department of Christian usefulness within their scope, Mrs. Sharland cordially co-operated with her husband, and proved a helpmeet to him.

In the training of their children they set an example worthy of imitation imbuing the tender mind with the knowledge of God; fostering a reverence for the Lord's day; inculcating the duty of honouring the Ministers of the Gospel, and all placed in stations of authority; together with a love for simple, rational, and intellectual pleasures, as opposed to the pomps and vanities of the world. Their precepts being uniformly enforced by example, the happiest results followed. The rule of Scripture was beautifully illustrated: "Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it." The children now arise and call the parents

blessed.

Some years ago it pleased the almighty Author of life to remove Mrs. Sharland from her attached domestic circle. Her illness was a protracted one, and of a character tending most painfully to depress the mind; but the uniform consistency of her previous course, and the depth, spirituality, and maturity of her Christian experience, assured her friends of her meetness for the inheritance of light, and precluded all shadow of doubt respecting her final safety. The writer had frequent and favourable opportunities of witnessing her abstraction from the world, her calm resignation to the Divine will, and her humble yet firm reliance on the covenant of grace, through faith in the atonement,

Many of Mr. and Mrs. Sharland's surviving friends, of various Christian denominations, will cherish, while memory retains its powers, the recollection of seasons of delightful social intercourse passed with them at Werrington. While their hospitalities were freely tendered to visiters in general, it was to the followers of the Saviour, and the Ministers of His word, that their hearts were especially open. On these occasions the social discourse was profitable, and not unfrequently varied by selections from theological or biographical reading; the interviews being further hallowed by sacred song and united prayer.

The loss of his worthy wife was felt acutely by Mr. Sharlaud; who, although for a time he rallied, began erelong sensibly to decline in health. For some years he had suffered from a disease of the heart, and also from attacks of erysipelas. In the autumn of 1855 other afflictions were superinduced, and it became apparent that the earthly tabernacle was about to be dissolved. The servant of God meekly bowed to the Divine decree, and set his house in order. The value of the religion which he had sought and enjoyed in health was now tested; and, when he was called to "walk through the valley and shadow of death," his steadfast heart "feared no evil,"

"His God sustain'd him in his final hour;
His final hour brought glory to his God."

There was no darkness; his mind was kept in peace, and his hope

bloomed with immortality. It is needless to say, that he bore suffering and extreme weakness with becoming resignation, frequently ejaculating, "The will of the Lord be done."

Ministers and other Christian friends, who had access to the chamber in which this good man languished, can bear ample testimony to the triumph of Divine grace over nature which was there exhibited. They always felt it a privileged spot; hallowed "beyond the common walk of virtuous life,-quite in the verge of heaven." Addressing one attached and much-indebted friend, (to whom Mr. and Mrs. Sharland had proved a second Aquila and Priscilla,) he on one occasion remarked,-" You cannot tell how I love you. The Lord is about to take me; my work here is done: but I am willing to wait His time." Again, during another interview, "Bless the Lord! Praise the Lord!

'I'll praise Him while He lends me breath;

And when my voice is lost in death,

Praise shall employ my nobler powers;

My days of praise shall ne'er be past,
While life, and thought, and being last,
Or immortality endures.'"

The writer had frequent interviews with his dying friend; in the course of which he spoke freely of the past, present, and future, and always in a strain of humble, devout confidence. "I know," he said, "my blessed Saviour and God will never forsake me: I have His word for it. I have nothing to fear, and everything to hope.

The last interview was in the evening of Monday, the 26th of May, [1856,] and within forty-eight hours of his decease. He was then rapidly sinking into the arms of death, and he lay for the most part in a state of stupor: yet, at the sound of a familiar voice, he roused himself, and affectionately pressed the hand, which was, as usual, placed within his own. He whispered out the words, "Feeble nature -feebleness extreme.' When it was suggested, "Your soul is kept in peace," he said, "O, yes. I have no fear; I know whom I have believed." When the verse was repeated,

"There is my house and portion fair;

My treasure and my heart are there,

And my abiding home;

For me my elder brethren stay,

And angels beckon me away,
And Jesus bids me come;"

he raised his dying eyes, and said with animation, "I come,' Thy servant, Lord, replies......Come, blessed Jesus, and take me to Thine everlasting rest." From this time he spoke little. The following Wednesday, a kind friend inquiring if he were still conscious and

peaceful, he replied, "Yes, all is well;" and, about ten minutes later, his happy, loving spirit was released without a groan.

In offering this record to the public, it is not designed to represent the departed as a man free from imperfections. These he had, in common with his fellow-men; but they were so subdued by the power of Divine grace, that the light of his Christian character was not dimmed by them, nor its beneficial influence countervailed. Mr. Sharland was distinguished by great simplicity of character, and plain common-sense; a sound judgment, and accurate professional knowledge; a quaint humour; an absence of all ostentation on his own part, and a manifest dislike of it in others; sincere humility, with which was blended much tenderness in dealing with the characters of other men; integrity in all his transactions; zeal for God's glory, and for the honour of religion; a conscientious attachment to the system of Wesleyan Methodism; a love of its doctrines, its discipline, and its literature; and a liberality of soul which renders his removal a public loss. "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." Let us humbly leave it to His wisdom to decide whether His revenue of glory shall be drawn from the life, or from the death, of His saints; and whether those whom He has renewed in His own lovely likeness shall longer bow at His footstool, or rise to worship before His throne.

T. P. T.

CHRIST THE BREAD OF LIFE.

