nection with other places. The following December and January I supplied Mr. Vinall's lecture in London, and in February I visited my mother (who then resided in Somersetshire), in consequence of her experiencing severe indisposition, when I told her that it was my firm impression I should never be settled at Cobham. This impression has ever since continued. Since my first speaking, the good Lord has opened more than fifty different places to me, and a few persons here and there have been gathered by the word. In many of them very pressing invitations have been given me to settle-at Brentford in Middlesex, at Richmond, Chertsey, and Woking in Surrey.

I take the freedom of troubling you with this account, to show that no anxiety has been, or is, manifested on my part to be settled over a people, until the good Lord shall be pleased to make it quite plain. In the first two years I was called to speak four hundred and eight times.

On the 18th September, 1825, I received a letter from Chichester, informing me that I had been given out to speak at that place on the following Sabbath, as it was known I was going to Brighton for my health. I spoke from 1 John ii. 27, after which I proceeded to Brighton and Lewes. On the feelings

expressed by the friends in these places I forbear making any remark. With my different visits to Chichester you are fully acquainted. The most earnest solicitations have been made from the first by the friends at that place, that I should settle among them, which solicitations have increased to the present

time and I have often admired their affection and ingenuity in contriving means of inducement. But I have always been uniform in telling them that he that believes shall not make haste; nor have I given, nor can I give them any promise, until my kind and gracious Lord shall be pleased to instruct me in His sacred mind and will.

On one occasion, about six or seven years since, when under a very deep exercise, the Lord was pleased most sweetly and powerfully to assure my heart from Exodus xxxiii. 14, And He said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest;' and more recently from Isaiah lviii. 10, 11, 'If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noon-day: and the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.' These exceeding great and precious promises I call in a peculiar manner my own; and faith sometimes is strong enough to take them in her hand, and plead them before the throne; nor has the great Author, eternal Finisher, grand Centre, and glorious Object of faith, ever turned a deaf ear to her humble, but earnest and importunate suit.

But I return once more. When I first spoke in London, certain friends expressed a very strong desire that a chapel should be taken for me; but others, with whom I have had the happiness of being more intimately acquainted, rather wished to wait and watch the Lord's hand.

After referring to a disappointment connected with Founders' Hall Chapel, the letter proceeds

I began to think that it was not the Lord's will that I should speak in London; but immediately on the back of this, Staining Lane Chapel presented itself. My mind has been brought into a very great strait, attended with much pleading before the Lord that I might not be permitted to act contrary to His sacred mind and will. I have been induced to say that I desire to leave it here-that if the Lord opened the door for me, and gathered a people together, I could at present feel free to speak among them. Further than this I have not engaged myself by any promise. Here, then, I desire to stand upon my watch-tower, till the Lord's mind and will shall be fully known. After much self-examination, I do feel that the Lord has graciously kept me from connecting my own natural feelings with that dispensation of the gospel which He has been pleased kindly to call me unto, and I do most earnestly hope that I shall be favoured with an interest in the prayers of my dear friend.

very

I do not recollect that I can say anything more at present, but sincere desires of my the express heart that the good Lord will bless you and keep you, that He will be very gracious unto you, and cause His face to shine upon you, that He will lift up the light of His countenance upon you, and give you that you and yours may ever be under His watchful eye and His paternal care; that He will spare you long as a blessing to His church and people; that your soul may be as a watered garden, and as a spring of water, whose waters fail not; that

peace;

you may be favoured with many endearing visitations, precious manifestations, and sweet discoveries of the everlasting love of Jehovah, in His eternal choice of His people, in the gift of His dear Son, and in the precious outpouring of His most Holy Spirit, so that you may dwell on high, and be indulged with many sweet views of the King in His beauty, and of that land which is very far off. That these, with all other new covenant blessings, may abundantly rest upon you and yours, is, my dear Sir, the very earnest desire of him who begs to subscribe himself, yours in the bond of everlasting love,

JOHN HOBBS.

AFTER his becoming the settled minister at Staining Lane Chapel, where he first preached November 5th, 1826, and was ordained to the pastoral care of the church November 16th, 1829, Mr. Hobbs's life was outwardly an uneventful one. Had he been permitted to complete his narrative, he would have had much to tell of the varied workings of God's providence, and the gracious instruction communicated to him thereby. But these secret operations of the Holy Spirit on his soul could be related by none but himself; and the Lord, in the mystery of His wisdom, has seen fit to seal up from his attached congregation and others, much which, in their view, might have been profitable to the church. Enough, however, has been written by him to serve as one more testimony to be added to that of the great cloud of witnesses,

who have proclaimed from their own experience the goodness and mercy of the Lord.

He continued to minister in Staining Lane for forty-four years, with the exception of a short interval, when, in consequence of alterations in the arrangements of the Haberdashers' Company, to whom the chapel belonged, the congregation removed to another place of worship. Through failing health, his labours were frequently irregular, and though his whole heart was in his work, he found himself compelled in the autumn of 1870 to relinquish his Sunday evening service, though still continuing his week-evening lecture. He preached for the last time on Wednesday evening, December 21st, apparently in his usual health; but the intense cold of that night was too much for him, and doubtless produced an aggravation of his complaint, from which he never recovered. He rallied after the first attack several times, and week after week indulged the hope that on the next Sabbath he should be able to go up again to the house of the Lord. But his work in proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ was done. Once more only, on the first Sunday in May 1871, was he enabled to meet his beloved flock, and that only as a worshipper. On this occasion he for the last time took his accustomed place at the Lord's Table, and with great difficulty and in much suffering he spoke for a few minutes during the administration of the sacred ordinance.

On returning home, he expressed his pleasure and thankfulness that he had been allowed to