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"At the very beginning he was popular and useful. Though young, his appearance was manly, and there was a noble bearing in all that he said and dd. It was evident, even at that time, that he was intended to fill no ordinary place among the ambassadors of Christ. I was younger than he, and always looked up to him with admiration, and often followed him to places where he exercised his early ministry. He had not been long on the preacher's plan, before he was called to occupy the principal pulpits of the circuit; and in all cases his labours were highly acceptable. O, those were happy days! We were simple-minded and sincere. We loved as brethren, and were of one heart and soul, and thought no sacrifice too great for the advancement of the cause in which we had embarked."

In the July following his conversion he was recommended to the conference as a travelling preacher. He was accepted and appointed to the Pocklington Circuit. Here he laboured with zeal and great acceptance. His circuit contained many agricultural villages and hamlets, where the service was generally conducted in private houses, barns, and carpenter-shops. While Mr. Newton was labouring on this circuit he was not without those temptations which most men have in similar circumstances encountered. "Feelings of discouragement rose in his mind; and at times he entertained the purpose of leaving his circuit, and of returning to his former occupation at Roxby." But John Hart, a pious local preacher, to whom he revealed his feelings, encouraged him in his work, and urged him to persevere, adding, in conclusion, "You dare not" abandon your work. That was a word fitly spoken and in season.

In 1800 Mr. Newton was appointed to the Howden Circuit. While on this circuit he united with Miss Nodes in marriage. His entire domestic life, running on for more than half a century, was most happy.

It is not our design to follow Mr. Newton in his itinerancy more than to say that his circuits were Pocklington, Howden, Glasgow, Rotherham, Sheffield, Huddersfield, Holmfirth, London, Wakefield, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Stockport, and Salford. It will be perceived that though he travelled more than fifty years his moves, for the most part, were not long, and that he occupied repeatedly the same field of labour-especially the Liverpool and Manchester circuits. He spent but one year in Glasgow and but two in London. Mr. Jackson says:—

"From the year 1817, when he left Wakefield, to the end of his itinerant ministry, Mr. Newton's official labours, to which he was appointed by the conference, were confined to fewer circuits than were those of any of his contemporaries; but his labours which he voluntarily undertook, extended through the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. According to the minutes of the conference, Liverpool and Manchester divided between them twenty years of his public life; Salford occupied six, Stockport three, and Leeds six; so that he appears to have spent thirty-five years in five localities."-P. 94.

This will seem strange to some of our warmest advocates for the most extensive itinerancy. Mr. Newton, the most popular as a pulpit orator and platform speaker of all the Wesleyan ministers, is stationed twenty years in Liverpool and Manchester.

Mr. Newton's voluntary labours are perhaps without a parallel in ancient or modern times. We may have some conception of them. when we consider that from 1817 to the close of his life, he was constantly travelling and preaching. He had only Saturday-and that but a part of the time-as a day of rest And then, such rest as he had on that day! From one to two dozen letters to answer, preparation for the pulpit on the morrow, and a social religious meeting to attend in the evening! While he was thus travelling all the week, attending missionary meetings, opening chapels, and preaching in the villages and cities, he always kept the Sabbaths for his own charge. And as a young man, for a number of years, was stationed wth him, to attend to the evening appointments, and other occasional services, the work on his own circuits was not uncared for or neglected.

In 1822 Mr. Newton made his first visit to the Irish Conference. He became after this a frequent visiter to Ireland, and laboured there successfully in the good work of his divine Lord and Master. "He attended," says his biographer, "at least twenty-three Irish conferences. Here some of his tenderest friendships were formed; and here many persons were, through his faithful ministry, turned to righteousness, and made heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ."--P. 101.

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The forte of Mr. Newton was preaching. He was a salvation preacher." We may learn from this why, with his great popularity, he was stationed in London but once, and remained there but two years. Mr. Jackson says:

"London was less acceptable to him as a station than the other places where he laboured. Being the centre of conuexional operations, numerous committees were held there, which he was expected to attend. These occupied much time, and diverted his attention from preaching, and from the work of pulpit preparation, in which, above all things, his soul delighted. The fact is, he never had that aptitude for the details of business in which some men excel. He felt that he was made for action rather than for deliberation, and that the duties of the pulpit were his especial forte and calling. He did attend the meetings of committees, as in duty bound, having in them a trust to execute; but he was always glad to escape from them to employment which was more congenial to his taste."-Pp. 76, 77.

Mr. Newton, genuinely converted, as we have seen, entered upon the work of the ministry at the age of eighteen. For fifty-three years he continued in that work, preaching the Gospel in England, Ireland, Scotland, and the United States. From the commence

ment of his public career to its close he was a man of one work. At home and abroad he strove to save men. In the faithful discharge of his duties he had to pay the price which such efforts too frequently cost he was at times falsely judged, and no little reproach was heaped upon him. But he could say, having such assurance as he had of the divine approbation and the divine presence, "None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God."

In 1852, and when Mr. Newton was past seventy years of age, he was compelled to take a supernumerary relation to the conference. It is delightful to see amid what respect and kind regard from his brethren, he retires from the labours and appointments of an "effective preacher." But the days of infirmity, long delayed, had come. He could no longer go forth to service as aforetime. The blanks in his "interleaved almanac" were becoming more and more common. He was learning, as he wrote his friends, to be an old man.

