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travelling on foot back to Liverpool. He continued his labours there for years, and had the inexpressible joy of seeing his exertions crowned with abun dant success. But his health was rapidly declining under this unremitting labour. In the year 1834, when on a tour through South Wales, for the benefit of his health, he came to Carmarthen, he preached there. The late Rev. D. Peter was then in need of a co-pastor. The minister and people united in giving an invitation to Mr. Breese. He, however painful to his feelings was the separation from his brethren in Liverpool, deemed it his duty to accept of this invitation. He commenced his stated labours at Carmarthen, in January, 1835. In a few months, the whole of the ministerial duties devolved upon him; his revered and venerable colleague was taken from his extensive field of usefulness to his rich reward. Here he laboured with wonderful faithfulness and eminent succes till the beginning of 1842, when he became so ill as to be obliged to give up preaching; and on the 8th of August, in the same year, he was transplanted from a world of sorrow and trouble to a land of peace and immortality. He left a widow and six children; one of whom soon followed him, and joins with her father to praise Him, who by his grace prepared them to meet in such a happy and holy world.

Mrs. Breese is the daughter of the late Mr. Williams, of Fronheulog, near

Caernarvon, who was a faithful and able friend of Dissent in West Wales ; he was also one of the first supporters of this useful magazine in that part of the country. May He, who is the friend of the widow, and father of the fatherless, protect and guide the bereaved mother and her children, even unto death.

As a man, Mr. Breese was benevolent, humane, and kind, perhaps to a fault. He was open and candid in conversation, but required to be roused before he would enter fully into it. He had too much confidence in human nature, believed all to be as innocent and guileless as himself, but had to lament often his mistake. As a preacher, his talents were of no ordinary character. He was a profound theologian; a fine metaphysician; had a most lively and vigorous imagination. Some of his sermons were most sublime and argumentative. All were concentrated in the cross of Christ; this, as he used to say, is "the front of my ministry." The cross of Christ was the theme on which his soul loved to dwell. No one preached the whole duty of man, and declared the whole counsel of God, with more faithfulness and constancy than he did. His wonderful success may be traced to this source, that he preached the truth as it is in Jesus. The echo of that success now says to every minister whom he has left behind, "Go thou and do likewise." T. T.

CHRIST NOT DIVIDED;

OR,

THE KIND OF UNION TO BE SOUGHT AMONG THE DISCIPLES OF CHRIST.

"Is Christ divided."-1 Cor. i. 13.

THIS is a question which ought to sink deeply into the heart of every sincere disciple of the Lord Jesus.

It was

urged by Paul, with burning severity, upon the church at Corinth, at a time when he knew that there were contentions among its members, that they

were divided into various factions, and ranged under different leaders. It was not directed so much against their diversities of opinion, as against that spirit of unholy rivalry, which marred their fellowships, and diminished the amount of their Christian love. They

The spirit, then, that would divide and alienate the disciples of Christ, is a marked indication of great feebleness in the spiritual life, and savours largely of those carnal affections which predominate in worldly minds. It is the emphatic description of men by nature that they are "hateful and hating one another;" but to His sincere followers Christ has said, "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another ;" and "This," said He, "is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you;" and, again, "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another."

are not charged with any serious departure from the grand outline of apostolic truth; but they are censured for a temper of mind inconsistent with the full manifestation of that confidence and affection, which ought to obtain among those who are "one in Christ Jesus." So lamentably did the spirit of party obtain among certain of the Corinthian believers, that they not only claimed Paul, and Apollos, and Cephas, as the leaders of so many sects; but went so far as to implicate the precious name of Christ as the watchword of a movement which threatened to rend asunder his body the church. In full view of this unlovely state of things, the apostle appeals to them, in the following tender and pathetic terms:"Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.” He deprecates the party spirit which had crept in among them; he pleads, in Christ's name, that it may be abandoned; he urges them to a holy union in the truth; he entreats that their unhappy schisms may come to an end; he exhorts them to cultivate that harmony of mind and judgment one toward another, which would annihilate their party heats and animosities, and better test the character of their piety, than all the "utterance and knowledge" by which they were distinguished. hath been declared unto me," saith the apostle, "by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you. Now, this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ." This was a feeble and unlovely state of the Christian proTession; which led Paul to say of the Corinthians that he could not "speak unto them as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ; "for whereas," says he, "there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men ?"

"It

It is deeply to be lamented that both in the primitive age, and in later times, the professed disciples of Christ have greatly neglected that “new commandment," which their heavenly Master delivered unto them. If there have been instances in which the world has been constrained to say, "See how these Christians love each other," it has too often, alas! happened, that the servants of the same divine Master have acted towards each other as if the law of love had not been the law of his kingdom. A species of antagonism and unhallowed rivalry has taken the place of union in the belief of great and saving doctrines, and of that love for the truth's sake, without which we are "become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal."

