the youth of both sexes.

Let such as attach any

importance to the cultivation of piety, and whose first solicitude it is to be prepared for eternity, avoid taking to their bosoms a domestic enemy, with whom it will be requisite to live in a state either of perpetual counteraction, or of sinful compliance; and from whom, without the interposition of divine grace, they must anticipate an eternal separation. Our dear departed sister made a wise choice, and determined to select, as a companion for life, one with whom she could indulge a confident hope of sharing a blessed eternity.

Her rapid advancement in every christian grace was manifest to every one except to herself: for she often expressed the deep sense she entertained of her manifest imperfections, while others beheld nothing in her but what was "pure, lovely, and of good report." As she was clothed with humility, so she was eminently soberminded, at the utmost distance from indulging in the levities, follies, and vain competitions of the age. She was chaste, a keeper at home, a lover of her husband, a lover of her children, and one who guided her house with discretion. Kindness to the indigent entered deeply into her character; she delighted "to do good to all men, especially to such as are of the household of faith." She was perfectly superior to the vanity of dress; her attire was suited to her station, neither mean nor splendid, but such as became a woman professing godliness. Her conviction of the nothingness of the world was

profound, and she longed, would her modesty have permitted, to admonish her young friends from her dying bed, to be on their guard against its fascinations and its snares. To her relations she often exclaimed, almost with her dying breath, "The world! the world!" intending to warn them of what she conceived to form their chief danger.

On the whole, among the numerous losses which this church has recently sustained, I know of none more entitled to lasting lamentation than the present; nor has there been a member removed, during the period of my ministry, whose life has been more exemplary, or whose memory will be more precious.

THE CHARACTER

OF THE LATE

REV. THOMAS ROBINSON,

VICAR OF ST. MARY'S, LEICESTER.

As exhibited in a Speech delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Leicester Auxiliary Bible Society, April 1813.

IT is with a melancholy satisfaction I rise to express my entire approbation of the sentiments contained in the resolution just read.

It would, in my opinion, have been unnatural to usher our annual report into the world, without noticing that solemn and affecting dispensation which has deprived this society, this town, and this county, of its principal ornament. We are weakened this day by the falling of a pious and a great man in Israel. In the formation of this society our incomparable friend had a principal share; and through every stage he gave it an unremitted attention, and watched over its interests with a parental solicitude. The idea of instituting an

auxiliary society in Leicester was no sooner suggested to him, than it engaged his most cordial good wishes he lent to its support the vigour of his masculine understanding, the energies of his

CHARACTER OF THE REV. THOMAS ROBINSON. 285.

capacious heart; and to him, beyond any other individual, it is indebted for the patronage and the maturity it has attained. He was, indeed, the father of this institution.-But of what institution formed for the promotion of the temporal and spiritual welfare of mankind in this place was he not the father? We can look nowhere, throughout this large and populous town, without perceiving the vestiges of his unwearied solicitude for the advancement of the happiness of his fellow-creatures. He has inscribed his history in the numerous charitable and religious foundations which owe their existence or their prosperity to his influence. Our jails, our hospitals, our schools, our churches, are replete with monuments of his worth, and with the effects of his energetic benevolence.

It is recorded of the great Hannibal, that, when an infant, his father conducted him to an altar, and made him vow eternal hostility to the Roman republic. Our venerable friend, when he first entered Leicester, appears, with an ardour not less intense, to have devoted himself to its interests. From the moment he entered the place, he appears to have relinquished all selfish pursuits, all idea of private gratification, and to have formed that system of conduct from which he never departed, which had the most immediate tendency to meliorate the state of its inhabitants. He became altogether a public character: he meditated, he wrote, he preached, he breathed, only for the public. Rarely, if ever, was there a mind more perfectly purified from

every tincture of selfishness or vanity. He made the most extensive sacrifices of his time and of his repose, with a spontaneity and alacrity which implied an almost total oblivion of his existence as an individual. Endowed with a capacity for high attainments in science, and distinguished at the university by the honours assigned to superior merit, he generously declined the pursuit of literary eminence for the sole purpose of doing good. It is but few who are capable of adequately appreciating the magnitude of such a sacrifice. Dr. Paley was, certainly, one of those few: and I had it from the lips of our venerable friend, that, in addicting himself to the duties of a parish priest, he had, in the opinion of that great man, chosen the better part; a choice which it is evident Heaven singularly sanctioned and approved. In fixing his system of life, he had unquestionably a view to a future account, and formed his determination on the assured persuasion of his appearing before the judgement-seat of Christ, where the salvation of one soul will cause a more glorious distinction than the greatest literary attainments; where all greatness of a merely intellectual nature will disappear, and nothing endure the scrutiny but active and disinterested virtue.

In the mean time, how narrow the bounds of his influence, how confined the ascendency of his character, had he been only the solitary student, instead of being the zealous and exemplary pastor, and the active citizen! On the former supposition,