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ing yourselves clean; in keeping your house clean; in keeping your yards and streets clean. In looking at man intellectually we find it the same. In this respect his well-being has depended upon observation, reading and reflection. If a man neglect these, he will neither be knowing nor wise. Look at his spiritual well-being. Have not 'repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ,' been always the necessary conditions of salvation? In relation to all these things we may say with the greatest truth, That which hath been is now.'

The one practical lesson of the subject is, that we rightly use our time. Not spend it in vain regrets about the past, nor in idle dreams about the future. We should take time by the forelock; or, as the Apostle emphatically says, be always Redeeming the time, because the days are evil?

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It is the loss of days, the improper use of time, which is the cause of so much personal remorse and general suffering. Some men pass their whole life in sloth, equally useless to the world and themselves; others in the hurry of business; others in a round of dissipation, that by excitement they may rid themselves of themselves. Time is a burden on their hands. Others simply use time in amassing gold, even though every noble aspiration should be crushed beneath the heap of dust; and others live as though they had nothing more to do in time than to eat and drink and work, and drop into the grave.

Time, with its accompanying life, grace and mercy, is the richest gift God has bestowed upon us. We have no claim to live in time. Massillon said: 'Man, condemned to death by the sin of his birth, ought to receive life only to lose it from the moment he has received it.' The blood of Jesus Christ has alone effaced the sentence of death pronounced against all mankind in the person of the first sinner. The death of our Lord Jesus Christ is our only claim to life. Our days, our moments are the first blessings secured to us from His cross, and the time we so vainly lose is the price of His blood. And more than this-so many times as we have violated the laws of the Author of life, so many times have we been exposed to death. Every sinner is, therefore, a child of death; and every time the mercy of God has suspended the sentence of condemnation, a new life is granted to us by His infinite goodness, that we may repair the evil we have done in the abuse of past time. The life we enjoy is a standing miracle of Divine mercy. Every moment we breathe is a new gift from God; and to spend that time and those moments in sloth or sin is to insult that Infinite Goodness which has granted them to us and to endanger our eternal salvation.

Time is our inheritance, which we should husband well, that we may lay up a store of blessedness for the future. In the world we should regard that man as a fool, who, heir to a great fortune, should allow it to be wasted through want of attention, or who should squander it or turn it into an instrument of future punishment: then what shall we say of him who so wastes his time as to cover his soul with guilt and shroud his eternity with gloom?

Time claims kindred with all existences. Its touch is upon everything. It will bear to oncoming generations the influence of your daily life. It gathers up the accumulating forces of all generations, and sends them surging through the great heart of society. Vast and varied as may have been the events which have transpired in our world: the gradual unfolding and perfecting of the Christian economy; the ebb and flow of its history; the unsteady, but progressive march of secular knowledge; the rise and fall of empires; the tidal flow of its commercial enterprise; the conflicts of truth and error; the final conquests of righteousness by which the whole world shall bow in humble and loving submission to the authority of Christ: all these, in a very important sense, are made ours by virtue of our connection with time. O! I love to indulge in this thought-Time linking me with the great past and the still greater future, not leaving me to dwell in cold isolation, but making me a part of the grand whole.

Nor do the associations and influences of Time stop here; they extend to eternity. If time were all, and nought should follow time; if, when its course is measured and its race is run, existence should become a blank; if all beyond the flood should become an unbroken sleep, then it would matter little how we spent our time. But it is not so. Time to us is the beginning. of that which shall never cease to be. Its course will terminate, but our being will go on for evermore, and that being's happiness or woe will depend upon the use we make of time. Every hour of our conscious life is giving a complexion to our eternal state. How precious then, and yet how fearfully solemn, is that time which thus connects itself with and helps to mould my destiny! Time is precious because it affords us opportunities of earnest work, not only for ourselves but also for others. Each day should be the harvest of its yesterday, and the seed-corn of its to-morrow; and, between this sowing and reaping, we may have time for rest but not for waste.

