his day, yet that now his poetry is very little read; and he, as either bishop or missionary, is thought of or remembered only by a handful of our race. He is gone; comparatively speaking all knowledge of him has gone also and yet his work remains. Men sing his hymns, and know not whether he was a "Wesleyan local" or a "Baptist itinerant," and dream never that he was an Indian bishop. But what does it matter? The workman may have gone; the work yet remains. And though he is dead, he yet speaks. His voice may be unrecognized, and its "whence" unperceived, and its "whither" equally unknown. But the voice once uplifted, its sound never dies. And just as our voices, by their different inflections and intonations are said to be still ringing on in some upper airy region where their owners are unknown, so the voice of the servant of Christ never ceases sounding the Master's will. Though the workman goes, the work remains ! The word endures. Like the plants of earth self-sown and reproduced, and reproduced and self-sown again, so that for generations following the crops come up in glad abundance, rich and strong, the word spoken for the Master descends from generation to generation, carried on by means of its tenacious hold upon the hearts of men, and ever carrying with it the fire and earnestness of the voice that first sounded it abroad.

The word lives, though the speaker dies. It is so with Heber. It will be so with you and me. Whatever work, earnestly, sincerely, prayerfully, we have done in the Master's service, that work will not be lost. Whatever teaching, humbly, earnestly, and with ardent yearning for souls for Christ we have striven to give, that teaching will live. We, too, must die. Our names may be forgotten; our very existence may be positively lost in the lapse of time, our work for Christ will still live. Our earnestness will be reproduced in the earnestness of after ages. Our ardent longings for the Master's glory will be reproduced in the earnest self-denying toil and noble fidelity of the growing love of the family of God. Being dead, we yet shall speak, though none recognise our voice, and though no one has heard our name. The glory of the workman is lost in the glory of the Master's work. "He must increase.”

TEARS O'ER OUR BROTHERS' GRAVES.

LAST Summer were their hands in ours,
Their greetings in our ears;
Our joy was bright as summer flowers,
Our parting knew no fears.

Yet with the summer flowers they went,
Touched by no autumn spell;

For scythe-mown, with a swift descent,
They faded not-but fell!

The first where ocean's billows roam
Around the Great Orme's Head;
The next so far from friend's and home
That no farewells were said:
But one, with all his kindred near,
Was underswept by death;

'Twas something that he knew their tear,
And they his parting breath.

And stunned with grief we feebly ask-
Were skilled physcians near?
Or think, had each had lighter task,
Then all had still been here:

We heave the heart's sad bitter sigh,

And cry, as Mary cried

Oh! Christ, if Thou hadst then been nigh,
Our brothers had not died!
Ripley.

Hush! Christ was there-is here-and weeps
His loving tears with ours;

And all the gentle words He speaks
Are calm victorious powers;

They carry to the inmost heart
The hope that ever saves
From all despairs-they heal our smart
E'en by our brothers' graves.

Not only still they tears and fear,
But give intelligence

Of those who were so lately here-
How He has borne them hence,
That somewhere in His glory they
In all their wills are one
With His, who helps us ere we pray
Thy will, not mine, be done.
And so content us with His peace
That had we now the power
We would not, though our sorrow cease,
Abridge their joy an hour

By cancelling their glory-birth
And freedom from our bounds

To call them back to weeping earth,
And from their early crowns.

EDWARD HALL JACKSON.

HOW TO MANAGE CHURCH FINANCE.

No. XI.-Getting rid of Chapel Debts..

BY A "LIVE" DEACON.

MR. BEECHER's paper, the Christian Union, inserted the following caustic paragraph a short time ago:-"Church debts are becoming a nuisance and scandal; church loans an incubus which none but the best saints have grace enough to carry; church finances more than a match for angel's wisdom." And Dr. Holland, in Scribner's Magazine for October, says that the following ought to be the form of dedication for places of worship at the present time:-"We dedicate this edifice to Thee, our Lord and Master; we give it to Thee and Thy cause and kingdom, subject to a mortgage of 150,000 dollars. We bequeath it to our children and our children's children, as the greatest boon we can confer on them (subject to the mortgage aforesaid), and we trust that they will have the grace and the money to pay the interest and lift the mortgage. Preserve it from fire and foreclosure, we pray Thee, and make it abundantly useful to Thyself-subject, of course, to the aforesaid mortgage." From which interesting items we may conclude that the unwelcome combination, of a "chapel debt" and a "church deacon," is as often found on the other side of the water as on this.

