quaintance with his subject, and considerable neatness of composition. He illustrated the facts stated in the Essay by several appropriate experiments. The business of the day was closed with a very animated repetition of the Parliamentary debate on the subject of the demolition of the Methodist Chapel at Barbadoes. The speakers on that occasion were well represented, and their speeches given at length by the senior boys. A suitable address was delivered by the Rev. Mr. Press, of Heathfield, who concluded with prayer. The venerable parent of two young men who had been educated at this school, was present, and with much feeling acknowledged, on their behalf and his own, the greatest obligation to this Institution. It was his happiness, he observed, to see his two affectionate and dutiful lads qualified by an attendance at this school, to move in the more respectable walks of life, whereas, had they depended for education solely on the means which he possessed, they must have gone forth into the world with an imperfect education, and their prospects must necessarily have been limited to the reward of agricultural or other labour, in a part of England where labour is remunerated with a very scanty income. We cordially recommend this useful, and we are now happy to say, flourishing Institution, to the attention and support of the Christian public.

RECENT DEATHS.

Died, on Friday, 30th of June, at his residence in Bedford Square, London, aged 56, JOSEPH BUTTERWORTH, Esq., late M. P. for the town of Dover, Kent. This pious and philanthropic gentleman was a native of Coventry, where his father lived and died pastor of the Baptist congregation in that city.

Mr. Butterworth was, for many years, an eminent Law Bookseller, in Fleet Street, from which, we believe, he retired, upon his being returned to Parliament as the representative of his native city. He was, at the election of 1820, chosen member for Dover, and distinguished himself in the House of Commons for his determined opposition to the Roman Catholic claims. He went to the late election at Dover with rather impaired health; and it is said that his exposure to the unclouded sun, and to the fatigue of a contested election, together with the annoyance which its unfavourable close produced, so affected Mr. B. that, on his return home, his vigour sank under the combined attack, and, after a short illness, he died. Mr. B. was closely connected with the Society of the Wesleyan Methodists, to whose Missionary Society he was Treasurer; but, we learn, he communed in the Church of England. He was, in private life, unweariedly engaged in works of Christian

benevolence and piety; and we believe that the religious public have much greater cause to deplore his loss as a philanthropist than as a senator.

his age, the Rev. GRIFFITH WILLIAMS, mi On Saturday, July 1, in the 72d year of nister of Gate Street Chapel, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London. He was a native of Wales, and when called by divine grace, was unable to speak the English language. Anxious to engage in the work of the ministry, he placed himself, about the year 1780, under the instruction of the Rev. Ellis Williams, of Kidwellyn, to acquire the English and other languages. After about six months, he left that residence, and being patronised by Lady Huntingdon, he was received as a student at her colGlastonbury in about 1784, or 1785, where lege, Trevecca. He was stationed at he laboured, and in the villages around, with great diligence, and suffered much persecution from the people. He preached in the Countess's connection till 1790, when he took the premises which now form Gate Street Chapel, then in a very dilapiing a congregation, over which he presided dated state, where he succeeded in collectwith much affection and success for 36 years. He was seized on Thursday, June 29th, at noon, with an inflamation of the chest, and died on Saturday noon, to the great surprise and grief of a large circle of friends. was calm and tranquil in death, fully il lustrating the words of the Psalmist, "Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace.”

He

Sir

Died at his mansion at High Wood, on Wednesday, July 5, in the 45th year of his age, Sir THOMAS STAMFORD RAFFLES, Kut. F. R. and A. S. This distinguished friend of science and Christianity was born at sea, on the 6th of July, 1781. His father, Benjamin Raffles, was one of the oldest Captains in the West India trade from the port of London. Stamford having received his education principally under Dr. Anderson, of Hammersmith, entered at an early age into the service of the East India Company, in which he so distinguished himself by his talents and industry as to secure the confidence of the Secretary, the late W. Ramsay, Esq. by whose recommendation he was appointed in 1805, Assistant Secretary to the Government in the Prince of Wales's Island, where he had not long resided, when he succeeded to the office of Chief Secretary. He now studied the Malay and other languages of the Eastern Archipelago, with the aid of his learned friend the late lamented Dr. Leyden, and such was his success, that he was appointed Malay translator to the Government, and on his visit to Calcutta, Lord Minto, in one of his anniversary discourses to the members of the College, honoured him

with special notice. He accompanied that enlightened nobleman in 1811, in the expedition against Java, as private Secretary, and in October he was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of that Island and its dependencies. Happy would it have been for the Javanese, had his paternal government been continued over them. Domestic bereavement and personal affliction brought him to England in the autumn of 1816, bringing with him a Javanese Prince, and a splendid collection of specimens in natural history, &c. &c. The Prince Regent honoured him with knighthood, permitted him to inscribe his History of Java to him, and confirmed his appointment to Bencoolen, in Sumatra, with the title of Lieutenant Governor.

