to hear the people speak of his plans, and modes of doing them good. In 1822, he received an appointment to Jamaica; but the previous exertions having so impaired his health, he was found to be an unfit subject for that climate; and, through the imperative injunctions of the physicians who attended him, he was obliged to return again to the Babamas. The exercises of mind occasioned by this circumstance were to him very painful. As Abaco was without a preacher, he went thither. In 1824, he received an appointment for Eleuthera, and in the year following for Turk's Island. This was his last appointment, and here his useful labours closed.

It is required of those who minister the word of life, that their lives correspond with the dignity of the sacred office. A missionary, as a minister of the gospel, is placed in a peculiar situation in the world. Holiness of life, and ability to discharge his difficult and arduous duties, are indispensably necessary for him. These qualifications were eminently possessed by the late Mr. Turtle. It may be said of him, that he dwelt in love. This was a conspicuous part of his character, and beautified and adorned the whole of his Christian walk. Having just views of the importance of the work in which he was engaged as a Christian missionary, he was always zealously affected in the good cause of his Redeemer. His exertions having greatly impaired his constitution, he was frequently a subject of very severe pain; but it was only when imperiously necessitated by affliction, that he could be prevailed upon to desist from discharging the active duties of his office. Often has it been with difficulty that he could get to his pulpit; and when there, not being able to stand, he has, on his knees, declared the word of life to the people. It was not in him to confine his labours, as a missionary, to the pulpit. He was instant in season, and out of season. None, I am confident, ever exceeded him in pastoral visits; and none of the flock over which he was placed ever had to complain of him, that he passed by their habitations. Prayer meetings formed a prominent part in his plan for carrying forward the work of God. In these, if possible, he would himself be present, and take an active part; nor, in attending these means of grace, did he despise the black man's hut. He was endued by the Father of lights with natural abilities of an exalted order. His mind was remarkably quick and fruitful; and he was blessed with a peculiar ease and freedom in his delivery. As he conceived rightly of his important charge, so he indulged a thirst for useful knowledge; and obtained, as far as the disadvantages of a missionary life will allow, an extensive share. Blessed with superior ability and zeal to promote the honour of the cause in which he was engaged, he took great pains to prepare himself for the pulpit; and when he was there, he appeared as a workman that needed not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word

of truth, and seldom labouring without effect. with him; and gave him favour in the eyes honour in the churches where he laboured. long remembered in the Bahamas.

God, indeed, was of the world, and His name will be

In the last five days of his life, Mr. Turtle was unremittingly employed in preaching Christ. None who approached his dying bed were allowed to retire without being admonished, prayed for, or receiving some expressions from him declarative of the power of the gospel.

The following are some of the expressions which fell from his lips when he was laid upon the bed of death :-"Oh my friends, you have all been very kind. How good is the Lord, that hath put it into your hearts! You have denied yourselves, and forborne many things, that you might add to my happiness. I thank you for it. I hope the Lord will reward you. Oh, I love Jesus Christ! He is the fairest among ten thousand, and altogether lovely." Being affected to tears, and apparently much exhausted, he said, "Oh that my Master would give me power to preach him with my dying breath! I am going the way of all flesh, and it is all one to me, whether I die this night, or in the morning. My friends, you are 'standing around my dying bed. I shall leave you. I have been with you but a short time. I have, however, endeavoured to be a faithful minister to you. Live near to God, my friends. Serve him with all your hearts. Oh, live near to God! It seems to be his will to take me from you. You will then be deprived of your earthly shepherd; but remember the Shepherd of shepherds,-the great Head of the church. When I am gone, unite in prayer. It may please the Lord to send you another minister. I wish my funeral to be without pomp, and that I may be buried in the island, by the side of Mr. Moore's children. I abase myself in the sight of God; but I look forward with assurance, that the Lord will crown me with life and immortality, through Christ Jesus. I trust in him. He is the Rock, the Rock of ages. God is love." Addressing himself to his sorrowing wife, he said, "My Margaret, I have not even a sixpence to leave you; but I pray God that you may know him, love him, and serve him." A little while before his death he distinctly exclaimed, "Happy, happy, happy! Triumphant! My Father will receive me for his own. Thus died John Turtle, Aug. 16th, 1825, aged 32 years.

MEMOIR OF MR. RICHARD RILEY.

RICHARD RILEY, of worthy memory, was born in the year of our Lord 1791, in the Cherokee nation, near the junction of the Hightown and Oostenauley rivers. His father gave him a pretty good English education when young, and soon after he left school he was placed with a merchant in Kingston, E. Tennessee, where

his steady habits and attention to business, soon secured him the respect of his employer, and the good opinion of all who knew him. From Kingston he went to the Southwest Point, where he did business for some time for a Mr. Clark, a merchant of that place. After he left Mr. Clark, he entered into a copartnership with a Mr. Paine, at a place called the Old Garrison. Indus trious, enterprising, and strictly honest, he soon gained the confidence of his customers, and discovered an aptitude and talent for business, rarely seen in young men of his age and opportunity.

Shortly after the commencement of the late Creek war, he removed to the famous Sauty Cave, a celebrated saltpetre establishment, which he superintended with such care and good economy, as to acquire a very handsome property in a short time. In this situation he was connected with men of the most dissolute and abandoned characters. He was not at that time a professor of religion, but he was, nevertheless, a lover of civil order and decorum, and frequently would he reprove the profane and licentious. Amiable and generous in his disposition, and always manifesting an interest for the welfare of the Cherokees, the eyes of the nation were now fixed upon Riley, as a man of integrity and uprightness, and as a proper person to be introduced into their national council. He was accordingly appointed a member of that body; and he discharged the duties of his office with general satisfaction to the nation. It was not long till he was made one of the principal chiefs, or, as some say, king elect, and was sent as one of the delegates from the nation to Washington city; where he was received and treated with great respect and marked attention; and was spoken of as a man of superior mind and very engaging manners. Perhaps no man in the nation, at that time, understood its interests better, or could support its claims with greater ability, than he could.

