sincerely desirous to do the will of God, and was willing to make any sacrifice in order thereto; but at that time he did not see his way clear to offer himself for the Itinerancy. Our residences being some distance apart, we did not see each other often. I think we met after this only two or three times at the preachers' meetings. From these slight interviews, I saw in Br. Mason suflicient to satisfy my mind that his picty was deep and genuine, though unostentatious; that he felt a deep interest in all matters connected with the prosperity of the work of God; that he felt it his duty to give himself to reading, study, and prayer, in order to qualify himself for the work to which his Master had called him; that he had placed himself wholly as a sacrifice on the altar of Christ; and that though evidently conscious of his unworthiness to take any part in the work of God, he was perfectly willing to suffer any privation, endure any hardship, make any sacrifice, or expose himself to any danger, so as to glorify his Maker, advance the interest and extend the kingdom of Christ, and thus secure the testimony of a good conscience. His humility and sincerity were strikingly manifest. "At Midsummer, 1836, having offered ourselves as candidates for the Itinerancy, we met at the Holsworthy Quarterly Meeting, held at Grimscott, and passed together through the usual examination. Br. Mason had previously been labouring in the Shebbear Circuit some months, consequently knew from experience some of the difficulties and exercises peculiar to an Itinerant preacher. I well recollect with what seriousness and deep feeling he spoke to me of the various mental and spiritual exercises through which he had passed. He appeared to feel that his office and work was fraught with heavy and dread responsibilities; and that deep piety, holy fervour, quenchless ardour, untiring zeal, undeviating consistency, singleness of eye, heavenly wisdom, a heart panting after God's fulness, a spirit in sympathy with Christ's purposes, and man's condition, a mind ever thirsting for requisite knowledge, with the assiduous and continuous application of its powers to the acquisition of such knowledge; humble, fervent, believing prayer, for the heavenly baptism to sanctify this knowledge, and to control, direct, and prompt the whole soul to holy, useful, and benevolent action; he appeared to see that all this and more than this was necessary to fit him to be an able minister of the New Testament, and to render him successful in bringing sinners to Christ. At the District Meeting, held at Bideford, we met again and were in each other's company two or three days, when we conversed freely and tolerably fully on matters connected with the work in which we were engaged. He referred with peculiar pleasure and emphasis to the signal answers to prayer with which God had favoured him, during his labours in the Shebbear Circuit, in reference to the salvation of sinners; and also as to his walking in the providential path. He was frequently melted to tears when speaking of God's gracious manifestations to his soul. He was now fully persuaded, though often tempted to the contrary, that he was where God had designed him to be. My own spirit was often refreshed whilst in his company, and I left him with the conviction that he was living in God, and striving to the utmost with the ability God had given him, to do the work assigned him. I did not see him after this until the Conference held at Exeter, in 1853, so that I know but little respecting him for a period of seven years. During the first and second years of his Itinerancy we wrote each other a few letters. His letters to me were generally short, but invariably pervaded with a spirit of humility, simplicity, piety, and zeal. Unlike some correspondents who write apparently only for the purpose of pointing out faults in systems and persons; Br. Mason, conscious of his own imperfections, loved to dwell on the goodness of God, on the state of his christian experience, and on the state of things existing in the circuits in which he laboured; thus keeping usefulness as the great object of his life before him whilst writing. At the Exeter Conference he was appointed to the Tenterden Mission; and the following autumn I had the happiness of spending two weeks with you on a missionary tour, when I had the pleasure of Br. Mason's company. From conversation and observation I concluded that he had not only made advancement in useful knowledge, but that he had grown in grace.' 66 His appearance certainly indicated great physical weakness, and I found at times when walking together, that it was with great difficulty he could keep pace with us. He spoke of the journeys as being too long for his strength, and said that he was afraid that the state of his health would soon render his resignation of the Itinerancy necessary: though" said he, "I will continue out, and do my work as long as I can." At the District Meeting, held in London, I saw him again, but was much struck with the great change in his appearance. He had been suffering for some months from a tumour in his back, and his sufferings must have been great; still he had persevered in doing his work, but evidently his constitution was sinking under the complaint. During the sittings of the District Meeting he evinced deep interest in the business, and often made judicious remarks, showing that our connexional system in its bearing and tendencies had not been overlooked by him. He delivered one of the morning lectures. The subject was, The blessedness of hearing and keeping God's word.' Not having heard him preach since 1842, when I first saw him at Holsworthy, I was greatly disappointed. When I first heard him, his manner was dull and heavy, entirely destitute of animation, and almost repulsive; his delivery amazingly slow, approaching sometimes to embarrassment; and his discourse then appeared to me very deficient in arrangement; and his sentences badly formed. Now he had evidently