moved! He fell asleep in Jesus! 'He rests in his bed;' his winding sheet is wrapped around him-the habiliments of death are upon him-the coffin has not yet closed over him-but I have heard that his manly countenance never looked more calm, more benevolent! He will soon sleep in the grave, and there will he remain until the last trumpet sounds, and then he shall leap forth from his prison-house, at the joyful summons of his Lord! His spirit now walks in its uprightness;' sweet, high, and holy, is the intimacy he enjoys; he holds converse with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the dead who have died in the LORD!" To these details, we will add the remarks of Mr. Burgess, which supply some additional facts. "There are four things which it is edifying to remember, as often as a faithful minister passes hence to his heavenly home. To remember his office and ministry, his preaching, his faith, and the end of his conversation, that is to say, his hope in death, and such a minister of Christ, my brethren, who once had rule over you, and spake to Lou the word of God, has, since we last assembled in this sanctuary, finished his course with joy. It is meet that you should remember him--it is right that I should exhort you to such remembrance, that you may pray to have his degree of faith, to die his death, and that your last end may be like his. The passing bell which has announced the departure of your once beloved pastor, and my fellowlabourer in this portion of Christ's vineyard, has fixed the thoughts of thousands upon this pulpit now so unworthily occupied. It was here where that man of God did the work of an evangelist, fed the flock over which the Holy Ghost had made him overseer, and had the rule over you without exercising dominion. It was here, where, in persuasive strains of eloquence, he spoke unto you the word of God, and by the force of simple unadorned truth, overcame the prejudices of many minds, and the hardness of many hearts, and drew many a penitent weeping to the cross of Christ. It was in this parish where that feeble frame exhausted itself by labours more abundant,' but where also the power of faith and the efficacy of prayer were almost visible in the prolonging of his days, and in the supply of strength for his ministrations. It was here where he preached, and while thousands hung upon those lips which are now closed for ever, and the popular current set toward this sanctuary, he departed not from the simplicity of the truth as it is in Jesus, but continued to declare unto you the whole counsel of God. With him it was a small thing to be judged of men, for he well knew that he must one day give an account to Him who searcheth the heart. His faith, which we may not be ashamed to follow, did not stand in the wisdom of men ; he made no vain parade of learning; he relied not for success upon elaborate argument, but his strength was in God's truth; as he began, so he ended; his theme was Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. His doctrine was pure, his life coincident did exhibit lucid proof that he was honest in the sacred cause;' his end was peace, and brance, for he being dead yet speaketh.' his name will long be had in remem "It may be doubted, whether there be any minister of the present day, whose labours of the pen and pulpit have been so extensively useful to the Church of Christ. Through a period of fifteen years, he was permitted to edify by his writings those whom his voice could not reach and thousands who never saw him in the flesh, will rejoice to meet him in heaven, and own him as the instrument of their felicity. There are many among you, my brethren, who will recollect the moral wilderness in which your once beloved pastor began his ministerial labours. A parish of 32,000 souls, with church accommodation for scarcely 3,000, and but three or four at the most, besides himself, to take part in the daily ministrations; what wonder, if in such an uncultivated waste there should have been comparatively few who loved the Gospel of Christ. And if we did not know that God had chosen the weak things of this world to confound the strong, who could have imagined that one individual, composing his discourses during a season of bodily weakness, and holding a subordinate station in the Church, would have been enabled by grace to leaven the whole mass, to inspire into the hearts of so many a desire for the bread of life, and to infuse his own spirit into the minds of others, so that they who before had hindered, became fellowhelpers in his work? It was during the season of Lent, in 1828, that the Curate of St. Luke's delivered his Lectures on the Life of Jacob, which he published, and in less than five years they went through ten editions. The following year his Lectures on the History of St. Peter appeared, and had as rapid and extensive a circulation. In the year 1830, this sanctuary was reared, partly by his exertions; and his pulpit ministrations, which had been so abundantly blessed, were transferred to this section of the parish. A succession of works, charac terised by the same fervent piety and ardent love of truth, issued from the diligent pen of our lamented author; and those unpretending volumes might be found in almost every religious family throughout the land; they passed the seas, and carried the lessons of