PAULL, GEORGE-The son of Joseph and Eliza (Lee) Paull was born near Connellsville, Fayette County, Pa., February 3, 1837. He studied the classical and mathematical course preparatory to entering college, first under Rev. Ross Stevenson, of Ligonier, Pa., then in the Dunlap's Creek Presbyterial Academy, and afterwards under Prof. John Frazer, and graduated at Jefferson College, Canonsburgh, Pa., in 1858.

During a revival of religion in the college in the spring of 1858 he made a profession of religion, and united with the church at Connellsville, of which his father was a Ruling Elder. After leaving college he went South and engaged in teaching for a time in Mississippi, but realizing it to be his vocation to preach the gospel, he returned and entered the Western Theological Seminary, Allegheny, Pa., where he spent three terms in diligent preparation for the great work of preaching Christ to the heathen. He was licensed by Redstone Presbytery, in April, 1861, and finished his course in the Seminary in 1862.

He gave his name to the General Assembly's Board of Foreign Missions as a candidate for missionary work, but owing to the embarrassed state of the Board, arising from the civil war unhappily raging in our country, he could not be sent on his mission immediately. For a time he supplied the vacant churches of Tyrone and Sewickly, in his native Presbytery. He then went to Morrison, Whiteside County, Illinois, in Rock River Presbytery, where he found a vacant and scattered church, to which he ministered with great popularity and success, and from the affectionate entreaties of which to settle with them as pastor, he found it difficult to tear himself away, that he might obey the dictates of conscience and the call of the Board to proIceed to Africa. In the autumn of 1863 he entered on his chosen work. With a view to this he was ordained by Redstone Presbytery, at Connellsville, in October of that year.

Mr. Paull was regarded by all who knew him as a Christian and minister of rare piety and promise. As a son he was affectionately devoted to his parents, who early consecrated him to God in baptism, and prayerfully nurtured him in the admonition of the Lord. As a friend he was to a remarkable degree ingenuous and constant. As a student he was diligent and successful, greatly beloved by his companions and teachers. His scholarship was highly respectable. He was endowed with a comprehensive understanding, sound judgment, fertile imagination, good memory, and refined taste. His reading and observation were not so extensive as judicious and profitable, of the kind best fitted for the cherished work of his life-preaching Christ and him crucified.

His piety was peculiarly simple, deep, earnest, and practical. It was of that lovely type which distinguished the "beloved disciple. His heart was an utter stranger to the spirit of censoriousness, and his lips to the language of harshness; but both abounded in expressions of love and goodness. Emptied of self-confidence he clung to Christ and his righteousness with unfaltering faith. He felt bound in covenant faithfulness by earnest prayer and self examination to find daily experiences in his inner life, which might attest the gracious indwelling of Christ's Spirit; hence he would call himself to account before God and confess his spiritual barrenness and shortcomings. This is seen in his Diary of missionary labors and spiritual life in Africa. Active and laborious beyond his physical strength, full of heaven-born charity, he elaborated schemes of usefulness, and the burden of the Lord on his heart continually was that himself and others might be fully awake to their high responsibility in working, praying, and giving for Christ and the salvation of the perishing in all lands. Few men of

his age have evinced such a gracious weanedness from the world and devotion to Christ's kingdom-such a wakeful, tireless sympathy with efforts to sow the seeds of salvation beside all waters, not only in our own land but in the remote deserts of the heathen world.

As a preacher Mr. Paull was, in the best sense, eminently popular. His preaching was scriptural, pungent, tender, earnest, practical, and faithful. His aim was not the entertainment and pleasure of his hearers, but their conversion and sanctification through the truth, which he pressed on them, like the sainted McCheyne, in such winning and cogent terms that they would gather in crowds to hear him.

Of a portly and commanding presence, with a deep, full, and wonderfully persuasive voice, fervent and eloquent in sentiment, logical and forcible in argument, natural and striking in his illustrations, and withal so filled with devotion to Christ and the salvation of souls, he never failed to enstamp his burning thoughts on the hearts of his audience and win souls to the fold of the blessed Redeemer. Who that heard his sermons on Christian missions can ever forget their ardent spirit of devotion to Christ and selfabnegation for the perishing heathen. He verified that tender of personal agency, Here am I, send me. Although his popular and attractive talents and manners seemed to mark out for him a ministerial career in some of our large city churches, yet his self-denying spirit and ardent zeal for the salvation of the poor and destitute, determined him to one of the humblest of all the fields of missionary work—a missionary to Africa. Now that the Master has called him to his unfading crown, the church might well inscribe on the beautiful marble monument which marks his grave in the cemetery at Corisco as her estimate of his character: "By the grace of God, a bright example of devotion to the missionary work." This noble standard-bearer having fallen at his post, the church looks eagerly to see his likeness reproduced in some of her gifted sons who shall aspire to the honor of seizing and bearing it onward to the final victory in reclaiming Africa for Christ.