Deacons must deal with chapel debts. We cannot avoid them if we would. The very qualities which made us the elect of the church for the management of its financial business will render it incumbent upon us to accept responsibilities in connexion with work which is not only similar in character, but which also closely affects the amount of the fund raised for purely church purposes. So that this special work is obligatory; and the diaconal influence ought to be the most weighty brought into action on committees for forming chapel debts, or for the more difficult and perilous task of getting rid of them.

A deacon of a church in the South tenaciously maintains that chapel debts are unrighteous creations, and ought on no account whatever to be contracted; and therefore holds Mr. Spurgeon aloft as a pattern of good works, because he would not open the Metropolitan Tabernacle till it was paid for. He might as well maintain that nations should never borrow money, or proclaim the Queen as a pattern in all housewifely duties. Mr. Spurgeon is an exceptional man, and can do exceptional things, as not a few find who try to do things a là Spurgeon. Chapel debts are inevitable, so long as we have men of venture, who are impecunious; and ministers who will live on the barest pittance, if they can but serve God by building houses for His worship and glory.

And what is more to the point, those debts are often as righteously created as they are inevitable. Why, it is often asked-and nobody can give the answer, should not a handful of people, wisely judging the needs and ability of a neighbourhood, erect a building, and leave a large share of the cost to be met by those who will enjoy the privileges of work and worship therein? Why, again, should ministers, who have cut off large slices from a scanty income for years, for the sake of doing such a good work, continue at that self-denying task to the end of their days, for the sake of setting, may be, a wealthy congregation free from a slight burden ? The division of responsibilities is a dictate at once, of justice, Christian feeling, and good sense.

The points to be kept steadily before the diaconal mind are, first, that debts obviously of an unmanageable character ought never to be incurred; assuredly not by expenditure for mere show and ornamentation, or elaborate and unnecessary apparatus. That a debt will be a difficulty is no reason at all against it. Business men know that well enough, and act upon it six days a week. The incurring of a debt is often the acquisition of a large gain. A merchant knows that borrowing money is often the wisest thing he can do. So if a chapel debt is justified by the circumstances of the case, and can be handled by men of average ability so as neither to cripple the church nor its pastor, then there is no strong ground against inviting it.

The second point is in reference to getting rid of a debt. It should be so done as that the process will be a "means of grace" to church and pastor alike.

More skill is requisite to compass this than for anything else the deacon has to do. Getting rid of a debt is mostly a perilous thing. Still it should be wisely, hopefully, and bravely undertaken, with an eye to all the risks of the business, and a determination to avoid them as far as possible. Whilst there should be no feverish hurry, yet cowardice must not suffer the debt to live too long, or its removal will be sure to become intolerable, its very antiquity taking all the grace out of giving to get free of it.

I know a minister who says that a debt wisely managed is one of the best means of grace a church can have; and who tells sad stories of churches that have acted in the most "graceless" way almost as soon as they had no debt to remove, no special financial work to do. But mostly it is otherwise. Churches either do, or think they do, suffer in freshness of spiritual tone, fineness of conscience, and energy of evangelizing endeavour, by the consecration of their power to money getting and giving.

It is easy to say, "These things ought not so to be." Everybody knows that. It is only here and there a solitary individual who carries such an intensity of spiritual emotion that he can spread his spiritual nature over all his life, bathe it with the pure light of heaven, and so infuse a life divine into all material work as to prevent it from materialising him. Still, ministers and deacons must not talk twaddle about this subject. The sickly maundering about money giving and getting, as if it could not be a supremely spiritual service, is irritating in the extreme. Let us be men. Never say it is unspiritual work. It is nothing but maudlin cant that blubbers thus. It may be more spiritual than a prayer-meeting; more bracing to the faith and zeal and love than the best service of song. Getting rid of chapel debts never need lower the spirituality of the church's life in the least. If it does, it is because the church does its work in the spirit of the world, and not in the spirit of Christ.

But great care should be taken not to worry and annoy churches, either with the method, or the time, or the urgency of the effort. The process should be comparatively easy, always cheerful and good-humoured, with well-chosen pauses, and abundant explanation of the spiritual aspects and bearings of financial work in Christian life. Most men look on money giving for God as they do on the payment of a bill; not as an act of worship, a sacrifice of love and devotion to the Lord of our new life. With unwearied persistence we must keep foremost the idea that the giving is to God, and for His service, and so it will expand the heart and ennoble the life.

