providential control of the Great Head of the church, he felt it to be at once a duty and a pleasure to watch the changing and shifting scenes presented on the theatre of the world, and to mark how all were working out the grand designs and gracious purposes of the Governor of all. Though, from a sense of what was due to the office he held and the sacred relations it imposed upon him, reluctant to mingle in the strife of party politics, he was not an uninterested observer of what transpired in the political world, and he cordially rejoiced in the triumph of whatever measures appeared to him calculated to promote the welfare of the people by securing for them these two most essential elements of all national prosperity, Liberty and Order. A dislike of controversy often kept him silent during the public discussion of questions in which, nevertheless, his convictions and feelings were deeply interested; but though there were occasions on which he carried this feeling farther, perhaps, than altogether became him, certainly farther than many of his friends could have wished, it never could be said of him, that he sought peace by any unworthy compromise of principle, or that when he did feel himself constrained to descend into the arena, he failed to bring with him to the conflict all the energies of his capacious and well-stored mind. It was not indifference to the interests of Truth and Right; it was not any want of conviction or of courage that held him back while others hastened forward; it was an unwillingness to peril a sacred cause by over-hasty zeal, or to stir up unnecessarily those bitter and turbid waters of strife in which love is usually poisoned, and truth too often lost. His knowledge of the world, and his acquaintance with the history of the church, led him to approve of moderate counsels, and temperate procedure in the advocacy of all great causes; and though, it may be, that he carried this in some instances too far, and allowed opportunities to slip, which a man like him might have turned to valuable account for the ends of truth, it cannot be doubted, on the other hand, that he acquired by his prudence and caution a weight of influence which gave to whatever movements he saw meet to make a force and dignity, which no reputation, gathered in the mere gladiatorship of debate, could ever have conferred.

Appearing before the public as the avowed adherent and uncompromising advocate of a particular form of ecclesiastical order, he nevertheless showed himself the friend of all good men, and interested in the welfare of every portion of the universal Church of Christ.

With his brethren in the ministry, not only in his own but also in other denominations, he lived on terms of frank and cordial intercourse; assuming no authority over the humblest; offering no slight to the feeblest; rejoicing to assist all as far as lay in his power; and, in every respect, conducting himself so as to draw towards him the love and reverence of all. Of our denominational institutions he was the steady, earnest, and unwearying friend, defending their principles, aiding their counsels, and advocating their claims; nor did he confine himself to these, but whenever he had the opportunity, lent himself to every institution which, on sound and scriptural grounds, appeared to him to be seeking the welfare of mankind, and the glory of God. On the great Missionary enterprise his heart was deeply set; and that noble Society, whose cause would this day have been pleaded in this place by its deputed representative but for the calamitous event which has demanded for its services a different theme,* he was the steady and enthusiastic advocate. Had he been spared, oh! how would his voice have been raised this day on its behalf! Suffer me to remind you that the cause lives though the advocate has gone, and that you cannot better attest your attachment to your pastor's memory than by showing that his pleadings with you in its favour in former years have not ceased to influence you, but that "he being dead yet speaketh" to you on its behalf.

As an Author, Dr. Russell has left high claims upon the grateful remembrance of the Christian Church. The works he has published are all upon subjects of first-rate importance, and these are treated by him with that gravity which their importance demands, and that copiousness and power which his ability secured. In his "Letters Practical and Consolatory," we have an admirable specimen of the union of high theological teaching, with the just application of revealed truth to the wants and circumstances of mankind; the whole work being admirably adapted to secure the author's avowed design, which was to "illustrate the Nature and Tendency of the Gospel." This has been by much the most extensively circulated of his larger works,

The annual sermons and collections in Ward Chapel, for the London Missionary Society, were fixed for the Sabbath on which this Discourse was delivered. In consequence of Dr. Russell's death, however, this design was abandoned, and the Rev. Arthur Tidman, who was to have pleaded the cause of that Society, occupied the vacant pulpit in the afternoon, only to follow up with an appropriate discourse the funeral service of the morning.

and has been the instrument of instruction and consolation to multitudes throughout the empire, as well as in other parts of the world. In his "Compendious View of the Adamic and Mediatorial Dispensation," and in his work upon "the Covenants," he has made a most valuable contribution to a department of theology too little cultivated or understood in the present day-that which views the System of Divine Truth revealed in the Bible in connection with the historical development of it under those different dispensations which God has been pleased to establish with man. This was a subject which Dr. Russell had long and deeply studied, and nowhere will the inquirer find it more copiously, luminously, and evangelically treated than in the two works above named. In his " Essay on Infant Salvation," he has sought to console the hearts of bereaved parents by "proving from Scripture that all children dying in infancy are saved through Christ;" this is, perhaps, the most eloquent and touching of all his works, for he wrote it from the depths of a heart that had felt the sorrow he seeks to heal. Among the most useful of his minor publications is his "Catechism of the First Principles of the Holy Scriptures;" it contains a most admirable compend of Biblical Theology, adapted to the wants of the young, and has been not only widely circulated in this country, but translated into some of the languages of the heathen, and used as a book for the Catechumens in several of our Mission Churches. A few occasional discourses, and one or two articles in religious magazines, complete the list of Dr. Russell's published writings. We might be tempted to regret that he wrote so little, were it not that it rather behoves us to be thankful in these days of superabundant bookmaking, that one was found who could write so well, and yet knew when to stop.

