Слике страница
PDF
ePub

societies, new preachers, and neglecting all that is vital, holy, and energetic in the faith and practice of a disciple of Jesus Christ; but "a lovely ornament," for so this affectionate son pictures his revered parent," of the truth as it is in Jesus;" adding, "The whole of her deportment was calculated to win my early attention to religion. I saw in her what it could do; how happy! how cheerful! how humble! how holy! how lovely in life, and afterwards in death! how full of mercy and good fruits it could render the happy possessor!" Yet, with this amiable lustre of character, while no other person doubt ed of her eternal safety, she was full of doubts and fears herself: she was selfsuspicious, and dreaded judging too favourably of her own religious character. Sermons, therefore, which urged and assisted self-examination, as well as those which exhibited the glory and free grace of the Saviour, were peculiarly acceptable to her. Yet a hope she had a good hope, through grace-which she would not give up, though she rejoiced with trembling; and when sickness and infirmity came upon her, and the mortal frame was sinking in lassitude and depression, this hope became more animated, and waxed brighter and brighter to the perfect day. When she believed her end to be approaching, continues her filial biographer, God visited her soul with more peculiar manifestations of the light of his divine countenance; and she seemed to be gradually filled with unspeakable joy as the day drew nigh which for ever terminated all her sorrow. Her secret diary, unknown even to her son in her life-time, records her fervent prayers and aspirations. Thus she says, for example, in one of the last passages which her feebleness allowed her to pen: "Oh keep me and save me, blessed Lord; I give myself to thee! Oh bring me to those blessed mansions of peace, where I shall be able to praise thee; where I shall be delivered from the painful clog of this body, which weighs down my soul! Prepare me for thy coming! Oh make me watchful, and ready to meet thee, when thou shalt be pleased to send thy messenger, death, for me. Make the pain I continually feel of use to me. I cannot be long here: oh quicken my soul! fix my affection upon heavenly things; give me clearer views; give me a sense of pardoned sin; wash me in thy precious blood; clothe me with thy perfect righteousness; conform me more to thy Divine image, and help me to meet death as a kind friend come to fetch me home to thee! Amen, Amen." And after she was unable to write, she dictated to the venerable clergyman, her pastor, her dying farewell; in which

she says: "I am dying, and not afraid; I trust I am going to my Father's house! I never was so happy in all the days of my life! I would write to tell you

what my soul feels in this blessed pros pect, that I might bear my testimony to His grace; that I might refresh your soul, who have so often refreshed mine; and tell you what joy I feel in this prospect. I do not doubt of meeting you in heavenand my dear child too!" And she has met him now, after the lapse of nearly half a century, he has rejoined her; and who can say that in that world of knowledge and recognition he may not even now look back with love and gratitude to those maternal prayers and hallowed instructions which his God and Father so eminently blessed and answered?

:

The same evening on which she dictated the above letter, she addressed her son, in language which, now that he also is removed from this earthly scene, becomes doubly emphatic. On his return from his beloved labours at his church of St. Peter's, she accosted him, “Oh, I am very happy; I am going to my mansion in the skies; I shall soon be there; and, oh, I shall be glad to receive you to it! you shall come in to go out no more! If ever you have a family, tell your children they had a grandmother who feared God, and found the comfort of it on her death-bed. And tell your partner, I shall be happy to see her in heaven .... Son, I exhort you to preach the Gospel; preach it faithfully, and boldly: fear not the face of man: endeavour to put in a word of comfort to the humble believer, to poor weak souls. I heartily wish you success; may you be useful to the souls of many!" Towards the conclusion of that evening she addressed her son in words which he delighted to repeat: when, after speaking of the boundless love of Christ, and his salvation, she added, "It is a glorious salvation; a free, unmerited salvation; a full, complete salvation; a perfect, eternal salvation: it is a deliverance from every enemy; it is a supply of every want it is all I can now wish for in death; it is all I shall want in eternity."

Thus did this sainted mother of her now sainted son breathe out her soul for a few days more, till she was peacefully translated from her couch of sickness to her eternal rest. Her beloved son's name was the last on her lips; and truly was her hope respecting him fulfilled; that hope which she expressed by repeating to him the words of a friend, who, adopting the consolation offered to Monica respecting Augustine, had said “ Go home, and make yourself easy; the child of those tears can never perish.'

