observer of the conduct of professors, and was not easily deceived by specious pretensions to superior sanctity. A profession of piety, not characterized by sincerity, he treated as the very bane of Christian society, and the worst sort of hypocrisy. The Apostle's injunction, in Col. ii. 6, was his rule in judging of the religious character of others; but his penetrating mind knew how to make proper allowances on the ground of education, and peculiarity of disposition. "Perhaps," he said, "these always tincture in some degree the stream of life."

His attachment to Methodism was firm and lasting; for it was founded on his conviction of the scriptural character of its doctrines, and the general purity of its precepts and practice. What led him to decide at first, in the choice he made, continued to be the ruling principle of his future life; and nothing shook the foundation on which he took his stand. Viewing the important temporal sacrifices which he made, and the alienation of human friendship to which he had to submit, he said, "this does not materially affect my mind ;-my heart is fixed, O GOD, my heart is fixed." He deemed the whole economy of Methodism so important and useful, that every part of it received his cordial approbation and support. In order, by the divine blessing, to advance its influence in the world, he felt the necessity of uniting ability and diligence. Writing to a dear friend in the ministry, he says, "I hope you are proceeding with your reading and studies: useful learning can only be attained by close application and perseverance; and in order to this, much patience is requisite. Let us Let us guard against every hinderance to improvement; and especially seek after a larger measure of the sanctifying grace of the HOLY SPIRIT. This will powerfully stimulate us to diligence in every good word and work. In every station, living to and for GOD constitutes the grand business of life. How, then, ought Ministers to live? Never forget, my Brother, that Methodist Preachers stand on slippery ground; they are encompassed with enemies; their office is big with importance; and their responsibility is exceedingly great."

In reviewing his past labours, MR. RUSHFORTH utterly renounced himself. What he had done and suffered for God, he esteemed as nothing for so kind a Master. To one who said to him, "With what pleasure you can look back on a life spent in the service of GOD, now that you are dying a martyr in his cause," he replied, "My labours are all nothing; I can do nothing without the merits of CHRIST; I entirely depend on CHRIST, my Redeemer; I am an unprofitable servant.' He preferred a life of active labour, and felt as every faithful Minister would feel, at the prospect of being laid aside. Rather than become useless, and be a burden to the community, or to his friends, he prayed GOD to cut the thread of life, and take him to himself: yet in all things he felt disposed to submit to the divine will concerning him.

In his last affliction and illness he was cheerful and happy."Why should I murmur?" said he; "the LORD has given me many years of health ;-surely my afflictions are not greater than those of other people."-My late friend possessed a fine natural flow of spirits; and I have often in his company shared the pleasure, which his vivacity of mind transferred to those around him. Joy often beamed in his countenance; to gloom he was a perfect stranger; and habitual cheerfulness and serenity indicated that all was right within.. During his long illness this happy frame of mind never forsook him, except at transient intervals, occasioned by excessive languor or nervous depression. He always dreaded the return of this, but was generally enabled to raise himself above it. After hours of coughing in the night, he frequently broke out in songs of praise to GOD. He could indeed sing of mercy and of judgment; and all complaining or murmuring against providential dispensations he strongly deprecated. When greatly suffering, he wrote to a friend as follows: "It is our wisdom to be resigned to the will of GoD; and the LORD has enabled me to exercise that patience and fortitude, which at one time I should have thought almost unattainable. The LORD is indeed GOD ALL-SUFFICIENT."-As a holy serenity marked his life, so was his death happy and triumphant. He had long admired the operations of Divine Wisdom in the works of Creation, Providence, and Redemption; and the exalted subjects of the Christian Revelation, especially, raised his thoughts to heaven. Often, when walking abroad, his mind was so happy in meditation on the word and works of God, that his soul seemed too large for his body, and was ready to take wing and fly to the realms above. Death, therefore, was not dreaded by him as an enemy, but welcomed as a messenger sent to liberate his imprisoned spirit. The closing scene of his life was an animated, yet solemn recommendation of that Divine Religion, the happy influences and hopes of which he then so largely enjoyed.-Thus having "fought a good fight, finished his course, and kept the faith," he entered into the full enjoyment of the "rest that remaineth for the people of GOD." JOHN BEYNON.