This constant and sanctified action I would earnestly press upon the young. You have the glow of opening life-you have energy of intellect and limb. String up your powers while they are elastic, and brace them by daily service. Boldly face your duties, and ask God to help you. Climb the hill Difficulty, and the air will strengthen you.

Time is always coming, always going. You may treasure up your wealth, but you cannot treasure up your time. No falling back upon an old stock— no making hoarded capital serve for the wants of the present. You must take time by the forelock, or it will elude your grasp altogether. An archangel's wing would not be fleet enough to overtake the hours of yesterday. You may lose your health, and recover it; your reputation, and regain it; your wealth, and replace it; your friends, and find them again; but if you lose your time, it is lost for ever. The phrase 'redeeming the time' occurs twice in the New Testament. St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Colossians, urges it upon the members of the Church, telling them to walk in wisdom,' that by 'redeeming the time' they may set a good example ' toward them that are without.' In this passage we are urged to 'redeem the time, because the

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days are evil.' To redeem the time is to buy up all its moments by profitable service.

In order to the right improvement of time there must be a definite object and purpose before the mind. A man who has no definite objects to accomplish knows nothing of the force of true life. You should set a mark before you, and bend all your powers for its attainment. What would you say of a man who should take a staff in his hand, bind his satchel upon his back, and set out upon a journey without knowing the road he would take, the object he had in view, or the place he would reach? A definite object gives energy, courage and increasing zeal to the soul. A man of purpose is ever on the watch for opportunities. Time is seized upon with greater avidity than that with which the miser grasps his gold. His sails are never corded to the mast, but ever unfurled that he may catch every breeze that may waft him to his desired haven. As the bracing air of the mountain knits more firmly the sinews of the Highlander, so every passing wind makes him firmer for his duty. The Apostle Paul had one grand object before him. He was fired by the heroic passion of saving souls; and under this impulse you see him sacrificing wealth, home, friends and position in society. You find him traversing continents, crossing seas. No maledictions of open foes, no solicitations of friends, produced discouragement or remitting in his immense labour. He had a purpose before him and nought could move him from its accomplishment.

But in order to the best improvement of Time, the objects we should set before us should be of the highest spiritual kind, such as will secure our real and eternal welfare.

Time is not redeemed simply by work, but by good work earnestly and constantly followed. The statesman, the poet, the philosopher and the moralist have their objects; and these bring out unceasing diligence, but amid all this they may fail in the grand mission of life, which is to 'glorify God.'

He who works out his salvation solves the true problem of life. What if you gained such power that your every word was law and your every nod command-power by which you could govern empires and rule kingdoms, and in grasping this power you lost your soul? What if you could mingle in gay scenes until your spirits trembled with delight-if you could realize more than was ever pictured in elysian dreams, and if in doing this you lost your soul, where would be your advantage? The recollection of lost power would prey upon your ruined soul; the remembrance of your gay scenes would be as fuel to feed the flame of your torment. I put the case in its most favourable form. Many of you, by spending your time in sin, are losing your souls and have not the poor exchange of wealth, or power, or pleasure. Think of all of which your soul is capable: its power of thought, its depth of feeling, its immortality of life. Think of the infinite love that Christ has shown for it: and this soul will either be saved or damned according to the use you make of time!

Notices of the History and Character of the late Rev. John Lomas.

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And this work of personal salvation will make life happy. Its various duties will keep you from idleness, that vile leprosy of the soul. It will make you buoyant with joy and hope, and cause life to glide away in holy peacefulness.

It is impossible to tell the amount of good influence which may be exerted by one man of decided character and strong religious principle. His energy is a text, his conduct a sermon that all around him may read. Such a man is the possessor of true power, if he lets it go forth into action. Power locked up does no good either to its possessor or to others. The running waters bless the earth. No one heeds the man who stands with folded hands

in the corner of the street saying, 'I am so and so.' The man who presses on saying, 'This one thing I do,' is acknowledged a hero. Men make room before him. The loiterers open the path to let him pass, and difficulties melt before him.