More imperative is it that deacons should shield the pastor of the debtburdened chapel from any possible peril. Never let your minister be a travelling "beggar" for more than fourteen days a year. I have seen so much of the riskiness of this begging occupation, that I wish I could get all our deacons to feel as I feel about it. I do not say it is necessarily injurious. Indeed, I heard a minister say once that begging for a chapel debt is the best school you can go to for acquiring a knowledge of the wonderful inventiveness of human nature in giving reasons for not doing an unwelcome thing. I also remember meeting a man in the city some years ago who was positively overflowing with delight because he had unexpectedly obtained £100 where he scarcely expected £10. These facts notwithstanding, I am sure that while a little begging may do him good, too much will kill him. It wastes time, energy, moral and spiritual fibre. It depraves. Not a few men have built new chapels, and buried themselves in the foundations. Many a minister has cleared off a debt, and himself too. To repeat the same story a hundred times, with the same unabated interest; to stand, cap in hand, before men of wealth, to beg and crave for assistance, is to take the best life out of the man, to exhaust his energies, and, in a word, demoralize him. Like angels' visits, so the money begging visits of ministers ought to be, few and far between, for their own sakes.

But whilst the removal of the debt is delayed by this great care for the truest welfare of the church and its spiritual leader and teacher, the real burden of the debt must not be left on the narrow shoulders of the pastor, as if it were his and his only. This is a sore mischief. I have made inquiries of pastors who have asked me for help, and have been grieved to find churches whose officers do not so much as feel an ounce weight of the responsibility of inventing plans or arranging methods for the diminution of the size of the incubus. They

WORK FOR THE DEAF AND DUMB IN DERBY. 423

leave it. They do not so much as relieve it with one flash of their generous sympathies: and occasionally, in unguarded moments, are willing to believe we talk as though they had no deep concern with regard to it; and so suffer the whole strain to fall on the minister, till the crushing debt takes the heart out of him, and forces him to adapt all his life and work to the removal of an incumbrance which has become unbearable because he stands under it alone; but would scarcely have bent him one-eighth of an inch from the perpendicular if his fellow-officers had heartily and sympathizingly stood by his side.

66

Yes," one will say, "and this is because we cannot tell what methods to adopt." But this branch of the subject I must leave to next month.

WORK FOR THE DEAF AND DUMB IN DERBY.

Ir was my intention to give to the readers of our Magazine a short account of the Deaf and Dumb Association affiliated to the St. Mary's Gate Sunday school; but as the Conservative church organ in Derby, the Derby Mercury, has given a report of the first public meeting, held Oct. 12, it will perhaps be better to leave the official reporter of the Mercury to tell his own tale, rather than to one specially interested in the undertaking. The report is necessarily much abridged.

"One of the most interesting meetings ever held in Derby was that at the St. Mary's Gate chapel on Monday night. For some time past religious services have been held at this place of worship for the spiritual instruction of the deaf mutes, and to this have been more recently added entertainments of a more secular character, consisting of lectures and conversation meetings. The teacher and secretary of this class is Mr. W. R. Roe, who has laboured with a zeal and disinterestedness which is worthy of all praise. All the services and lectures are conducted in the finger and sign language, and no speech is heard. The deaf and dumb, having good characters, are assisted in obtaining employment, and provided with an interpreter on certain occasions. The religious instruction conveyed, it should be remarked, is distinctive of no sect.

"Three hundred and fifty persons sat down to tea; and afterwards a public meeting was held, presided over by Mr. George Dean, the president of the Association. In the centre of the chapel were seated the clients of the movement, between thirty and forty in number, some of them having come from other towns to be present. Excellent and telling speeches were delivered by the Chairman, the Rev. E. H. Jackson, of Ripley, the Rev. W. Griffith, Mr. Crocker, Mr. Thompson, and others; and these were translated into the sign language by Mr. Roe. The report of the Association was interpreted by one of the class, Mr. G. Kniveton. The following resolution was passed:-That this meeting hails with great satisfaction the formation and steady progress of an Association for promoting the spiritual and temporal welfare of the deaf and dumb, and pledges itself to use its best efforts to promote its success.' There was also a lip recitation by Mr. Kniveton, and a recitation in the sign language, entitled 'The Bible,' by a boy named Peat, a deaf mute.