unadulterated truth to the new world, and into our most distant colonies; travellers and sea-faring men, and families emigrating to foreign lands, carried out with them those treasures of wisdom and religious truth, until, in the course of eight years, the works of the Rev. Henry Blunt were disseminated wherever the British flag waved, and when they were read by thousands whether at home or abroad there was found in them nothing hard to be understood, every word told its own meaning. You had no mystery concealed beneath a doubtful phraseology; no handling of the word of God deceitfully; it was the Gospel in all its purity and simplicity; it was man exhibited in his fallen state, and Jesus lifted up in a manner to draw all hearts unto him; it was a picture of heavenly felicity to smooth the brow of sorrow, or it was a promise beautifully unfolded to make the bed in sickness; it was the unvarnished story of Jacob living in tents, of Abraham confessing himself to be a stranger and pilgrim, of Peter in the frailty of human nature, of Paul in the strength of divine grace using his apostleship; but above all, of Him who went about doing good, and whose blood cleanseth from all sin. Thousands read and wondered they had never before understood the way of truth, now made so plain. Thousands will yet read and adore the simplicity of the Gospel. It pleased the all-wise Disposer of events, soon after your beloved minister's removal from this parish, that he should cease to teach publicly; but while he was restrained from the exercise of pulpit ministrations, his unwearied mind was engaged in preparing other works for the edification of the Church. He was permitted, until within a short period of his death, to continue those labours of the closet, and to be useful to the world, without opening his mouth. His family exposition of the Pentateuch was but just finished when his increasing weakness put an end to all exertion, and the last page which issued from his pen, contains an affectionate allusion to the present state of the Church. 'Let us be careful' (such is the last admonition of the departed man of God,) 'that we suffer nothing to stand between us and this Divine Leader [Christ], and least of all that we allow any thing to occupy his place. Sacraments, ordinances, churches, are only good inasmuch as they lead us to Christ, and not only use less, but infinitely worse than useless, when they incline us to rest satisfied in themselves, or to substitute any thing for union with him our living head. May God, of his infinite mercy, grant that neither learning nor authority, a desire for fanciful and unattainable unity, nor a respect for some who ought not so to have learned Christ, may be permit ted to turn us back to those weak and beggarly elements which for centuries misled and enslaved the world." "The speech of the man of God is ended. The remembrance of his preaching, his walk, and of his sickness and death, is left for us; his valuable expositions of divine truth are the legacy he leaves to the Church. But as for himself, who can doubt but that he lives in the glorious presence of the God of Jacob, and that his soul has been carried into Abraham's bosom, which, as he once said, 'is only another term for heavenly happiness and eternal bliss."" We feel much indebted to Mr. Burgess and Mr. Close for these hallowed memorials. The passage cited by Mr. Burgess from Mr. Blunt, in which he alludes to errors now rife, and affirms that "sacraments, ordinances, and churches are good only as they lead to Christ," reminds us to mention how early he discerned the delusions of the Tractarian system, and how energetically he opposed them, so long and so far as he could labour either with his voice or pen. Some nine years since, a company of his reverend brethren met at his house, at Chelsea, to consider what measures ought to be taken to meet the evil, whether by sermons, or a series of counter tracts, or in whatever other manner; but objections were made elsewhere to the proceeding. He also, at a more recent period, wrote to us to request the republication of our controversy with Mr. Newman, and other antiTractarian papers in our Volumes; scription, that it might be done and proposed undertaking a subefficiently, and without our incurring any expense. He had, with similar zeal and faithfulness, opposed the delusions of Irvingism, by which some dear to him were in danger of making shipwreck of their faith; and we received some valuable communications from him on the subject. Mr. Blunt's short, but pre-eminently useful and honoured, career at Chelsea, was most remarkable. We have often heard it asked, "What is it in Mr. Blunt's preaching or writings which has produced such extraordinary effects?" His publications passed, in the aggregate, in a short term of years, through nearly a hundred editions; and yet they were chiefly sermons, which are not the most popular species of writing; nor were they marked by stirring novelties, flights of fancy, or overwhelming bursts of eloquence. They were earnest, scriptural, practical, solidly useful, and frequently striking; but they were simple and unpretending. And what we say of the written discourses we may say of the preacher. No person ever mised that he was affecting the orator;-he affected nothing; but he was deeply impressed with the responsibility