your late minister must have contemplated such a father, when for years he had opportunities of witnessing his meekness and quietness of spirit, his astonishing patience under occasionally great bodily suffering, his complete and entire deadness to those gainful pursuits which before had been so habitual to him, and, above all, his spirituality of mind, which, at the advanced age of eighty, could delight, with all the vivacity of youth and the firmness of manhood, in never-wearied meditations, and discussions upon those high and holy subjects which involve the last and dearest interests of all mankind!"

Such was the character of Mr. Cotterill at the commencement of his religious course, and such were the effects which it produced in his own family. It may, perhaps, be allowable to add a few more particulars of his father's latter days, as illustrative of the extent and blessedness of the change which Christianity can produce upon the mind of a person in advanced years, and of a character previously upright and amiable. For some time he firmly maintained his self-righteous system; but when at last his eyes were opened to see its insufficiency, he yielded with a childlike simplicity to the humbling and sanctifying doctrines of the Gospel. The first decided symptom of a change of mind, was his sending for his family, when confined to his room by a fit of the gout, and expressing a wish that family prayer should be immediately commenced, -the constant performance of which duty was, in this, as in so many other cases, productive of unspeakable blessings. He lived about fifteen years after relinquishing his concerns in trade; and it were much to be wished that such a sequel as his were more often seen to a life of extraodinary activity in worldly pursuits. Active he continued to be, but the world had lost its hold upon him, and he was therefore active in the service of his God. Scarcely a day passed in which,

except when prevented by illness, he did not visit the abodes of the poor and ignorant; relieving their wants as far as his means extended, and conveying from cottage to cottage the books belonging to a little library which he kept for the benefit of his poor neighbours. Many, it is believed, will rise up and call him blessed, on that day when none who have improved their means of usefulness, however limited, shall pass unnoticed or unrewarded.

The success of Mr. Cotterill's exertions in his own family, was an encouraging prelude to his more enlarged labours in the ministry, which he prosecuted with remarkable zeal and diligence. He did not satisfy his conscience with the regular performance of his public ministrations: he taught his flock "from house to house;" explained the Scriptures to them at their own homes: and thus, by pursuing the system of aggression on the territories of ignorance and sin, induced many to attend the church who had before absented themselves, and prepared them to hear with profit the instructions which he delivered from the pulpit. He was much occupied, while residing at Tutbury, in communicating religious knowledge to the children employed in a cotton-mill; and it was interesting to see the affection with which they regarded him, and the delight which his visits occasioned them. He also prepared a hymn-book for the use of his congregation, and spent much time and labour in teaching the children to sing.

In July 1805 he was elected Perpetual Curate of Lane-End, a populous village in the Staffordshire Potteries, containing at that time about six or seven thousand inhabitants; to which place "he was allured principally by the prospect of abundant work, which presented itself to the eye of a Christian minister." "When I arrived there," said he to an intimate friend, "and found myself in the streets with the people swarming about me in all

directions, I looked at them till I loved them so that I made up my mind not to leave them (should the will of God be so) till I had laboured hard and long among them to do them good." Hard and long did he labour among them; and much good, no doubt, he did among a people so affectionate and attached as numbers of them were to him. On the Sunday, he conducted two full services, and a lecture in the evening. During the week he had a service in the church; and his other evenings were spent in private readings, in teaching the children, or in visiting the sick. He established a very large Sunday school: and in every possible way laid himself out for the good of the inhabitants. Through his exertions, a parsonage-house was built; an organ was erected, for the more decent and edifying performance of a most delightful but much-slighted ordinance of religious worship; and the church in other respects beautified and improved.

(To be continued.)

FAMILY SERMONS.-No. CLXXXIX. Hosea viii. 12.-I have written to

him the great things of my law, but they were counted as strange thing.

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THE book of Hosea, from which the text is taken, contains a most affecting remonstrance of Jehovah with the ungrateful and rebellious people of Israel and Judah. He enumerates the great benefits which he had bestowed upon them: "When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by the arms. I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love." Yet, notwithstanding these benefits, they were constantly rebelling against their Almighty Benefactor: "My people are bent to backsliding from me: though they called them to the Most High, none at all would exalt him:""They