gained confidence and assurance by several years' experience; his arrangement was clear, easy, and natural; his delivery was tolerably rapid, but not without emphasis and pause requisite for impression and reflection; his language though not perfect was greatly improved his sentences were full, expressive, suggestive, oftentimes perfectly laconic; and his manner was earnest, winning, and animating. The discourse was richly evangelical and practical. I never heard him preach but twice, so that I am unable to speak of the character of his general pulpit performances. His abilities and attainments were not of a very high order; but such as he possessed were employed honestly and zealously in promoting the cause of his Redeemer; in striving to bring sinners to Christ, and then to tran them for a blissful immortality. He studied and laboured, not to gain the applause of men, but the smiles and approbation of God. His ser mons and speeches were not learned, flowery, or fanciful; but solid, scriptural, serious, and useful. His piety was quiet and unobtrusive; but at the same time it was deep, regular, manifest, and constant: and having finished his work in the tabernacle, he is now without doubt, serving God unceasingly in the temple above." This extract is rather long, but it so fully expresses my views generally, and is so valuable, that I offer no apology for inserting it. And I have only to add, that the tumour which terminated the earthly existence of Br. Mason broke while he was at Sherness, soon after the District Meeting. He returned to his lodgings at Rolvenden, where every attention was paid to him by the friends, and by his medical adviser [free of charge on the part of the latter.] He bore his affliction with exemplary patience, and rejoiced in his approaching dissolution. In consequence of severe family affliction I did not see him for five or six weeks; but embraced the first opportunity I had of visiting him, and saw that he was sinking fast. The discharge from his back was very copious. In conversation he spoke with the greatest clearness of his acceptance with God, and informed me several times that he knew Christ was his Saviour. I saw him the day before he died in company with the Brethren, Hillman and Horwell. His title to heaven was clear, and he appeared perfectly resigned. About ten minutes before he died, he looked up, and with all the simplicity of a child, he said to the friends who stood by his bed-side, "I think I am dying." They replied, "Yes, you are." reclined his head again on the pillow; and sweetly fell asleep in Jesus, without a struggle, on Saturday, the 28th of October, 1854, in the 33rd year of his age, and the 8th of his Christian Ministry. His remains were conveyed to their last earthly resting place by the Local Brethren. "O may I triumph so, When all my warfare's past; And dying find my latest foe, He R. WESTINGTON. MISCELLANEOUS. THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.* THE main subject of Paley's treatise is the external evidence of Christianity, and especially that part of it which relates to the mir acles of our Lord and his apostles. The other branches of it, in the prophecies and miracles of the Old Abridged from "A view of the Ev idences of Christianity in three parts by WILLIAM PALEY, D. D., Archdeacon of Carlisle. A New Edition with Illustration, Notes, and Supplement,_By the Rev. T. R. BIRKS, M. A., Late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge," Published by the "Tract Society." VOL. XXI. THIRD SERIES. Testament, or the later fulfilment of the prophecies in the New, are touched upon more briefly. Beyond all these there is a moral evidence, which appeals to the universal conscience of mankind. It consists in the direct nature of the precepts of the New Testament, the moral beauty and excellence of the character of the Lord Jesus, the candour and sincerity, the zeal and love, of the evangelists, apostles, and first disciples; and finally, in the moral loveliness of Christian principles, as developed in C consistent and earnest believers of the gospel down to the present day. This kind of evidence has been dwelt upon, though more defectively, in one chapter of the foregoing treatise; but to unfold it completely would require a commentary on almost every page of the New Testament. To see clearly its nature, in its three main branches, we have only to read the sermon on the mount and the twelfth of Romans, the closing chapters from the thirteenth to the seventeenth of St. John's Gospel, and the defence of St. Paul before Festus and Agrippa. He who can read these passages, and remain unimpressed by the plain remarks they supply of purity, sincerity, and love, or fail to discern the brightness of their spiritual beauty, such as befit a Divine revelation, must have seared his conscience, and blinded his eyes to the light of moral evidence. But there is a further and higher class of Christian evidences, which have been entirely passed by in the present treatise, and which may be called internal or spiritual. They are composed of all those proofs of Christianity, and of the Divine glory of the gospel, which reveal themselves to the sincere Christian, when once he has submitted his heart and conscience to the transforming power of these messages of God. It is, of all kinds of evidence, the highest, surest, and most complete, but the least capable of direct communication to others. To the unbeliever it must continue merely a matter of testimony, not of personal apprehension and experience; yet still admits of being so far explained as to prove that it is no mere enthusiastic conceit or fancy, but based on the deepest wants of the human heart, and the fullest harmony of the awakened conscience and purified reason. It thus becomes an evidence higher, and not lower in kind than what is commonly termed scientific demonstration. It may be considered in four different aspects, as it relates chiefly to the individual conscience, to Christian society, to the