The son of this admirable woman early began to follow in her steps. Of his youthful days few relics can now be traced; but from his very childhood the opening germ of piety seemed implanted within him, so that he would often say, that he scarcely knew when the Holy Spirit first began to impress his youthful heart; though he was led more decidedly to de

vote himself to the service of God at about the age of thirteen, in consequence chiefly of the pious and affectionate letters of his excellent mother. At the age of seventeen, after studying for some time under an eminently pious clergyman, the Rev. T. Clarke, of Chesham Bois, he entered Trinity College, Oxford, where he took his degrees in due course; and he was accustomed in his latter days to moralize on the changes and uncertainties of human life, on finding that he had survived most of his academical contemporaries, and that his name stood at the head of the masters of his college. He was ordained deacon in 1783, at the Temple Church, by Dr. Thurlow, bishop of London; and priest in 1784, at Westminster Abbey, by Dr. Thomas, bishop of Rochester. The same year he was chosen Lecturer of St. Peter's, Cornhill; where he continued his services during twenty-four years, with great spiritual benefit to multitudes, who frequented his edifying ministrations. In 1785 he became Morning Preacher at Bentinck chapel, Marylebone; of which, being a proprietory chapel, he purchased the lease in 1793, and remained there till the moment when his lamented decease, April 12, 1831, divided him from his affectionate people, after a long and eminently useful series of labours among them for nearly forty-six years. In the year 1808, an attached member of his flock, the late Lady Robert Manners, presented him to the Rectory of Drayton Beauchamp, in Buckinghamshire, memorable as the parish of that kindred spirit, Richard Hooker, whose supposed study (lately destroyed in building a new rectoryhouse) his worthy successor was accustomed to point out, with much gratification, and with many a eulogy on his devout spirit, his attachment to the Church of England, and his love of peace. In this secluded retirement Mr. Woodd was accustomed for many years to spend a portion of the summer and autumn, delighting in the meek labours of a village pastor, and introducing among his simple flock those works of piety and mercy which he had been accustomed to superintend and foster on a larger scale in a busier sphere. But to these points hereafter. This benefice he resigned, in favour of his eldest son, a few months before his death, intending, had he been spared, to devote his remaining days wholly to his flock at Bentinck chapel.

-It re

mains only to mention among the notices of his life, that he was twice married. His first wife died in 1791; his second was spared to him till within twenty months of his death. And how worthy she was of him, how much she conduced to his happiness, how assiduously she assisted his charitable labours, how holy was her life, and how blessed was her end, may best be scen from a memoir of her which he had drawn

up for insertion in our pages, in which at different times had appeared interesting obituaries from his pen of his own family and friends. (See Obituary of Basil Owen Woodd, 1811, p. 333; the Rev. T. Woodd, 1816, p. 480; Mrs. Cahusac, 1817, p. 870; and Mrs. Mortlock, 1829, p. 261.)

Such are the few leading occurrences of his personal narrative. The peculiar place which he occupied in the church of Christ, in connexion with the ecclesias tical communion established in this land, next deserves consideration. Mr. Woodd was born the year of the accession of George the Third; at a period when the Church of England, with comparatively few exceptions, was sunk into a mournful state of spiritual apathy. It was exactly thirty years before, that, in the bosom of the Church, and the University of Oxford, those eminent servants of God, the two Wesleys, had formed an association for prayer, the germ from which sprung much of that revival of piety which, amidst innumerable defects, has increasingly distinguished the last hundred

years.

The clergy of the Church of England at that period (why should the painful truth be disguised?) were, as a body, lamentably defective, both in correctness of doctrine and scriptural newness of life. Some were coldly orthodox; some were inclined to heretical pravities; some were semi-Pelagians; some rose little higher than heathen moralists; and too many, though not obviously heterodox in their creed, were wholly secular in their spirit, exhibiting nothing beyond the frigid decencies of professional character, and utterly opposed to that spirit which determines to know nothing among men but Jesus Christ and him crucified. Some of those clergymen with whom the revival chiefly commenced, unhappily forsook, at least in practice, or were banished from, the communion of the national church; and a person eagerly in quest of scriptural truth might have entered scores of churches in succession, without hearing a discourse which clearly set forth such topics as the lapsed and guilty and helpless condition of mankind by nature; the way of salvation; pardon, adoption, justification through faith in Christ, unpurchased by human desert; the need of conversion of the heart to God, and of the sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit. It is not meant that there were not bright exceptions-some in elevated stations, and more, doubtless, in humble villages, unknown to the world-but it is vain to deny, that, as a whole, the Church of England was in the condition just described; and no sooner was any man seriously concerned for his salvation, than he was ready to wander from the Establishment in search of more fruitful pastures.

