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Obituary.

Died, at Bury, Lancashire, September 28th, aged 45, Martha, the wife of Mr. John Haworth, of that town. The parents of the deceased (whose maiden name was Seddon) were members of the old Ringley Society (the nucleus of that at present meeting at Kersley) at the time it met for worship at a place called Top-o'-th'-Brow," where the subject of this notice attended, and received the first of those religions impressions which, in after life, were developed into a deep, ardent, and self-sacrificing love for the doctrines and uses of the New Church. In every thing that related to the church her husband accordingly found in her a genuine helpmate, inciting him to active usefulness, and making, when necessary, sacrifices of her own comfort, to enable him efficiently to fill the duties that devolved on him, among others his duties in the Sunday school, he having taken an active part in that connected with the Stand Lane Society for several years. In her attendance on public worship she was equally exemplary, never absenting herself, even when surrounded by a numerous little family, except from ill-health, of which she suffered a large share, or some other unavoidable cause. Constitutionally weak, for many years she drank deeply of bodily affliction, and to appearance was only preserved from death by the kind and unremitting attentions of her surviving partner. At length, decidedly consumptive symptoms were manifested, and she rapidly sank. Her last illness was marked by a calm and peaceful serenity-her interest in whatever related to the church remaining unabated, especially her solicitude for the somewhat newly-formed society and Sunday school in Bury, whither she, her husband, and family, had removed some months prior to her decease. Though deeply lamented by her friends, she is doubtless gone to reap the reward of a life spent in the humble effort to build up the Lord's church in herself and others.

W.

Died, on the 17th of January, at Carver-street, Leeds, after the most severe bodily affliction, James Swift, aged 72. Humble in his pretensions and demeanour, he had a true nobility of soul within. His patient fortitude and cheerful resignation, under the most intensely agonizing pain, displayed the ascendency of a mind sustained by a power divine over its mere earthly tenement; and, still more strikingly demonstrating the greatness of that sustaining power, by which frail humanity is enabled to triumph over the very depths of suffering and of sorrow; affording the most irrefutable argument against the misgivings of the dubious, and the hollow sophisms of the sceptic. In him, the love of truth was paramount over every worldly consideration, while this again was second to the still more constraining love of use-thereby inculcated. Indeed, a self-sacrificing desire to promote the happiness and well-being of others, was felt by all with whom he associated as a conscious sphere, illustrating, even while here, the force and meaning of the words-" Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." Matt. xiii. 43. Faithfulness in the discharge of every duty was the end at which he aimed, as exemplified in a life of undeviating rectitude. He fulfilled the arduous and responsible duties of his vocation to the entire satisfaction of his employer, for a period of more than forty years. As a husband, and the father of a large family, he was irreproachable; as a Christian, he was the humble follower of his Lord. He loved "the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob." He preferred "Jerusalem above his chief joy." To those who knew him not, these remarks may seem but the fond effusion of a filial heart; but to those who knew him best, they will be recognized as a faithful record, and but a feeble and inadequate tribute due to the memory of the departed. Liverpool.

Cave & Sever Printers, Palatine Buildings, Hunt's Bank, Manchester.

E. S.

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ON THE NECESSITY OF INTERNAL AS WELL AS OF EXTERNAL WORSHIP.

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[SERMON FROM EZEKIEL XXXIII. 30-32. By Professor BUSH.*]

Also, thou son of man, the children of thy people still are talking against thee by the walls and in the doors of the houses, and speak one to another, every one to his brother, saying, Come, I pray you, and hear what is the word that cometh forth from the Lord. And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness. And lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do them not.".

THE chapter from which these words are taken has always been regarded as a very clear and emphatic declaration of the respective duties of preacher and people in relation to the entertainment of the Lord's messages from heaven. It opens with the enunciation of the law of responsibility, on the part of those who receive, and those who reject the intimations of the divine judgments. The past evils of a man's life, we learn, will not be sufficient to condemn or ruin him, provided he

* As the regulations for the Magazine admit, during the year, of the insertion of two or three Sermons, it is with much pleasure that we print this admirably practical discourse by Professor Bush, from the " Anglo-American Repository.”— EDITOR.

N. S. No. 160.-VOL. XIV.

is now disposed to repent of and turn from them; but this cannot be done without making restitution when one has wronged a fellowcreature, restoring the pledge, and walking in the statutes of life without further persistence in the commission of iniquity. So, on the other hand, no degree of previous integrity or uprightness can avail to exempt one from the legitimate consequences of his misdeeds. Especially if, after a career mainly exemplary, he subsequently recedes from his rectitude, there is no avoiding the penalty which such a defection is sure to draw after it. However he may be disposed to presume upon the past to trust in the righteousness of which he has deemed himself possessed-still it will stand him in no stead, it will avail him nothing, if he commits iniquity, for the laws of the Divine Order are inflexible— they acknowledge no favoritism-they know neither friend nor foe in regard to the consequences of violation The soul that sinneth it shall die."

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After this emphatic statement of the general law by which life and salvation are secured on the one hand, and rejection and death incurred on the other, we come, in the closing verses of the chapter which constitute our text, to a Divine declaration of the manner in which the preaching and teaching of the Lord's messengers, in the person of the prophet, were entertained.

