'Shall I not do my Master's work? Yes, I will.' After he had drunk something he recovered, finished his sermon, and afterwards administered the Lord's Supper, not abating anything of his usual length, so earnestly was his heart set upon his work."

LAST DAYS.

Though Mr. Trosse had a strong and healthy constitution, yet his hard studies, public labours, watchings, fastings, and austerities impaired his health, and brought upon him much pain and suffering; but the mighty efficacy of divine grace supported him under the heaviest afflictions. He often rode, or was carried in a [sedan] chair, to the public assembly when unable to walk thither. Under several severe fits of sickness he enjoyed a blessed composure of mind. On one occasion, when visited by one of his brethren, and asked how he did, he answered, "Here my heavenly Father is pleased to lay his rod upon my back; but I desire to bless him for that he shines upon my conscience." At other times he gave such replies as the following:"God hath made me to see that he is well pleased with me in Jesus." "I have a strong confidence of heaven, and believe I shall go thither; but I never had any great joys except when I was in prison, and in a great sickness in 1688." "'Tis no more to me to die, or to think of dying, than to go from one room to another."

For some weeks before his departure he complained that he was weak and indisposed, yet he would not remit anything of his public work, studies, or devotions. The evening before his death he told his wife very positively that "the time of his departure was at hand." The next morning, being the Lord's-day, he rose early as usual, and preached at the meeting-house near South-gate in the forenoon. As he was returning home he was seized with faintness, and, upon being carried into an apothecary's shop, said, "I am dying." After a while he somewhat recovered, and said to the friends who were about him, "There will shortly be an end of all sin, sorrow, and trouble. I thank you for all your kindnesses to an unworthy servant of Christ." When they expostulated with him for preaching in so weak a condition, he said, “It becomes a minister to die preaching." He refused to avail himself of a sedan-chair, and was with difficulty assisted to his house. Upon entering he fell down, and "though his tongue, which had been a ready and faithful servant, now failed him, yet he seemed to be still breathing after God in fervent prayer: his friend thought he heard him pronounce the words, Jesus' sake." "The physician was called and rich cordials administered, but could not renew a life quite spent and worn out in labour and watchings, and so in about three-quarters of an hour he gently surrendered his spirit to God, about one o'clock, Jan. 11, 1712, when he had lived eighty-one years, and been an ordained minister above six-and-forty-years." What old Thomas Fuller said of Bishop Jewel might well be applied to this one of the Lord's jewels, and a bishop withal-"Tis hard to determine whether his natural heat or his zeal was first extinguished; whether his prayers or his soul first arrived in heaven; for he died praying, and prayed dying."

Mrs. Spurgeon's Book Fund Report.

WE have watched from day to day for months the agonies of authorship as this Report has been produced. Our beloved wife has the lowest possible idea of her own powers of composition, and hence every line has been written in grief, criticized in despondency, and condemned without mercy. Not that there was ever the slightest occasion for all this, for in our judgment no language is more pure or pleasant; but so it has been, and therefore "the Report" is a child of sorrow. No one would think it, nor ever dream it; nobody has thought so out of all who have seen it, for the style and manner of the report are every way as good as the subject could possibly require, as good as any subject could suggest. At any rate, the flower has emerged from the bud, and all who gaze on it can judge of its beauty for themselves. All that now remains is that it be widely scattered and attentively read. The smallness of the price (sixpence) will, we hope, enable all our friends to purchase it, and we want them to make a point of doing so for several reasons.

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First, it will do them good to read the narrative. A friend, with tears in his eyes, told us that it had been a sweet means of grace to him. To hear how the Lord answers prayer, comforts his mourners, and glorifies his own name, must be beneficial; and there are plenty of instances in the little book by which faith will be confirmed and hope encouraged.

But, secondly, we want poor ministers to have more sympathizers, and nothing upon earth that has ever issued from the press is more likely to make friends for the Lord's needy servants. Read, and let your heart break, if you will, for the sorrows of those who feed the flock of God, and are in return but scantily fed themselves.

Our third motive is that other workers may be stimulated to exertion by seeing how a simple effort can be made to grow till it becomes as "streams from Lebanon." They will see that brethren of all denominations have drunk at this well in the desert, and that many more are pressing forward to be refreshed, and yet this much-valued fountain was once no more than a trickling drop of crystal, hastening to hide itself from the heat. Where once it trembled as a tiny globe it now flows in floods. The Lord's way is ever from good to better; he can in this fashion help the weak things of the trembling beginner till they grow into strength and size altogether unexpected.

We should like to give our readers a few extracts to tempt them on, but we do not know how to manage it: we cannot dig out pieces with the trowel, nor cut them out with the sword: we would, if we had the space, transfer all the pages bodily to our own. Here, however, is a little narrative which may come away whole, like a primrose removed with roots and soil:

"One of our own' men, who has long been ailing, has at last been obliged to resign his charge, not alone on account of feeble health, but also because his people are utterly unable to keep their pastor in the common necessaries of life. You must go to Australia,' said one doctor after another, it is your only chance for life!' But what was

to be done with the dear but very sickly wife and the three mites of children? Long they pondered ways and means, and the conclusion they arrived at was a hard one for loving human hearts, and cost them many a struggle,-the poor wife consented to remain in England, working at her needle for a subsistence for herself and babes, while her husband would seek in a far-off land the strength to labour for means which should reunite them.