About the period of our respected

friend's birth, and onward to the close of the century, the prospect began to amend. More piety was found in the land, and a larger portion of it in the Established Church. Among the conspicuous names which float before the eye during those forty years, the rapid glance catches such as those of Venn, and Newton, and Romaine, and Toplady, and Harvey, and Cadogan, and Jones, and Stonhouse, and Conyers, and Grimshawe, and Fletcher, and Coulthurst, and Robinson, and Scott, and Gordon, and the Milners; with many others, worthy of being classed with the brightest of the foregoing; men differing in education and habits-some strict, and others censurably lax, Churchmen; some verging to the extremes of Calvinism, and others of Arminianism; engaged sometimes in warm and unedifying controversies among themselves, as well as with the common enemy, the world, the flesh, and the devil-yet, in the main, and with whatever of human alloy, at heart men of God, anxious for the glory of the Redeemer and the salvation of the souls of men. These divines, and others of similar character-some now unknown, and some for brevity's sake not named-were the precursors of that large body of the clergy of the Church of England, now numbered, not by scores or hundreds, but by thousands, who have entered into their labours; the great majority of them free from those ecclesiastical blemishes and peculiarities of doctrine which deformed some --not however all, very far from it of these their predecessors; and who, under whatever name of reproach known among men, are not the least powerful stay of the Church of England, the least faithful expounders of the word of God, or the least zealous promoters of all that is lovely and of good report.

Now the peculiar station which Mr. Woodd occupied, was that of one of the few remaining links between the race of men above alluded to, and the body of what are now currently called (themselves not assuming the title) the modern Evangelical Clergy of the Church of England. In his early days he had been acquainted with most of the clergymen above specified; with some of them he was intimately connected: he had witnessed their excellencies and their failings; he had walked unscathed amidst their unhappy contentions; he lamented the doctrinal excesses of some, and the unseemly jarrings of others; but he admired their ardent piety, their love to their Redeemer, their zeal to bring sinners to Christ; and he determined, at whatever cost, to bear his share of their reproach. If sweetness of temper, moderation of statement, and reverential affection for the forms, services, and discipline of the Established Church, could lessen the offence of the cross, then was he willing, nay, most anxious, that it should be lessened; but, amidst all his lovely

spirit of conciliation, he never swerved from what he believed to be the doctrines and spirit of the Gospel; and was perfectly willing, in such a cause, to be a sufferer for truth, whatever obloquy might be attached to a faithful declaration of his sentiments. He rejoiced to behold the auspicious progress of what he was persuaded was the truth as it is in Jesus, in the Church of England. He cherished, in particular, the opening piety of many of the younger clergy, who sought to him for advice and direction: he would point them to those bright names which honoured his own earlier days; animating them by their example, but guarding them against their errors. When he saw controversies growing up, new and exciting to younger minds, he would tell them of similar contests, which he remembered half a century ago, with their dangers and their issues; and thus would use his large experience and influence to counteract novelties and errors, where, in the main, there was an honest desire to attain the truth. Thus, stretching back to past scenes, yet keeping up his interest in the present, he formed a connecting bond between the two generations above alluded to, and was one of the few survivors who had held hallowed converse with holy men now known only by their writings and the vestiges of their spiritual labours. His general estimate, from the comparison, was, that scriptural piety in the Church of England is not only far more widely diffused in the present day than it was forty years since; but that with some unhappy exceptions, which he bitterly lamented, the doctrinal views of that portion of the clergy with whom he was usually classed were more sound, sober, practical, and scriptural, than those of some whom he had known in early life; that they were consistent Churchmen and useful parish priests; and were chiefly defective in those deep spiritual attainments, that fervent communion with God, and that "blessed unction from above," which characterized some of the fathers of his youth. Oh, may these gifts of the Holy Spirit be abundantly increased! that, while the profession of religion widens, it may not become more shallow; or the warm glow of piety be diminished in the heart, while the torch of truth is lifted on high to illuminate the world.

