most fit for him to send, most appropriate for me to bring, what other could it be than this, the surviving monument of his talents and his toils? Orphaned of him, the Wesleyan University claims a new adop tion into your cherishing affections, and your zeal of enterprise. It was his it is yours. By the holy name of WESLEY inscribed upon her entablatures by the sacred memory of FISK emblazoned first upon her heraldry-by her past brief, but successful career, and by her hopeful yet tremulous prospects for the future-by what she has already done for our church, and by what she yet may do for your ministry and sons--we implore that, if while his arm sustained us, ye leaned too much upon its support, that now ye would redouble your effort and substitute your energies to supply the vacuum of its withdrawal. Memorials more near to your own metropolis you may erect to the memory of the departed, honorable to yourselves and appropriate to him; but his spirit would bid me tell you, that no memento could be dearer from your efforts to him than the towering success of that monument to whose existence his labors contributed; in all the elements of whose prosperity his prayers are intermingled; around whose columns his memories are entwined; and within whose hallowed precincts his ashes are reposing.

nest."

The pulpit in which I stand and the audience addressed are both remembrancers, that the man whose character is commemorated was, as has been already said, the champion of a cause. Dr. Fisk's Me. thodism, uncompromising as it was, was of the most genuinely liberal stamp; for with him it was synonymous with “ Christianity in ear. He knew that not only the spirit, but the very name of Me. thodism, upon another continent, is synonymous with vital religion of belief, heart, and life; and he knew and rejoiced too that, even on our continent, the more fervid tone that now melts through all the spirit of the American Church, not only thence instrumentally received its electric spring, but was what in Europe would be called, and here would thirty years ago have been called, Methodistic. In the spirit that he saw transcending his sectarian boundary lines, and transfusing itself through the different bodies of the American Protestant Church, he saw the pervading glory of his Methodism. But he was not one jot the less an unflinching champion for the creed, the forms, and the institutions of central, original Methodism proper. He believed her tenets the purest fac simile of the New Testament original; he con. templated her forms as the best enshrinement of her creed and spirit; and he maintained her whole machinery and operations as the best attainable apparatus for evangelizing the world. He knew that there was a spirit in her springs and eyes in her wheels; and while he would rigidly and purely confine her to the most energetic and decisive effort to electrify the world with the gospel's power, he would sooner have disjointed his arm from its socket than not have maintained her utmost energy in that one, pure, holy work. Religious radicalism and church anarchy found in him an opponent uncompromising, frank, and perpendicular; for while they eyed the bishop elect as assuming the air of haughty churchmanship, and drawing up the reigns of an upstarting prelatic, he viewed them as cutting the marrow and sinew of the best-nerved evangelic arm that has ever since the apostolic days held forth the gospel gift to the nations of the earth. Upon this

occasion, we hold ourselves no disputant, and upon any occasion no arbiter of so great a question. Our prayer and our trust are, that whatsoever may be the fate of ecclesiastic institutions, the gospel's power and the Bible's truth may be triumphant.

Such, my friends, was Wilbur Fisk. Such, at least he was, to the fallible view, and in the hastily-expressed phrase, of one whose happiness it was to enjoy his friendship, and whose honor it was to have been the associate of some of his earthly labors. If personal feelings were likely to color the expression, still the endeavor has been to draw the lineaments from memory, and to speak with the impartiality of history. And so speaking, we must say, that in the possession of great and most beautifully balanced mental powers, held in sway by the energy of predominant will, and that will aiming at the highest moral purpose, he has left very few, if any, his living superiors. And we must affirm, that we hold him to be one of those characters deigned in mercy to a wicked world-commissioned messengers of almighty goodness, on ministers of grace and mercy-God's visible ANGELS of the church below.