inspired Seriptures, and to God himself, the source and fountain of all true revelation. The first of these constitutes the experimental evidence of Christianity, or the proof of the gospel which results from its felt agreement with the character, the wants, and the experience of each individual heart that submits to its power. I. This experimental evidence consists, first of all, in the agreement which the awakened sinner finds between what he feels within bimself, and what the Bible declares him to be. The gospel proclaims the universal corruption of man's nature. It tells us that there is none righteous, no, not one; that all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; that men are alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them; that from within, out of the heart of man, proceed all manner of evil thoughts; and that when tried by the only true standard, the Divine law, every mouth must be stopped, and all the world be found guilty before God. It reveals not merely isolated acts of transgression, but a deep and inveterate habit of ungodliness pervading the soul of man, so that it needs an entire renewal, a change described as a new birth and a new creation, before it can really delight in God, and in his holy commandments. Now by these statements the word of God is liable to be confronted by the individual experience of every human being. Each one may look within, and make the comparison. If he find on close search, that he does naturally delight in submitting his own will to the will of his Maker; that no selfishness and pride have place in his bosom; but that his meat and drink, his joy and pleasure, is to do the will of God, then he will have found a short and effectual means of discrediting the truth and divinity of the gospel. But if, on the other hand, he finds that the description of man's heart in the Bible answers perfectly to his own state, and every attempt at closer self-examination only discovers to him a more vivid agreement between its faithful warnings and his own inward experience, there is here a proof of Christianity, deeper and more powerful than all the laborious arguments of human learning -a seal upon the message, which marks it plainly to the innermost conscience as a inessage from the living God. Now the gospel has been submitted to this searching test of human experience times without number, and the result has been invariably the same. Every one who has honestly examined his own heart, and the state of its affections towards his Maker and Preserver, has been forced to the same humbling conviction that the descriptions of his state in the Bible are true and faithful; and that if their language is very remote from the smooth courtesies of the world, it is just because the word of God is living and powerful, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and spirit, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Every varied form in which the fact of human corruption is there announced will meet with a distinct response and confirmation in the history of his own secret experience. Once let any one seriously catechise his own spirit, with a view to ascertain its moral state, and compare it with the voice of Scripture, and the words of the apostle will be speedily fulfilled: " The secrets of his heart are made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report" that God is of a truth the very author of these words, which have power to search out all the hidden mysteries of our being. II. The second branch of experimental evidence consists in the full agreement between the conscious need of the sinner, and the gracious promises and overtures of the gospel. Man feels that he is guilty, and needs forgiveness; that worldly pursuits tend only to vanity and vexation.of spirit, and that he needs a more satisfying portion. He is a daily witness of his own mortality, and needs the assurance of a better life beyond the grave. Now all these wants are met and supplied in the gospel of Christ. It is a message of pardon to the guilty, of peace and holiness to the restless and weary prodigal, of heavenly and eternal rest to those who feel that they are strangers and sojourners on earth, as all their fathers were. Habits of worldliness, or the deceits of vain philosophy, may sometimes disguise these wants from those who ought to feel them most deeply; but still conscience will often awake, and when once awakened, it needs a Divine Physician to heal these deep wounds of the immortal soul. No vague promise of forgiveness can then give it peace, unless it sees, along with the promise, some provision made to vindicate the holiness of the Supreme Lawgiver. Where this is wanting, conscience will be too strong for the instincts of hope, and a cloud of suspicion will rest upon the message, and make it incapable of restoring peace to the burdened heart. Such is the first view of that experimental evidence, which arises from the full accordance between the provision of the gospel, and the known and secret wants of the soul of man. The sinner needs, for his comfort, a message of forgiveness; not a message of impunity, which he can never believe without renouncing his faith in God's moral government altogether, but a message of holy forgiveness and pardoning holiness, which the soul can rest upon with confidence, because it feels it to be no blind hope, framed out of the rebel's wish to escape all punishments, but a message in harmony with the perfections of the Most High. Such a message is found in the gospel, and there only. A full provision is there made for the vindication of God's holiness, as well as for the display of his mercy; so that he may be just, and still the justifier of every one that believeth in Jesus. In the words of the Psalmist, mercy and truth meet together, righteousness and peace embrace each other. The first and deepest want of the fallen spirit is satisfied; while mercy and forgiveness are so wisely dispensed, through the atonement of the Saviour, as only to |