and sought his glory and the salvation of souls as the great aim of all our labours.

Such, I am persuaded, is the kind of reflections which habitually occupied the mind of your late Minister, and which will tend to relieve in your bosoms the pangs of your present separation from him. He was this character; he preached the great doctrine of the grace of Christ as the foundation of your hope. He urged on you the Christian virtues and graces, as the evidence of your calling and election, and the means of your having an abundant entrance into heaven; he put you in remembrance of these things, though you knew them, and were established in the truth; he did this with diligence and perseverance; he laboured that after his decease you might continue stedfast in the faith; and he was urged to these duties by the constant impression of the brevity and uncertainty of life, little as he apprehended the immediate termination of his labours at the time when his death actually impended.

But I shall now, I am aware, be expected to give some particulars of the life and character of your esteemed Rector.

Mr. GOODE was born at Buckingham in the year 1762. His father was a member of the Church of England, and educated him in her communion. He was gradually brought to a

serious knowledge of religion very early in life. The first impressions of its importance were made on his mind when he was at school; and these continued till he was led to a deep repentance for sin, a living faith in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and a holy and devoted obedience to his service by the grace of the Holy Spirit. The ministry of a pious clergyman, who afterwards resided for many years at Macclesfield, was particularly useful to him at this time. From the age of fourteen to that of sixteen he followed his father's business at Buckingham; but his heart was even then strongly bent on the office of the sacred ministry; and he was accustomed to rise at a very early hour to study the Hebrew language. His earnest desire to devote himself to the service of the church continuing unabated, he was placed by his father at the age of sixteen under a private tutor, to prepare for the University.

He entered as a commoner at Magdalen College, Oxford, about the year 1781, and was ordained to a curacy in Buckinghamshire in 1784.

Not long after his ordination, he heard, when he was in London, of the curacy of the late Rev. W. Romaine, and entered soon after on the duties of this parish, which he discharged for about thirty years. He continued curate to Mr. Romaine, till the death of that truly eminent cha

racter-a character beloved and honoured by all who could rightly esteem that eminent faith in Jesus Christ, that holy love to his name, and that long course of honourable and consistent obedience to his Gospel, which so much distinguished him. This event, which occurred after he had been curate about ten years, led to Mr. Goode's appointment, on the presentation of the crown, to the rectory of these united parishes. He continued in the weighty and solemn office to which he was thus called for above twenty years, labouring with incessant diligence both in public and in private. Besides the various private duties of his ministry throughout the parish, he preached regularly three times each week in this church; namely, on the Sunday morning, the Tuesday morning (afterwards changed to the Wednesday), and on the Sunday evening. In addition to these labours, he was for a long period Lecturer of St. John, Wapping, on the Sunday afternoon, and Lady Camden's Tuesday Evening Lecturer at St. Lawrence Jewry.

In these scenes of exertion he persevered without intermission, lending his aid to most public designs of piety and benevolence as they arose, whether in his own parish and neighbourhood, or in other parts of the metropolis. To the Society for the Relief of poor pious Clergymen, in particular, he was a warm and con

stant friend. He sustained the situation of secretary to that Institution for twenty-one years. He bestowed likewise great attention on the concerns of the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East. It was first established very much by his efforts; and during the early periods of its struggling infancy, he always resisted despondent feelings, and animated its friends to go on steadily, in reliance on the word and promise of God. Nor did he spare his personal labours. He was the constant adviser and supporter of his beloved friend the secretary of that Society; he attended regularly general and subordinate committees, and accommodated the Society with the use of his own study, till the increasing business and success of the Institution made a discontinuance of that practice necessary. Still his church was at the service of the Society, and in this pulpit sixteen anniversary sermons have been delivered.

I mention these particulars, not only in justice to the zeal of your excellent Minister, but also as they stand connected with his last illness and death. In the autumn of the year before last (September 1814), he was first seized with the indisposition which afterwards terminated his life, as he accompanied the secretary to Ipswich in the service of the Society. The attack, which appeared at first only to be a cold, soon became a confirmed diabetes, which in the

course of about eighteen months ended in his putting off this his tabernacle, and his entering into the joy of his Lord. During his long illness, his patience and resignation were exemplary. His chief anxiety was for the welfare of his much-beloved people, and his chief prayer that the affliction might be sanctified to his spiritual benefit. This holy effect, indeed, was visible to all around. He spent much of his time in prayer and devotional exercises; his general tone of mind and temper were obviously softened, and his love to his Saviour purified and quickened. His zeal also to stir up his people's minds by way of remembrance, his anxiety not to be negligent in this duty, his impression how shortly he might be called to put off his tabernacle, were manifest to all, though, as I have already said, he was not aware of the really dangerous nature of his disease.

After various fluctuations in the symptoms of his complaint, it became but too manifest that Mr. Goode's general strength was greatly abated. His debility indeed was gradually so obvious, that his friends, for the last few months, began to apprehend that the fatal event could not be distant. Accordingly, on Monday, April 15th, at half past four in the afternoon, at the very period when the Church was celebrating the resurrection of her Lord Christ from the dead, this excellent man fell asleep in Jesus,