When we reflect on the oft-repeated injunctions of our Lord to the culti vation of the spirit of love; when we turn to his memorable prayer that his disciples "may be one ;" when we survey the numerous intimations of inspired apostles that Christians should "love one another with a pure heart fervently;" and contemplate, at the same time, the disjointed, schismatic, and hostile aspects of the Christian church, we cannot but feel that a great moral revolution must take place ere the period of millennial glory can be realized; and that the church herself must be converted, before we can look for

the ingathering of the world into the fold of the Redeemer. The union of Christians, as such, irrespective of all the other peculiarities which belong to them, must be practically and universally recognized, if their combined energies are to tell on the salvation of millions who are still out of Christ.

It is matter of deep thankfulness to God, that, at a time when error and bigotry are spreading to an alarming extent throughout our country, there has arisen, in many quarters, a fervent longing for closer union among the children of God. A series of provisional meetings have been held, in London, composed of ministers of various churches, with a view to discuss the question of union, and to prepare some catholic platform of visible fraternity, on which evangelical Christians may stand forth before the world as substantially one, in the recognition of great catholic principles, and in the expression of mutual esteem and love. furtherance of this object, a refreshing meeting was held on Thursday, the 1st of June, at Exeter Hall, when pastors of various churches and members of several religious denominations gave the right hand of fellowship to each other, and endeavoured to show to the world, that diversity of ecclesiastical forms may comport with keeping "the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace,”may co-exist with unbroken confidence, and cordial harmony and good will.

In

It is high time, for those who are building their hopes on the one sacrifice for sin, amidst the seclusion and rivalry of denominational feeling, to bethink themselves of the heart-stirring interrogatory of Paul,-"Is CHRIST DIVIDED?" and, with all their zeal for questions pertaining to the form and order of Christ's house, to prepare themselves, in these eventful days, for a more comprehensive fellowship with all who in every place "call on the Lord out of a pure heart."

What, then, is the kind of union we must seek to promote among the disciples of Christ?

I. It is not the union of mere name and profession.

We greatly fear it has been one of the crying sins of the present age, that loose professions of love and union have been made on public occasions, which have no sooner been uttered than forgotten. If they have not been advanced to serve a purpose, there is reason to apprehend, from the fruits they have produced, that they have been made without due deliberation,without any solemn feeling of the responsibility attached to such avowals in the midst of popular and applauding assemblies. The objection does not lie against the public profession of love; but against that heartless inoperative thing, which is put on for an occasion, and then laid aside like a holiday dress, only to be used again when the field-day of some great society calls for the ordinary amount of charitable profession. Many a time has it happened, that a speaker, on a London platform, has been as comprehensive in his love as the Christian church, while, in his own circle, he has been known to be narrow, contracted, distant, cold, and repulsive. It is not such union as this we must labour to promote. It is not the shadow of union, but the substance of it we must seek to realize. Hollow professions of love will do us harm rather than good. We want the living generous emotion, which springs from principles which will act with the uniformity of a law, and glow with an undying fervency like the fires on the Jewish altar. Pure love cannot be constrained; it must be spontaneous, heartfelt, sincere. It will sound no trumpet in its path; but it will ever be expressing itself suitably towards its legitimate objects; and as it knows no guile, so it will wear no disguise. The union of mere form and ceremony is the most hateful thing that can be displayed under the Christian name.

II. It is not a union of unholy compromise that we desire to promote.

A man who has an enlightened conviction cannot relinquish it, but as the

result of a process of investigation which overbears his former conclusions. Even union itself cannot be purchased at the price of moral consistency. We must not give up what we believe to be truth, to enjoy the most delightful fellowship which earth can afford. That union, then, which should be formed on the principle of merging the claims of individual conscience, or which should agree to abandon a single principle or practice considered as sanctioned by Divine authority, would be unworthy of the disciples of that Master, who requires that "every man shall be persuaded in his own mind," and whose express injunction it is, that we should "Prove all things," and "hold fast that which is good." A union constructed upon the principle of compromise, would necessarily be reserved, and cold, and insecure. It would soon issue in mutual jealousies and misunderstandings. Points, not to be mooted, would, at times, make their appearance; breach of faith would thus be charged upon the offending party; and instead of love and union, discord and strife would be the inevitable result. But irrespective of the formidable difficulty of conducting union upon the principle of compromise, the thing in itself would be sinful. A Christian can never safely stipulate to relinquish any part of what he believes to be the will of God; nor could he expect a blessing upon a union formed at the expense of truth. If he find, in the effort to draw himself closer to his brethren in Christ, that he has unduly magnified certain points of difference between himself and them, he may henceforward regard those points in a subordinate light; or if he should discover, in this process, that he has held certain points to be truth which he now finds to be error, he is bound to relinquish them; but what he still believes to be Christian truth, a part of the will of God, he must neither abandon nor compromise; nor will the principles of well-defined Christian union require that any such sacrifice should be made,

in order to the enjoyment of its blessings.

