was felt-felt by all, by men and officers, by the highest and the lowest." One of his midshipmen gave a similar testimony: "You people at home,” he writes, "cannot imagine, not even his sisters, how universally dear Captain Bate was loved and respected, from the admiral down to the youngest boy in the fleet. This is without exaggeration; for I really never knew a man who enjoyed a more well-deserved affection and popularity. His officers and men have lost a kind friend and a patient adviser, who never tired of doing good, who entered into all their pleasures, and assisted them to the utmost of his power in all their difficulties. He was firmness itself, but so kind withal, that his most severe reproof was better received and better attended to than most men's praises.

"All felt his loss, his virtues we'd tried;

And knew not how we loved him till he died.""

Wrapped in the bloody dress in which he fell, he was buried in the graveyard of the "Happy Valley," Hong-Kong, near the veteran Dr. Gutzlaff, a spot selected by his friend, the Bishop of Victoria, who read the service over his remains. "The

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scene," says one who beheld it, was painful and mournful to a degree; and the not unmanly tear of sorrow fell unrestrainable from the eye of not a few of whom it might be said, 'Behold, how they loved him!' The governor, and his many friends, followed the chief mourners in the solemn procession; while the road was lined with other civil

ians, who stood with uncovered heads while passed the mortal remains of that heroic man whom all Hong-Kong mourns."

man.

The bishop referred to his death on the succeeding Sunday, in his sermon, in these words: "The loss which we have sustained is the loss of no common Private intercourse of the most confidential kind, during an intimate acquaintance of more than twelve years, revealed to me, in no common measure, the excellent qualities of the friend in whose death, not only the service, but the whole foreign community in China, have experienced a heavy calamity. It is a blessed solace, amid the more than ordinary mourning caused by this melancholy event, to be privileged to cherish no doubt as to that state of glorious immortality into which our departed friend has entered. He fell in the service of his country. He has been taken earlier to his reward. He has received from the King of kings the highest promotion which a glorified spirit can receive. He is now singing the new song in the courts of paradise. He is now with that Saviour whom he long served on earth. He has departed, and is with Christ, which is far better."

This was high testimony, but it was spontaneous, and was drawn forth by the decided and consistent course of Captain Bate, who, while busy in the service to which he was devoted, served the Lord and his own generation by the will of God. Thus he was prepared to die, and to enter into rest with Jesus forever.

Reader, are you on the Lord's side in the warfare of Christ? Is it not time for you to decide? Captain Bate was in the height of strong life when the death-call came; but he had decided, and was in the service of Christ, and was ready. Delay not. The salvation of your soul is momentous, and the danger of perdition is imminent. "Behold now is the accepted time, and this is the day of salvation."

"Busy, O Death, thou art; thou and the brave

Have formed a fast alliance. Forth from our midst,
Dayly some victim goes to thy embrace,

While thou relentest not.

Yet one-Ah! ONE

Loved for his honor and his Christian heart,

The hero and the man-has gone to rest;

Passed through thy portals, Death, and smiled at thee,
For he feared not thy terrors.

Many a sailor on the pathless deep,

Whene'er he nears the coast of treacherous shoals,

Will bless the name and memory of him

Whose toil and science chartered out their track.

Not on the couch where lingering sickness lies,
Not by decay of old and honored age,

He passed to glory; but, in the duty-hour
Where England's chieftains are at all times found-
Beneath the battlement-before the foe-

There sighed he out a brave and glorious life!"*

* Written to his memory, and dedicated to the "board-room officers of H. M. S. Acteon."

JAMES STIRLING,

THE TEMPERANCE ADVOCATE.

Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?-ZEOH. iii, 2.

O madness, to think the use of strongest wines
And strongest drinks our chief support of health,
When God with these forbidden made choice to rear
His mighty champion, strong above compare,

Whose drink was only from the limpid brook.-MILTON.

THE Temperance Reformation in Scotland had its origin among workingmen. Drunkenness had in their ranks its most numerous victims, and was continually advancing in its career of destruction. It therefore occurred to seven men of Preston, whose names will be ever memorable, to form a Total Abstinence Society, the members of which were to give up the entire use of alcoholic liquors. These men were Messrs. King, Livesey, Gratrix, Dickenson, Broadbelt, Smith, and Andersonnames worthy of lasting memory and honor.

As the cause sprang from the ranks of labor, so did it derive its earliest advocates from the same class. Some of them were men of natural genius and eloquence; several had been themselves rescued from the brink of ruin; they were all enthusiastic in their philanthropic work, and they labored

with untiring zeal to spread their principles and to increase the number of abstainers. Without patronage, and with small means, they prosecuted their mission at great self-sacrifice and with noble energy, until thousands took the pledge, and were rescued from intemperance and restored to sobriety, comfort, and usefulness. Their simple but powerful antidote to drunkenness was, abstain from drinking; and one of the most valuable auxiliaries to this resolution in the case of the individual, was the association of like-minded men. Hence personal pledge to abstain, and membership of a temperance society, formed the two practical aims of the advocate in his labors of love.

One of the ablest and most useful advocates of the abstinence movement in Scotland, was a man in humble life, whose biography we propose to lay before our readers. He was long a victim to intemperance, but when reformed became an eminent and successful laborer in the reformation of others.

JAMES STIRLING was born in the parish of Strathblane, Dumbartonshire, on the sixth of March, 1774. On the same day, as it was a Sabbath, the new-born infant was hurried away to the parish church and baptized. It was deemed at that time to be singularly fortunate if birth and baptism could take place on the same day. The parents of Stirling were respectively plowman and dairymaid on a farm in the parish. After his marriage the plowman became a country job