In the last paper were named thirtysix hymns by which Newton was familiarly known as one of our Christian poets, and that number might have been increased; but there is a wide contrast respecting the productions of the esteemed writer now under consideration, from the rather singular fact which has not been much noticed, that his fame as a hymn writer appears to have rested chiefly on two hymns of such general acceptation that they are to be found (as they well deserve) in almost all our selections. Besides these two, there are only three or four, but slightly known, and no others scarcely to be met with. Dr. Ryland did not much cultivate the small poetic gift he possessed, for his whole collection entitled," Hymns and Verses on Sacred Subjects," does not reach one hundred in number. All are excellent in sentiment, some also in composition, but with scarcely any pretension to poetry. Many are very defective even in rhyme, which accourts for their long neglect few reaching mediocrity, and the rest falling far below that point.

Still, his two "favourite hymns" merit all the honour bestowed on them, since none have more sweetly uttered the submission of the child of God to his Heavenly Father's will, and the satisfying permanence of the blessings from the fullness of grace in Christ Jesus, when earthly comforts fade and die. When we know the circumstances urder which certain hymns were comEcsed, how much is our interest increased? This remark unquestionably

refers to those now under notice; and, as the suffering and affection of one heart meets the heart of another, it will perhaps explain how, by the witness of one spirit, they attained their popularity. For the benefit of such as are not acquainted with the narrative, we venture to run the risk of repetition. None will, therefore, be surprised to know that the original MS. had this note in the handwriting of the afflicted author:- "I recollect deeper feelings of mind in composing this hymn, than, perhaps, I ever felt in making any other." Dec. 3rd, 1777.

John Ryland, jun., aged twenty-four, was on the eve of marriage to a most estimable young lady who fell dangerously ill. One day, in deep solicitude, he called at the house to inquire respecting the object of his warmest affections, and received from the maid-servant this reply: "The doctors are now upstairs and she is as ill as she can be; if you call, sir, in a quarter of an hour, you shall know what they say." He turned from the door in anguish of heart, to spend the fifteen minutes until the probable confirmation of his distressing fears. Not far from the house a large building was under repair; so, seating himself on a heap of stones, he picked up a piece of slate and scratched thereon the utterances of his troubled breast, in those verses which have found an echo, and proved, for a century since, a balm to thousands of wounded spirits (as the writer can testify) in times of sore bereavement and grief.

The hymn is the twenty-seventh in his own collection, without any text or title, beginning

"O Lord! I would delight in Thee,

And on Thy care depend, To Thee in every trouble flee, My best, my only friend!" "When all created streams are dried, Thy fulness is the same; May I with this be satisfied, And glory in Thy name."

But, better than their fears, the day of sorrow was postponed, the lady recovered and became the young pastor's

wife. After the enjoyment of a full measure of human bliss, for one year only, she gave birth to a son, who survived his mother, and the hand of "death did part" them. This bitter

blow occasioned the other equally celebrated hymn; for on the day following, driven to the only refuge, poor Ryland, with his motherless babe upon his knee, penned those lines, the language of many a heart in loving submission to "Him who performeth all things for us" (Ps. lvii 2). This (No. 28) also is without any title :

"Sovereign Ruler of the skies!
Ever gracious, ever wise!
All my times are in Thy hand,—
All events at Thy command."

"Thee at all times will I bless; Having Thee, I all possess:

How can I bereaved be,

Since I cannot part with Thee?"

Instead of giving, as is usual, the whole of one of these "favourite hymns," found in all selections, it may be more acceptable to insert one, very similar in its strain and sentiment, but which, after a careful search, in most of those in use, has not been found even once, which omission is somewhat singular. It is No. 6 :—

"RESIGNATION.

"O Thou, whose providence divine
Fulfils Thine own decrees,
And overturns the schemes of men,
Or prospers, it if please!

"Controlling all, by none controlled,

Thine arm is ever strong;
All-wise, most holy, just and kind,
Thou canst do nothing wrong.

"Worm as I am, a rebel once,

But now subdued by grace;
I glory in Thy Sovereign love,
And there my hope I place.
"In Thee delighting, to Thy care

I would my way commit;
Thou orderest every step I take,
And holdest up my feet.

“Into this world to do Thy will
(And not my own) I came;'
So said Thy Son: and His
may grace
Teach me to say the same.

"Body and soul redeemed with blood,
O God, are both Thine own;
I lay them at Thy footstool, Lord,
Before Thy sacred throne.

"My outward ways,
thoughts,

my inward

Direct, succeed, prevent ; Give, or withhold, or re-assume, I ought to be content. "Nothing I absolutely ask, Except more grace to be With Thy good pleasure satisfied, And swallowed up in Thee."

