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Special Contributions to aid the Income of 1843, in Answer to the Appeal made by the Treasurers and Secretaries of the Wesleyan Missionary Society, dated December 22d, 1843, in addition to Sums announced in preceding Numbers of the "Notices.”

John Sutcliffe, Esq., and Mrs. Sutcliffe, Willow-Hall, Sowerby-Bridge

Thomas F. Sutcliffe, Esq., and Mrs. Sutcliffe, Willow-Lodge,

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A Friend in the Nottingham and Derby District, by the Rev.
Thomas Staton

J. Holt, Esq., Leeds, by the Rev. Robert Newstead

Sale of useful Articles, prepared by Mrs. Alfred Strong, Ham-
mersmith

Friends at Kilham, in the Bridlington Circuit.

Friends at Houghton-le-Spring

A Friend, by Mr. G. P. Bainbridge, York

A Family Thank-offering for mercies vouchsafed to the Mission-party on board the "Persia," by Mr. James Wakinshaw, Byker, Newcastle....

A Friend to Missions, Rotherham........

T. R. Carter, Esq., Woolgreaves, near Wakefield
Friends at Castleford

Friends at Goole

A dying Youth (Charles Raven, of Quordon).
Friends at Harlow, Essex, by Mr. Taylor

Mr. Foster, Tibthorpe, by the Rev. Seth Dixon

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A Friend, Barrow-upon-Humber, by the Rev. Thomas Kent
Rev. P. Hardcastle

Mr. Joseph Dalby and Family, Bradford-Moor.
Friend at Osset, by the Rev. I. Woodcock

Rev. Z. Taft, towards the Expenditure of the Gold-Coast
Mission..

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A Friend, by the Rev. J. Brown, Higham Ferrers, towards

the Expenditure of the Badagry Mission...

A Lady, by Mr. John Bliss

A Friend at Blandford

Mr. Homan

Captain James Wearne, St. Ives, Cornwall

Jonathan Backhouse, Esq., Darlington

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LONDON: PRINTED BY JAMES NICHOLS, HOXTON-SQUARE.

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FOR MAY, 1844.

BIOGRAPHY.

MEMOIR OF MR. DAVID SHAW,

OF HUDDERSFIELD:

BY THE REV. JOHN HANNAH, D.D.

THE following memoir, in its general form and substance, was kindly supplied by one of the sons of the esteemed man whose history it briefly records. A few alterations, chiefly verbal, and a few additions, have been made; the latter of which were drawn from the transcriber's personal acquaintance with the deceased.

Mr. David Shaw was born at Huddersfield, in the latter end of the year 1784. He was trained by his parents in a regular course of attendance on the ministry of the Gospel; and, while listening to a sermon preached by the Rev. William Moorhouse,-for many years Pastor of the church assembling at Highfield, he was deeply affected with a sense of his own want of a scriptural meetness for heaven. From his early childhood, indeed, he was frequently visited with the strivings of God's Holy Spirit, and was mercifully preserved from gross immorality. Some, who had a familiar knowledge of him before he became fully decided in his religious character, describe him as one who was very serious and orderly in his habits; who shunned the company of the frivolous and gay; and who loved to associate with persons superior to himself in age and experience.

But, notwithstanding these favourable tokens and promises of good, he continued to live without the personal enjoyment of our Lord's saying mercy, until he was between sixteen and seventeen years of age. About that period, while attending the ministry of the exemplary man already named, he was more powerfully convinced of his guilt and sinfulness in the sight of God. He now felt the supreme importance of "being justified freely by the grace of God through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus," and of being "born of the Spirit," that he might thus be "created" anew "in Christ Jesus." Religion, he saw, does not consist in an exact attendance on the services of the church, or in our outward walk, how blameless soever that walk may be in man's esteem; but in the vital possession of "righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost:" "for he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God," as well as "approved of men."

From this time he resolved that he would seek the "communion VOL. XXIII. Third Series. MAY, 1844. 2 C

of saints." He desired to be "a companion of them that fear the Lord, and of them that keep his precepts ;" to "take sweet counsel together" with them, "and walk unto the house of God in" their "company." If his penitential grief was not so severe and overwhelming as that which persons in similar circumstances sometimes endure, it nevertheless bore the genuine marks of that "godly sorrow" which "worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of." He sought the Lord in the diligent use of the appointed means of grace, and soon obtained a consolatory evidence of his acceptance with God through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. One Sunday morning, at six o'clock, he attended a prayer-meeting, which was held in the neighbourhood of his father's house. Two only were present besides himself; and both of them were members of the Methodist society: Thomas Dyson, long since removed to his heavenly rest; and Thomas Sutcliffe, who yet survives. At that meeting he was enabled to join to his sense of guilt and sin a believing apprehension of our Lord's atoning sacrifice; and to wait, in patient faith, for the Holy Spirit's testimony to the fact of his adoption into the family of God. Nor did he wait in vain. While the three retired and humble suppliants were pleading, at that hour of prayer, for the mercy which, through the true propitiatory sacrifice, God always extends to awakened and self-renouncing sinners, the believing penitent found the peace which his spirit sought, and "went down to his house justified."

Before the time of his conversion to God, as above narrated, he had often attended the ministrations of the Wesleyan Methodists; and he now, after due deliberation, resolved to seek Christian fellowship with them. Accordingly, he attached himself, without delay, to a class which assembled on the Thursday evening of each week; and which was under the care of the late Rev. Joseph Collier, one of the Ministers at that time stationed in the Huddersfield Circuit. But a trial of no small severity awaited the youthful Christian. It was contrary to the wishes of his family that he had entered into the Methodist society; and, as he was about that season liberated from his apprenticeship, in consequence of the death of his master, an attempt was made to place him in a situation at a distance from Huddersfield, where he would have been cut off from all regular intercourse with his Christian friends, and deprived, in a great measure, of the religious advantages which he now enjoyed. He tried the proposed situation; but, on the very first day that he spent in it, he painfully felt that he was removed from his Christian associates; separated from the place of his spiritual, as well as of his natural, birth; deprived of the pastoral care of the Ministers who had begun to watch "over him in the Lord, and admonish him;" and no longer surrounded by examples of piety and peace. His spiritual interests were in imminent jeopardy; and he resolutely determined that, whatever prospects of worldly success might rise before him," he had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of his God,

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