held in London at Whitsuntide, to consult on common interests, and especially on a closer and more effective union. When the meeting took place, Mr. Aspland was laid aside by illness. He had hoped much from this Unitarian council, and had contemplated taking an active part in its proceedings. In a letter addressed to Mr. Travers, the Chairman, he lamented his disappointment, and thus proceeded to describe the objects of the assembly and the spirit which ought to animate its proceedings:

"The Meeting, my dear Sir, has grown out of the condition of our body. As a denomination we are in a crisis,—but many are in my view the indications of Divine Providence that the coming change will be for the better. The dissatisfaction felt by many in our actual state, is less a confession of our weakness than an acknowledgment of our capacity, and a recognition of a higher duty than has yet been practically admitted. And the fierce spirit of hostility that rages against us on every side,-so strange and unexpected, and so inconsistent with the intelligence and improvement of our age and country in almost every thing else,—is, in one sense, an admission of our power; and our power can consist only in character, in reason and in the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.'

"You meet, my dear Sir, as brethren; no individual, no party of individuals, having authority above the rest. Yours will be a friendly conference rather than a debate, and consequently there will be no striving for mastery,' nor any triumph of a majority over a minority. You will take into view, not the peculiar opinions and feelings of individuals, or the condition and prospects of this or that congregation, but the manifest wants and powers and duties of the whole denomination. By unreserved communication, by frank and generous counsel, by fraternal advice, by the expression of Christian sympathy, and by the tender of needed help,-all will be edified, and even he whose opinion or plan may not be adopted or generally approved will go away blessing God that he has been present at one of the few ecclesiastical assemblies since the days of the Apostles, in which spiritual dominion has been neither claimed nor allowed, in which, in fact, the first and most eager feeling and declaration of the whole assembly have been on behalf of the sacred rights of every private conscience."

His anticipations were not fulfilled. A great practical error was committed in providing for the guidance of the meeting no well-defined line of discussion. Imprudences of speech incidental to debate, provoked retaliatory remarks equally mischievous. Some appeared to apprehend an invasion by their brethren on their intellectual liberty, or by an ecclesiastical confederation on their congregational independence. Many were startled and pained by the assertion that the bond which held Unitarians together was merely the negation of orthodoxy. Distrust and mutual misunderstanding were the immediate effects of this unfortunate Aggregate Meeting.

To no one in the Unitarian body was this result more painful than to Mr. Aspland. His Diary contains traces of a feeling of rising impatience at his own inability of action. Thus,

"1838, June 24.-This is now the fourth Sunday that I have been silent, the whole indeed of this month, and I seem as far as ever from the pulpit. But let me remember my last text and subject-'The will of the Lord be done.""

His ordinary medical adviser expressed his desire of a second opinion on the case that of Dr. Bright was taken, who prescribed active medical treatment and long-continued rest.

Rev. Robert Aspland to Rev. Dr. Rees.

"Woodford Wells, Friday, August 3rd, 1838. "My dear Sir,-I am forbidden to write a needless line, but under this description I can scarcely bring a short letter to you.

"You must have been surprised at my breaking down so suddenly and entirely. The truth is, that the gout was only a symptom of a crisis in my constitution. I have long been a sufferer, to a degree which I cannot now describe or even look back upon, from disorder in the organ of the heart. For years, I may say, I studied to conceal the complaint, revealing it at home only when it was necessary to explain something said, or something not done. When I was driven, at length, to take unreserved medical advice, it was found that my life hung upon a thread. In this condition I gave myself wholly up to my advisers, and am here in seclusion and quiet, undergoing a course of mercurial medicine. The effect is hardly yet apparent, though my general health is decidedly improved, and my feelings, which I hope are a true barometer, are much more comfortable. Could I regain anything like a healthy or even regular pulsation, I should consider myself on the eve of restoration to the ordinary habits of life. But I bless the Author and Disposer of our days, I am not anxious, or, I hope, impatient. Hitherto, I have found it no effort to say, 'His will be done.'

"I duly estimate your kindness in offering for my sake to put on again the pulpit harness on Sunday morning, which, after so long a period of total freedom, must, I fear, be irksome to you. But I rejoice in the persuasion that the task will be lightened by the consciousness that you are serving and giving relief to an old friend.

"My friends at Hackney have most kindly taken the pulpit out of my hands; but I cannot help asking you to administer the Lord's Supper on Sunday morning. There having been no observance of the Sacrament last month, I fear its further discontinuance may break up the really good habit of the congregation with regard to this most beneficial ordinance.

"I see in the Morning Chronicle an advertisement against the Government from the Three Denominations. Should not Mr. Bischoff vindicate the Presbyterians from this continued misrepresentation? Pray think of this.

"Present my kindest regards to Mrs. Rees, and believe me, my dear Sir, your obliged and faithful friend, ROBERT ASPLAND."

The removal by death of his aged friend Mr. William Sturch, the author of "Apeleutherus," and a zealous friend of liberty, occasioned the following letter.

Rev. Robert Aspland to Mrs. Sturch.

