Christianity in France, Switzerland, Germany, and other parts of the world. As an earnest of this plan, the Editors beg to call attention to the foreign articles of intelligence in the November Magazine, and in the Supplement. The January Magazine for 1834 will include communications of still higher interest. As far likewise as their space will permit, they propose to furnish brief notices of the more important transactions of the several Missionary Societies now labouring in the vast field of the heathen world. This improvement in the Magazine they know will be hailed with much satisfaction by those friends, who seek for no other vehicle of religious intelligence but what is supplied in its own pages. The Editors would venture to urge upon all their friends, in town and country, the duty of endeavouring to extend the circulation of a work, which has ministered so essentially to the temporal and spiritual comfort of hundreds of the widows of Christ's faithful ministers. And as no case has hitherto been refused that came within the printed rules of distribution, they feel that the claims of the Magazine upon the support of their brethren in the ministry are peculiarly strong. Nor would they suspect their Lay friends of any thing like indifference to the happiness of a class of highly deserving persons, who are in general most scantily provided for, after having lived in respectability and comfort. Could the sale of the work be increased onethird, the Trustees could then either augment their annual grants to widows, or admit a greater number of candidates to share the benefit of an enlarged sale. What an effect might be produced by the very simple plan, of each reader of the Magazine endeavouring to find another willing to make the small sacrifice of a sixpence per month, for the noble and generous purpose of soothing the sorrows of the widowed heart, and thereby relieving the anxieties of many a faithful and devoted pastor, who, in prospect of his removal out of this world, is agonized at the thought of the probable hardships of an unprotected widow and helpless babes! Let the followers of the compassionate Redeemer look well at this proposal ere they rashly say within. themselves, "It is not in our power to realize it." May the blessing of the widow's God come on all the friends and supporters of a Work, which has caused so many widowed hearts to sing for joy! THE EVANGELICAL MAGAZINE AND MISSIONARY CHRONICLE. FOR JANUARY, 1833. MEMOIR OF THE LATE REV. WILLIAM HOWELS, MINISTER OF LONG ACRE CHAPEL. THE REV. William Howels, whose somewhat sudden death we announced in the December Magazine, was a native of a village contiguous to Cowbridge, in the county of Glamorgan, in the Principality. His father was a respectable farmer, who took considerable interest in the classical education of his son; and, for this purpose, placed him at the grammar-school of Cowbridge, preparatory to his college studies. It does not appear, however, that his care of the eternal interests of our deceased friend was equal to his solicitude in other respects. But in his mother, of whose prayers and instructions Mr. Howels was wont to speak in accents of filial tenderness, he realized all that parental affection and Christian devotedness could secure. From the days of his boyhood, as the writer of this article has heard him declare, he was the subject of many and great awakenings of conscience; though it was not till a subsequent period of his history His tutor's name was Dr. Williams, and we are told that he still survives. VOL. XI, that he actually entered upon the life of faith in the Son of God. At a time when he was most exposed to temptations of various kinds, it pleased God fully to open his mind to the light, and consolation, and purifying influence of the gospel. About the period of his entering Wadham College, Oxford, in the year 1801, he met with a disappointment which overwhelmed him with sorrow and anguish of mind. A young lady to whom he was greatly attached refused to reciprocate his feelings of regard; but this event, which promised nothing but evil, was overruled by God for great good to his soul. "It drove me," said he, in a confidential conversation, "to my Greek Testament; and, while reading it in the fields at Oxford, I found it was not a wife, but a husband, that I wanted. I could take you now to the spots where I was wont to read, and pray, and agonize, and where the Spirit of God enabled me to apprehend Christ as the pearl of great price."" Speaking of Oxford, he would often exclaim, "It was there the Lord met with me." B After his entrance upon a decided Christian course, he had to endure " a great fight of affliction," and in quarters, too, where other treatment might reasonably have been expected. But opposition only nerved his purpose of "following the Lord fully," and prompted him to seek those congenial intercourses which, in after life, proved an unspeakable blessing to him as a faithful minister of Christ Jesus. Of Mr. Howels's college history we know but little, only that his application to books was very close, and that his attainments in mathematics and in classical learning were highly respectable. He was a good Greek and Hebrew scholar, and took great delight, through life, in the critical study of the Scriptures in the original tongues. Often have we heard him repeat long passages of Greek and Hebrew, from different parts of the word of God, showing his entire familiarity with the original of the sacred text, and at the same time his distinguished ability to interpret and illustrate its several parts. On leaving college, in 1805, he was ordained by the late Bishop Watson, and, on account of his piety and evangelical ardour, was chosen as the curate of Mr. Jones, of Langan, one of the brightest ornaments of the church of Christ the Principality ever produced. Of his spiritual obligations to this distinguished man, we have heard Mr. Howels speak in terms of the utmost enthusiasm. "He united," said he, "the simplicity of a patriarch with the burning zeal of an apostle." On one occasion he said, "My soul had a kind of existence in that man's soul; he was every thing that man could be to me. I imbibed his knowledge, and sought to catch a measure of his love to God and souls.” For many years Mr. Howels continued to labour, with zeal and diligence, amidst his native mountains, preaching, almost uniformly, in the Welsh language; and we may easily conceive that the extreme simplicity of his manners arose, in a great measure, from his long and familiar intercourse with a people proverbial for the absence of all fastidious polish, and for the exercise of that unsuspecting friendship and hospitality by which our departed friend was so eminently distinguished. We may also allow ourselves to conclude that, with a native loftiness of soul, he owed much of the occasional grandeur of his conceptions to his early and long converse with the lofty mountains and deep winding glens of his beloved country, of which he could never speak without tears of affection and joy glistening in his eyes. Nor was his ministry in the Principality without effect. While he was there trained for future and more extended usefulness, he was at the same time the messenger of peace and salvation to not a few. "Oh!" said he, "I would at times give worlds to recover the full tone of that feeling which often thrilled my bosom while visiting from cottage to cottage, among a simplehearted people, who were wont to receive me, in my Master's name, as an angel of God." On the death of Mr. Jones, a powerful effort was made, by the friends of Mr. Howels, to obtain for him the vacant living, which was in the gift of Lord Clarendon, upon the failure of which he deemed it his duty to leave the Principality, and to direct his steps to the metropolis. In referring to his residence and observation in the Principality, we have often heard him speak of two subjects with great energy-his high sense of the indefatigable zeal and usefulness of evangelical dis-senters, and the horror with which he traced, in some instances, the baneful effects of Socinian teaching |