The following extract is from his last letter, and was addressed to his faithful friend, Mr. Turner, of Derby :

“And now what can I say to Derby, which I am loth to give up after all these years? I believe all I can say is, that if in July I am as well as I am to-day, I may offer you one sermon on the Sabbath, and if it be thought well, one on the Monday evening."

Good man! even Derby with all its charms and endearing friendships could no longer hold him in life. His July was spent in heaven. On the 30th of April, and ten days after writing this letter, he fell asleep in Christ, saying, "Jesus is the resurrection and the life!"

Fletcher, Benson, and Coke had their distinct places in the Wesleyan Connexion; so had Adam Clarke and Richard Watson. Newton had his. He was not great as Clarke and Watson were, but he was great as Robert Newton, the eloquent and indefatigable minister of Christ. He came from the people; he sympathized with the people; he lived among the people; he laboured for the people; he died lamented by the people; and with the "people" saved from sin and earth, he dwells in heaven. Of no man can it be more truthfully said, "IN LABOURS MORE ABUNDANT."

FOURTH SERIES, VOL. VIII.—8

ART. VI.-SCHAFF ON AMERICA.

The Political, Social, and Ecclesiastico-religious Condition of the United States of North America, with Special Reference to the Germans. By PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., Professor of Theology at Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. Berlin: Wiegandt and Grieben. 1854.

DR. Schaff, as some of the readers of the Quarterly know, was called from Switzerland, his native country, about ten years ago, to occupy his present position in the Theological Seminary of the German Reformed Church at Mercersburg, where, in connexion. with Dr. Nevin, he has laboured with great zeal, and as far, it is presumed, as his own communion is concerned, with considerable success in building up the system of doctrine known in certain quarters as "the Mercersburg theology." In several works, published both in German and English, he has shown himself to be a man of elegant culture and profound theological learning. He has contributed several papers to this Review.

He lately visited his native land, and, during a short sojourn in Berlin, delivered several lectures on America, which the favourable opinion of certain friends induced him to publish, though in a form somewhat altered and considerably extended. The result is a book of three hundred pages, whose title forms the heading of this article. It is divided into three parts. First: The United States of North America-their Importance, Politics, National Character, Culture, Literature, and Religion. Second: The Ecclesiastico-religious Condition of America. Third: The German Churches in

America.

Under the first head Dr. Schaff gives a graphic account of the wonderful growth of his adopted country; of her thirty-one organized states, with additional territory sufficient to make a dozen more, each as large as a German kingdom,-the whole, though less than a hundred years old, containing three millions of square miles and more than twenty-five millions of people. He speaks of the foreign immigration as of such magnitude as to entitle it to be called a peaceful, bloodless migration of the nations; and declares that the Americans bid them all welcome,-both good and bad, the good rather, but the bad too, in the hope, that in a new world they will become new men, thus disproving the truth of the old verse—

Coelum, non animum mutant, trans mare qui currunt.

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With the author we say, Let the good come, but we hope to be doned by our countrymen generally if we cannot welcome or

invite such men as the foreign burglars and murderers who make our homes and lives insecure; who fill our prisons and supply nearly the whole of our material for the gallows; who would overturn our government and establish red republicanism; who would abrogate marriage and institute licentiousness; who would blot out the Sabbath, and indeed destroy Christianity, of which it is an essential part. The patriotic piety which would prompt us to pray for the prosperity of our country and the permanence of our institutions leads us to regard such men as in the highest degree undesirable, and heartily to wish them back in their own lands, with all of their sort ever to remain.

In treating of the political condition of the country, he shows that while all the governments of Europe rest, more or less, upon the institutions of the middle age, here the last remnants of that period, with the exception of slavery in the southern states, fall entirely away. We have no king, no nobility, no aristocracy, except the unavoidable threefold aristocracy of character, of talents, and of money; no standing army and no state Church; but instead of these, perfect civil and religious liberty, as well as unrestricted freedom of speech and of the press, and access to the highest offices, even for the poorest citizens, under the reasonable and natural conditions of competency and worthiness; and that with all this apparent excess of liberty there is joined universal regard for right and law, deep reverence for Christianity, well-ordered government, and perfect security of person and property. Our author, however, is very solicitous, as indeed he should be, to make a strong distinction between the radical democracy of Europe and the cherished republican freedom of his adopted country. On this point he remarks,—

"Although a Swiss by birth and an American by adoption, I have lived too long in monarchies to deny in the least their historical necessity and high excellence. I am utterly destitute of sympathy with the shallow fanatical republicanism of so many Americans, who see no salvation for Europe except in the universal spread of republican institutions, and hence are prepared to hail with joy the vilest revolutions, born of the spirit of darkness. This comes, however, of not understanding the matter; for if they knew better they would decide differently. But unhistorical, foolish, even ridiculous as it would be to plant American institutions at once and without modification on European soil, yet on the other side, for the United States I can think of but one form of government as reasonable and appropriate, and that is the republic. All the traditions and sympathies are there in its favour. With it are connected the whole previous history and present vocation of the country; under it she has become great and strong; under it she feels happy and satisfied. We cannot imagine from what quarter a king for America could come." P. 19.

Now, while we most cordially agree with our author in his hearty denunciation of red republicanism in other parts of his book, and are

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