THE BAPTIST REPORTER, AND MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCER. THE Reporter contains a considerable amount of information respecting the proceedings of the baptists both at home and abroad. Every person, whether baptist or pædobaptist, who feels any interest in the movements of this denomination, will find in this periodical, a greater amount of information than can be found in any other similar publication. CONTENTS FOR AUGUST. What would Constitute a Revived Ministry?-Our CollegesBaptist Anniversaries-Denominational Annual Meetings-A Statistical Table of Religious Denominations in the United StatesPoetry-Reviews- Baptist Church History-Christian Experience -Characteristic Sketches-The Spiritual Cabinet-The Three Great Curses-Correspondence-Hints of Usefulness-Christian Activity-Baptisms-Baptism Facts and Anecdotes — Religious Tracts-Sabbath Schools and Education-Baptist, Missionary, Religious, and General Intelligence-Marriages-Deaths-General Election. PRICE, MONTHLY, THREEPENCE. Bound Volumes for 1846, and past years, may be had of the Publishers. THE CHILDREN'S MAGAZINE, AND MISSIONARY REPOSITORY. Thirty-six pages, One Penny, with numerous beautiful Engravings. CONTENTS FOR AUGUST. The Harvest (frontispiece)-The Turkey (cut)-The Kidnapped Boy (cut)-History of the Bible-Jesus in his Childhood-William Cave-Noble Generosity-New Zealanders-Obedience-Poetry: Flowers; The Cataract of Lodore; Summer Scene at a Cottage (cut); First Grief; On Arriving at the Age of Sixteen. N.B. Be careful to order Winks's Children's Magazine. London: Published by Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. AND MAY BE HAD OF ALL BOOKSELLERS. CHRISTIAN PIONEER. MINISTERS are respectfully requested to mention the "Christian Pioneer" from the pulpit, and Sabbath School Teachers, Village Preachers, and Tract Distributors, are earnestly invited to promote its circulation. PRICE ONE HALFPENNY. Willie Watson, the Poor Lost Lad.. 181 184 THE CONTENTS. ........ No. 16. ........ .... Temptations Bible Society 186 188 Facts and Hints. The Outside Appearance........ 188 OCTOBER. ....... .... .... ....... ............ 189 LEICESTER: PRINTED AND SOLD BY JOSEPH FOULKES WINKS. And may be had of all Booksellers. 190 191 192 1847. LONDON: PUBLISHED BY SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO., STATIONER'S COURT. THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER. When Dr. CamPBELL proposed his scheme for a cheap magazine for the Independents, he referred to our efforts in issuing cheap publications. Dr. C. entered on his labours under great advantages, He afterand worked out his projects with ability and success. wards issued a Penny Magazine, and we, in imitation, issued this halfpenny one. Another thing he has just done, or rather one of his correspondents has suggested that it be done. It is proposed, by subscriptions, to put it in the power of Dr. Campbell to send monthly to home missionaries, and poor pastors, and other active agents, in various parts of the country, a number of copies of his Penny Magazine for gratuitous distribution. An excellent suggestion-just in the spirit of the times! At present we only mention it, and shall refer to it again in our next. What do our readers think of it ? We again urge attention to the following considerations. When it was found that the greater part of the people would read, men, whose only object was to make money, soon set to work and printed books, pamphlets, tracts, magazines, and newspapers, of all kinds, at very low prices, to meet the demand. Some of these publications were bad, others were wicked, others were vile and infamous. Tales, novels, romances, plays, songs, ballads, and we know not what were published in millions. Can we wonder that some who could read became more vicious and wicked? True, there were some publishers who issued useful works— Knight, and Parker, in London, and the Chambers', in Edinburghand in their way they did good, but they were not-they did not profess to be-of a decidedly religious character. And nothing can effectually preserve men from vice and wickedness but real religion. Plenty of room then for such publications as this to be circulated in every cottage in the empire-so cheap that the poorest may buy -so amusing and instructive that all may be interested-so plain that all may understand-and with so much religion every month that no man can take up a copy without finding words by which, under the divine blessing, he may discover the path of life. Jesus Christ is set forth in every number as the way to God. Spread it then, christian friends, spread it on every hand. Can you who are rich do anything much more likely to do good among the poor than by ordering 50 or 100 copies for gratuitous distribution amongst them every month? Many a poor pious man or woman, who perhaps could do nothing else, not being able to teach in the sabbath school, would delight to be thus employed as the almoner of your bounty. And even where this is not or cannot be done, our poor pious friends, who wish to do some good in their life-time, may do much in this way, by shewing it to their neighbours, and getting subscribers, for its very low price places it within their reach. A poor bed-ridden man at St. Alban's was the means of circulating many by always recommending it to all who came to see him! WILLIE WATSON, THE POOR LOST LAD Ir is now fifty years since Willie Watson returned, after an absence of nearly a quarter of a century, to his native place, a sea-port town in the north of Scotland. He had been employed as a ladies' shoemaker in some of the districts of the south; no one at home had