We might tell you, as the text does, that 'The days are evil.' I am in a world of death! Soon I too shall be dead. I see not a living thing in all my rambles that will not die. The eagle cannot soar above the shaft of death; the monster of the deep cannot dive below it; the tiny insect cannot make itself so insignificant that death shall not notice it. The Christian will die, the sinner will die. Death loves to level the thistle as well as the rosebud, the bramble as well as the cedar. Death comes pale, solemn, fixed, stern, determined on his work. He comes steady, certain and unchangeable. He has always been coming-advancing, never receding, and soon his shadow will fall upon you. And that shadow will deepen and become more chilly, like an advancing eclipse, and then his dark form will stand right before you, between you and the light of the living world. With deep-toned earnestness should all this speak to us, saying, 'Prepare to meet thy God.'

NOTICES OF THE HISTORY AND CHARACTER OF THE LATE REV. JOHN LOMAS:

BY THOMAS PERCIVAL BUNTING.

1.-PARENTAGE AND EARLY LIFE.

THE difficulty of supplementing words like those spoken by the President of the Conference at the funeral of Mr. Lomas,* and like those, too, contained in the short, but generous and glowing, notice which appeared in the number

We give as our next Paper that admirable characterization, so deserving of a permanent place in the Connexional organ.-EDITOR.

of this Magazine for October last, will be at once candidly appreciated. My materials are scanty; but I have before me valuable contributions from the Rev. W. W. Rouch, Mr. Lomas's early friend, and from the Rev. Benjamin Hellier, a disciple at whose feet his illustrious teacher loved to sit; from the Rev. Thomas Nightingale, who, in Mr. Lomas's latest years, won his special confidence and love; and from that lone widow and her daughter, ('and yet not alone,') the last immediate representatives of one branch of a family for ever famous in Methodist history, and the tender companions and nurses of their beloved relative. For the rest, I must draw upon my personal knowledge.

Of the family to which I have just alluded, there are, scattered up and down in divers books and memoirs, some few very interesting notices. They were of the first-fruits of Methodism in the Peak of Derbyshire; still, notwithstanding railways, one of the loveliest and most secluded portions of England, and rich, a hundred years ago, in its intellectual and spiritual products. Manchester Methodism, in particular, and there has not been, nor is there now, so far as I know, any better type of Methodism,- -owes much to immigrants from the Peak. Besides the Lomases, the Healds, the Marsdens, the Reeces, and countless other families, can proudly trace their descent from ancestors 'brought in' by the early Methodist Preachers who traversed and evangelized Derbyshire. The first Lomas of whom I catch any glimpse was of the party who, about the middle of the last century, and at the instance of Thomas Bennett, of Chelmorton, went to Monyash, two miles distant, to hear that same John Bennett preach who learned what real religion was from John Wesley, and then stole from him Grace Murray.

A late Duke of Devonshire is reported to have said that every man born in Derbyshire was a gentleman; and it is certain that there was an air of respectability and worth about these good people not so distinctly observable in the natives of adjoining counties. Thomas Lomas, the son of Bennett's convert, became a Class Leader at Monyash, and my father's mother, after she had got good' under the casual ministry of Richard Boardman, became a member of the Class. This was in 1769; and it was during the previous year that Robert Lomas, the father of the subject of these Memorials, was born, of parents who 'entertained the Preachers' at Monyash, and were the principal support and bond of a small Society in the village.'

The words I have just quoted are to be found in the Memoir of this Robert Lomas, written by his early friend in Manchester, the venerable Joseph Entwisle, and published in this Magazine for 1811. I cannot even epitomize that Memoir here. But I hope that, if but for the son's sake, it will receive revived attention and gain extensive perusal. Would that many such forgotten Memoirs, contained in that inexhaustible mine of biography, at once curious and instructive, might be extracted, and, in successive cheap volumes, and duly annotated, and, in some cases, enriched with additional materials still available, commended to the perusal of the Methodists of this generation.

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