lost the most intimate Christian friend and brother that ever I had upon earth. We took sweet counsel together, and our hearts and hands were united in the same pursuits for two and twenty years. But this tie of friendship is dissolved. My friend and brother is gone, and I despair of ever finding an equal in these mortal abodes. Thus I feel for myself in this awful event. But mine is a drop, compared with your ocean of grief. Mine is a loss, not to be mentioned with that of the widow and the fatherless. Who can comfort you, when you see him no more in your own house, or in the house of God? No more enjoy the meltings of his inmost soul? No more behold that cheerful, self-possessing, ever-smiling countenance? No more join in his prayers and praises? Nor be a witness to his pious labours, his delightful intelligences, or his overflowing joy and triumph through all?

Happy for us that we know where to seek solid and satisfying comfort, even amidst this sorrowful scene! God is not dead. Jesus, from whom the most amiable friends derived all their loveliness and excellence, is the same yesterday and to-day, and for ever. The promises are true and faithful, great and precious. Providence is but accomplishing the designs of covenant love. Out of the eater comes meat, and out of the unsavoury comes sweetness. Death, indeed, has

conquered, but it is only in order to be itself entirely abolished. Our friend is gone from us, but he is with infinitely better friends. He can no more serve and please his family and flock, but it was rich grace that enabled him to serve and please them so much, and so long. We justly mourn the loss we sustain, but we are very unjust if we do not bless and praise God, that ever we had such a friend, such a relative; that we enjoyed him so freely and fully, and reaped such valuable benefits by him. Nor have we lost him now, he is only gone before, got the start of us in this instance, as he did in every thing that was important. He is with him who is the God of the widow and the father of the fatherless, and who comforts them that are cast down into any trouble. He is where we, through grace, are also going, where we hope to be soon. What an interview will that be? How will our friend look in glory? Where will all our pains and tears at parting be then? How will that meeting reprove our present unbelief? O let us turn our complaints into praises! Blessed be God for such a friend! Adored be divine grace for all his loveliness and usefulness! that he did so much in so little time; that he lived and died as all will wish to have done! that he rests with the saints in their everlasting rest! that the labourer now has his

hire, the weary pilgrim his home, and the heir come to the full possession of his large, his glorious inheritance.

"May the Spirit of Jesns which made a dying bed so comfortable to our friend, take the comforts of Jesus and apply them to me, to you, to the dear children, and to all the weeping friends and neighbours around you! There are comforts for us that are neither few nor small; do not let us overlook them, nor through our tears mistake them.

"I thank Miss Darracott for her letters, and rejoice in the discovery therein made of her im provements under her dear father. May the Lord Jesus Christ abundantly bless, and comfortably provide for her, and her dear brother.

"I desire my thanks may be returned to Mr. Kennaway for his letter, and for the copy of what is written on the back of the will. There is not any room for objection to such a dying request, otherwise Mr. Pearsall would have done every thing better. The Lord help me to fulfil this last office for my friend, in a manner worthy of such friendship as his. If it please God to preserve my health and my family's, I hope to be with you in April or May. If you should discern any peculiar reasons for desiring one month or Sabbath rather than another, I beg, madam, you will be pleased to inform me. I am expecting

Mr. Davey here from Crediton, and both he and myself would be disappointed if I should not be at home when he is here. If he would come hither in April, I would administer our Lord's supper the last Sabbath in that month, and then go back with him, so as to be at Wellington the first Lord's-day in May. I am writing to him. Your and your dear children's sincerely sympathising friend,

"B. Fawcett."

The funeral sermon which Mr. Fawcett preached at Wellington April 15, exactly a month after his friend's decease, was by his command silent concerning his praise. The attentive multitudes, their sighs, and tears sufficiently proclaimed the worth of their departed shepherd. And in the following picture of a faithful pastor, Mr. Fawcett evidently designed to give the likeness of his friend.

"If a gospel minister has a heart ever glowing with love to Christ, and love to immortal souls; if this love makes him abundant in labours, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, and glad to spend and be spent for the people committed to his care; if by this love he is evidently superior to selfish views, above the influence of filthy lucre, full of anxious concern to convince and convert sinners, and edify saints, ready to every good word and work, and yearning with bowels of

compassion towards the ignorant, the stupid, the profligate, the doubting and distressed, the weak and feeble minded, the poor and mean; if this love not only pours out a continual torrent of faithful, affectionate, heart-searching ministrations from the pulpit, both in season and out of season, but opens his house at all times, as a common refuge for the distressed, and especially for soul distresses; if this love opens his way into the houses of all his friends, and neighbours, not to serve himself, but them, and especially by bringing eternal things home to their personal converse and immediate attention; if this love leaves him no idle moments, and shews him to be most of all in his element, when most directly promoting the beginning, progress, or establishment of the divine life in those around him; if this love makes the prosperity of the churches, and especially of the particular church over which he presides, his chief joy; in a word, if in con sequence of this love, he lives, and best of all enjoys himself, when his people stand fast in the Lord; is there not a beauty and excellence in such a character, which forces esteem, and obliges even the enemies of Christ and godliness, either silently to admire it, or (which is sometimes the case) freely speak their approbation of it, or in some way to acknowledge its excellence. Was not this the meaning of what a profane gentle. G