"Woodford Wells, Sept. 18th, 1838. My dear Madam,-I cannot reconcile it to my feelings to let the late solemn event pass by, without assuring you and your family of my sincere condolence. Mr. Sturch's venerable age and long increasing infirmities must have prepared you for his departure; but it is not possible to see the grave close upon so much intelligence, virtue and goodness, without deep affliction; and to you and his children, who alone knew his worth, the pang of separation (with all the alleviations supplied by a kind Providence) has been, I am sure, severely trying.

"Yet I need not remind you, my dear Madam, that you have a source of consolation in the character of him over whom you are called to mourn. While his eminent powers of mind and stores of knowledge commanded universal respect, the tenor of his long life excited habitual esteem and confidence. I never knew a person who with so much true independence of mind united so many of the better qualities of the heart. In public and in private life he discharged well and truly all the duties which his excellent and wellregulated understanding acknowledged.

"To that Supreme Benevolence which he habitually recognized and adored,

his family and friends may resign his spirit, satisfied that in all the future dispensations of the Merciful Disposer, it must be well with one who in his temper and habits was a practical disciple of our Great Example in all righteousness and charity.

"I write from a retirement into which I have been driven by a malady, the issue of which is yet uncertain. My seclusion enables me to review the past, and amidst my varied feelings none is stronger than the hope that in the world to come, whenever I am summoned to it, I may not be found unworthy of the society of those departed friends whom I have been accustomed to delight in as the wise and good, and amongst these the image of your deceased husband always rises up pleasingly to my view.

"Sincerely sympathizing with you and the members of your family, I am, my dear Madam, your obliged and affectionate Christian friend and servant,

ROBERT ASPLAND."

At the close of a retirement of six months, Mr. Aspland expressed the desire to return to public duty. Dr. Bright remonstrated, telling him, "if he entered the pulpit, he could not ensure his leaving it alive." He answered, "that it was better to die in harness than to lead a life of inactivity."

On the 2nd of December he re-entered the pulpit at the Gravel-Pit, and preached from Ps. xciv. 19, his subject being-Piety a Resource in Trouble. Though he spoke for nearly an hour, he sustained no inconvenience from the effort beyond one or two sensations of faintness.

In 1839, he projected and carried into execution the publication of a series of Tracts "designed to vindicate Religious and Christian Liberty." They were, with one exception, not original, but reprints of Tracts by Milton, Thomas Gordon, Charles Fox, Dr. George Campbell, Hoadly, Bishop Hare, Sir Michael Foster, Hales and Sir Matthew Hale. The original Tract was a very ingenious essay, by a physician of some eminence in the capital of Scotland, "On the Proper Conduct of Religious Education," &c.

Mr. Aspland also composed and published at this time, a Catechism and Prayers for the Young. The former continues to be extensively used, and is a very instructive manual of scriptural and religious knowledge. In the early years of his ministry, Mr. Aspland objected to catechetical instruction of the young in their religious and moral duty, probably from his recollection of the abuse of this mode of instruction in "orthodox" churches, and of the way in which in his early years he himself had been taxed beyond his capacity by the Assembly's Catechism. A larger experience, however, shewed him the expediency, if not the necessity, of teaching children the lessons of Divine wisdom authoritatively, of fixing them by repetition in the memory, and of furnishing them with a standard to which in after life they might refer. It was his apprehension that the younger members of Unitarian families were sometimes left untaught, from the fear of teaching them any thing which in the progress of their minds they might have to unlearn.

In the course of this year he officiated at the opening of the new chapel at Dukinfield. His sermon was preached from Mark xi. 17— My house shall be called the house of prayer for all nations.* He

In explaining the remarkable transaction of Christ's driving the buyers and sellers out of the temple, he followed Joseph Mede and Bishop Hurd, and treated it not merely as an assertion of his authority as the Messiah, but as a prophetic declaration of the catholic spirit and far-spread triumphs of the gospel.

went through the fatigues of the several services and private meetings. consequent on this occasion with a degree of animation and power that astonished those who knew the state of his health. His countenance was, when he began, pallid, and his once remarkably erect frame was somewhat bowed by days and nights of pain; but as he warmed in his subject, a stranger would scarcely have supposed that the earnest, clear and sonorous elocution which kept his attention untired for more than an hour, was that of an enfeebled invalid, conscious that his life hung upon almost a thread. From Dukinfield he proceeded into Yorkshire, where he took part in the ordination of Rev. Frederick Hornblower as the pastor of the Lydgate congregation. In this service he was associated with the Rev. Charles Wicksteed, Rev. W. Turner, Jun., Rev. R. Brook Aspland, and Mr. Sidney Morehouse as the representative of the Lydgate congregation. Mr. Wicksteed delivered the charge to the young minister, and Mr. Aspland preached the sermon to the congregation, his subject being (Luke x. 21, 23, 24)*-Our Lord's Joy in contemplating the Result of his benevolent Mission, an Example of rejoicing in the Progress and final Triumph of Divine Truth. From Lydgate he proceeded to Leeds, where he was the guest of the Rev. Charles Wicksteed. To the pen of that valued friend the writer is indebted for the interesting sequel to this Chapter.

Rev. Charles Wicksteed to Rev. R. Brook Aspland.