heard of Willy in the interval; and there was little known regarding him on his return, except that when he had quitted town many years ago, he had been a neat-handed, excellent workman, and what the elderly people called a quiet, decent lad. And he was now, though somewhat in the wane of life, a more thorough master of his trade than before. He was quiet and unobtrusive, too, as ever, and a great reader of serious books. And so the better sort of the people were beginning to draw to Willie by a kind of natural sympathy. Some of them had learned to saunter into his workshop in the long evenings, and some had grown bold enough to engage him in serious conversation, when they met him in his solitary walks; when out came the astounding fact and, important as it may seem, the simpleminded mechanic had taken no pains to conceal it—that during his residence in the south country, he had left the kirk, and gone over to the baptists. There was a sudden revulsion of feeling towards him, and all the people of the town began to speak of Willie Watson as a poor lost lad." 66 The "poor lost lad," however, was unquestionably a very excellent workman; and as he made neater shoes than anybody else, the ladies of the place could see no great harm in wearing them. He was singularly industrious, too, and indulged in no expense, except when he now and then bought a good book, or a few flower-seeds for his garden. He was, withal, a single man, with only an elderly sister, who lived with him, and himself to provide for; and what between the regularity of his gains on the one hand, and the moderation of his desires on the other, Willie, for a person in his sphere of life, was in easy circumstances. It was found that all the children in the neighbourhood had taken a wonderful fancy to his shop. He was fond of telling them good little stories out of the bible, and of explaining to them the prints which he had pasted on the walls. Above all, he was anxiously bent on teaching them to read. Some of their parents were poor, and some of them were careless; and he saw that unless they learned their letters from him, there was very little chance of their ever learning them at all. Willie, in a small way, and to a very small congregation, was a sort of missionary; and what between his stories and his pictures, and his flowers and his apples, his labours were wonderfully successful. Never yet was school or church half so delightful to the little men and women of the place as the shop of Willie Watson, "the poor lost lad." Years of scarcity came on; taxes were high, and crops not WILLIE WATSON, THE POOR LOST LAD. abundant; and the soldiery abroad, whom the country had employed to fight in the great revolutionary war, had got an appetite at their work, and were consuming a great deal of meat and corn. The price of bread rose tremendously, and many of the townspeople, who were working for very little, were not, in every case, secure of their little when the work was done. Willie's small congregation began to find that the times were exceedingly bad. There were no morning pieces among them, and the porridge was always less than enough. It was observed, however, that in the midst of their distresses, Willie got in a large stock of meal, and that his sister had begun to bake as if she were making ready for a wedding. The children were wonderfully interested in the work, and watched it to the end-when, lo! to their great and joyous surprise, Willie began and divided the whole baking amongst them! Every member of his congregation got a cake; there were some, who had little brothers and sisters at home, who got two; and from that day forward, till times got better, none of Willie's young people lacked their morning piece. The neighbours marvelled at Willie: to be sure, much of his goodness was a kind of natural goodness; but certain it was, that independently of what it did, he took an inexplicable delight in the bible and in religious meditation; and all agreed that there was something strangely puzzling in the character of "the poor lost lad." We have alluded to Willie's garden. Never was there a little bit of ground better occupied—it looked like a piece of rich needlework. He had got wonderful flowers, too-flesh-coloured carnations, streaked with red, and roses of a rich golden yellow. Even the commoner varieties-auriculas and anemones, and the party-coloured polyanthus-grew better with Willie than with any body else. A Dutchman might have envied him his tulips, as they stood, row above row, on their elevated beds, like so many soldiers on a redoubt; and there was one mild dropping season, in which two of these beautiful flowers, each perfect in its kind, and of different colours too, sprung apparently from the same stem. The neighbours talked of them as they would have talked of the Siamese twins; but Willie, though it lessened the wonder, was at pains to show them that the flowers sprung from different roots, and that what seemed their common stem was in reality but a green hollow sheath formed by one of the leaves. Proud as Willie was of his flowers-and with all his humility he could not help being somewhat proud of them he was conscientiously determined to have no miracle among them, unless, indeed, the miracle should chance to be a true one. It was no fault of Willie's that all his neighbours had not as fine gardens as himself-he gave them slips of his best flowers, flesh-coloured carnations, yellow rose, and all; he grafted their trees for them, too, and taught them the exact time for raising their tulip roots, and the best mode of preserving them. Nay, more than all this, he devoted whole hours at times |