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Not so.

Was it a Divine
The agency

with power.
But how came that celestial gift?
influence which came without human means?

The disciples had been

of man is as visible as the power is Divine. at prayer for ten successive days. With one accord, in one place, they had met and poured out their souls in supplication for the promise of the Spirit; and in answer to their prayers he was given, and then they were filled with love and power, and the Word of the Lord mightily grew and prevailed, and Satan's kingdom fell like lightning from heaven. Now, why hath God caused these facts to be recorded, and why are the means and the mighty results so circumstantially connected in the narrative? For this reason, my brethren, that the Church in all ages might see wherein her great strength lieth, and know that prevailing prayer is the means by which the power is secured. Without him we can do nothing; but by the power of his Spirit we can do all things.

And thus it hath been in all ages since; the same means have brought the power that renders the ministry effectual. Luther, Wesley, Whitfield, Nelson, Bramwell, Payson, Brainerd, Fletcher, were all men of power, because they were all men of much prayer; and by their prayers as much as by their preaching, they made full proof of their ministry. My brethren, be ye men of prayer, sanctify your studies by prayer, steep your sermons in prayer, go from your knees to the pulpit, and, whenever practicable, return from your pulpit to your knees; continually breathe the spirit of prayer, and exercise a faith that expects an answer to your supplications. "I wish I had prayed more," said a dying minister, when looking back. The wish came too late for him, but it may serve as a warning note for us, especially for you just entering on your work. The effects of your ministry, and therefore the eternal destiny of souls-probably hundreds, it may be thousands of souls-may depend upon the prayers you put up for the next twenty years of your lives. Oh, will you not then be men of prayer! Though others should be careless, indolent, prayerless, be ye men of seriousness, earnestness, laboriousness, and prayer. Then, my brethren, you shall not labour in vain. Your ministry shall be successful, your career shall be one of honour. Thousands edified and blessed by your labours shall praise God that they ever heard your voice; and many shall be your joy and crown of rejoicing in the day of the Lord!

But oh, should you prove unfaithful, how dark your future, and how dreadful your eternity! Well may the faithful Richard Baxter exclaim: "Oh, think how dreadful and aggravated will be our final condemnation if we live and die neglecters of the great work we have undertaken! Our parents (it may be) that destined us for the ministry, our learning and our gifts, our voluntary undertaking the care of souls, all the care of God for his Church, all the precepts, promises,

and threatenings of the Holy Scriptures, all the examples of prophets,. apostles, and preachers there recorded, and all the books in our studies that tell us of our duty, or any way assist us in it, will rise in judgment against us! All the sermons we have preached to convince men of the dangers of sin and the torments of hell, and of the joys of heaven, to quicken them in their duty or reprove their neglect, all the maintenance we take for our service, all the honour we receive from the people and the ministerial privileges we enjoy, all the witness we have borne against the neglect of ministers, all the judgments and the mercies of God with which we have been acquainted,. all the fervent prayers that have been offered up by God's people on our account, and, finally, all our vows, promises, and resolutions for diligence in our work, will at the last great day, aggravate our condemnation, if we are found unfaithful in our Master's service." Great God, should we perish, what a hell would be ours! and to us would. be denied the privilege of perishing alone, for our unfaithfulness. would drag others down to the same eternal perdition.

But this need not be the case: it shall not be our case if we are wise and conscientious. The reverse of this, my brethren, is within. your reach now. I exhort you, in the name of the triune God, to lay these weighty truths upon your hearts, and go from this sacred place resolved to do your duty, to carry into effect the counsels now given, and then shall you be blessed and be a blessing to the Church of God, and that to an extent which ordinary members have not the privilege to realize; and the blessedness of this life shall be followed by brighter glories and higher joys in the life to come. May Jehovah crown you with his favour, and keep you as the stars he holds in his right hand! and when the Great Day of Judgment shall come, may you, and multitudes converted through your instrumentality, hear the welcome sentence, "Well done, good and faithful servants, ye have been faithful over a few things, I will make you rulers over many things;. enter ye into the joy of your Lord!" Amen, and amen.

GIDEON OUSELEY:

WHO HE WAS, AND WHAT HE DID.

"Men are equal; it is not birth, it is virtue alone that makes them differ. He is one of those spirits, the favourites of heaven, who are everything by themselves, and nothing by their ancestors."-French Writer.

IN Adam Clarke and Gideon Ouseley, Ireland has made Methodism a present of two very different and dissimilar men, and yet, withal, men who had points of comparison not less than shades of contrast. Each had a respectable and influential ancestry; each received a classical and mathematical education; each was brought into the

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friendship of God and the fellowship of his people by the agency of Methodist ministers; and each, up to the end of a somewhat extended career, served his generation and glorified his God in connection with Methodism. But the men as strikingly contrasted as they accidentally compared with each other. Clarke was a steady, a severe, and a successful student; Ouseley was desultory and fragmentary in all his studies, and made far more use of his eyes than of books. Clarke was systematic, orderly, and grave, both in public and in private, in friendly intercourses and in official ministrations; Ouseley could not be confined to fixed rules, to venerable forms, and to what is usual in modes and ministrations; but, torrent-like and truant-like, he would often make channels and ways of his own. Clarke put his soul into writings which live yet, and by them he, "being dead, speaketh;" but Ouseley was a "swallow on the wing," doing his life's work during his life's day, and leaving little behind him that he wrote, and that little almost valueless. But still, at the great day— the day when goodness alone will pass for greatness; the day when saintship will take precedence of scholarship; the day when God will be the Judge, and human hearts will be adjudged-in that "day of days," I question whether Gideon Ouseley will not stand side by side with, perhaps even a step higher than, Adam Clarke; for Gideon Ouseley "turned many to righteousness," and is destined to "shine as a star in the firmament of heaven" for ever and ever!

