ANOTHER WORKER REWARDED. 455 summer has not gone; and there is enough of beauty and loveliness left to cheer us as we pass on to the actual winter that is threatening to overtake us so soon. How like to life, when the May of abounding and dew-filled blossoms has long passed away, and the July of fervid endeavour and bold deed has given place to the September of proud achievement and coveted success, and that again to the gathering weakness and dreary melancholy of waning powers, and we sit awaiting, with sad thoughts of defeat and failure within us, and plans half carried out, books half written, houses half built around us-awaiting that true Christmas, the advent of the soul to Christ, and to the unending spring of the paradise of God! Be of good cheer, then, aged Christian! the merciful Lord is with thee. "Even to your old age I am He, and even to hoary hairs will I carry you; I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry and will deliver you." He shall give you calm and deep peacefulness, make your old age to flower, if not with the exuberance of "the leafy month of June," yet with a real though sobered beauty; and in His own wellordered time shall usher you into the world where "Everlasting spring abides, And never-withering flowers." JOHN CLIFFORD. ANOTHER WORKER REWARDED. THE REV. JAMES SHAW WAS an "old disciple" and an "old servant." He lived longer than the allotted threescore years and ten, and had finished the work his Lord gave him to do. When only a young man he met with and accepted the Saviour amongst the Wesleyans, and soon became a preacher of considerable acceptance and power. On the separation of the Arminian Methodists from the larger body—though he was not one of the seceders -accident, or rather Providence, threw him among them, and he became one of their travelling preachers, giving up for that purpose a profitable business, and the prospect of a good position in the world. Afterwards he was connected with the late Rev. Mr. Aitken (since settled at Penzance), in his evangelistic labours, and ministered in Liverpool, Sheffield, and other towns. On becoming a Baptist he accepted a call from the General Baptist church, Union Place, Longford, near Coventry, where he laboured with much success for more than seven years, and where his first wife, the mother of his children, a woman of saintly memory, lies buried. Thence he removed to Cradley Heath, in Staffordshire, and some years afterwards to the united churches at Ross and Lay's Hill in Herefordshire. These two places were four miles apart, and the labour proved too much for his strength; though but few ever knew how heavy a burden his work was. Next he went to Whitestone, in the same county, where the opposition of the clergyman to the Baptist Sunday school induced him to open and maintain, for a considerable time, a free day school. Feel ing a desire to live again in his native county, Nottinghamshire, he was easily persuaded to take charge of the church at Southwell; but the dominance of the Establishment, and the previous troubles of the church, together with the absence of any trade to keep young people in the town, prevented great progress. On leaving Southwell, he retired from the ministry and fixed his home in the Isle of Wight, near to Ryde, preaching sometimes for Congregationalists, sometimes for Baptists, and often for Methodists. Being so much occupied with preaching, and his hearing having become so impaired as to make it difficult to listen to other preachers with profit, he entered the ministry again, undertaking the care of the church at Ledbury. This position he held till a year and a half ago, when he resigned, and has since employed his time in preaching, visiting, distributing tracts among the people, and praying, and talking with them of spiritual things. On Thursday, Oct. 21, his niece, who had for several years made his house her home, died, and in bidding her farewell he said, "We shall not be separated long, darling." The next day he followed her to heaven. For a week he had been ailing; but nothing serious was apprehended till Friday, Oct. 22, when he suddenly complained of feeling faint, and in a few minutes his happy spirit took its flight for its native clime. All his affairs he had left in the most perfect order. Two months previously he had visited his sons and daughters. His letters were all answered; his papers all arranged; and the last of a number of tasks which he set himself about his house and garden finished. Everything was in its place. He had nothing to do but to die. Nothing could be more fitting or beautiful than the setting of his sun. His body, along with that of his niece, was laid in the Ledbury Cemetery, Oct. 26; all the houses on the way thither having their blinds drawn as a mark of respect. He was followed to the grave by his three sons, Mr. Henry Brown Shaw, of Coventry; Mr. James Shaw, of West Bromwich; and the Rev. N. Herbert Shaw, of Dewsburythe Burial Service being read by the Rev. C. Y. Potts, assisted by the Rev. T. Field. The latter gentleman preached a funeral sermon on the following Sunday to a crowded audience.. The