แ

"Westridge, March 2, 1852. "MY DEAR SIR,-Your strictures on the Manchester Educational Scheme are, I think, most just and forcible. I should like to hear what Mr. Stowell has to say in answer to them. I hope you have sent him a copy. Lord Derby has made a good profession. May we expect he will act upon it, and countenance no education not based on Scriptural instruction? But the whole plan propounded at Manchester of rating for Schools would need to be modified. It would not be fair to rate Papists or Jews for Schools from which they could have no advantage,- especially as it is meant, I apprehend, to be a voluntary arrangement entered on by the town. If there are not at present powers to enforce a rate for Scriptural education, I doubt if Parliament will ever grant them. So the friends of such education will need to work by themselves.

"Have you got Edwards' just published work on Charity? It is worthy of his pen. I have just received Taylor's Wesley and Methodism, which I suppose you have read by this time.

"I hope you have had as much of health this winter as you could expect. I have, with nothing more the matter than a cough, occasionally troublesome, and at times languor and weakness. I preach almost every Sunday here or at Ryde.

"Does the Record uphold you in your remonstrance against the Manchester Scheme?"

This bill was utterly at variance with the professed principles and recorded convictions of its chief promoters. Although many of the clergy and laity of Manchester had been for years in open hostility to Popery, -truly alleging that Popish schools are seminaries of pestilential error, and of disloyalty, that their system is one "that goes to enslave the child to the man; that goes to cherish the sins of the child, and to supersede its faith; that goes to make the child hold its Bible to be no book for it;" yet, strange to say, they framed this bill so as to admit not only Jews and Socinians, but Papists, on their own terms of a closed Bible, to all the assistance it was to secure, and even invited their co-operation! Mr. Hay justly considered such a course plainly one of low expediency, latitudinarian, and glaringly inconsistent.

These remarks are made in no unkind spirit.

Far

We

from it. All error is hurtful; but error in fundamental principles,- errors in which professors of Christianity appear as propounding a measure whereby a Christian population is to be taxed to support antiChristian systems that they abjure,-are most pernicious and perilous; and these remarks are prompted by the hope that they will not be wholly without effect, in warning our readers never to take part in any public scheme on the ground of mere supposed utility, or because it is recommended by reputable names. ought ever to look at the measure, not at the men who propound it; for good men are not always wise, and able, zealous men, often fall, as in this case, into great and fundamental mistakes. We hope that our remarks may have some effect also in preventing another such application to Parliament by our Manchester friends. Mankind at large know no rule but that of personal advantage and expediency. Multiplied proofs, however, are not wanting, that even those from whom we expect better things, not unfrequently contravene all their long cherished convictions and oft-reiterated sentiments, when they expect some pecuniary aid to their own party to follow. So deceitful above all things is the human heart! So broken a reed is man to lean on! So powerful and successful are the temptations of the world and the devil!

The first and chief thing we have to do is to live by the Bible, to maintain an unshaken loyalty to the divine government;-practically to remember that the good of creatures is not the primary end of the creation;-that God must ever have the first and principal regard to his own glory, and that a course can never be otherwise than derogatory to His honour which leads us, in any degree or manner whatever, to countenance what is false and unscriptural. Under the most favourable circumstances, we possess little power to reach and impress the moral nature of man,-what then can men expect when they fly in the face of their own principles, drawn from the Bible, and resist the Spirit of God?

CHAPTER VI.

1853.

Opens a large church at Lynn-His habitual preparation for death-Unwillingness of Christians to die-His last days.

DURING the winter of 1852-3 Mr. Hay and Lady Alicia resided with their esteemed friend Mrs. Young, of Westridge, Isle of Wight, and at that time he assisted the Rev. J. T. Marsh, of St. James' Chapel, Ryde, pretty regularly, on the Sabbath morning; and that gentleman says "his health being very delicate, I frequently felt afraid lest he should overwork himself." He enjoyed his connexion with the St. James' congregation, and spoke of it in his last days with evident satisfaction.

In February, 1853, he was engaged to preach at the opening of the Church of St. Nicholas, at Lynn, and the following letter to the editor was among the last he was favoured to receive from him. The sermon preached on that occasion was the last he delivered in that town, and will be found at page 178.