1775.

Part of the next hymn is in Rippon's, and a few modern selections :

"Rejoice, the Saviour reigns

Among the sons of men;
He breaks the prisoners' chains,
And makes them free again :

Let hell oppose God's only Son,
In spite of foes, His cause goes on."

There is another, entitled, "Anticipation of Death and Glory," very good, but seldom seen, which, the author states, was "Composed while walking through the streets of London :”–

"Ah! I shall soon be dying,
Time swiftly glides away ;
But, on my Lord relying,
I hail the happy day.

"The day when I must enter
Upon a world unknown;
My helpless soul I venture
On Jesus Christ alone."

To add one more, a nice "Hymn for a Child," written, he says, at the request of the wife of his intimate friend, Rev. Andrew Fuller, for her little daughter Sarah, who died May 30th, 1786, aged six years and a half :—

"Lord, teach a little child to pray,

Thy grace betimes impart,
And grant Thy Holy Spirit may
Renew my infant heart.”

John Ryland was born in 1753 at the rectory house at Warwick, in which town his father of the same name was a Baptist minister and kept a seminary, till he removed to Northampton in 1759, where he laboured with some eminence as a preacher, an author, and a scholar for twenty-seven years, until 1786, when he went to Enfield, where he died in 1792, aged sixty-nine. Mrs. Rylands was a pious mother, and trained her children in the fear of God. His father was so fond of languages that he taught his son Hebrew when but a child, who was so apt in learning that often has been told the facts (almost incredible but for proof) that when only five years old he read and translated from Hebrew the twentythird Psalm to the celebrated James Hervy, who lived near, and, to his father's great delight, who recorded respecting his child's subsequent proficiency in Greek :-"Finished reading and translating the whole Greek Testament, Saturday, December 12th, 1761, in eight months and twelve days. Aged eight years and ten months." [!!]

But, better than human learning, John, the younger, early sought the wisdom from above. He was remarkably tender in his feelings, and often wept at the mention of the future punishment of the wicked; and, following after holiness, said how "he wanted to be like Christ." He recorded the date and circumstances of his conversion in his fourteenth year, and was baptized in 1767, and had serious

thoughts of the Christian ministry. Sanctioned by the church, he began to preach while but young, and, in 1781, age twenty-eight, he was ordained as co-pastor with his father, and, after his removal, became sole pastor. He was much blest in his labours, and was a shining light as a devoted preacher in the town and the country around. He became the intimate friend of such men as John Newton and T. Scott, and the earnest co-adjutor of the noble founders of the Baptist Mission to India in all its early struggles and discouragements, so that he stands with Carey, Fuller, Sutcliffe, and Pearce in the foremost rank of "Baptist Worthies."

The year 1793 witnessed a great change in his career. At that time Bristol was the only Baptist College in England, and required a president in connection with the pastorate of Broadmead Chapel in that town. Classical learning was then rare in the denomination, and it was at once generally considered that no one could be found so qualified for the united important offices as was Mr. Ryland. They were affectionately offered and earnestly earnestly pressed on him, till, with great reluctance and the sorrow of his people, he felt it his duty to accept, it which he did to the great relief of all interested. Nor was the judgment wrong, as the responsible duties were faithfully fulfilled by him for thirty years with the manifest tokens of the blessing of God and the profit of many. Not only in the western city, no minister was better known or appreciated; but in continual services far and near, no one was in more request for services of all kinds, which he was always ready to fulfil. Among these he owned to having assisted at eighty ordinations in twenty years.

Dr. Ryland was blest with a singular power for continuous public speaking, and never appeared weary alter his efforts. He used to say playfully that he could preach sermons all day long without fatigue, if he were conveyed from place to place, as walking was a trouble to him. His sermons were we'l digested and much esteemed by his

hearers for their fulness of spiritual instruction and depth of thought; yet the manner of their delivery was anything but attractive to strangers, with a small Bible held by both hands close to his face. Yet such was his pathos, cogent reasoning, and appeals that his hearers bore with and scarcely noticed any peculiarity, or the above ungraceful attitude. He used a few notes written in a beautifully small hand; indeed, few could read them, but his vision was singularly clear, of almost microscopic power. Several of these are kept in the Bristol Library, where we have seen them, and are really illegible without a glass, yet plain to

MR. JOHN BUNYAN MCCURE. "The memory of the just is blessed."

THE Lord has again come down and called from our midst another distinguished watchman from the walls of Zion, in the person of our dear brother, the late Mr. John Bunyan McCure.

