His bodily strength and mental vigour, when nearly eighty years of age, were truly astonishing and seldom equalled It appears almost incredible, but is a certain fact, that even at that very advanced period of life he was able to travel, (and sometimes on foot) to distant places, and to preach almost every day. every class of duties, he spared only would call bigotry, and that no labour, and was a man of great liberality which bigots only would punctuality and dispatch. His censure as indifference. Although mind was well disciplined, his from conviction a Protestant Distime well distributed, his engage-senter and a Baptist, he was courments well arranged. Hence he teous to all men, and loved all was seldom, if ever, in confusion" who loved the Lord Jesus Christ" and haste, or compelled to omit of every denomination. any duty for want of time and preparation. He was in a remarkable degree" ready for every good word and work." He seldom did any thing (and never any thing of importance) without plan and forethought. Every day, and almost every hour, had its appropriate duties allotted. By this order, preparation, and punctuality, much time was saved, and much more In a letter to his son, dated Sepdone, than if (as is too frequently tember 1817, he says: "The the case) he had acted without a fourth of this month I walked from plan. While a close student, he Evesham to Upton to breakfast. neglected not his people, but much I set off at four o'clock in the enjoyed the pleasures of friendship morning, and arrived at nine o'clock and social intercourse. He culti- without feeling overdone. I menvated fellowship with his brethren tion this to inform you of my health, in the ministry, and was seldom and that you may make a memoabsent from their annual associa- randum of it for your children, that tions and other public meetings. when their grandfather was nearly He was much attached to the As-seventy-seven years of age, he sociation to which his church be- walked fifteen miles to breakfast, longed, and not only regularly without resting or baiting on the attended it for a long series of way." years, but was often engaged at its anniversaries, both as a preacher and moderator, and wrote the circular letter for many of his brethren, who felt reluctant themselves to appear in print. While he was such an ardent lover of truth as not knowingly to resign an atom of it, he was nevertheless willing that others should think differently to himself. He never lost his temper when necessarily engaged in controversy. He would not, indeed, suffer others to impose their views on him, neither would he force his views on them, nor attempt to frown or to flatter them into acquiescence. He had that tenacity of opinion which sceptics After this, some years elapsed ere his strength very perceptibly failed, so as to incapacitate him for continuing his usual ministerial and pastoral labours, which included three services on the sabbath, besides a weekly lecture on Thursday evenings. A1 length, however, it became evident that an assistant minister and copastor was highly desirable, and the choice of the church and congregation happily fixed on the Rev. D. Davies from the Stepney Academy, who was ordained August 21, 1823, and who, "as a son with his father served" with his venerable colleague in the gospel, the remainder of his life, and now succeeds him with great ac ceptance, and a pleasing prospect enabled to bear a dying testimony of usefulness. The ordination ser- to the truth of that gospel he had vices were rendered peculiarly so long preached, as the sole founinteresting to all the ministers and dation of his own hope and comfriends present, from their venera- fort, in the immediate prospect of ble father in Christ, at nearly the eternity. He died on Tuesday the age of eighty-three, being able, 1st of July, and was buried on the with great distinctness and affec-8th. His remains were attended tion, to state the steps that had to the grave by his neighbouring been taken in the choice they were brethren in the ministry, and folthat day assembled to recognize,lowed by a great number of friends, and to express his ardent hope and who felt desirous thus to evince prayer that his young brother might their respect to his memory, and be long spared to prove a blessing their sympathy for his bereaved to the church and congregation, family. The Rev. D. Trotman of after he should be gathered to his Tewkesbury delivered the oration, fathers. Almost every one was and on the evening of the followdeeply affected with the allusion he ing Lord's day, the funeral sermon made to the lapse of nearly sixty from 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8. "I have fought years, since the commencement of &c." was preached to a very crowdhis ministry at Evesham. ed congregation, by the Rev. T. Coles of Bourton on the Water. The last text from which Mr. B. preached, only ten days before his death, was Zechar., i. 3. << Therefore say thou unto them, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Turn ye unto me, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will turn unto you, saith the Lord of hosts." May it be written on the hearts of all who heard it, and of all who survive him, and may his church and congregation especially consider, that in such a gracious mandate and animating promise from the lips of Jehovah, their late pastor and minister, as his servant, and in his name being dead yet speaketh." In November 1827, he lost his aged partner, who had nearly completed her eighty-third year, and had for some time been afflicted with the loss of sight, to whom | he was a most affectionate and kind husband