deceased was a specimen of what a Christian may, and ought to be. As a preacher he had much more than the average native ability; and he might have been amongst the foremost preachers of his day if his training had been worthy of his natural endowments. But he was entirely self-educated, and often felt deeply the want of scholastic attainments. In temper and disposition he was well-balanced, and nearly always sunny. He was characterised by strong common sense, independency of spirit, deep religious feeling, and Christian manliness. His widow and children have suffered an irreparable loss, but they have a precious legacy in the remembrance of his noble example, and the truest joy mingles with their sorrow. They know that he is only hiding himself for a little while, after which they will see him again, and heaven itself is the brighter for the prospect of meeting one who reflected, with such clearness and beauty, the character of Christ. N. H. SHAW. DR. BROCK-THE PREACHER. THE decease of Dr. Brock, notwithstanding he had reached the age of sixty-eight, comes upon us with all the shock of a painful surprise. His appearance and spirit at the recent meetings of the Baptist Union at Plymouth were so hale, hearty, and cheerful, and his work so able, energetic, and strong, that all who were present were encouraged to anticipate years more of valuable service from him. His ringingly eloquent words, his overflow of cheerful enthusiasm, seemed to indicate much stored-up power; but after a very brief illness, the forces of the body have failed, and his name has to be added to the list, so long and so sad, of men taken away from us during the months of this year of ministerial bereavement. Dr. Brock was a leader: eminently such amongst Baptists, and in the first rank amongst other leaders of Christian and public service. His advent to London marks the beginning of an epoch of Baptist history in the metropolis. It ceased to be parochial, and became metropolitan. Thanks to Sir Morton Peto, it leapt out of its hidingplaces and stood forth a public and an impressive fact; doing work of no better quality, perhaps, than before, but doing it now so as to arrest the attention of the rushing tide of life in the great city. William Brock came from Norwich to London when he was in his prime. His natural powers, by no means of secondary quality, were enriched with the potent and perfecting forces of a long and chequered experience. Overflowing energy; keen and active sympathies with men and goodness; strong sound sense; an eager and practical intellect; a large catholicity of spirit, blended with warm affection for his own denomination; a fairly furnished mind; good speaking ability; and whole-souled consecration to Christ: these, and other qualities, enforced and fortified with the ripe results of business knowledge acquired in watchmaking, of training at College, and of ardent pastoral labours for many years in the city of Norwich, were all ready for the service of God in the gospel of His Son when William Brock stepped into the Bloomsbury pulpit. The place to which he thus came was undoubtedly an incalculable advantage. It set his powers on a throne, and gave them a wide dominion. The Bloomsbury spires were at a commanding point of metropolitan life. The chapel was new, large, commodious, impressive. Compared with other Baptist chapels of that day, it was a giant. It compelled attention to itself, as the Metropolitan Tabernacle does now. And perhaps the greatest merit of the Norwich preacher is this, that he was great enough for such a place and time, and could meet the wide and various demands made upon his resources. He was a living and growing preacher. His sermons on Sunday were not those of a recluse, hidden away from men and the world all the week; buried out of sight and hearing in huge tomes of dry theology, or lost in reveries of world-forgetting meditation. They were like himself, all astir with the life-pulses of the age. Men felt as if he had been with them all the week; sorrowing with them over their defeats; shouting over their victories; looking with their eyes on that incomprehensible but always profoundly interesting phenomenon, society. The newspaper was to him no idle gossip of the hour, to be conned at the breakfast table and done with. It showed the signs of destroying disease or increasing health in humanity to a sympathetic man, whose hand was on its pulse. Again and again we have heard him speak of his indebtedness to the Times, and with what thoroughness he studied it. "The Bible and the Times newspaper are the best material for the preacher," was the way in which he unwittingly represented his quick susceptibility to the life around him, and his strong faith in the living creed that the God of the Bible is the God of every day. Another prominent feature of his preaching was the manifest proof it bore in every part, of elaborate workmanship. He wrote his sermons -wrote them fully, carefully, and retouched them after they were written. He never shirked labour. Sermons, lectures, addresses, all alike gave indication of hard and persistent work. There was nothing