the attention of the public? The same observation applies still more forcibly to the inquiry made, how far the remark in Mr. Cecil's first sentence is borne out by the second; for by what process of reasoning the interpretation which Indignissimus then proceeds to put upon Mr. Cecil's words can be applied to them, I am utterly at a loss to conceive. I refer to that part of the letter to which is appended a note respecting Thurtell, though not to that note itself.

I do hope, sir, that there are very. few pious parents, or indeed parents of tolerably decent character, who could harbour such a thought, much less say," I did not bring up my children to exercise a gentle, modest, and becoming temper and conduct, because I know that adulterers sometimes become subjects of Divine grace, but men of virtue are seldom reached." If any such there be, does not their evident insanity render them objects of the tenderest compassion? And is it well, by such extreme hypotheses as that now under notice, to excite in the minds of any, who may be indisposed to spiritual religion, the opinion too frequently entertained already, that all who profess it are destitute of common sense?

I shall offer but one additional observation. Possibly the expression "free grace," may, strictly speaking, be a tautology. But, by the same rule, are not such expressions as "loving kindness," "tender mercy," (and others probably might be produced, which indicate the warmth and fulness of the heart,) tautological also? And, judged by such canons, might not St. Paul, in many instances where he is labouring for phraseology large enough to express what he felt and meant,