About this time all that part of the Cherokee nation, which then lay on the north side of Tennessee river, was ceded by treaty to the United States. After the survey of the lands, which had thus fallen into the hands of the whites, Riley still resided for some time at the Sauty Cave, Jackson county, Alabama, and soon became acquainted with the Methodist preachers, who embraced the earliest opportunity of planting the gospel in this newly acquired territory.

To them he readily opened his doors, and his house was ever after their welcome home. Shortly after he became acquainted with the Methodists, he removed from Jackson to Creek Path, in the lower part of the Cherokee nation; and as soon as the preachers were sent to the Jackson circuit, which is separated from the nation by the Tennessee river, Riley embraced the first opportunity to invite them into the nation. They went, and their labour in the Lord was not in vain. Riley joined society as a seeker the

first opportunity that offered, and soon after embraced religion, and lived and died in the faith that was once delivered to the saints. His health, which for some time had been very delicate, was evidently and rapidly declining when the writer of this memoir first saw him, which was in the summer of 1821. He was then thought to be in the incipient stage of the consumption. The symptoms which portended a fatal issue now made their appearance; nor was he unapprized of his situation; believing, as he did, that he inherited a predisposition to pulmonary disease, he had little, if any, hope of recovery; but he looked with composure upon the decay of his earthly tabernacle, knowing that he had "a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."

His friends, and the nation generally, regarded his situation with the deepest solicitude and interest. They saw sinking from among them one of the brightest ornaments of their nation, and of the religion of Jesus. If prayers and tears could have saved him, Riley would have lived; but he is gone; the Lord hath taken him away, and we should say, Blessed be the name of the Lord. His disease took its course, and he continued to linger, and suffer with Christian patience and resignation to the will of his heavenly Father, until the 26th of April, 1824, when he closed his suffering scene, in the triumphs of victorious faith, and fell asleep in the arms of Jesus. In the last struggle, he lifted his dying eyes to heaven, and exclaimed, "My confidence in God is unshaken." These were his last, words. He has left behind him an amiable and pious family. Sister Riley is a widow indeed, whose general character and uniform piety are acknowledged by all who know her. Her two daughters have embraced religion. Preaching is still continued at her house, where the ministers of Jesus will always find a home. This was the wish of her pious husband before he died, and she fulfils his dying request with a willing mind. Riley was truly the apostle of Methodism in Creek Path, and the missionary who was sent to that place was kindly received and gratuitously boarded at his house; nor while the present generation lives, will his piety and devotion to the cause of God be forgotten; nor can the Methodist preachers ever forget, or neglect, the affectionate and worthy family which he has left behind him; no, neyer, while gratitude is the companion of the pious breast, will the missionaries who go to Creek Path forget the widow and the children of the man who once loved them and the cause of God so well. But he is above all praise; for that God whom he loved so sincerely on earth, has taken him home to heaven.

MISCELLANEOUS.

THE EVANGELISTS AND JOSEPHUS.

THE writings of Josephus, when taken together, and as a whole, directly tend to convince us of the truth of the gospel history. No man, I think, could rise from a perusal of the latter books of his Antiquities, and the account of the Jewish War, without a very strong impression, that the state of Judea, civil, political, and moral, as far as it can be gathered from the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, is pourtrayed in these latter with the greatest accuracy, with the strictest attention to all the circumstances of the place and the times. We close the pages of Josephus with the feeling, that we have been reading of a country which, for many years before its final fall, had been the scene of miserable anarchy and confusion. Every where do we meet with open acts of petty violence, or the secret workings of plots, conspiracies, and frauds ;the laws ineffectual, or very partially observed, and very wretchedly administered;-oppression on the part of the rulers, among the people faction, discontent, seditions, tumults: robbers infesting the very streets, and most public places of resort, wandering about in arms, thirsting for blood no less than spoil, assembling in troops, to the dismay of the more peaceable citizens, and with difficulty put down by military force; society, in fact, out of joint. Such would be our view of the condition of Judea, as collected from Josephus.

Now let us turn to the New Testament; which, without professing to treat about Judea at all, nevertheless, by glimpses, by notices scattered, uncombined, never

intended for such a purpose, actually conveys to us the very counterpart of the picture of Josephus. For instance: let us observe the character of the parables; stories, evidently in many cases, and probably in most cases, taken from passing events, and adapted to the occasions on which they were delivered. In how many may be traced scenes of disorder, of ra pine, of craft, of injustice; as if such scenes were but too familiar to the experience of those to whom they were addressed! We hear of "a man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and falling among thieves, who stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead," Luke x, 30. Of another, who planted a vineyard, and sent his servants to receive the fruits; but the "husbandmen took those servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another," Matt. xxi, 35. Of a "judge which feared not God nor regarded man," and who avenged the widow only "lest by her continual coming she should weary him," Luke xviii, 2. Of a steward "who was accused unto the rich man of having wasted his goods," and who, by taking farther liberties with his master's property, secured himself a retreat into the houses of his lord's debtors, "when he should be put out of the stewardship," Luke xvi, 1. Of the "coming of the Son of man," like that of "a thief in the night," whose approach was to be watched, if the master would "not suffer his house to be broken up," Matt. xxiv, 43. Of a "kingdom divided against itself being brought to desolation."