The next particular to be noticed was his ministry. A clergyman's ministry comprises, in a large sense, the whole of his life; his labours in the study as well as the church; his private prayers as well as his public discourses; his pastoral intercourse; his visits to the sick and dying; his advice to the perplexed; his conversation; his social habits; his watchfulness over the young; his schools; his charities; and his whole course of action, ever going about, like his Divine Master, doing good. It is a miserably deficient estimate, and no person thought so more

than this excellent man, to measure a Christian pastor only, or even chiefly, by the duties of the pulpit; for all the above particulars are comprised in the character of a faithful minister of Jesus Christ. The present portion of these remarks will, however, be confined chiefly to Mr. Woodd's public labours in the house of God; reserving the mention of other parts of his ministerial engagements to the statements respecting his personal character, and his connexion with religious and charitable institutions.

It is clear that there must have been some peculiar charm in his preaching, from the very circumstance that, in a fickle and restless metropolis, amidst surrounding variety, novelty, and multiplied fascinations, he for nearly half a century, was always encircled by a large and attached flock; not parochial, but collected by voluntary attraction; and that for many years the chapel in which he officiated was unable to contain the multitudes who desired to enjoy the benefits of his ministry. And what was that charm? Did he aspire after the cheap popularity excited by flights of fancy, eccentricities, extravagancies, and volatile speculations? Or did he affect the artifices of gaudy eloquence, or the higher bursts of sublime oratory? Or did he dive deeply into subjects of obscurity and mystery, and perplex himself and others with being wise above what is written? Or had he ever some quaint device, some newly-coined notion, some phantom of the moment, to catch applause, and attract a giddy multitude? Or did he agitate party questions, and collect the bigots of a system; assembling them to hear the abuse of those who did not coincide in their own opinions? Far removed was he from every thing of this nature: no man had less of any such artifices; no man was more sober, solid, steady, uniform, and unaffected. His hearers never looked in him for any thing paradoxical, startling, or visionary; and, mild as he was, he set his face like a flint against the seductive novelties of the day. Such things may draw together an inconstant multitude for a time, but they will not support a steady, attractive, and beneficial ministry, like his, of half a century. No; the charm of this holy man's pulpit discourses, was, simply the doctrine he taught, and the manner in which he taught it. His doctrine was the Gospel of Christ; his manner was with the love of Christ. He told men of their guilt and wretchedness; but it was not with the spirit of a censor, but of a friend and father, anxious to shew them how their sins might be pardoned, and their sorrows assuaged. The love of the Saviour, his agony and bloody sweat, his cross and passion, were his constant themes. His exhortations were, "Be ye reconciled unto God;" "Come unto me, ye that labour and are heavy

laden, and I will give you rest;""God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Repentance, faith, justification, and newness of life, were among his perpetual topics. He took a large view of the value of the soul, and the price paid for its redemption; and all his discourses were modelled accordingly; pointing out the way of salvation, and the gratitude due to God for his inestimable gift; and exhorting his hearers to work out that salvation with fear and trembling, and to grow in grace and in the knowledge and love of their God and Saviour. They were always eminently practical: not according to that false and meagre notion of practical preaching which would confine it to the inculcation of some partial moral deeds and virtues; but according to that large scriptural view which grounds holy works on a lively faith in Christ; which makes his cross at once the centre of hope and the incitement to obedience; ever setting forth the Saviour as both a sacrifice for sin and an ensample of godly life. There might be others who could probe more deeply the human heart, and could detect more acutely the wiles of the hypocrite and self-deceiver; but in tender expostulation, in scriptural exhibitions of the mercies of God in Christ, in attractive displays of the blessedness of true religion, in paternal remonstrances with those who were living only to the world, and exhortations to them to shun its snares and devote themselves to the service of their Saviour, he was a master in Israel; and it pleased God eminently to bless his ministrations. Charity was his element; the charity described by St. Paul in the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, love to man flowing from love to God: the charity that suffereth long and is kind; the charity that is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth. Of this charity he was ever the zealous advocate, it was one of the prominent elements of his sermons; and few clergymen have laboured with greater effect in enforcing it upon the hearts of men. To young persons his preaching was particularly attractive, from the spirit of love, simplicity, and anxiety for their best welfare, which always characterized it. To see him cacatechising several hundred children, as he did every Sunday for a long series of years, before the assembled worshippers in the house of God, was an affecting spectacle, which none who have witnessed it can ever forget. It was one of his happiest moments. He was all kindness, patience, and condescension. He "exhorted, and comforted, and charged every one of them, as a father doth his children;" for he had a father's heart: he loved children; and thousands of the rising generation, and of those