of his office, and anxious for the salvation of his hearers; and all who saw and sur beheld him witnessed that he was preaching not himself, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and himself their servant for Jesus' sake. Among the more fastidious classes of society, his addresses, though unshrinkingly faithful, were listened to with favourable prepossessions, on account of his calm, yet impressive, speech and action; his respect for his audience; and the absence of display and self-seeking. No one could doubt that he was intent upon the message which he had to deliver; that he felt its unspeakable importance; and that he wished, by God's help, to enforce that conviction upon others. His life also was known to be a daily sermon. He was a zealous, affectionate, and laborious pastor; and those who least loved his religion could not but admire his conduct and respect his motives. The results of his ministry, brief though it was, were very remarkable; he seemed as though a special trust had been committed to his keeping, and having early discharged it, he has rested from his labours, and his works do follow him. ISENBERG AND KRAPF'S TRAVELS IN ABYSSINIA. Journals of the Rev. Messrs. Isenberg and Krapf, Missionaries of the Church Missionary Society, detailing their proceedings in Shoa, and other parts of Abyssinia, in 1839 to 1842 to which is prefixed a Geographical Memoir of Abyssinia and South Eastern Africa, by James McQueen, Esq., grounded on the Missionaries' Journals, and the Expedition of the Pacha of Egypt up the Nile. London, 1843. WE doubt whether merchants or statesmen, philanthropists or Christians, have sufficiently considered the vast prospects which seem opening to British enterprise (secular and religious) on the Eastern side of Africa. Steam navigation has brought England within a few weeks' sail of India; and the route being by way of Egypt and the Red Sea, we have been introduced to important relations with the NorthEastern and Eastern, as we had long been with the Southern and Western, coasts of Africa. If we waft ourselves to the Straits of Babelmandeb, and take our station at Aden, which Great Britain holds as a citadel, and a depôt for coals and other stores, we see, Northward, the vast tracts of Arabia, with the Red Sea leading us to Egypt, the Mediterranean, and the countries bordering on the Levant; Southward, the coast of Africa, and our own Mauritius, with Madagascar ; Eastward, across an open sea, India, and the tract to China; and Westward, Abyssinia, and the whole interior of Africa, now presented to us from a point which offers new and enlarged facilities for its exploration, and in connexion with geographical discoveries which connect its hitherto inaccessible recesses, Eastward with the Indian Ocean, Westward with the Atlantic, and Northward with the Mediterranean Sea and Europe and Asia. Of these geographical discoveries a very interesting memoir is prefixed to the volume in our hands, so far as respects the researches of the missionaries of the Church Missionary Society in Abyssinia, and the expedition of the Pacha of Egypt up the Nile; but to see their full extent and importance, the explorations in Abyssinia should be connected with those in the South and West of the vast continent of Africa; by means of which the whole of the interior is brought within the probable range of rapid discovery. The Pacha of Egypt's steam vessels have ascended the White Nile, penetrating far to the South of Nubia, almost to the Equa tor; and not far to the Westward of the tract of country where this expedition terminated are the fountains of those mighty rivers which flow into the Atlantic; so that the Nile, the Zaire, the Congo, the Chadda, the Niger, are conspiring to unlock the interior of this mighty continent to Christian, and probably to mercantile, enterprise. The Missionaries Isenberg and Krapf have furnished some important and necessary links in this chain of African exploration. They have been the first to acquire and communicate correct information respecting that once celebrated portion of Africa which lies South of the Straits of Babelmandeb, and South and South-East of Abyssinia, and the early course of the Blue Nile. They have laid open the highlands which give birth to and separate some of the largest and most important rivers of Africa; and they have made known to the world regions in the interior of this sultry continent, which from their elevation and irrigation are rather European than tropical in their climate and productions. It would be impracticable for us to follow the travellers through five hundred pages of narrative, so as to present an outline of their journies and discoveries. The book, perused with its accompanying maps, is very interesting and entertaining: but a string of dates, and names of towns, villages, and rivers, would be neither. We must, therefore, detach a few particulars; hoping that, as the work issues from the Church Missionary Society, it will obtain so large a circulation as to render even that superfluous. The history of the rise, progress, and suspension of the Society's labours in Abyssinia, is succinctly given in a Preface, the substance of which we will extract. "The operations of the Church Missionary Society in Abyssinia commenced Gobat, and the Rev. Christian Kugler, in the year 