Divine Providence.-Two out of the three Secretaries of the Wesleyan Missionary Society have been removed from us in less than two months.-Both of the persons appointed to attend our PRESIDENT to the next Conference in Ireland, have been called into eternity :-they are gone to join in the blessed conferences above !-the venerable and learned Dr. CLARKE was one; Mr. JAMES was the other.

Now, is it quite unseasonable or unimportant, amidst such unusual spoliations by death, for your minister to inquire, (and he does it with unfeigned humility,) Does not all this look like some special visitation, some "controversy" of God with us? Does it not seem to bid us, with lowly solicitude, "say unto God, Do not condemn me-show me wherefore thou contendest with me?"

Have we provoked the Lord to jealousy by idolizing any of his ministers, and by depending more upon his human instruments than on the agency of his own holy and eternal SPIRIT? Or, have we displeased him, on the other hand, by undervaluing and depreciating his servants; by treating them, or their office and its scriptural rights and claims, with unbecoming indifference and disrespect; or by hindering instead of helping them in their great work?-These, I think, are questions which the Methodists in general, and those of London in particular, on whose ministers the stroke of death has fallen with such astounding severity, ought individually to ask themselves at a time like the present. Truly excellent and affectionate as I know many of the people connected with the metropolitan circuits to be, they will do well to put such inquiries, as I have here ventured to suggest, to their own consciences with all fidelity.

Or, can it be, that times of peculiar temptation to the Church of Christ, and of peculiar anxiety to its best-instructed and most thoughtful friends, are now approaching;-that a proud, and fierce, and bitter spirit of strife and secular contention is likely to infect, defile, and disturb some parts even of the family of God;-and that, in judgment on others, or in mercy to themselves, the men who, in such a crisis, could

I

least be spared, are taken away from the evil to come,” and hidden from the strife of tongues, and from the fear of suffering, in the secret place of God's heavenly tabernacle ?

1

Or. finally, can it be, that our Connexion at large has been somewhat ungrateful for the many holy and valuable ministers, with whom the great HEAD of the CHURCH has from time to time supplied us? Have we forgotten that such ministers are among the choicest gifts of the glorified Saviour to the people of his love; and that what is true of nations, is applicable to Christian communities also, namely, that God's usual providential method of making them great and prosperous is, to raise up amongst them great and good men, eminent for talents and virtues ?* Have we really needed to be reminded of these things by dispensations so painful, by breach upon breach, and stroke after stroke?

1.2. But even if there be nothing of special rebuke or chastisement in recent visitations, there is, at all events, much of general admonition and instruction. Let us, then, humbly acknowledge the frailty of our common nature; let us be seriously impressed by a survey of the desolations which death is making in our families, in our friendships, in our congregations; and let us apply ourselves to the work of immediate preparation for our own approaching dissolution. "The voice" from the tombs of the departed "says, Cry:All flesh is grass; and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it; surely the people is grass: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but

* Allusion is here made to the just sentiment recorded on the well-known monument erected in the Guildhall of London, in memory of the elder PITT,-WILLIAM, EARL OF CHATHAM. After describing the national prosperity resulting, under the divine blessing, from PITT's talents and patriotism, the inscription proceeds as follows:“The Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, mindful of the benefits which the city of London received, in her ample share of the general prosperity, have erected to the memory of this eminent statesman, and powerful orator, this monument in her Guildhall; that her citizens may never meet for the transaction of their affairs without being reminded, that the means by which Providence raises a nation to greatness, are the virtues infused into great men; and that to withold from these virtues, either of the living or the dead, the tribute of esteem and veneration, is to deny to themselves the means of happiness and honour."

the word of our God," with the hopes and comforts founded upon it, "shall stand for ever.""Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning; and you yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord; that, when he cometh, and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately. Blessed. are those servants, whom their Lord when he cometh shall find watching. If he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those: servants. Be ye, therefore, ready also; for the Son of Man cometh at an hour when ye think not.

3. Let us be concerned for the bereaved churches of our Connexion, which have lost so many of their most able and influential ministers, and, by this last stroke, have been deprived of the individual who, at the period of his removal, was unquestionably their brightest living ornament. Let us have recourse to God, Now is the time to exclaim, in all the fervour of united and believing prayer, "Where is the Lord God of Elijah" And, while thus employed, let us not be afraid to "encourage ourselves in God." Both the gifts and the graces of ministers come from him; and with him is “the residue of the Spirit." He can always find, or make, fit instruments for his own work. He can save by many or by few; by men of gigantic mental strength and stature, or by others of far inferior intellectual grade, specially made wise for the occasion by his wisdom, and filled with his Holy Spirit.Amidst all the outward desolations of our Zion, we have good ground to hope in his unfailing mercy. This has been hitherto, indeed, a year of unprecedented bereavement by death, as it respects the preachers and pastors of our Connexion. But it has been, also, a year of unprecedented visitation in the way of gracious and extensive and numerous revivals of the good work of our God, in various parts of our body. "The Lord's hand is not shortened, neither his ear heavy ;" nor is his "Spirit straitened," or "the sounding of his bowels and of his mercies towards us restrained." "My Spirit remaineth among you; fear ye not." Now that our ranks are strangely thinned by the triumphant deaths of our late honoured comrades, let

us who survive draw nearer than ever to each other; and be more closely and firmly united in brotherly affection, in pious zeal, and in benevolent effort. Let us frown, with just indignation, on every attempt to weaken our strength by division, and endeavour to make up by our compactness and concentration whatever we have lost in point of number and expansion; looking to the Author of all good for such an increase of our interior graces, and energies, and resources, as shall compensate, and more than compensate eventually, for any diminution of external splendour and magnificence. Courage, my brethren! "The best of all is, God is with us ;" and will be with us while we shall be "with him," by a faithful, united, and fearless exhibition and defence of those "banners" of pure doctrine and holy discipline, which our fathers and predecessors "set up in his name." They,-dear and sacred are their names and memories,-they are dead: but "the Lord liveth, and blessed be our rock, and let the God of our salvation be exalted."-Hallelujah. The Lord God Omnipotent

reigneth!

APPENDIX.

WHEN the Sermon here published was preached, a few days after Mr. Watson's funeral, the Author, who, from want of time, had been obliged to study brevity in his hasty preparations for it, was also compelled, for the same reason, to omit in the delivery much of what he had actually proposed to offer, especially in reference to the CHARACTER of the deceased. Some of those passages, as well as other illustrations of the subject, which have since occurred to him, or have been suggested by the kindness of friends, he has now incorporated in the preceding pages. The necessity of compression induced him likewise wholly to omit everything which he had learned from his long knowledge of Mr. WATSON, or from the communications of others, in the way of biographical details of his general history. But in compliance with the wish of several friends, he now takes the liberty of appending to his enlarged discourse a brief Outline of that kind. It includes not only some information respecting Mr. WATSON's early life, which had been previously furnished by the obliging attention of the Rev. THOMAS GALLAND, A.M., and other materials then necessarily suppressed, but various particulars subsequently collected by his own careful inquiries into facts, or kindly placed at his disposal by the Rev. JOHN HANNAH, by Mrs. WATSON, and by several other persons, who well knew Mr. WATSON, at different periods of his earthly career. These are embodied in the First Article of this Appendix, under the head of Brief Biographical Notices. They may, probably, after all, be deemed chronological rather than properly biographical ; being stated as succinctly and rapidly as was practicable,