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Of Mr. Paull as a minister and missionary I would quote from the Rev. J. L. MACKEY, one of his companions in labor, now of New London, Pa. :"In November, 1863, Mr. Paull left his father's house and sailed for his chosen field of labor. In consequence of the war then raging in our country, but few vessels from the United States were going out to Africa. was, therefore, under the necessity of going by the way of England. He was detained there for some time waiting for a vessel, during which he was most kindly entertained in the family of Mr. George Thompson, in Glasgow, a friend to all evangelical missionaries, especially such as have their faces set towards Africa. During his short stay in Glasgow, Mr. Paull preached in several of the churches there with great acceptance, and made inany friends by whom his memory is affectionately cherished.

"Mr. Paull reached Corisco in May, 1864, and entered on his missionary work. He was appointed by the mission to take charge of the station at Evangasimba, during my absence, as I was compelled to seek a change of climate on account of my broken down health. The work at that station is laborious and attended with much responsibility, and few men could be found, perhaps, who could have entered on the work there and conducted it with as much discretion and good judgment as he did. Immediately after my return in December, 1864, Mr. Paull expressed a desire to go to the mainland to enter on the work of building up a new station. He had made several trips to the mainland out stations, and knew well the kind of work that would devolve on him there. He was not unapprized of the

danger to which he would be exposed in undertaking such a work alone; but his faith was strong and his zeal ardent, and he urged upon the mission to give him an appointment to Bonita, a point on the continent about fifty miles north of Corisco. Dr. Nassau, who had several years' experience in mission life in Corisco, expressed a strong desire to accompany Mr. Paull on this new enterprise, but the mission thought his services could not be dispensed with at Corisco, and therefore Mr. Paull was appointed to go alone. He went to Bonita in January, 1865, and entered upon his work with the assistance of several of the native Christians from Corisco.

"From the very commencement his work was attended with the deepest interest. Though he had not gained command of the language so as to preach without an interpreter, multitudes were deeply interested, numbers asked to be taught how to pray to the true God, and how to seek the way of eternal life, and in a very short time some professed to have found that Saviour whom he preached to them.

"His labors of preaching, teaching, and instructing inquirers, together with the superintendence of building his house, multiplied on his hands and proved too great even for his strong physical powers. He was taken down with illness and God saw fit to remove him in the very commencement of his labors, when, in our judgment, only the dawn of his usefulness in Africa was opening before him. God sees not as man sees.

Mr. Paull was a man who sought to consecrate all his powers to the service of his Divine Master. This desire to work for Christ and to consecrate himself to his service, seems to have commenced in very early life, and long before he made a profession of religion. When quite young he denied himself some of the luxuries of the table that he might have something of his own to give to the cause of Foreign Missions. When about to offer himself to go as missionary to the heathen, he said, in conversation with his father, Pa, with my convictions of duty to preach to the heathen, I never could look up to the throne of grace again, if I did not carry out my convictions." An intimate friend and classmate in the Theological Seminary writes of him: "I have read of the heavenly-mindedness of Edwards and Payson, Martyn and Brainard, and of the singleness of their devotion to God, but I never witnessed a living illustration of such exalted attainments in the Divine life, until it was my privilege to be the hourly companion and friend of George Paull." One of his last intelligent utterances on his death-bed was, 66 Oh for more consecration to the cause of Christ! I wish only to cast myself at his feet and feel that he is my all."

As a speaker he was clear, instructive, and convincing-at times eloquent and powerful. Of strong physical powers, a strong and well cultivated mind and good common sense, he would have been an acceptable and instructive preacher in the most cultivated community; but with all his powers of mind and body and large heart, he chose to devote himself to the degraded heathen in Africa. God accepted the sacrifice, blessed his labors in his brief work, and called him to his reward."

The Presbytery of Redstone entered on their record, relative to the death of Mr. Paull, the following minute, viz. :

"WHEREAS, It has pleased Almighty God, in his inscrutable providence, to remove by death from the Foreign Mission field, the Rev. George Paull, a young brother so greatly beloved and who had shown himself so eminently fitted by nature and grace for the great work to which God and the church had called him; and, WHEREAS, He was born and reared among us, and by this Presbytery set apart to the work of the ministry in a foreign missionary field; and, WHEREAS, His self-consuming, untiring devotion to the

Master's cause not only reflected great honor upon the gospel of God, but also upon this body by whom he was given to the foreign service of the church; therefore,

"Resolved, 1. That while as a Presbytery we record with gratitude to God the gift of one to the church so specially qualified for the great work to which he had consecrated his life, we would at the same time bow with profound submission to the very mysterious behest which summoned him so soon and so suddenly from the service and labors of the church militant to the higher and holier service of the church triumphant.

2. That in the life and labors of our departed brother we recognise a spirit akin to that of a Brainard, an Eliot, a Swartz-akin to the spirit of Him who said, 'The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up'-a zeal for the salvation of bleeding Africa, which prematurely and almost literally consumed the vessel in which it burned-a love for the souls of men and the glory of God, which many waters could not quench, which quailed at no sacrifice however great, and which could say with the great apostolic missionary to the Gentiles, Neither count I my life dear unto myself so that I might finish my course with joy and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.'