now in mature life, remember with indelible affection his scriptural admonitions and benignant address. The poor also understood and valued his instructions for while his whole deportment, in public and private, was such as conciliated the rich and fastidious, he would often say that he considered it the happiness of his ministry that to the poor also the Gospel was preached. To the sorrowful, the mourner, and the penitent, he had ever a message of tenderness, which found its way to the afflicted heart. On the high days of the Church, the chief fasts and festivals, his addresses were more than usually impressive; for he delighted in the recurrence of those solemnities, and eagerly availed himself of them to set forth those scriptural facts and doctrines to which they relate, especially the great events in the life of our blessed Lord, in reference to us men and our salvation. He greatly admired the wisdom of our Church in the appointment of such seasons; and, indeed, all the arrangements of her ritual and worship were most congenial to his feelings: for in these days of change and schism he was an honest, hearty, and affectionate Churchman; a Churchman upon principle and conviction; a warm advocate for the Scriptural Articles, Homilies, and Liturgy of our established communion; and seldom did he allow a Sunday to pass in which he did not, besides his pulpit labours, read the public service twice; never accounting himself so much honoured as when, in the desk, as the minister of Christ, leading the united prayers and praises of the people.

Such were his public ministrations in the church. In his more private ministrations, by the bed of the sick and the dying, he was eminently useful, usually dedicating, if possible, a portion of every day to these unostentatious labours. He was, in truth, a devoted minister of Jesus Christ; and eminently obeyed that injunction of the Apostle to Timothy : "Follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart; but foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes; and the servant of God must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves, if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowleging of the truth." "He taught publicly, and from house to house, testifying repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.” "He was not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ," knowing it to be "the power of God unto salvation to every one that beṛ lieveth." He was "gentle, even as a nurse cherisheth her children, being affectionately desirous" of his people; and they were his hope, and joy, and crown of rejoicing," "whom he ardently longed to behold in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming."

66

(To be continued).

The Rev. D. Wilson preached the funeral sermon for his much beloved and esteemed friend at Bentinck Chapel, and we understand it is to be published. We hope to introduce it to our readers.

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

F. F.; W. S. C.; THEOGNIS; J. K.; B. C. S.; A. R. C.; R. E.; C. E.; OBSERVER; and some papers without signature, are under consideration.

C. H. H. has somewhat misconceived the paper of O. S., on the parable of the Lord of the Vineyard. The first labourers, as C. H. H. truly observes, had no claim in justice to more than they had agreed for; but O. S. directed his argument to rebut the alleged charge of caprice, or unjust partiality, in the lord of the vineyard's making such an agreement. His argument is directed to the objection, that, though the arrangment was legally just, it was morally inequitable.

It is clear that B. has never considered the actual ascertained facts relative to the earth's structure. There they are, let us deal with them as we may; and it will neither confute the sceptic, nor satisfy the well-informed Christian, to say that all such researches indicate "that pride of the human heart which unconsciously skims the very verge of infidelity." Whether is it wiser and more Christian to shut our eyes, and aver that we see no such facts; or to admit what is palpable the moment we open them, but to shew that those facts do not really, as they cannot, controvene the inspired statements, though they may, and do, set aside the popular interpretation of them? T. W. C. will perceive upon re-perusal, that we did not say that the views expressed by Mr. McNeile, relative to the temporal prospects of the Jews, are held by himself alone; or that, as to their substance, they are altogether novel-we say, as to their substance, for it is not just to construe the language of every writer who has spoken of the spiritual privileges and pre-eminence of the restored Jews as if he meant to include temporal exaltation. What we really said was, that the theory of the future temporal superiority of the converted Jew over his fellow-Christian, appears to us fanciful (that is, unsupported by the word of God), and likely to lead the Jews to

« ПретходнаНастави »