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REV. JOHN BROWN,

Author of "The Self Interpreting Bible." THE REV. John Brown, like many other eminent men, owed little to descent. He was born A. D. 1722, in a small village named Carpow, in the parish of Abernethy, county of Perth, North Britain, of parents in obscure circumstances, and remarkable for nothing but their good sense and piety. At an early period he was deprived of their care, and cast on the world with no other dependence but the providence of that God who is "the father of the fatherless and the orphan's stay." He dates his first impressions of religion in his eighth year, and he frequently afterwards recollected with pleasure the kindness of youth. About this period, he repeatedly said a few years before his death, he experienced more clear and delightful discoveries of divine truth, than ever afterwards he had enjoyed, or even on earth expected to enjoy. Having studied divinity under the Rev. Ebenezer

Erskine, and the Rev. James Fisher, he was licensed to preach by the Associated Presbytery of Edinburgh in 1750, and was shortly after ordained to the pastoral office of the church of Christ at Haddington, where he continued to labour with increasing usefulness till he was called to enter into the joy of his Lord.

Mr. Brown for many years before his death, was much troubled with indigestion. In the beginning of the year 1787, this increased in an alarming degree, attended with general debility. Every means was used to remove it, but without success. His stomach seemed entirely to have lost its tone. His strength gradually declined, until exhausted for want of its necessary supplies, nature sunk under its own weakness. During the progress of his disorder his mind was serene, cheerful, and happy. He never expressed either impatience or apprehension. So perfectly was he resigned to the Divine will, that life or death was to him indifferent. He would not, as he emphatically expressed it, "turn a straw for

THERE'S A TONGUE IN EVERY LEAF.

either." His wish was that Christ might be glorified in him, whether it were by his life or his death. His only solicitude about life was, that if it were lengthened, his ability for usefulness might be continued. But far from shrinking from death, he regarded it as an object of desire. His hopes of future happiness were founded solely on the mercy of God through the merits of Jesus Christ. On this subject, he never seemed to entertain a doubt. His language was not only that of hope, but of the full assurance of faith. On one occasion he declared himself as assured of his eternal felicity, as that there was an eternity. A day or two before he died, when scarcely able to speak, he looked up, and said with a smile, "The Lord is my strength and my song, and he

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is become my salvation." His last words were, "My Christ!" Having said this, he fell asleep in Jesus. He is gone to join the spirits of the just made perfect. He adds another to that numerous and illustrious band of worthies, whose deaths present a practical proof of the truth of their religion; a proof, addressed at once to the understanding and the heart; a proof of which the infidel cannot get rid, without having recourse to the most palpable absurdities, which outrage reason and set possibility at defiance. Mr. Brown died, June 19th, 1787, and was interred in Haddington church yard on the 24th, where his relations, out of respect to his memory, have erected a neat monument over his grave.

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Temperance Advocate.

DICKEY TURNER'S SPEECH.

RICHARD TURNER, of Preston, in Lancashire, has, very undesignedly, got his name immortalized by the term Teetotal. As to the etymology of the word, a knowledge thereof is not professed: but it is often used in Lancashire and Cheshire in the light of a strong affirmative, as real, entire, absolute, altogether, and such words, are generally used. Dickey, in the effervescence of his zeal, at one of the meetings in Preston, when attempting to depreciate the moderation pledge, observed, "Nothing but the tee -teetotal pledge will do." This phrase was immediately taken up, serving as a convenient substitute for the circumlocution which had previously been used. It spread rapidly, and it is now the standing technical name, both in England and America, for the doctrine of teetotal abstinence from all alcoholic liquors. Dickey Turner's head contains a vocabulary of new words; but as the Preston friends are not very fastidious, Dickey always obtains a favorable hearing. His usual remarks is, "If I make blunders you must expect them." The following is a sketch of one of his speeches:

"I have need to rise to speak well of the glorious cause of Temperance, for the good

AFFLICTION.

it has done for me. At one time I was a trouble to my parents; for I believe I was the worst lad that ever was born of a man -(roars of laughter). Oh! you must not expect much from me, because my education was at the ale-bench. When I go through the streets on a Sunday, it does my soul good, to see so many reformed drunkards well-dressed, and going to their places of worship. What fools you are to cover the landlords' tables, while you yourselves must live on potatoes and salt, and your children barefooted and bareheaded, your coats out at elbows, and your trowsers out at knees, as mine use to be. I used to call these temperance people fools; but after attending a meeting at the Moss School, I found I was the fool, and they were the wise men. If they had got so much good, why may not I too? They wanted me to come up and sign. I went up to the table. They asked me how long I would sign for. I said a fortnight; for I thought it was quite as long as I could keep it. I signed the moderation, but that would not do. Afterwards I signed the Teetotal, and, bless God, I have kept it. I am strong and hearty, can do my work better than ever I could, and am determined to go about preaching temperance as long as I live."

Evening Talk.

THE sufferings laid upon us by God do all lead to happy issues; the progress is from tribulation to patience, from that to experience and so to hope, and at last to glory But the sufferings we make for ourselves are circular and endless, from sin to suffering and from suffering to sin, and so to suffering; and not only so, but they multiply in their course, every sin is greater than the former one, and so is every suffering also.

MAGIC OF A WORD.

MOTHER is a word to which every bosom responds. It finds its way to our hearts in our youth, and retains its hold upon us in our age. If fathers are looked up to for

precept, principle and example, mothers are relied on for tenderness and enduring affection. Fathers are strongholds of safety; mothers are sources of love and consolation. The word mother is as a soft balmy breeze coming up from the green side of the valley, sweet, soothing and grateful! cooling the fevered brow, calming the ruffled spirit, and tranquillizing the agitated heart. What voice was ever like the tender, soft voice of a mother.