EXPOSITORY SERMON:

BY THE REV. ALFRED BARRETT.

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me hath everlasting life. I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us His flesh to eat? Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day." (John vi. 47–54.)

THIS is the most impressive portion of that long discourse which our Lord delivered in the synagogue of Capernaum, the day after He had miraculously fed a multitude of five thousand persons with five barley loaves and two small fishes. The chief representatives of that multitude were so dazzled with the splendour of the miracle, that their hopes of attaining national freedom and independence through the power of a worldly Messiah were elated to the highest point; and they had it in their hearts (so He who knows all hearts tells us) to make Him a King. But, while they were in the full glow of political

:

excitement, Christ left them for the mountain-solitude, having constrained His disciples to get into a ship, and pass to the other side of the sea; and, on the following day, everything in His own circle was as lowly, sorrowful, and unworldly as before. The Jews and Galileans must needs, however, follow this mysterious Teacher; though they had not been permitted to witness the awe-inspiring miracle which was wrought on the sea, in the intervening night-season, for the benefit and instruction of the Apostles. In this exclusion we recognise an arrangement of infinite wisdom and justice; which is, that those who reject plain and palpable evidence are judicially debarred from having that evidence increased. Assembling at the synagogue, these earthlyminded followers show forth their disappointment. They draw a tacit comparison between our Lord and Moses;-between the humble Man of Galilee, whose public acts led to no direct result, and their own great leader, who sustained the whole host of Israel for forty years in the wilderness and they so represent this matter, as to make it an argument against our Saviour's claim of a Divine mission; demanding, as the condition of their faith and obedience, that some similar or still nobler "sign" should be given to them. He first corrects their base and wilful error as to the point of fact, and attributes to Jehovah the Father, and not to Moses, (who was only His minister,) the glory of that ancient miracle. Then, from thoughts which the topic suggested, from the recent transactions at Bethsaida, and from their own cavils, He draws occasion for that strain of heavenly wisdom which we find in this chapter; which contains the mystery of our redemption through His blood; which is the connecting point of truth whereby the Old and New Testaments are harmoniously expounded; which is instinct with the deepest feeling of human want and woe, and the tenderest solicitude to relieve them; and which confounds unbelief by the glory of its inward light, and the comprehensive range of its mercy. In His conversation with the Jews, our Lord allows the carnal mind on their part thoroughly to reveal itself in uttering forth its folly; and then He meets it in His own way, and so that His answer shall serve not merely for this emergency, but for the edification of His people in all future time. The learned and the unlearned are both present; and both speak out, that both may be alike confuted. Our Lord makes use of figurative language; and, considering that a prediction of His death is involved, we may suppose that the preservation of the free agency of His hearers required that mode of expression. But the figures were such as could not have presented any real cause of stumbling, if the people had been true to themselves, and to their own sacrificial system. Under the necessity of interposing a veil between them and the object which He had to place before them, He withheld from them for a season, even till the Holy Ghost should be given, the full illumination of these glorious truths: but that veil was so transparent, and allowed such rays to shine through it, (so we may judge from the faithful conduct of the Apostles on the occasion, who confessed that His were "the words of eternal life,") that every beholder ought to have been glad to watch and wait until it was.

taken away. Happy we, if, while cavillers are offended and depart, we say, with Peter, "Lord, to whom shall we go?"

The cast of this discourse is suited rather to the principles of a heavenly, than to the rules of an earthly, logic; and it will not, therefore, bear to be stiffly defined in set forms. It glances from earth to heaven, from the wants of the body to the void and anguish of the soul, from the bread that perishes to the Bread which is life, and which gives life, from an Incarnation in shadow to an Incarnation in substance, from the ceremonial training of man under the Law, to the pardon and salvation of man under the Gospel: pursuing its objects by methods so freely adapted to the varying thoughts of the audience, (known only to the Divine mind,) that the sermonic science of the schools is here entirely out of the question. Let our course, then, be simply that of gathering up and unfolding the principal thoughts and statements which are intermingled in the paragraph before us.

And, first, we are reminded of the universal necessity for spiritual aliment.

The circumstance which led our Lord to assert this general truth, was that of the physical faintness and exhaustion of the multitude who had followed Him from the towns and villages of Galilee. Man, as to his bodily life, must be sustained by bread; yea, and by bread from heaven, whatever may be the nearer agencies through which he receives it. All creatures "seek their meat from God," even when natural laws are left to their usual operation. It was to impress this truth upon the mind of ancient Israel, that for a certain period those laws were pretermitted, and the daily miracle in the wilderness was wrought. The Lord did not collect the beasts of the forest, nor the cattle upon a thousand hills, to be slain for the sustentation of His people; nor did He cover the ground with countless homers of wheat, -a production with which they were familiar, and of which they could give a natural account: but He fed them with manna which they knew not, and which their fathers knew not; that every link of their dependency on earth might be broken, and they might "know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live."

He taught them that He had Himself a deep interest in their life; that He took the conservation of it into His own hands, for great moral purposes; and that their physical well-being was upheld in order that their nobler life-that of the soul-might be upheld by His word. Thus their food came from heaven. What availed the strength, and wisdom, and genius of man, in a rocky wilderness? All these could not produce either a corn of wheat, or a grain of

manna.

The people must have food, or die; and, as the earth in such a place was barren, their help must come from above. And the gift was bestowed in circumstances which, to the spiritual ear, were all vocal with instruction. It was granted, "by the hand of a mediator," to a nation without merit,—a multitude of worldly-minded murmurers ;