Whilst Governor at Batavia, Sir Stamford shewed great attention to our Missionaries Kam, Supper, Bruckner, and Milne, but it was upon his appointment to Sumatra, that he appeared as the distinguished patron of our Chinese Mission.

In 1823, Dr. Morrison was favoured with several interviews with Sir Stamford, upon the plan of an Anglo-Chinese College, which negociations at length terminated in a meeting of the principal inhabitants of Singapore, at the Residency House, at which Sir Stamford presided, who explained the object to the assembly, and submitted, in the form of a minute, his ideas on that important establishment. The plans being arranged, Sir Stamford laid the foundation stone of the new College on the 4th of August in that year. Whilst his enlightened Government was diffusing the blessings of free trade, equitable laws, and pure Christianity amongst the inhabitants of that interesting archipelago, he was warned by the loss of his personal friends, and the death of three of his children, to leave a malignant climate, which had also impaired the health of his Lady and himself to an affecting degree. He prepared for England a vessel stored

with an unrivalled collection of specimens, in every department of natural history, and with MSS. of untold value, in which also he and his family embarked, but from which, by a mysterious providence, they were compelled to escape, the vessel, with all its treasures, being destroyed by fire, whilst yet in sight of the land.

On his arrival in England, Sir Stamford appeared at the Anniversary of the Bible Society; became a Vice-President of the Language Institution, and Patron of the Zoological Society, which promises so much gratification to the lovers of science. His health continued infirm, but he was not alarmingly ill. Though indisposed with a bilious attack, he was in the bosom of his family, and received a visit from his attached relative, Dr. Raffles, the day before his death. He retired to rest on Tuesday at his usual hour, and the next morning it was discovered that he had left his bed-room earlier than usual, when Lady Raffles rose, and found him lying, in a state of insensibility, at the foot of a flight of stairs. Medical aid was sought in vain. Sir Everard Home pronounced it an apoplectic attack; one of which had caused him to fall in the street but a few months before. Thus died, in the midst of his days, an ardent lover of science and literature, an able statesman, and an enlightened patron of pure religion.

APPOINTMENTS.

Dr. Henderson is appointed, by the Directors of the Missionary Society, the Resident and Theological Tutor of the New Missionary Seminary at Hoxton, and Mr. Bishop, a senior student of Homerton College, is chosen to the classical department.

The Rev. Robert Halley, of St. Neot's, has accepted the office of Classical and Resident Tutor to Highbury College, and will enter upon his duties at the opening of that Institution in September.

THE apparent isolation of Congregational Churches has long been a fruitful topic of reproach amongst the enemies of their system, who have condescended to employ no very elegant similes to describe their want of adhesion, which is exhibited as one of its characteristic defects. Whilst we gladly concede that a great jealousy does exist in our denomination of all authoritative interference, yet we must also maintain that the Congregational Churches may be brought, without violation either of principle or precedent, into a state of contact most advantageous to the whole body

"Distinct as the billows, yet one as the

sea.

Dr. Owen has well said, that "no church is so independent, as that it can always, and in all cases, observe the duties it owes unto the Lord Christ, and the Church Catholic, by all those powers which it is able to act in itself distinctly, without conjunction with others; and the church that confines its duty unto the acts of its own assemblies, cuts itself off from the external communion of the Church Catholic; nor will it be safe for any man to commit the conduct of his soul to such a Church. Wherefore this acting in Synods is an institution of Jesus NEW SERIES, No. 21.

Christ, not in an express command, but, in the nature of the thing itself, fortified with apostolical example."*

It was these views, entertained by the other fathers of the Congregational Churches, as well as himself, which led to the important Assembly, the history of which is the subject of the present paper.

Various causes may be assigned why the materials for such a narrative are now so few, and that the character of the meeting itself is so little known. The Assembly was convened on the eve of one of those portentous periods in the history of our country, which absorbs public attention, and blots, as it were, from the memory the recollection of less momentous topics. The treacherous and vindictive proceedings of the restored Stuarts, who, to adopt the sagacious remark of a fallen chieftain, concerning another royal house, “had learned nothing, and forgat nothing, in their exile," rendered it very inexpedient for men to employ their time in collecting documents, and in writing the history of proceedings which, to the perverted vision of the dominant party,looked vastly like treason; or if such illustrations of these doings were preserved for

* Owen's True Nature of a Gospel Church, p. 251. 4to.

3 M