Burry Green, near Swansea, Dec. 8, 1820.

DIVINITY.

ORIGINAL SERMON ON JOHN VI. 66-68,

By the late REV. JOHN FLETCHER, of Madeley.

"From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him: then said JESUS unto the twelve, will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life."

In opening these words, I shall endeavour, First, to show what

offended so much many of our LORD's disciples, that they walked no more with him. Secondly, I shall prove from St. Peter's words, by the grace of the LORD, that, as out of CHRIST there is nothing but eternal death for sinners, so in CHRIST there is eternal life for the chief of sinners that come to him. I shall then take occasion to make some practical reflections upon those two heads, by way of application. And may the LORD JESUS SO shine upon our understandings by the striking light of his truth, and so prepare our hearts by the softening power of his grace, that we may all join Peter in his glorious confession of faith: "To whom shall we go, O LORD? Thou hast the words of eternal life; and we believe, and are sure, that thou art the CHRIST, the SON of the living God, who openest the kingdom of heaven to all believers."

- I. I shall endeavour to show what offended so much many of our LORD's disciples, that they went back, and walked no more with him.

The sermons which our blessed LORD preached were plain, though deep; sharp as a razor, though smooth as oil; and the effect was the conversion or the confounding of his hearers. True doctrine will always cause a division between the chaff and the wheat of a congregation; it sifts the worldlings, puts the formalists at a stand, and makes the Pharisees and Sadducees, the secret and open infidels in all ages, to exclaim against the severity and depth of gospel truths: So that some, unable to bear it, run away from the disagreeable sound, as many of our LORD's disciples did; or, if they come again, it is to seek an occasion against the preacher, and, if possible, to catch him in his words, as the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Lawyers tried to do by our LORD himself.

Now, if the ETERNAL WISDOM, the lowly, meek LAMB OF GOD, who knew how to suit his discourses to the capacity and wants of his followers, could not declare the counsel of GOD without exasperating many of his hearers, how can it be expected that we, who have hardly one ray of the wisdom of the Sun of Righteousness, should preach the same gospel without any of the same inconveniences. Do not then conclude, my Brethren, that Ministers are false teachers, because many rise up against them, and walk no more with them; and that a doctrine is contrary to truth, because it is hard to flesh and blood, and is exploded by the generality of the hearers. In so doing, you would condemn JESUS CHRIST himself, to say nothing of his Apostles, whose plain ministry met every where with the greatest opposition. And as for you, my Brethren, whose heart speaks still the language of the prejudiced hearers of the Gospel in the days of our LORD; you who often say or think," this is a hard saying, who can bear it?"-consider that, as the heart of man is the same VOL. XLIV. JUNE, 1821.

in all ages, so is also the Gospel: the same cause will produce the same effect in England, as well as in Judea: search, therefore, your hearts; search the Scriptures; and you will find that the opposition which plain Gospel-truths meet in you is not owing so much to the uncouthness or harshness of the Preacher, as you think, as to a secret aversion which you have to the Cross and the Gospel of CHRIST.