It will be observed that the testimony here given is not that of the prophet himself, who could have but a very inadequate idea of what was going on in the minds of his people, but it is the testimony of Omniscience itself, of Him who searches the hearts, and tries the reins of the children of men; who knows what is in man. He it is who is here making the exposure of the internal workings of men's minds in relation to the hearing of his servants, and the reception of their messages. This fact gives added weight and solemnity to the words of the text, for we are sure there is no error-no mistake. Were it the testimony of man, erring and loving to err, we might rightly doubt its perfect reliability. We might suspect the secret operation of prejudice or passion; we might think the picture overcoloured, and the lineaments distorted; but now every pretence of that kind is entirely taken away. He who cannot err makes the revelation of the motives and promptings of men, in certain circumstances, in reference to the hearing of the Word, and to this revelation it becomes us devoutly to listen.

But here it may plausibly be said that the testimony given is of limited and local and not of universal or general, application-that it is a testimony given at a distant period, and in a remote region of the

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world, respecting the nation of Israel after the flesh, and therefore we cannot infer that the same character is predicable of men at this age, in circumstances altogether different.

This, however, may justly be regarded as an objection originating rather with the man of the. Old Church than of the New. The New Churchman recognizes a sense of the spirit hidden beneath the sense of the letter, and in the Israel after the flesh he reads a representation of the Christian community in the various states of its spiritual life, which are palpably shadowed forth in the vicissitudes that marked the lot of that people in the successive periods of their history. The conquests of Israel over their enemies imaged the Christian victories of truth and goodness over falsity and evil, while the captivity of Israel under Babylon pointed forward to the disastrous dominion which should be exercised over Christendom by those who were in the love of ruling from the love of self. In the present case it is to be borne in mind, that the nation of Israel was now in a state of captivity; the major part of the people had been actually transported to Babylon, and those of them that remained were reduced to the greatest extremities, dwelling in what are termed the wastes of the land, and looking round upon a scene of outward desolation corresponding with the spiritual dreariness, decay, and consumption within. Now, it is at once easy and natural to the New Churchman to give this a spiritual significancy, and to recognize in this forlorn and abject state of the sons of Jacob a desolation of truth and a vastation of good in the nominal members of the church. It is a state very nearly allied to a state of consummation—a state of prevalent dearth and destitution of the genuine elements which constitute the prosperity of the church. We cannot, therefore, be out of the way in applying this description to our own times, which are strikingly parallel, and the text sets before us as one strong feature of the epoch of a degenerate church the manner in which the preaching of the Word is entertained. And upon this point it is our design to dwell at some length on the present occasion. “Also, thou son of man, the children of thy people still are talking against thee by the walls, and in the doors of the houses, and speak one to another, every one to his brother, saying, Come, I pray you, and hear what is the word that cometh forth from the Lord. And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and

they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them: for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness."

The language denotes a certain community of prompting in respect to outward attendance upon the preaching of the Word. One proposes

to another to go up to the house of the Lord, and hear the message delivered by the preacher, as if there were a certain wont or habit of hearing, which would create inward disturbance and uneasiness if it were interrupted. The language implies that even in a very degenerate state of the church, the forms of worship may still be kept up, a certain decorous adherence to church usages retained, and a certain delight experienced, when at the same time the true life and soul of worship has utterly departed. Thus too the prophet Isaiah in parallel language recognizes the same fact. (Ch. lxviii. 2.) After calling upon the prophet to proclaim the sins of the people, the Lord says "Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice: they take delight in approaching to God." The lingering influence of remains-the effect of early training-the respect due to tradition—the working of the religious instinct when not wholly stifled by the spirit of the world, will doubtless account for the disposition evinced by the majority of what are termed religious people to be found in attendance upon the Sabbath day services of the Sanctuary. And we may undoubtedly say that when any people have so far declined from the right ways of the Lord as habitually to forsake his house and account his worship a weariness-when their backs are turned from week to week upon the solemn assembly, and an inner repugnance is felt to the whole round of pulpit devotions-the last tie which binds man to heaven would seem to be upon the point of being severed, and the sad indication is, that all wholesome and hopeful remains of goodness and truth, early implanted, are well nigh extinct, and a state closely bordering on heathenism in danger of being induced.

But because a total renunciation of the house of the Lord and its appropriate services is bad, it does not follow that frequenting it in any state of mind whatever is necessarily good. Far from it; as we have abundant testimony to prove in the specimen here so distinctly set before us. In order to form a correct idea of the character of the hearing here depicted, let us endeavour to bring before us still more distinctly the prevailing state of things in the midst of which it occurs. It is a state of abounding, absorbing, all-engulphing worldliness; consequently of the fearful dearth of all the good things of charity and faith. Charity, in fact, is completely swamped in the dominion of selflove and love of the world; and as to genuine faith, it has given up the ghost with its parent charity. There is of necessity a complete negation of the things of spiritual truth. The realities of the spiritual world are so completely ignored, that that world might as well not be, as to

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