Leeds, Nov. 8, 1849. "My dear Friend,-You ask me to recal some of the circumstances attending your Father's visit to Leeds in September 1840, and in making this request you invite me to undertake a very easy and agreeable task. The circumstances of that visit are vividly impressed upon my memory, and I shall be happy if in recalling them I can reciprocate to yourself and others any portion of that interest which I have felt while reading the successive chapters of the instructive biography in which you are engaged.

"It was, I think, at the opening of the new chapel at Dukinfield that Mr. Aspland arranged to pay a visit to the North. On that occasion some of the congregation at Lydgate applied to him to take a part in the ordination services of Mr. F. Hornblower; and finding that public duty would bring him thus far on his way to Leeds, I ventured to request that he would honour me by spending a few days under my roof, and afford my congregation the benefit of his services on the Sunday. It was in your study that this interview took place, and I remember your Father's searching gaze when I spoke to him, and the frank cordiality with which (this scrutiny over) he accepted the invitation. About that time, some little alienation had arisen, partly from real, partly from imaginary causes, between your Father, and the school of Unitarians whom he might be considered to represent, and some of the younger ministers of our body. A new periodical had a few years previously been commenced in Lancashire, occupying, as he conceived, the same ground and aiming at the same general object as the Magazines which he had conducted for so long a time and with so untiring an energy. A disposition was manifesting itself to undervalue some of those central denominational institutions which he had, from a conviction of their great importance, devoted so much time and effort to establish; and much was said about the age of controversy —that is, as he regarded it, of earnest and open defence of scriptural truth— being past. Added to this, a reaction was manifesting itself in many minds against some of the distinguishing principles of the philosophy of Locke and

* It is No. XIX. in the posthumous volume of Discourses. VOL. VI.

D

Priestley, and a mode of discussing several theological questions was arising which appeared to him to have the danger, without the explicitness, of scepticism. These things had given him considerable pain. Some of them he regarded as diversions from that cause to which it had been the labour of his life to give unity and strength; and in others he saw nothing but an unsettling shallowness and mysticism. These are the trials which every generation, in a moving and advancing country, almost always inflicts upon its older men. The young forget the things that are behind, and press forward to those that are before,-feeling after newer things, and hoping to find truer. It is just what, amid similar doubts and fears, their predecessors had done before them. Thus a new set of views and aims grow up, in which the older men, having in some instances tested them and found them wanting, feel no confidence, and with which, in other instances, a characteristic indisposition to open afresh questions in their minds already settled, and a preference of stability and repose, prevents them from feeling any active sympathy. This sober equipoise and still maturity of thought has no charm for the earlier periods of life, which are usually only captivated by something extravagant in view or exaggerated in character. The older men in consequence regard the younger as rash and unripe, and the younger men regard the older as stationary and dogmatic. Thus, with an equal honesty of purpose, it may be, and an equal love of truth on both sides, a certain want of sympathy and mutual trust arises among men of the same time and the same church.

"I think your Father had felt this very deeply. He feared that a generation was arising that was forgetting the past, with its noble struggles and its successful labours; and some of the younger men, with a strong personal and traditional respect for him, were perhaps disposed too much to look upon him as a landmark of the past, a sign of where the waters of life in the last generation had subsided. In all this there was some exaggeration on both sides; an exaggeration which the absence of full, frequent and friendly intercourse rather tended to increase. Your Father's visit, therefore, to the North, after so many years, and on an occasion so peculiarly interesting to him, to yourself, and to a numerous Christian community, was looked upon with very lively interest. Many men embraced with eagerness the opportunity, by gathering round him on that occasion, to shew that they had not forgotten or ceased to appreciate the spirit and manliness with which he had fought the battles of Christian Truth and Civil Liberty; and he on his part, I think, felt a cordial joy in this sympathy, and was but too happy to believe that his younger brethren were, after all, more sincerely attached to that household of faith which he himself so dearly loved, than he had been daring to hope.

"The day of the opening of your new chapel I need not recal to your mind, nor the visit to Lydgate in which you took a part. But you lost sight of Mr. Aspland after this, and I can supply the wanting link. On the Sunday following his arrival in Leeds, he preached, to large congregations in Millhill chapel, two excellent sermons, which appear in the posthumous volume of his Discourses. The subject of the sermon in the morning was, 'The conscientious and liberal Man a Servant of Christ, a Benefactor to his Species, and an Heir of the Divine Blessing.' In the evening, he took for his subject the fifteenth chapter of Luke, on the Prodigal Son; the whole of which he wished to read out as the text of his sermon, and in substitution for the regular lesson. I am not sure whether he did this, or whether, as I rather think, he yielded to my wish, that the lesson should be read in its proper place; but it has amused me since to remember that in this difference it was not the older man that was the more conservative of usage. This sermon was listened to with the deepest interest, and was, in truth, a most beautiful and impressive one. All the features of the narrative were brought out with the utmost feeling and tact; and there was a cautious solemnity in the application of the doctrine of forgiveness, which, while it detracted nothing from the prevailing tenderness of the sermon, prevented the possibility of too loose or indulgent