1829. The Rev. Samuel the first Protestant Missionaries who ably received by Sebagadis, the then "In the beginning of 1830 Mr. Gobat proceeded to Gondar, the capital of Amhara, where he was kindly received, chief authority in that part of Abyssinia. and protected by Oubea, then exercising In 1836 Mr. Gobat was compelled by ill health to quit the Mission. "Early in 1838 opposition to the Mission was excited by the priesthood of the Abyssinian Church, fomented by certain members of the Church of Rome The who had entered the country. "On quitting Abyssinia, Messrs. Isenberg and Blumhardt proceeded to Cairo. Mr. Krapf being unwilling to relinquish the hope of re-entering Abyssinia from another quarter, determined to make the attempt to do so by Zeila, which lies without the Straits of Babelmandeb, in lat. 11° 20′ north, long. 43° 50′ east. He was led to contemplate this attempt in consequence of the Missionaries, while at Adowah, having been invited by the king of Shoa to visit his country. Mr. Krapf accordingly proceeded to Mocha, where he arrived on the 28th of May, 1838. Here he met with a servant of the King of Shoa, who encouraged him to prosecute the design which he had formed, and gave him much information as to the best method of proceeding from Zeila to the capital of the King of Shoa. From Mr. Naylor, the British Consul at Mocha, Mr. Krapf met with a friendly reception, and the promise of every assistance in his power. While he was employed in collecting information at Mocha, he was attacked by dysentery; which reduced him so low, that he was compelled to return to Cairo, where he arrived on the 27th of September, 1838. "Mr. Isenberg and Mr. Krapf now seriously deliberated on their future course; and came to the conclusion jointly to engage in an attempt to reach Shoa by way of Zeila and Hurrur. Should they fail in their object with regard to Shoa, it was their purpose to make their way, if possible, to the tribes of Heathen Gallas, which are spread over the country to the southward and eastward of Shoa. "Colonel Campbell, then British Consul-General at Cairo, procured for the Missionaries a firman from the Pacha of Egypt. He also gave them letters to the Consul at Mocha, and to the King of Shoa, strongly recommending the Missionaries to their protection and favour. Mr. Gliddon, the United States' ConsulGeneral at Cairo, gave them a letter, recommending them to the friendly offices of all captains of United States' vessels with whom they might meet. "Thus aided and encouraged, they started on their arduous undertaking. Mr. Krapf thus concluded a letter from Cairo to the Secretaries of the Church Missionary Society, Jan. 20, 1839: "May the Lord of Sabaoth be our guide, our preserver, our strength, our light, and our life!' "From Mocha they crossed to the opposite coast, passed the straits of CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 72. Babelmandeb, and on the 4th of April arrived at Tadjurra, which they found preferable to Zeila as a point of departure to the interior. After encountering the many difficulties which embarrass travellers in these unfrequented regions, they reached the frontier of the kingdom of Shoa on the 31st of May, the journey having occupied thirty-five days. They had an interview with the King on the 7th of June, who gave them a favourable reception. "The Missionaries remained together in the kingdom of Shoa until November 6, 1839; when Mr. Isenberg departed, to return for a season to this country. During these five months they were diligently occupied in conversational preaching and discussion, and in obtaining a great variety of information. Mr. Isenberg had made considerable progress in translations into the Amharic Language, both while in Tigre, and after his arrival in Shoa. A leading object of his visit to England was to print the works which he had prepared, for the future use of the Mission wherever the Amharic Language is vernacular. He arrived in London on the 30th of April, 1840. Here he completed works already commenced, and prepared several others. He eventually carried through the Press:-An Amharic Spelling Book, 8vo.; Grammar, royal 8vo.; Dictionary, 4to.; Catechism, 8vo.; Church History, 8vo.; Amharic General History, 8vo. Mr. Isenberg had prepared a Vocabulary of the Dankali Language, which was likewise printed. The object of the Mission was not only the Christian population of Shoa, but the Galla Tribes extensively spread over the south-eastern parts of Africa. To the Galla language therefore, hitherto unwritten, Mr. Krapf's attention was much given. During Mr. Isenberg's stay in London the following Galla works, prepared by Mr. Krapf, printed:-Vocabulary, 12mo. ; Elements of the Galla Language, 12mo.; St. Matthew's Gospel, 12mo.; St. John's Gospel, 12mo. The Committee have since received from Mr. Krapf a translation into Galla of the Book of Genesis, and the Epistle to the Romans. were While Mr. Isenberg was absent in England, Mr. Krapf, though alone, and painfully feeling the difficulties and disadvantages of his solitariness, occupied himself diligently and zealously in his arduous duties. Amidst much to try and discourage him, he was graciously sustained in his work, and not left without tokens of the Divine blessing upon it. The nature of that work, and the difficulties and trials incident to the pro 5 D |