III. It is not a union of cold uniformity that we desire to promote.

Such a union can only, in the nature of things, be the result of legal enactment, or of tyrannous church rule, or of sectarian predilection. The minds of men, when suffered to act freely and without constraint, never exhibit, in masses, the aspect of uniformity. There was no act of uniformity in the apostolic churches; and no one can trace their records without finding that great diversities of opinion existed among them; nor were those diversities censured, except where they trenched upon vital truths, or impaired the spirit of love. History, indeed, proves, that all attempts to force uniformity of belief or practice upon a professing people, only tends either to multiply their actual differences, or to foster the spirit of formalism and hypocrisy. Is it not a matter of undeniable fact, that the episcopal church of England, which is under an act of uniformity, is more divided and torn asunder at the present moment, than any accredited body of orthodox Dissenters now existing in this country? The union of mere uniformity may be political, or priestly, or sectarian; but to the name of Christian it can have no title. If it creates adherence, it is the vulgar adherence of human law; if it fosters quietude, it is the quietude of the tomb; if it produces co-operation, it is only that kind of co-operation which aims at self-preservation, at the expense of destroying others; if it promotes religion, it is the religion of a sect, and not the wide-spread catholic religion of the New Testament. The union of uniformity, where none are at liberty to think and act for themselves, may generate the love of party, but it must, in proportion, quench the " unfeigned love of the brethren."

IV. The union we desire to promote is that which arises from fellowship in the cordial reception of great and saving truths.

Amidst all the diversities of the

Christian profession which have sprung from the infirmity of man, the animating fact still remains, THAT THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IS ONE! "There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." The evidence of this oneness of the Christian church may be very imperfectly exhibited, but the principles and influences on which it depends are common to every genuine disciple of the cross. The faith which unites to the Church's Head forms a connecting link with the whole brotherhood of the redeemed. The Spirit, which quickens and renovates the sinful hearts of man, imparts a conscious sympathy with all who are born from above. The hope of eternal life, which springs up in the bosoms of those who have passed from death unto life, entails a community of interests and possessions upon all who are "begotton again" to its enrapturing prospect. The Church of Christ is ONE; and every member pertaining to that church has in him, however much concealed, or restrained, or counterworked, the elements of union with the entire body of Christ, and with all its several members; he is, in common with every believer throughout the world, washed in the same atoning fountain, sanctified by the same Spirit, conformed to the same holy standard, introduced into the same fellowship with God, engaged in the same spiritual conflict, upheld by the same mighty power, and destined to the same eternal home.

It is for the development and manifestation of these common principles of union among the disciples of Christ that we contend. If all believers in the great atonement are one in Christ; if they have one Father, one Redeemer, one Sanctifier, they ought to "receive one another, as Christ hath received them, to the glory of God." There can be no solid ground for actual fellowship with any specific body of Christians, which would not justify, and even require the spirit of fellowship

"with all in every place who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus." The particulars in which one Christian differs from another, are not the basis on which rests the unity of the church ; but the grand principles in which they all substantially agree. As our minor peculiarities, therefore, are not the points which unite us truly to any portion of Christ's body, so they ought never to be permitted to separate us, in feeling or in deportment, from any who bear the image of Christ. They may multiply the points of union in our separate churches, but, in themselves, they could not create Christian union; neither should their absence be suffered to destroy it. Our differences would do us but little harm, if common-grand principles were suffered to exert their legitimate influence. Real Christian union must centre in Christ the Head. Looking to Him, and living upon his fulness, we must look on one another as members of the same mystical body, linked together by ties which neither time nor death can dissolve, and which eternity will only cement.

The union, then, for which we plead, is not a union of mere name and profession, cold, distant, and reserved; nor is it a union of compromise, demanding that we should relinquish what we believe to be truth; nor is it a union of uniformity, consisting of a constrained performance of the same round of religious ceremony and ob servance; but it is a union in the belief and experience of great and saving truths, inclining us sweetly to feel the tie of a spiritual relationship, to recognize the bond of a fellowship never to be dissolved, and so to reverence the principle of our unity in our Blessed Head, as to suffer no inferior principle to triumph over it, and to divide us from those with whom we are essentially, gloriously, and eternally one. We plead, too, with all the authority of God's word on our side, that this unity may be avowed; that it may be fully and fearlessly exhibited to the world; that no sectional line of demarcation may be allowed to prevent

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