St. JOHN, in the chapter out of which the text is taken, gives us a particular account of the sermon which caused the disciples of our LORD to murmur and depart from him. It is a close and deep one indeed, and contains many things which are foolishness to the natural man, though they are the wisdom of God to every awakened sinner. First: In the 27th verse, "Labour not for the meat which perisheth, (says our SAVIOUR) but for that which endureth to everlasting life." This was more than the worldlings and the covetous could well bear. There are in every congregation people who bury themselves all the week in worldly cares; they think of nothing else but of adding field to field, or of enlarging their business; they have no time to say their prayers, or if they say them, it is always in a hurry; as for death and judgment, hell and heaven, eternity, and such solemn points of meditation, they do not trouble themselves about them, more than about the most impertinent story in the newspaper, perhaps not so much. Now, how could people of this stamp bear the doctrine of our heavenly Master, "Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that which endureth to eternal life." No doubt they murmured secretly, or went away saying, “Did you hear this Galilean, this Son of Joseph? He tells us that we must not work. Can there be a more abominable doctrine ?" And thus grossly mistaking our LORD, who only endeavoured, by those words, to damp their desires after earthly things, that they might begin to provide heavenly food for their perishing souls, they ran away with part of a distorted sentence, made him an offender for a word, and represented him as a man whose doctrine interfered with the duties of people's calling, and tended to subvert the commonwealth.

In the next verse, the Jews asked, "What shall we do that we might work the works of God?" And they expected, no doubt, that our LORD would have said, "You must go regularly to the synagogue; you must take care to have your children circumcised the eighth day; you must religiously observe all the festivals and the Sabbaths;-you must pay tythe, and give alms, out of all you have;"-for, thought they, if we do all this, who shall do the works of GoD better than we? But our SAVIOUR, who knew there were hundreds of hypocrites and formal Jews among his hearers, who did all this, and were nevertheless as far from the kingdom of heaven as the vilest publican present, answered, to their great surprise, "This is the work of GoD, that ye believe

on him whom he has sent."-This is the work of God that we believe! Why, this is a new doctrine, (thought some of them ;) how can faith be the work of GOD? That man with his doctrine of faith will set aside good works, and then what will become of "the Law and the Prophets."-This doctrine of salvation by faith never was, and never will be, understood by the world: Because all the children of the world are self-confident, proud, boasters, as St. Paul says, (Rom. i.) thinking that they can do good works before their heart is washed and changed by faith in JESUS CHRIST, and little suspecting that what they call their good works are only their least iniquities. "Without me," says our Saviour, "you can do nothing" "If I give all my goods to feed the poor, and have not love," true faith, working by love, says St. Paul, "I am nothing." And now, what good works can the best moralist do, what good fruit can the most flourishing bramble produce, till grafted in CHRIST, the true Vine? Must not faith make us one with JESUS CHRIST, the Tree of Life, before we can bring forth fruit unto God; and is not this the work of GOD, that we believe on him whom he has sent,-that we come to CHRIST by faith, to have our hearts changed, and made fruitful in all good words and works? But this our LORD's hearers did not like. Some, no doubt, blamed him for discouraging people from doing, as they thought, good works; and others could not bear to hear him declare, that they had not the true faith, and that therefore their best works were only the fruit of their virtuous and hypocritical pride.

In the 51st verse, our SAVIOUR goes deeper yet, and tells the Jews, "I am the Bread of Life; if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever." They could not conceive what he meant by the bread of life, if he did not mean the manna which their fathers had eaten in the wilderness. So in our days, thousands cannot conceive what our Church means by bidding us feed upon CHRIST in our heart by faith; they believe that it means just kneeling at the communion-table, holding out their hand to receive the bread, and eating it with the mouth of the body; and they are ready to quarrel with ministers if they insist upon an inward, spiritual, sensible feeding, in the heart, on the heavenly virtue of CHRIST'S hidden flesh, and of CHRIST'S blood, whereby the soul is refreshed and strengthened, as the body by bread and wine. Nor could the Jews make any thing of that repeated invitation to come to our blessed LORD, in verse 37, and 65,"He that cometh unto me shall never hunger; he shall live for ever. No man can come unto me, except the FATHER draw him," &c. Strange doctrine! Some murmured at it, no doubt, and were ready to interrupt the heavenly Teacher by such words as these: "Why, what do you mean by coming to you? are not we come to you, and some of us from far? do not we now throng