Well, then, more particularly, let us ask who he was.

This question has been already anticipated so far by the intimation that Gideon Ouseley was an Irishman; and it may be added that the wit and humour, the elasticity and buoyancy, which distinguish his countrymen characterized him. He was an Irishman, not only, as it is sometimes said, "to the backbone,” which, after all, is not much to say, but to the very core of his heart, and more than this cannot be said. He loved Ireland as the ancient Jew loved Palestine, and for its people, as we shall see, he recked not life or labour.

He was born at Dunmore, in the county of Galway, in the year 1762, so that at the Irish Rebellion of 1798 he was getting into middle life, and had attained the sense and sobriety of manhood. His biographer is careful to tell us that he "descended from an ancient family," and it is added, by way of climax, "of great respectability." But these are words which convey no very distinct, certainly no very definite, ideas. Ancient! Why, where is there a man-whether he be the lordly occupant of a gorgeous castle, or the humble inhabitant of a miserable cottage; whether his skin be black as jet or white as ivory-that has not "descended "-come down in more senses than one-"from an ancient family?" Ethnology and philology are just now, as never before, clasping the hands of Biblical

history, and joining with her, despite Darwinian theories and Huxleyite speculations, to assure us that all men have "descended from an ancient family," whose head was Adam and whose home was in Eden.

"From yon blue heaven above us bent,

The grand old gardener and his wife

Smile at the claims of long descent."-Tennyson.

Then as to respectability, what shall we say of that? In itself the word is respectable enough, for it implies an object that deserves to be looked back upon (re-specto); but, like many words and wordmakers, it has got "the worse for wear," and is now either misleading or meaningless. Do you tell me of a "very respectable preacher?" I conclude him dull and heavy. Do you point me to a "respectable picture?" I expect it lacks ideality and beauty. And what intelligent conception have we of a family distinguished for its "great respectability?"

Still, I fancy I can gather the intended idea. John Ouseley, Esq. Gideon's father, was a man of social position in Galway, as had been his immediate ancestors. His family were well brought up and well educated. One of his sons, ten years younger than Gideon, entered the military profession, and in after years somewhat signalized himself as Major-General Sir Ralph Ouseley.

Of Gideon's early days the Rev. W. Reilly, his biographer, just tells us nothing, or, speaking accurately, "next to nothing." I believe memoranda exist, could they be got, which would illustrate this suppressed chapter in his life; and I predict, from the man's nature, it would be full of curiosities in the way of adventure, haphazards, hair-breadth escapes, and all those "vices which pass for virtues" in a lad, like him, of versatility and genius. From his earliest life he did nothing, we are told, "by halves." Not he he was of too self-reliant, too plucky, too pertinacious, and too persevering a nature to start upon a race without reaching the goal, or to leave an arena without victory or death.

His education, considering the time and place, was considerable and, in the good sense, respectable. In classics and mathematics he was a fair, perhaps an advanced, scholar. In Greek Homer, and in Latin Virgil and Horace, were great favourites with him, and he read them with avidity and appreciation; but mathematics had for him, as for all who take pleasure therein, a special charm, finding in him also special aptness and ability. Nor were these early acquisitions allowed, in after life, to lie inactive, like "sleeping partners" in a business, or useless, like huge pieces of lumber in a storehouse. He knew how to get at them when he wanted them, which is a rare virtue in learned men, and he knew how to employ them when occasion required, which is the still rarer virtue of a skilful man. It may

anticipate, but I hope it will not mar, our story, if I illustrate my meaning. On several occasions when Gideon attended the gatherings at a country mass he would translate the Latin, which none of the hearers knew, into Irish, which all the people relished; and whenever a passage contained any gospel truth, he would add, "Listen to that." On one of these occasions, we are told, "the people were deeply affected, the priest was thunderstruck, and all were ready to receive whatever he might say. Service being ended, Mr. Ouseley and the congregation rose to their feet; he then delivered an exhortation on the need of their having their peace made with God—of being reconciled to him, of accepting the doctrine of reconciliation by real penitence and by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. When he had concluded they cried out to the priest, 'Father, who is that?' replied the priest; 'he is not a man at all: he is an angel. No man could do what he has done.'"* Mr. Ouseley rode off, and left both priest and people in as much bewilderment as they were at Lycaonia, who, in presence of Paul and Barnabas, and in not less deplorable ignorance, cried, "The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men."

'I don't know,'

On another occasion his mathematical knowledge, as his classical in this, came to his help. A Roman Catholic gentleman called upon him one day, and found him hard at work upon Euclid, whereupon the visitor made an observation on the sublimity of the science and the beauty of the instrument with which Gideon worked. "Yes," he replied, "there is Euclid," pointing to the book; “take him up. If you abide by him he will bear you out; but if in any one instance you depart from the principles laid down by him, you forfeit all claim to his support, you will inevitably go astray." "That is very true," rejoined his neighbour. "Very well, sir," continued Mr. Ouseley, "take up the New Testament, read it, and if you abide by the truth revealed in it, you will be infallibly right. Christ the Lord, the great Author of that book, will stand by you. sake it, you deny Christ; and if you were priest, or bishop, or pope, Christ will disown you." The inference thus skilfully and conclusively drawn from the acknowledged premise came with such conviction and force to the listener that he was compelled to say, “Ob, sir, it is all right."+

If, however, you for

But in a religious sense Gideon Ouseley was not well situated in those early days, and in his native place. It was hard to tell whether the Roman Catholics were more superstitious, or the Protestants were more sleepy; and in both these were blind guides who were apter to plunge poor souls into the pit of perdition than to guide them into the peace and the paradise of God. From early life Gideon had been

*Reilly's "Life," p. 59.

+ Ibid., p. 62.

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