MARRIAGE enlarges the scene of happiness or misery: the marriage of love is pleasant, the marriage of interest easy, and a marriage where both meet happy.

Printed by JOHN KENNEDY, at his Printing Office, 35, Portman Place, Maida Hill, in the County of Middlesex, London.-June, 1851.

THE SOUL'S WELFARE.

"THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF JOHN HOWARD."

A Lecture,

BY REV. W. WALTERS, PRESTON.

To do justice to the character of Howard, would require two lectures-one devoted to his outward, the other to his inner life; one a relation of what he did, the other an application of how and why he did it. About his early history, as about the early history of many great and good men beside himself, there hangs considerable uncertainty.— The noblest specimens of humanity, the men who have most fully developed mental power and moral worth, and who, therefore, have effected the greatest amount of good for their country and the world, have oftentimes risen from the people. Their origin has been humble, their early life possessing no features to distinguish it from the histories of the masses. And as there was no prophet to predict what the future man would be or do, as no star shone over his birth-place, and no wise men presented offerings and homage to his infancy, it frequently happens that when his great work is performed and he has gone to the seats of the blessed and entered upon his repose, and his survivors wish to chronicle his history and trace back his life-day to its dawn, the hour and place cannot with certainty be found. So is it with our researches after the birth-time and birth-place of Howard. It is true that on the monument erected in St. Paul's Cathedral by public subscription as an expression of the estimate put on his labours by the public mind, it is said "He was born at Hackney, in the county of Middlesex, September 2nd, 1726." This, however, is mere conjecture. His father was a London merchant, such a one as Hogarth studied for his "Industrious Apprentice." His mother died while he was yet an infant, and he was placed out to nurse with a farmer's wife at Cardington. In his childhood, he was sickly, modest, gentle, shy. He exhibited no precocity of intellect, displayed no marks of genius, gave no indication of his future, except, perhaps, a kindly act to a play fellow, or a patient and meek endurance of occasional injury or insult. After the death of his father, who left him a handsome fortune, and the decease of his first wife, Howard determined to relieve in some way the unhappy survivors of that dreadful earthquake which in 1775 destroyed a great part of the city of Lisbon. The ship in which he sailed was captured by a French privateer, and he was cast into prison. He was permitted at last to return to England, on condition that he would prevail with the English government to send back a suitable exchange. In this he succeeded. His thoughts were now directed to "The Prison World." His first efforts were on behalf of our sailors imprisoned in foreign parts, and he had the pleasure of seeing those efforts crowned with success. He had no intentions at this time of pushing his benevolent exertions any further-no thought of occupying that important position in public life which he was destined to fill. His time was not yet come.

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THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF JOHN HOWARD.

He married his second wife on the 25th of April, 1758. On the 27th of March, 1765, Harriet Howard was delivered of her first, her only child, and on the 31st she closed her eyes in death. After travelling on the continent, Howard filled the office of High Sheriff for the county of Bedford, in 1773. In the discharge of his duties, he discovered gross abuses, which he dragged to light. He found the men in petty power lording it with an iron hand over the wretches placed beneath their control, and he at once stood up to punish the tyrant and avenge the wrongs of the oppressed. He commenced his work of prison reform in the gaol of Bedford, and was led on to an examination ultimately of almost every county goal, borough gaol, and bridewell, in England and Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Everywhere he discovered the places for the confinement of prisoners in a wretched condition-damp, confined, dirty; the prisoners, in most cases, diseased, half-naked, and starving; the governors and turnkeys oftentimes imperious, insolent, cruel, inhuman. The records he has left illustrate the horrible treatment of prisoners in the dungeons of Launceston (in Cornwall), Durham, Chester, Southwark, Plymouth, &c.

Howard was defeated, by a small majority, when, at the request of many friends, he consented to stand, at the election of 1774, as a candidate for the representation of Bedford. In the April of 1775, the philanthropist departed from England, to acquaint himself with the regulations and workings of prison discipline in various continental countries to accumulate information for the work he had now projected, and which, prior to its publication, he wished to make as full and as complete as possible-to reform whatever existing abuses he might discover, and bring home for English use whatever excellent he might find. After an absence of about six months, he again returned home, having discovered great and many evils in the continental prisons. He spent about seven months-from Nov. 1775, to June, 1776-in inspecting such prisons as he had not previously visited, and in re-inspecting many, if not all, of those he had before examined. He perceived in many places a change for the better. Already were the fruits of his labors manifest. Many of his suggestions he found carried into action. Prison keepers began to know who he was, and what he was doing. He had already called into existence that powerful agent, public opinion; and the consequences were seen in cleaner and better ventilated cells, a larger supply of better food, the exercise of milder authority, and other ameliorations in connection with the routine of prison governance. As soon as he finished this second tour through the country, he was so impressed with the advantages resulting from it, that he at once determined to take a second journey of a similar kind through the continent. In reference to all the continental prisons he had yet seen, taking them in the aggregate and comparing them with those of our own country, he says-" In my late journey to view their prisons, I was sometimes put to the blush for my native country." On his return, after visiting a few prisons of England, the time had arrived for him to present to the world his report of what he had seen in the last three years, both at home abroad, during which time he had travelled no less thad 13,418 miles.

The author's fame had gone out before his work, and had pioneered the way for its reception among all classes in the land. It was also read widely on the continent, excited intense interest, was favourably criticised by reviewers, and its effects upon that portion of society to which it specially refers were of the most beneficial kind, and will long continue. His attention was directed in 1778 to the hulk system. He visited the “Justitia," which had been fitted up for convicts, and was stationed at Woolwich, and found existing most disgraceful abuses. He reproved the officers in charge, and they, no doubt fearing a public exposure, commenced a reform. The result of his further journeyings in

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