His removal from the church below to the home above was so unexpected unexpected that we can scarcely realise the fact that here we shall see his face and listen to his voice no more, But his work is done, the race has closed, the conflict is over.

He has now reached the goal, obtained the prize, gained the victory, and, amongst the glorified, is holding communion face to face with Him whose name he delighted to exalt, and to whose truth he bore faithful testimony for many years on earth.

Our departed brother was born at Camberwell, Aug. 5th, 1822, his parents being members at Grove Chapel, under the ministry of the late Joseph Irons, of blessed memory. In his early youth

ful days he was very fond of theatricals, and, for a time, strove with all his might to find permanent satisfaction in those soul-bewitching pleasures. God, however, spoke to him one night when in the theatre, in the voice of conscience, inducing a conviction of his sinful and lost estate, that he was unable to shake off, and causing him shortly afterwards, for the first time, to utter with heartfeeling the cry, "God be merciful to me a sinner." He forsook his pleasureseeking ways, and burnt his theatrical books, notwithstanding the remonstrances of his companions, who offered to purchase them. He exhorted his giddy young friends to flee from the wrath to come, but they took no heed, and he felt compelled to quit their society. It was some time before he obtained a sense of pardoning mercy as full and free through the precious atonement of our Lord; but a gleam of hope one day arose in his mind from hearing an old woman, "Blind Mary," singing in the street the hymn, "How sweet the Name of Jesus," and speaking a few words about the pre

ciousness of Christ to her soul when the hymn was finished. This poor woman, it seems, was a hearer of the late Mr. George Comb, and, being blind, got her living by thus singing in the streets the songs of Zion. The reading at a bookstall the hymn, "Come, ye sinners, poor and wretched," was made a great comfort to his burdened soul, repeated readings of that hymn causing his heart to leap for joy. Attending a legal ministry, however, for some time, he was, the meanwhile, kept in considerable bondage of spirit until directed, in the providence of God, to Woodbridge Chapel, where, under the ministry of Mr. Richard Luckin, he was brought into Gospel liberty, and favoured with great joy and peace of soul in receiving the testimony of the Word of God by the power of the Holy Ghost accompanying it from the lips of that good

man.

Becoming convinced of the Scripturalness of believers' baptism from witnessing the administration of the ordinance at Bethel Chapel, City Road, he made application to Mr. Lucombe, the minister of that chapel, and was baptized by him, and joined the church there. That good man has now long been dead, the church extinct, and the chapel displaced by a warehouse, but the labours of Mr. Lucombe, although his ministerial gifts were but of a humble order, were much blessed of God, repeated instances of which have from time to time come within the knowledge of the writer of these lines, both before and since the good man's death.

Shortly after his baptism, Mr. McCure became exercised in mind about preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and, after much prayer, and some consultation with friends, preached his first sermon in the open air, near Islington, from the words, "Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy Kingdom," on Lord's-day, March 1st, 1840. Friends who heard him were much pleased with the effort, and he was after a while requested by the church, of which he was a member, to exercise his gifts before them for their approval, which

was unanimously accorded, and he was sent forth by them to preach the Gospel of Christ wherever God in His providence should open doors for him to do so. He was then in his eighteenth year.

After preaching about at different places-at first very much in the open air in London-he became settled at Sunningdale, remaining there about eighteen months. Here he was much tried in circumstances, owing to the smallness of the support the people were able to give him, and the persecuting conduct of the clergyman of the parish in driving away customers from a little shop he had taken to add to the small income of eight shillings per week received from his church.

Leaving Sunningdale, after preaching awhile at Hammersmith, and then for twelve months at Birmingham, he eventually settled at Hadlow, in Kent, where he was ordained as pastor in July, 1848; Mr. Foreman giving him the charge from the words, "The work of the ministry." Here he continued. about six years, much success attending his labours; but here, as before, the people were unable to support him, and he had to engage in business, difficulties in which arising he resigned his pastorate. After this he was induced to think of going to Australia, and was encouraged by the Kent and Sussex Association of Particular Baptist Churches to do so, there being a great need of ministers of our denomination in those colonies. Friends in London and elsewhere were very kind in furnishing him with the means of taking himself and family to that distant part; collections on which behalf were made, realising the amount required and "two pounds over."

Mr. McCure embarked for Australia with his wife and six children on September 2nd, 1852, and arrived at Melbourne on December 20th. No arrangements had been made for his rece tion on his arrival, nor support afterwards; and the time being that when the gold-digging fever was raging, and everything exceedingly dear, at first he had to endure great hardship, and accept very menial