"At this juncture she wrote to me, acquainting me with the above arrangements, and there were certain facts in her communication which led me to desire intensely to overturn these present plans of theirs, and secure the emigration of the entire family. But how was this to be accomplished? The expense is great to convey so many to the Utopia of feeble folk, and the funds of the Pastors' Aid' could not be made available for such heavy and unusual charges. I wrote again, suggesting and enquiring, and, meanwhile, the Lord sent me quite unexpectedly a sum of money which I could do no less than consecrate to him or this matter. With even this, however, there was still a deficit of some sixteen pounds in the amount needed, and now it was that the wonderfully tender dealing of our God became so manifest. The very morning on which I received a rapturous agreement to my proposal that the whole family should go out, and the good news that the passage could be effected under exceptionally cheap rates, my dear husband came joyfully into my room exclaiming Here's the rest of the money to take your protégés to Australia !' and to my amazed delight he explained that on opening his morning's letters he found £15 as a personal gift to himself from an unknown correspondent, and forthwith felt that it was sent from the Lord for this very purpose about which our minds had been so exercised and anxious. Those notes seemed to come straight from Heaven's mint into our uplifted hands, and the morning's hours were hallowed by a sweet sense of the nearness of an invisible and watchful love.

"Nor did the Lord's thought for these poor exiles exhaust itself in this sole benefit, for I afterwards received a parcel of new clothing from a gentleman, a stranger, containing the very articles which were needed to complete the outfit of the husband, and I was enabled to obtain all that was requisite for the comfort of mother and children. What joy to see the hand of the Lord sustaining, directing, and providing in so blessed and unmistakable a manner. Can eyes which have seen so clearly the goodness and lovingkindness of our God ever be obscured by the wicked mists of distrust and doubt ?"

Many such things are in this record, and others painful or pleasant, as the case may be, but all setting forth the goodness of the Lord, and the way in which his own right hand leads those who put their trust in him. His people are not a regiment of ornamental guards, whose chief delight is to be admired by all the weak minds around them; "they all hold swords," and are expert in war of the most trying kind, and yet not one of them is overcome by the enemy. We are more than conquerors, through him that hath loved us. Believers in the living God shall not fail nor be discouraged, but they shall see and admire the wonderful faithfulness of the Lord their God.

THIS is inteported by their liberality.

HIS engraving is intended to remind our readers of the two major

THE PASTORS' COLLEGE has about one hundred students in training for the ministry, and more than two hundred men in the evening classes, who spend their evenings in gaining an education by which they shall be better fitted for out-door preaching, Sunday-school teaching, and other gracious work. Besides this, a large Sunday-school meets in the building, and all sorts of societies for the benefit of the young people of the Tabernacle. Hitherto the expenditure has always been met by the providence of God. We usually spend £1500 per

annum more than the income from donations, but this has been specially furnished from time to time by considerable legacies, which have enabled us to go on with the work without hindrance. How our God may deal with us in the future it is not for us to prophesy, but he is sure to do that which is right. More than five hundred ministers of the gospel have been trained in the College, and the work still goes on. Many will give to an orphanage out of natural compassion, who will not contribute to a college out of zeal for the truth; and yet we have never lacked friends who have seen the needs of this work supplied, nor shall we ever find ourselves forsaken, for the work is the Lord's. While departures from orthodoxy startle us on all sides, it would ill become the lovers of the old-fashioned gospel to withdraw their aid from an institution which keeps to the Puritanic lines of doctrine, and has no ambition to be held in repute for "progressive ideas," and "advanced thought."

THE STOCKWELL ORPHANAGE FOR BOYS AND GIRLS is the second work, and a great one it is. Our bird's-eye view is nearly all to be seen at the present moment, but it does not quite show all that must be built before the Institution is complete. The entrance and dining hall for the boys, on the left, are familiar objects to our readers. Something similar will be required on the right hand for the girls, with a chapel or large hall for our great public meetings, to be placed where the artist has sketched a thicket of trees. For this expense we have not even made an estimate at present, but it will be met, we hope, by the Bazaar next Christmas. The left-hand range of houses is all occupied by our two hundred and fifty boys, and the handsomer pile on the right, with covered way in front of the lower windows, contains the houses and schools for two hundred and fifty girls. We do not wish to see the Orphanage increase beyond this size; for this number of children the ground-space is admirably adapted, and we may say of it, "there is room enough and to spare." The number of children is quite enough for one management, if we only consider the domestic arrangements, while financially the burden is quite sufficient, and we shall need extraordinary help to carry the work to completion. So much, however, has been done that no excuse for unbelief remains: "this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes." Friends will scarcely need to be told that the great square which makes the Orphanage is not surrounded by fields, as our woodcut would imply; that is a freak of the draughtsman's imagination; yet the site is open, airy, and healthy; and, being under the eye of the people and friends at the Tabernacle, it is more likely to be cared for than if it stood shivering alone upon some bleak hillside. The advantages of a country site are very great, but for convenience of oversight, for securing sympathy, and for command of the markets our position could not be excelled. The Stockwell Orphanage can be seen at any time by dropping a note to Mr. Charlesworth, the Head Master.

Our friends have cared for our boys, and we have suffered no lack, or scarcely felt an anxiety; surely the girls will cast around their hearts a second and yet stronger chain, and the family of half a thousand will eat and be filled and gather up of the fragments.

We have sought only the glory of God, whether we have taught men or fed children, and God has been glorified. To him, therefore, be praise that he has permitted us to bring any measure of praise unto his name.