"North Runcton, Lynn, Feb. 24, 1853. "MY DEAR FRIEND,-It was a great pleasure to receive your letter yesterday. I had it just before going to Lynn, to preach at the re-opening of a large church there. I never addressed so great an assembly before, a building 200 feet long, crammed with people. It needed the utmost stretch of my artificial voice to be heard. The subject was Isaiah lxvi. 1, 2. Jehovah's true temple; not one made with hands, but as it was originally, a man, and not such as we would fashion and prepare for him, were we to attempt to fit up and furnish ourselves for his habitation; for when we have

collected under one roof all that in our estimation is most bright and precious, still that is lacking which will make him look to it with complacency and delight,-"Poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at my word," these are just the qualities we cannot produce, and the sacrifices we cannot offer. This man, therefore, must be of divine workmanship; and though he was so rudely expelled from the temple he at first fitted up for himself in man's soul, yet at what a cost hath he devised a plan for restoring it,removing its unsightly disfigurements, bringing back its faded glory.

"Your remarks chanced to be most apposite to the subject, and I made them my own; for, as you truly say, the price has been paid, yet how few temples are rebuilt,-how few of such a spirit to whom God can look. Surely we have not because we ask not. Sin is all we can call our own. What a constant attitude, then, should we maintain, of begging, and looking, and receiving, for the fulness whence the supply comes, is inexhaustible.

"The weather continues very severe, and I think I shall do wisely in postponing my long looked for visit to Epsom till April, when I may hope to be able to spend a Sunday there, for at present I could only have come on Thursday next, as I must be here till then to see one of my sisters, and return to the island on Saturday, as I must be at my post again on Sunday. I have some prospect of work at Bath. Mr. Widdrington, rector of Walcot, thinks there may be some of a light kind vacant there. I should like the place much. I hope to send you a copy of Dr. Love's sermons when I return. If you know any persons wishing to possess the volume, the enclosed will give directions for getting it.

*

"Yours truly and affectionately,

"S. HAY."

With a spare, enfeebled body, presenting all the evidences of such disease as betokened a brief sojourn on earth, he still thought of his great work, and here adverts to some prospect of it at Bath, after leaving Ryde. His chief business was to speak in that great Name which he so dearly loved, and for the benefit of mankind, in whose highest welfare he took to the last so deep an interest. But that work was fast drawing to a close. This, however, although a loss to the world, was to himself great gain; for he strove to live as a

stranger upon earth, sedulously cultivating a willingness to die. One who knew him most intimately says, "He always appeared to me to have his thoughts and his heart raised to heaven in a remarkable manner." And the clergyman-a gentleman, we believe, of sound religious experience whose testimony to his character appears in these sheets, at page 19, concludes that communication by saying-"His last letter to me was lying on my table, unanswered, when I heard of his death. He was ripe for heaven." In a subsequent letter it will be seen that, after expressing his desire that the dews of heaven should be further vouchsafed on his heart, Mr. Hay says "then the sooner the transplantation takes place, the happier for me."

In a world where everything passes away so speedily, -our very life passing as a weaver's shuttle, the only state of mind proper to our condition is that of a stranger and pilgrim. Not only so; it is indispensably necessary to the proof of our being safe and blessed. Mr. Hay asserts, as we have seen (p. 60), that "it is only of those who reckon themselves strangers and pilgrims, and have an aim beyond this earth, that God is not ashamed to be called their God."

Nevertheless, most Christians live all their days in a great strangeness to the life to come, and to serious meditations on the heavenly blessedness, the loss of which is incalculably great. It was far different with him. Although it is evident that that looks like feigned love which does not desire to see the beloved, and that to a creature so frail and sinful as man is, and encompassed continually by so many and great enemies and dangers, nothing can be so suitable to his condition as a daily earnest preparation for his exit; yet we do not set ourselves purposely to cultivate

*Happily we now and then meet with a signal exception to this. "I am a stranger in this world," says Dr. Love, "because there is little of God in it; because it is full of carnality, ignorance of God, unbelief, want of the fear of God, profanity, presumption, and hypocrisy. I am intent upon the glorious presence and service of God in heaven, and a world of unmixed holiness and love. The shortness of this life is matter of habitual joy to me."-Dr. Love's Letters, page 19.