"Mr, Griffith, the missionary to the deaf and dumb of Birmingham, himself thus afflicted, delivered a capital address in the sign language, which was read to the meeting by Mr. Roe at the same time. In his address were the following touching sentences:-Have you ever mused on the real condition of the deaf and dumb? By my own experiences I know and feel their condition perfectly. Not only are we shut up from hearing pleasant sounds, music, praises, hymn singing, birds singing, bees humming, music of the streams and rivers, etc.; but also from the tones of loving mothers' and fathers' voices. Other children are called dears and darlings and other names-you know best, because I have never heard them myself. But the deaf and dumb child hears nothing of all this. He is insensible to the sweet softening influence of loving wordsdeprived of the moral and intellectual advantages which social conversation gives. When the deaf and dumb leave school, after having received instruction, they are still shut up in prison house; but the only difference is that afterwards there is no grate on the prison house, but they come out with a little opening,

through which they can receive the thoughts and feelings of their fellow-man. This poor loop-hole for knowledge needs to be kept in continual use. They depend on the eye for all the knowledge they can gain. There are thousands left altogether untaught.

"Mr. Crocker, of Nottingham, who claims the honour of having formed the first deaf and dumb class for religious instruction, gave a very interesting explanation of the sign language.

"The most interesting portion of the evening, however, was the presentation of a splendidly illuminated address and inkstand to Mr. Roe by his class-no one with vocal speech being allowed to contribute. The presentation was made by Mr. G. Kniveton, in sign language, as follows:-It is with unfeigned pleasure that I have to present to you, on behalf of your deaf and dumb friends, this testimonial, consisting of an address and inkstand, as a token of our gratitude for your noble efforts for our spiritual and temporal welfare. I wish that the present was worth its weight in gold; but as we are too limited in number, and as we give it from our hearts, you will rejoice us by graciously accepting it as a token of our appreciation of your noble work, as a labour of love, and that of a true philanthropist. We wish that Almighty God may abundantly bless your labours on earth; and that at last you may receive your reward in heaven. Such is the prayer of your humble flock, on whose behalf I now make this gift.

"Mr. Roe replied as follows:-My deaf and dumb friends,—If I had two hearts, I should feel with one very unworthy to receive your beautiful gift; but as I have only one heart, I thank you with the whole of that, not only for the gift itself, but a thousand times more for the kind feelings which prompted it. I will honestly own that at certain times I have felt somewhat discouraged with the many difficulties which beset my path in the work connected with our Association; but I have never doubted its ultimate success, feeling assured it was the hand of God which led me to start this work; and being for the promotion of His glory, however humble the undertaking, it could not possibly fail. The kind terms in which you speak of me in the beautiful address, will not only be an encouragement to me, but a stimulus to further exertion; and I sincerely hope it may be preserved for many, many years to come as a memorial of this most interesting occasion. When I look upon your address, and remember that no hearing person was allowed to subscribe to it; when I look at the fact that you were but a small assembly to secure it-it will be an encouragement to me to use my utmost efforts for your welfare; and I trust while my life shall last I shall at least be deeply interested in the spiritual welfare of our Association. During the past nine months I have addressed you ninety-two times, and as you know I make it my rule never to address you without telling you some truth from the grand old gospel, so to-night I feel I must say a few words, however brief. I have repeatedly urged the claims of Christ upon your heart and life. I have put before you sin and its consequences if not repented of. I have earnestly appealed to you to come into the Saviour's fold-to lay down your arms of rebellion, and yield yourselves to the Lord. It is my privilege and duty to present Jesus to you all to-night as the way, the truth, and the life, and through Him is the only way to eternal joys. Though you are, my friends, deaf and dumb, I beseech you be not spiritually deaf to the calls of a loving Saviour; neither let your heart be dumb, but let it rejoice that He came to redeem us from all sin; and if we believe and trust in Him, He is truly our Saviour. While thanking you again for your testimonial, which is a most beautiful one, let me say that nothing will bring more joy to my heart than to see you leading a true and happy life-living to Christ, who lived and died for you. If such a life is yours, you will have the encouragement of every right-hearted person, the approval of your own conscience, and best of all, the smile of God will ever be upon you. Such a life as this adds a lustre to the brightest character; if such a life be yours, then, notwithstanding your silence, it will shine out in the midst of the dark generation as the stars of the firmament, and your death will be as the going down of the morning star, which sets amidst light and glory."

Will some of our churches look out for the W. R. Roe's in their midst; and will the members of our churches—all of them-give God-speed to such men, especially in the earlier stages of the formation of societies similar to the one described above? FRED THOMPSON.