have dealt treacherously against the Lord:" "Though I have redeemed them, yet have they spoken lies against me." At length their provocations became so numerous and aggravated, that they seemed to have "filled up the measure of their iniquities;" and accordingly the prophecy contains denunciations of the most fearful kind against them: "I will spread my net upon them; I will bring them down as the fowls of the heaven; I will chastise them. Woe unto them, for they have fled from me; destruction unto them, because they have transgressed against me:" "The days of visitation are come; the days of recompense are come!" "I will be unto them as a lion; I will meet them as a bear that is bereaved of her whelps." Yet, amidst these threatenings, their merciful God did not forsake them without first holding out to them the most tender remonstrances, the most affecting expressions of his pity, and of his reluctance to punish them, or to cast them off. He asks, "Is it in my desire that I should chastise them?" "How shall I give thee up, Ephraim; how shall I deliver thee, Israel! How shall I make thee as Admah; how shall I set thee as Zeboim! Mine heart is turned within me; my repentings are kindled together. I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger'; I will not turn to destroy Ephraim." He seems, as it were, to listen for the first accents of penitence on the part of the offender; and, like the father of the prodigal son, to watch with joy his returning step, and to haste to meet him and bring him on his way. According to the similar language of another prophet: "I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus, Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke: Turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the Lord my God. Surely after that I was turned I repented; and after I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh: I was ashamed, yea, even con.

founded, because I did bear the reproach of my youth. Is Ephraim my dear son? is he a pleasant child? For since I spake against him I do earnestly remember him still; therefore my bowels are troubled for him: I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord." And, in addition to free forgiveness for the past, a promise of the highest favour and prosperity is held out for the time to come: "I will heal their backslidings; I will love them freely; for mine anger is turned away. I will be as the dew unto Israel he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon; his branches shall spread; and his beauty shall be as the olive-tree, and his smell as Lebanon." This exhibition of Divine mercy was connected, on the part of the penitent, with a renunciation of his evil ways and a determination to live to the glory of God. "Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols ?" Or, in the words put into his lips by his long-suffering Instructor: "Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses" (that is, we will not trust to our former heathen alliances, to the chariots of Egypt or the refuges of lies of Assyria); "neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods; for in Thee the fatherless findeth mercy:" "Come, and let us return unto the Lord; for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up."

Now the cause of all the obstinate ingratitude and rebellion which have been described, and of the miseries which followed upon them, is traced up in the prophecy to the spiritual ignorance of the people. "My people," it is said, in the fourth chapter," are destroyed for lack of knowledge;"-not because information of their duty and their privileges was withheld from them, but because they remained contented with wilful ignorance; for it is added, "Thou hast rejected knowledge." Light had been afforded them, but

they loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

And thus in allages have mankind acted towards their gracious Creator; neither endeavouring to obey his laws, nor even obtain a knowledge of them that they might obey them. Nothing is wanting upon the part of God to enlighten and to guide his frail and ignorant creatures: his Holy Spirit is promised, both to give them the will to obey him, and to work with them when they have the will: but, alas! they prefer ignorance to knowledge, sin to holiness, the service of Satan to that of God. In a word, to use the striking language of the text, God has written for them the great things of his law, but they account them a strange thing.

In applying this passage more fully to our own case, we shall first shew that God has written for us the great things of his law; and shall, secondly, inquire what reception we have given to them.

The Jews of old had the law of the Ten Commandments given, to them at Sinai; they were also favoured with many revelations made to them through their divinely inspired prophets; they were in structed in the services and worship which God had enjoined upon them they were taught the heinousness of sinning against him, and the way of pardon and expiation, by means of the typical sacrifices and offerings, which prefigured the atonement and death of the Son of God, "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." The fundamental points of their faith and duty were kept constantly before their eyes; being embodied in their laws, their ritual, and their customs. From their infancy they were instructed in, the nature and attributes of God; his wisdom and his power; his justice, and his mercy; his promises and his threatenings; his demands upon their obedience; his providential care over them; and all the momentous disclosures made in the "lively oracles" which he had committed

to their care. When Moses called the people of Israel to him, and recapitulated the Ten Commands, summing up the first table of the Law in one brief precept, "The Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might;" it was added, "And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up." And, to prevent any omission or alteration in the record, it was not only thus to be communicated from lip to lip, and perpetuated by careful tradition, but was also written down, and preserved for constant reference and circulation. The tables of stone which contained the moral law, it is said, were "written by the finger of God;" and in like manner all the prophecies uttered by the prophets, and committed to writing, were of his dictation, for "holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." These sacred writings were deposited in the Temple, and were publicly read and explained. Thus was the most solemn, public, and perpetual provision made for bringing home to every tribe and family and individual, a full knowledge of the law of God; and nothing but the most inexcusable obstinacy or indifference could prevent any per son from obtaining an intimate acquaintance with all that it required of him, both to believe and practise.