"3. That while Presbytery would bewail the loss to benighted Africa of so burning and shining a light, whose inchoate and earliest labors on the mainland were signalized with remarkable and immediate success in the conversion of souls, we would also record our unfeigned condolence and sympathy with the bereaved parents and other friends, in the early demise of such a son and relative, divinely assured that however great their loss to him it was unutterable gain.

The Presbytery of Corisco, at their first meeting after the death of Mr. Paull, October 10, 1865, adopted the following, viz. :

"WHEREAS, The Great Disposer of all events, a merciful and loving Heavenly Father, has seen good in his infinite wisdom to afflict us most sorely in the removal by death of our dearly beloved brother and efficient co-laborer, Rev. George Paull, we do in token of our sorrow for this event, adopt the following resolutions:

"1. That while we deeply mourn the loss to his kindred and to ourselves, and, humanly speaking, the great harvest field for which God's grace had so eminently fitted him, yet will we strive to bow in meek submission to Him who afflicts not but for our good.

"2. That we shall never cease to cherish a tender recollection of the sincere sympathy and hearty love evinced by our departed brother in all our trials and discouragements; the memory of his cheerfulness, hopefulness, zeal, and entire consecration, shall serve to fire us anew with ardor and delight in the blessed work to which our brother gave his all.'

The Rev. Ebenezer Erskine, Editor of the North-western Presbyterian, Chicago, Illinois, writes as follows:

Those who belong to the Rock River Presbytery within whose bounds this beloved brother labored for months previously to his sailing as a missionary to Corisco, and who knew him well, will enter into the feelings of sadness and mourning, heartily concur in the expressions of sympathy, and cordially unite in the tribute of respect which the action of the Presbytery of Corisco was designed to convey. For simple, earnest piety, for strength of faith, for devotion to the work of the ministry, for earnestness and fidelity as a preacher, he exhibited greater resemblance to McCheyne than any one whom it has been our privilege to meet. All hearts were won by

his refined manners, his ardent piety, and his self-sacrificing devotion to the work of his Master."

But let us see how this lovely and devoted Christian missionary spent his time on his way to the field of his preferred work, and how it pleased the Lord to try his faith. In the private Diary which he kept from the day on which he bid farewell to sweet home and kindred, till he was taken with his death-sickness, he writes on board the ship Elgira in which he sailed from Greenock to Africa:

Sabbath, March 13, 1864.-Preached on, 'And he said, to-morrow.' Sailors did not come in because of offence from the mate. Am sorry to have lost the opportunity of speaking to them, as I wish to do them all the good possible while with them.

"March 15-Have been reading Henry Martyn, Missionary Journeys of Moffat and John Williams, the one in Africa and the other in the SouthSea Islands; also, Memoir of David Brainard amongst the Indians in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

April 4-Spend the time reading religious books, and especially the Bible-preach every Sabbath plainly and pointedly to the men; but nothing. save Christ and him crucified. Have done but little talking since I came on board. Others jest and laugh around me, but my thoughts have been engaged within. For many weeks I have been eating the bread of sorrow, because I have been in darkness and had no light. All my sweets have been turned into bitterness, and I have walked on the borders of despair. I have been truly in the deep, and neither sun nor moon nor stars have appeared for many days. God grant that this may be the fire that shall consume the dross of sin wholly from me.

"I asked the Lord that I might grow

In faith, and love, and every grace,'" &c.

On the subject of missions he next writes: "Some would turn aside from carrying on this glorious work by saying that God will not punish those who live in ignorance, without the light of the gospel. But what then must become of God's character? He who is all good established a law upright and good. The soul that sinneth it shall die.' Mercy may seek to let the transgressor free, but justice, immutable justice cannot, must not, else it is no longer justice. Under the government of a just and holy God, death must follow transgression so surely as God is a God of truth, whether there has been light or whether there has been no light; but then according to Scripture, circumstances may mitigate the severity of that punishment for which death is a general term.

It is cheering to know that in some places, at least, the heathen are earnestly pleading for the bread of life-looking out from their darkness to catch the faintest dawn of the morning. It would do your hearts good to hear one tell who belonged to a station on the west coast of Africa, how the moment a vessel came to anchor, they all ran down to the beach with the anxious inquiry, 'Have you brought us a missionary?' If none had come they turned away with sorrowful hearts. But if some one stepped forth and said that he had come to tell them 'the story of the cross,' how they bore him away in triumph with a joy which knew no bounds.

"We ought to make the world conform to our religion, instead of our religion to the world, for Christ and his religion are paramount to everything, and ought to be esteemed by us above and before every thing. The world and all its concerns, pursued for their own sakes are the vilest dross in comparison with them. Our religion should be the life, the very heart-blood