From these works, Dr. Russell's character as a theologian may be correctly estimated. Though not allowing himself to be fettered by a bigotted attachment to any particular school in theology, and though seeking to draw all his opinions respecting divine truth from the "well undefiled" of Scripture, his sentiments were closely conformed to those commonly designated moderate Calvinism. He had learned much from Fuller, Williams, and Maclean, of whose writings he had been a diligent student, and continued to the last an admiring reader. Like most of the Congregational preachers of his day, he owed something also to the writings of Glass and Sandeman, though from the chilling coldness of many of their peculiar views he heartily

recoiled. His theology was eminently evangelical. Man's ruin in Adam, man's redemption in Christ, and man's regeneration through the Holy Ghost, were the great pillars of his creed. The Cross was with him the central point of the whole system of divine truth-that on which all the light of former dispensations converged, and from which all the glory and beauty of the present flows. To place it in its proper light, to assert its claims, to defend its preroga tives, and to announce its perennial worth, may be said to be the great aim of all his writings.

But whatever success may have crowned Dr. Russell's efforts on the field of authorship, it is as a christian Pastor that he chiefly claims our notice and our remembrance. In this office he supremely gloried, to its duties he devoted his best energies, and to the attainment of its ends he looked as his highest ambition and his richest reward. He had "desired the office of a bishop" at first with all the earnestness which the enlightened mind feels for that which it sees to be emphatically "a good work;" he had entered upon its duties "not of constraint, but willingly, not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind;" and during all the vicissitudes of a lengthened pastorate, he never repented his choice, never wearied of his work, never assigned to it an inferior place in his affections, but seemed ever the longer to love it the more, and abode like a good soldier by his post until summoned by his heavenly Master to his rest.

It would not be consistent with truth were I to say that Dr. Russell was alike eminent and successful in all those departments of duty which in our churches fall to the share of the pastor; but this I may say without fear of correction, that of none of them was he neglectful, that in regard to none of them did he "do the work of the Lord deceitfully," but that in every respect he proved himself a true and zealous workman in the vineyard of the Lord. As overseer and ruler of the church committed to his charge, he was prudent, vigilant, and faithful, tempering authority with gentleness, and combining firmness of decision with patience and deliberation in action. In his private intercourse with his flock, he won their affections by the unaffected simplicity of his manners, the cheerfulness of his deportment, and the sincerity of the interest he took in all that concerned them; whilst he ever commanded their respect by his judicious behaviour and instructive discourse. But it was in the pulpit that his

greatest excellency was displayed, and here his largest measure of official reputation and success was earned.

As a preacher, Dr. Russell had few superiors in what constitutes the most valuable qualifications for the duties of the pulpit. Owing little to the superficial graces of rhetoric, and still less to the allurements of manner, he had those solid excellencies which secure for their possessor the firmest hold upon the admiration of intelligent and earnest hearers. His discourses were always replete with rich scriptural truth; their texture was firm and continuous throughout; their tone was elevated and serious; and they were delivered with that freedom and energy which bespoke the interest which the speaker felt in what he was urging upon his audience. Though not until very recently committed to writing even in part, they betrayed no indications of looseness of arrangement, or incoherence of argument; on the contrary, they were carefully thought out, and all the parts of which they were composed stood in strict logical relation to each other, and had a common bearing upon the result which the preacher had set before him as the end of his address. In listening to him, one was never led astray by useless digressions, or puzzled by metaphysical niceties, or amused by unmeaning declamation. Hastening at once into his theme, throwing aside all that was merely incidental and collateral, spurning as with disdain all the little arts of preparatory display, and grasping with a firm hand the great truths of his text, he would pour out in long succession, and with unflagging energy, a stream of thought and illustration and appeal that constrained the attention, and went home to the bosoms of his hearers. It was not in occasional passages of unusual vigour, nor in bursts of fitful eloquence, that ever and anon paused as if to recover strength for a renewed effort, that the power of his preaching lay; it was the discourse as a wholeits substance, its richness, its unction, its earnestness-that wrought upon the minds of the hearers, and made them feel and acknowledge his power. The lightning flash of genius, the glittering artifice of the rhetorician, the skill and craft of the practised logician, were not there. But there was the rush of a strong and ardent mind laden with the choicest treasures of divine truth, impelled by the deepest convictions of duty, and fired by a holy zeal for the glory of God and the best interests of man, that carried every thing before it, and at once captured and enriched all who came within range of its impetuous flow.