slipshod, awkward, or involved in his utterance; nothing haphazard in his choice of words or themes. His language was often ponderous, immense, like the man, affecting Latin derivatives rather than Saxon; but it was always selected. The structure of his discourses was artistic in a high degree. Every sermon we had the privilege of hearing had the ring of the anvil in it; a ring so distinct and resonant, that we could not always forget the worker in listening to his work. The finished sentences were to a large extent given from memory; yet with none of that painfully introspective glance and sentence-hunting aspect, so often characterizing memoriter preachers. His manner was free from constraint; and his " delivery," save for the reminders it contained of the artistic construction of the different parts of the discourse, as fresh as the most extemporaneous utterance. This art was, however, part of the preacher's strength. It suited him. It seemed to fit his nature. All will remember the Brockian style of repeating, in another setting, emphatic words in a sentence, and of concluding each successive section of a discourse with a graphic summary of the main points it contained, and urging them home on the reason and conscience with a tremendous sledge-hammer power. The energy of conviction with which such reasoning struck the mind was sometimes perfectly irresistible. Men who were young in the early days of the Bloomsbury ministry have recently told us that they vividly recall to this hour the penetrative and overwhelming power of many of his discourses. Dr. Brock was par excellence a defender of the faith once delivered to, and the work carried on by the saints. In a certain, hearty, popular, and crushing style, this was his forte. Being a man of his age, and responsive to the thought and feeling of the hour, it was inevitable, in such times as the last quarter of a century, that his preaching should often partake of an apologetic and reasoned character. Not so much by a careful analysis and complete recital of the doubts and objections of opponents of Christianity; but rather by setting out, in cogent well-knit sentences, and with the resonant accent of personal conviction, the positive truths and beneficent issues of Christianity, he illumined the path of the doubting, fortified the spirit of the timid, steadied the step of the wavering, and increased the confidence of the believer. The prospect of routing the foes of modern Missions to the heathen OUR MAGAZINE.-THE SACRED NAME. 459 was always attractive to him; and in fine style he smote the scoffing crowd of objectors, hip and thigh, and compelled his audience to see the ignominy of their defeat. It was a positive luxury to a combative spirit to hear him in this vein, and to cheer the defiant warrior, as he stood master of the field. The Christian faith has lost a valiant champion in his removal; and Christian work will miss his hearty co-operation, practical counsel, and stalwart defence. Loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ in all things, a strong and manly Christian life, a felt and acknowledged dependence on the grace of Christ, together with the qualities we have very briefly sketched, contributed to make William Brock, whose loss we mourn, one of the most healthily influential English preachers of the last half century. JOHN CLIFFORD. OUR MAGAZINE FOR NEXT YEAR. THE six years' service of the churches we have been privileged to render as Editor of our denominational Magazine has fixed in us a strong conviction of the real use of our literature to the churches. To champion principles like those we hold, to help in work such as our churches undertake, to feed the springs of Christian life, and purify Christian thought and life, can never be rated too high. It saves men. It builds up character. It tends to the glory of God. We therefore appeal to every church officer, minister, elder, and deacon, and to every reader, to increase the number of our subscribers. Make a vigorous effort to double the circulation in your midst. In many quarters we are below the maximum of readers. Make the Magazine known. Introduce it. Give it away. Somehow or other, let it have the chance of speaking for itself. Now we scarcely need "letters of recommendation to you." You know us and it. But we may add that we feel so keenly the responsibility of the work, that we will spare nothing within our power to carry the GENERAL BAPTIST MAGAZINE up to our ideal of an instrument meant to help all the Associated Churches in all their corporate and individual work. We trust to loving hearts, and know that we do not trust in vain. THE SACRED NAME OF JESUS. ONE name of beauty and of joy We give no little child; It is so pure, we tremble lest By us it be defiled. And yet it was a common name Had to the manger come. And still the names of noblest men, We long to link them with the good With some sweet love that found our hearts Ripley. But reverence finds no common use And howsoe'er 'twas used before But O! Thou Fount of love and good, Give Thou Thy sweetest name to all Writ deeply on their secret souls, E. HALL JACKSON. |