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Brethren in the ministry of reconciliation, he whom we have lost rejoiced to make great worldly sacrifices for the honor of being your brother, in your high and sacred calling. With the path of human ambition full in high prospect before his ardent imagination, with a heart beating with hope, and talents that most amply augured his complete success, he sacrificed all-and his was a Methodism and a ministry which cost him something. When," says he, in one of his private papers, "when I made up my mind to be a Methodist travel. ing preacher, it was an entire abandonment of ease, wealth, worldly honor, and even an earthly home." Such was his sacrifice; but it was without reserve without retraction—and without regret. How beautiful and striking an assurance did he give of this, in a passage (which his modesty would not allow to be published, as being too personal) addressed by him in England to thirty young missionaries, then ordained for the foreign service! When, in the new world, I gave myself to the itinerant ministry, I laid my ease, my reputation, my future prospects, my all, on the missionary altar; and I have never regretted it. No, nor even for one moment have I ever wished to take any thing back. So good has God been in his manifestations to me." To you his brethren, in the midst of the successive depriva. tions she has suffered, in the quenching of her shining lights, the church turns with new and increasing solicitude. What stars have, from our earthly orrery, gone up to the high empyrean! An Emory, a Ruter, a Merwin, a Fisk, where are they? Alas, our prophetsthey live not for ever! But though they to our vision be lost, all is not lost; for the great Head of the church survives, "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.'

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Brethren of the Young Men's Missionary and Bible Societies, yours too was this great loss. From among your bulwarks, a tower of strength hath departed. Ye are coming to your place of annual ga. thering, but let there be no voice of joy among you-for know ye not that a prince and a great man hath fallen in Israel? Ye are summoning down from their towers the watchmen of Zion, to challenge them, "What of the night ?"-but summon ye not the noblest of them

all,-for know ye not that the beauty of Israel is slain upon her high places? I have come--for ye have called me- -from the halls of study and the abodes of science, and I tell you there was a sadness and a mourning among them; for he who was their chief light was quenched and gone. His pupils look over the green sward where he walked, and the prayer-room where he came, and they thought to have seen him—and then remember they that they shall see him no more. We, the partners of his labors, gather ourselves to our place of counsel, but our little number is diminished; we look for our guide and our own familiar friend-but he comes not-he shall be there no more! There is a widowed heart that is lone and desolate—and she mourneth with a mourning that may not be comforted-for he who was her life's life is gone, and gone for ever!

We stand by the new heaped tombless mound, where spring hath spread her fresh green sod, and we muse silently over the days, when he, who was meek as a lamb in his mildness, and mighty as a lion in his strength, with his voice of softness and his look of peace, was one among us; and we say, as we gaze upon his grave

Shrine of the mighty! can it be

That this is all that's left of thee?

From the field where he lies-from the scene where he fell-I have come at your kindly bidding; but I bring you not that mighty heart which ye knew once beat with such heaving throbs in the cause for which ye are banded; for that heart beats no more:-but the pulsations which it felt and the vibrations which it awakened shall revolve to the world's remotest bound, and their wave shall never cease! I bring you not the lofty utterings of that voice which once pleaded with you and for you in your own cause; for its words are gone, and its tones are suppressed in death; and yet they are not dead; for they were sparks of immortality; and they burn in many a living heartburning hearts that shall kindle other hearts-and the fire shall be undying! I bring not that manly form which once led your section of the sacramental host; for that form now molders in the fresh spring cemetery that spreads upon the sunny hill where his pupils hands have placed it; but moldering as is his dust, I hold on high before you his beaming example, to guide, like a flaming pillar, your triumphant march in the cause for which he lived, and for which you labor. These shall be his still surviving life; in these, even on earth, shall he be immortal. But to the image that once lived and now is dead-to the speech once articulate but now hushed-to the eye once beaming with intelligence but now closed, we join to bid our silent-sorrowing -last-FAREWELL!

For the Methodist Magazine and Quarterly Review.

BIBLE ELECTION.

BY REV. RAPHAEL GILBERT, OF THE NEW-YORK CONFERENCE.

"Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied," I Pet. i, 2.