for the long period of fifty-seven years. In April last he went to London on business, bore the journey remarkably well, and met his friends and brethren there with his accustomed cheerfulness. After his return, he continued to preach in general once on the Lord's day, till the very sabbath before his last illness. This was occasioned, either by a fall which he had when attending the funeral of one of his oldest He left several manuscript works friends, or (as is more probable) ready for the press, on a variety of by a renewed paralytic seizure, subjects, and some of them of conseveral of which he had the last siderable size. Among these is two years of his life. After much one "On the Divine authority of bodily suffering, his illness speedily the Old Testament;" a second, terminated in his introduction to "On the internal evidence of the the immediate presence of his di- New Testament;" a third, vine and gracious Master, whom the Scripture evidences of the funhe had faithfully served in the pas-damental principles of the Christian toral office for upwards of sixty Religion;" a fourth, "On the downyears, and in the work of the mi- fall of Antichrist;" a fifth, "A nistry nearly sixty-four. He was treatise on the wisdom, power, and "On I goodness of the Deity;" besides | personal interest in its blessings. several pamphlets and entire ser-"I thank you for your kind letter, mons, which appear to have been and the intelligence it communiprepared for publication. These, cates to me, and for the attention and many other manuscripts in a paid to the cold remains of my less finished state, are proofs of father and mother. I have such a his very great diligence, activity, shake in my right hand that writand perseverance. He began to ing is a great difficulty. I can write the last of the abovemen- neither make nor mend a pen, or tioned works when he was seventy I would send you a long letter. I years of age, in consequence of have been visiting London three an advertisement offering a prize weeks; my son came back with to the best performance on the me, and returned yesterday. subject, which might be exhibited hope he will have a good journey. at Marischal College, Aberdeen. We depend upon God for every Although Dr. Lawrence Brown of thing. I still continue to preach that College, obtained the prize, once in the week on a Lord's day. those who have seen the manu- I find I have lived longer than any script of Mr. Butterworth regard of our family that I have been acit as evincing much profound re- quainted with. My father lived to search both in nature and in theo-be eighty-two, my grandfather logy, and some have thought it eighty-four, and I am in my eightywell deserving of publication. Mr.B. often observed to his friends, that the unspeakable pleasure he derived while composing that work amply remunerated him for all his labour. It appears from the letters addressed to him by many of the most eminent servants of Christ, and found among his manuscripts, that his correspondence was extensive and valued. eighth year; but I find that word to be true, 'If our days are fourscore years, yet is our strength labour and sorrow, (Ps. xc.10.) It is soon cut off and we fly away.' There is nothing satisfying in this world, nothing but a sense of interest in the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ that can make us happy, nothing else can give us full content. That passage deserves to be printed in golden letters, yea, to be printed on Our hearts, where it is said, John iii. 16. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Whosoever, mark the word, whosoever, let our case be what it may!" The present memoir cannot perhaps better close than by an extract from the last letter ever written by the venerable subject of it, only a short time before his death. It was addressed to a nephew in Lancashire, who had sent him an account of the necessary removal of the bodies of his parents to another spot, owing to an alteration in the burial ground in which they had been interred. From this letter we perceive that it was the latest employment of his pen, as well as of his tongue, to MUCH has been said and written recommend the grace of the saviour about a dying bed. Imagination of sinners, and urge the infinite importance of a supreme regard to his great salvation, and of a THE DYINg Bed. T. C. has lent her pencil, and poetry her lay, to aid in describing its terrors or to excite our sympathies on its awaiting its final call. I went to the bedside, but I spoke not: death was busy on his victim, the countenance was pallid and ghastly in the extreme; and as I looked at the fearful wreck of that which was lately so lovely and attractive, now exhibiting all the ravages of disease and pain, instead of the smiles and joy of health, I felt how utterly insignificant the most brilliant possessions of earth were, in comparison of that peace which passeth all understanding, of that love which baffles the scrutiny of knowledge, of that imperishable joy which no man can give or take behalf. The heiress of a throne, | fectly insensible: a rapid breathing or the outcast of a prison, have only intimated that the spirit still contributed to magnify and increase lingered in its dissolving tabernacle the triumphs of death. Our ears are perpetually pained with the passing deathwail of some departed soul, or the rumours of a war which the conqueror Death is ever waging with indiscriminate fury against every son and daughter of an apostate race. And yet how very little of its importance is brought home to the personal admission of our liability to its visitation. We assent to its certainty, we lament its victims, and