The importance of the subject also, and the magnitude of the interests which it involved, were such as we might have supposed could not have failed to command the fixed attention of every individual. It was no trifle that was at stake. The God who commanded obedience, was supreme in power and majesty, able infinitely to reCHRIST. OBSERV. No. 273.

ward or to punish; the precepts which he enjoined were holy, just, and good; in keeping them there was great reward, while to slight them was to call down the vengeance of the Almighty, and incur eternal destruction. The omnipotent Lawgiver himself speaks of his revelations as being of the very highest importance; they are called in the text "the great things of his law." Such Moses had described them to be, when he said, "What nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law which I have set before you this day?" Devout men in every age cherished the same sentiment. The Psalmist David, in particular, often celebrates with the deepest reverence this law of God; including not merely the injunctions to certain duties and prohibitions from certain sins, but the whole of his revealed word; all that is known in any age as a part of his will, and binding upon creatures; his promises no less than his threatenings, his rewards no less than his punishments.

Hitherto we may have seemed to apply the declaration in the text only to the case of the people of Israel and Judah; but does it not apply, and if possible still more strongly and pointedly, to ourselves? For we possess the whole of that portion of Divine revelation which they enjoyed; and, added to this, we live under a more perfect dispensation, in which many things" that to them were obscure are cleared up, and many new and powerful motives are added for the encouragement of our faith and obedience. The moral law, which was revealed to them, is perpetuated to us; it was explained to us by our Saviour in its spiritual meaning, and summed up by him in one comprehensive rule of Love to God, and to man for God's sake. The ceremonial law, indeed, is done away; and we are made free, with the liberty which is in Christ, from its obseryances and its penalties; but all that

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it pointed out, its typified propitia tion for sin, and the holiness which it enjoined, are perpetual. The Christian dispensation unveils to us "great things" indeed; subjects of everlasting importance; privileges of infinite value-our guilt, our misery, our ruin by sin; the pardoning efficacy of the blood of Christ; the freedom of our justification by faith; the sanctifying influences of his Holy Spirit renewing and purifying our hearts; our obligation to live to the glory of our God and Saviour; and the immeasurable rewards which he has treasured up in heaven for all who truly love his law. Such are the "great things" made known to us; they are taught us in the Scriptures, and by means of the various other instruments of religious instruction which God has provided for our spiritual edification. In the present age especially, and in this highly favoured country," the things which belong to our peace," our true peace for time and for eternity, are so brought home to us in numerous ways, especially by the diffusion of education, the preaching of the Gospel, and the circulation of the Scriptures, that we might suppose that all would be acquainted with them; that all would take an interest in them; all would treasure them up in their hearts, and exemplify their blessed influence in their lives.

But let us inquire, secondly, whether such is the fact. Would indeed that it were! Would that it could not be said of too many of us, as of Israel of old, "I have written to them the great things of my law, but they counted them a strange thing." Many persons, within the reach of every means of religious instruction, are ignorant of the first principles of Christianity; they know not even the elements of the scriptural plan of salvation; and are careless of inquiring into it. Others, who are in some respects better informed, are yet so far practically unacquainted with the

subject, that "they count it as a strange thing." They are ignorant of God and of themselves. They are strangers to true repentance; to faith; and to newness of life. If told of the real nature of God's law, its spiritual character, and its demands upon their affections and conduct, they reject the informa tion; they think such a law severe, unnecessary, perhaps absurd. There is not a doctrine or a precept of the Gospel which they will willingly espouse, in its full meaning and personal reference to their own case. If they cannot overset the evidence which proves it, they will turn it aside, and refuse to listen to it. But would it avail a criminal to act thus by the laws of his country? Would a fraud upon the public revenue be overlooked or pardoned, because the offender had deliberately refused to examine the statutes which he well knew were enacted to regulate the transactions of his particular occupation? No; for, neither in the affairs of this world nor of another, is ignorance any excuse, where that ignorance is wilful, or might have been avoided by a due use of the means of information.

But the words of the text seem to imply even more than mere ignorance, although wilful; they seem to point out a feeling bordering upon contempt. Not satisfied with neglecting the great things of God's law, the rebellious Israelites counted them "a strange thing." They perhaps thought it precise, or meanspirited, to attend to them; they were antiquated and out of date; suitable enough perhaps for the consideration of the sick, the aged, the dying, but not for the young and the vigorous, for persons of gaiety and spirit, for men of business and men of the world. They were things so strange that they could not think of giving heed to them; they required sacrifices which it was im reasonable to expect could be made, something must be allowed to haman weakness and temptation? and surely God would not be very