It is our object, in the following remarks, to present as explicitly as we can, the doctrine of election as taught in the Bible.

In order that we may have a clear, just, and Scriptural understanding of this subject, we shall,

I. In the first place, treat on the different kinds of election spoken of in the Scriptures.

1. Christ is called the elect of God, "Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my Spirit upon him; he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles," Isa. xlii, 1.

2. The Scriptures speak of elect angels, "I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, that thou observe these things without preferring one before another, doing nothing by partiality," 1 Tim. v, 25. It seems that these angels were chosen to perform particular offices to the church.

3. God chose or elected certain individuals to fill particular offices in the Jewish nation. Hence he elected Saul, David, and Solomon, to be kings in, or over the children of Israel.

4. Moses and Joshua were elected to lead the children of Israel from Egypt to the land of Canaan.

5. Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, and others, were elected to be the prophets of the Lord to his people Israel. See Jer. i, 4, 5.

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6. Our Lord elected Peter, James, John, and others, to be his apos. tles, and set them apart for that office. Hence he says, " Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you," John xv, 16.

7. There is also a national election spoken of in the Bible: "And I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an inheritor of my mountain, and mine elect shall inherit it, and my servants shall dwell there," Isa. lxv, 9. This kind of election is introduced into the ninth chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans, at the eleventh verse: "For the children being not yet born, neither having done good or evil, that the purpose of God, according to election, might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth." This national election is an election to great and exalted privileges, which are mentioned by the apostle in the fourth and fifth verses of this chapter: "Who are Israelites, to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen." And we are confident that the election spoken of in the eleventh verse is a national election to great and exalted privileges, and not a personal and individual election

to salvation; because the apostle begins, continues, and ends this chapter in a national point of view.

1. The apostle begins this chapter by expressing his "great heaviness and continual sorrow of heart for, his brethren, his kinsmen according to the flesh; who are Israelites." Now we would ask, What was the cause or causes of the apostle's "great heaviness and continual sorrow of heart for his brethren, his kinsmen according to the flesh?" We answer, Because the apostle saw that they were deceiving themselves with the false notion that they were the only people of God, merely because they were the natural descendants of Abraham, and because they had also been honored with greater and more exalted privileges than any or all the other nations of the earth.

2. That in consequence of their rejecting and crucifying the Lord of life and glory they were not only to be broken off, and rejected as the people of God, and the Gentiles elected in their stead; but that the most awful and tremendous judgments that had ever befallen any people or nation were lowering in horrid aspect over their guilty heads, and were ready to fall in redoubled terror upon their defenceless souls. These were the evils which the apostle saw would soon come in upon them like an overflowing flood. And how deeply was the apostle affected by the sight. What would he not have been willing to do or suffer, if by that means he could rescue them from these coming judgments. Who can fathom the deep tones of sorrow that are implied in these words of the apostle: "I say the truth in Christ; I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart; for I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites," verses 1, 2, 3. Now a deceived Jew might reply, and say, If we are to be broken off and rejected as the church of God, then has the promise of God failed; for God said to Abraham, “I will establish my covenant between me and thee, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and thy seed after thee," Gen. xvii, 7. Here we have a clear view of the ground of their deception-namely, they supposed that the promises of God, which were made to Abraham and his seed, were restricted to the natural born Jews, when in fact Abraham was to be "a father of many nations:" "not to those only that were of the law, but to those also that were of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all," chap. v, 16. Therefore, though the Jews were to be broken off and rejected as the people of God, and the Gentiles elected in their stead, it does not follow from hence "that the word of God hath taken none effect," or that the promises of God to Abraham and to his seed have failed. No; for they are not all Israel which are of Israel." God has other children besides those of the descendants of Jacob. Verse 6: "Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham are they all children" the real spiritual children of God, and the seed to whom the promises were made. For,

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3. "They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God," though they be the descendants of Abraham, verse 8. And the reason is, they have not "walked in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham," by which alone they can become the true children of God.