we weep at its solemnities, but we seldom bring away a permanent impression of our vassalage to its dominion. But when the demands of friendship or affection invite us away-which not only robs horto the dying beds of those whom memory hallows in the heart's best and brightest recollections, we feel acutely the strange and mysterious bodings of apprehension steal with silent and resistless sway over our minds, and a wild throb of anxious wonder rushes over the soul, as we unavoidably revert to the time when we shall lie a prey to the merciless spoiler. A few days past I was called to the dying bed of a departing saint, to witness the last struggles of nature ere the devastation of death was complete. She had for the last twelve months been gradually preparing for eternity. She seemed day by day to become more and more a partaker of that holiness without which no man can see the Lord; yet in the very bloom of life, none imagined how near her immortal hopes were to their full fruition. A short illness hurried her with rapid haste to the grave, but its horrors were subdued by the prowess of her Redeemer, and she entered its dreary valley leaning securely on the arm of the beloved of her soul. She lay per ror of its sting and time of its triumphs, but which smooths the declivities of the grave, and throws over the tomb the fadeless arch of victory. There is something very appalling in the silence of dissolution, the unanswered salutation, the expression[less eye and lip, and the heedless and fixed countenance, as though the stagnant blood forbade the impulse of the mind's great deep, or refused its channel to convey the brightening thought. As I looked at her altered form, the mere outline of her former self, so dreary and desolate, as the shadows of death were passing heavily and slowly along, leaving their stern and dread impress, I remembered her peaceful smile, her undeviating affection, her mistrustless friendship, and the holy tranquility which marked her countenance in the house of her God: andI understood the truth of the wise man's observation, that it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting; for the heart is filtered in sorrow, and a death-bed gives us the truest estimate of urges its penalty on manhood with resistless power. Even the age for which we all pray, with its train of infirmities and weaknesses, is only death sporting with life, apparently amusing itself with the gradual demolition of a temple built by the hands of God, but being polluted by the leprosy of sin, becomes his by earthly good. I felt as though I permitted to weep and lament was in the presence of an immortal, around her, how heedless of their reading the sealed leaves of a book sorrows and supplications! And whose mysterious characters can though her friends, dear and beonly be understood in the light of loved as they have been, were to eternity. As though the sacred se-entreat her smiles with all the encrets of the grave were about to dearing blandishments of affection, unfold to my view, and a thrilling how senseless and supine she slumawe crept on my soul as I thought|bers bound in the rigidity of death! of the bright hosts of angelic con- And to this we must all come: voys, hovering around the silent there is no appeal from a law which chamber awaiting to convey the stamps its seal on the smiling brow freed spirit to its God. And I pray-of helpless infancy, and which ed earnestly that I might be prepared for the solemn change, and that when the mighty trifles of a doomed world should fade from my view, my soul might enter with equal ecstasy on the immensities of eternity. Her aged mother, who has resigned ten children to the tomb, came to her and touching her exclaimed, in accents broken a fatal and irresistible inheritance. by infirmity and sorrow, "Thou I repeated my visit to the dying art going my child only a little bed, but all was then still; the while before me, I shall soon be window was darkened, and all the with thee; God is working a glo- melancholy cares and attentions of rious work on thee, and thou wilt sympathy and love were useless, soon be for ever at peace; and the for she lay clad in the garments of big tear of suppressed grief rolled the grave, and motionless as the heavily on the flushed hectic of evening shadow on the bosom of youth and beauty, breaking up be- the mountain. I indulged in all neath the toil and labour of death. the luxury of grief, but I sorrowed The countenance while we gazed not as they sorrow who have no had changed from its tintless hue hope, for I felt a holy assurance to the brightest glow of health, that I should again meet her in which mocked our hopes with the one of those many mansions which appearance that some favourable our adorable Redeemer hath prechange had occurred, and that she pared for us, and as she lay so would be spared to us a little long-still, so moveless and serene, I inBut it was delusive and tran- voluntarily thought sitory. It was the final struggle of conflicting nature, unwilling to resign its power, and tenacious to the last gasp of its broken and conquered authority. Here, thought I, is a lesson of invaluable import-As evening shadows close the weary flower. anee, but how humiliating! Though The feeble pulse, that oft hath wildly throbb'd a world could assemble and offer her With the fierce rush of passion, dies away, an undisputed throne, how incapaMore gently than those glowing hues of light ble of accepting the splendid dis-Which wreathe the mist to beauty, and retinction! Though her children were er. But sweeter than all rest that holy sleep And lulls him to repose-the willing eye, shade, solve |