MAJOR-GENERAL GORDON.

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was broken. It seemed to the soldiers as if their leader had a charmed life. He went into the thickest of the fight absolutely unarmed, and waved his men to victory with a small cane, which came to be regarded as a magic wand.

Once he was shot through the leg, and once he was very near shooting Li-Hung-Chang through the head, for that dignitary at the surrender of Soochow violated all rules of civilized warfare and massacred the Wangs, to the dishonour of Gordon who had pledged his word for their personal safety. This act was afterwards condoned.

At the beginning of his command Gordon was made a Mandarin, and eventually the highest rank possible to a subject, that of Ti-tu, was conferred upon him, with the honour of the Yellow Jacket, which made him one of the Emperor's body-guard.

Twice the Imperial Government voted him a large sum of money, but this in both cases he declined to accept. On the first occasion, the bullion-bearers, like the slaves of the lamp in the Arabian Nights, came into his presence only to be driven out again, laden as they came. The other honours he accepted, though, as he said, without caring "twopence" about them.

He took the large gold medal given him by the Empress at the close of the rebellion, scored out the inscription, and sent it to the relief of the starving operatives in the Lancashire Cotton Famine.

Returning from China in 1864, he was appointed, in 1865, Commanding Royal Engineer at Gravesend, where for six years he discharged his official duties and became a zealous missionary. He rescued boys from the gutter, took them into his own house, clothed them, taught them, got them berths on board ships, and marked their career with pins on a map over his mantle-piece, as they voyaged from place to place. No wonder they wrote in chalk everywhere, " God bless the Kernel." The sick, the poor, the miserable he was always ready to help. The Ragged School, the Workhouse, the Infirmary were his favourite resorts. His garden he gave up to the poor to plant in it what they liked, and take the proceeds; and if they sent him presents he always gave them to the sick and needy. His fare was of the simplest, and if invited to a sumptuous dinner his reply would be, "Ask the poor and sick; don't ask me, who have enough!"

In 1874, we find him in the service of the Khedive, succeeding Sir Samuel Baker as Governor of the Tribes in Upper Egypt. In accepting this post he declined the offer of £10,000 a year, and would not accept more than £2,000.

In 1877, after a visit to this country, he was vested with large powers, and became

GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF THE SOUDAN.

A slave-dealer named Sebehr had waxed too powerful. He was master of thirty stations, and lived in princely fashion. Promotion did not pacify him, and when at length his power became dangerous, the Khedive, posing before the English people as one determined to stamp out slavery, asked Gordon to carry out his designs. The task was one of immense difficulty and danger.

He had to deal with lying, corruption, incompetence, laziness,

mutiny, anarchy, and with the terrible power of the slave-dealers. The district he had to govern was 1640 miles long, and about 700 wide. The climate is most deadly.

Writing from Sennaar, on the Blue Nile, he says, "The biting beetles are awful here-in myriads! No one can have an idea of these lands. If ever you repine you ought to be shot, for your lot might have been so different. There were at least eighty large beetles on my night-shirt last night, when I lit the candle." In some districts the country was like an ocean of grass, the grass six feet high. Travelling through its narrow paths was like being in a pit six feet deep with nothing visible but the tops of distant hills. Some of the tribes are absolutely naked and are not ashamed; others are more or less clad.

On reaching Khartoum, which is 1,500 miles miles from Cairo, a royal salute was fired and he was duly installed. His speech was as laconic as any attributed to the American General Grant. He simply said, "With the help of God I will hold the balance level." Anything less to his taste than living in a magnificent palace surrounded by 200 servants one cannot imagine. His dignity was such that he felt himself a prisoner, for he could never move without an escort of some sort, and right glad was he when, mounted on the swiftest camel, he could leave his staff ten miles behind and enter some distant station, to the astonishment of its Governor, with perhaps no other attendant than an Arab chief. He rode over 4,000 miles of desert in a single year. The rapidity of his movements, his boldness, his indomitable energy, his wonderful tact in dealing with the various tribes, and above all the justice of his administration, made him famous throughout the length and breadth of the land.

The worst of it is that when Gordon, assisted by his valiant lieutenant, Romulus Gessi, had broken the power of the slave-dealers, Sebehr, who was tried for rebellion, found guilty, and condemned to death, was actually permitted to live at Cairo on a pension from the Khedive of £1,200 a year.

It is often said that Gordon is

A FATALIST.

But so far as I am able to gather from his own words, his fatalism resolves itself into an unwavering trust in God, and a Christ-like submission to His will.

Of his journeys into Abyssinia; his office no sooner taken than resigned, of private secretary to Lord Ripon; his return to China; his official visit to the Cape; his pilgrimage to Jerusalem; and finally, his return to the Soudan, there is no need that I should write. No man living is better fitted for his present task than he. To show the hold he has gained even over the Mohammedan mind, it is said that he is the "one Christian for whom they offer yearly prayers at Mecca.” Nevertheless it may be that in those lands where all is anarchy and strife, from which ever and anon there come the news of wholesale disaster and defeat, even "a charmed life" will be lost. Of this we are certain, that when he dies the unhappy Soudanese will have lost their best, their most faithful friend.

J. FLETCHER.

In Memoriam: John Earp, of Melbourne."

AMONG the Christian laymen of our Connexion, of the generation now one by one passing from us, there have been few more worthy of affectionate respect and honour than the good man whose name appears at the head of this paper.

He was born on the 5th of February, 1804, at Melbourne, in Derbyshire, at the ancient residence of the Earp family-a substantial farm-house then standing on a pleasant spot known to many of our readers, adjoining the precincts of an old Norman church, and overlooking Melbourne Pool with its twin islands and its embosoming foliage of chestnut and fir. He received his early education in part under the care of the Rev. Thomas Stevenson, of Loughborough, and was afterwards placed with a relative at Breaston with a view to his adoption of the profession of a surgeon. But the death of this relative and other circumstances led to successive changes in his plans of life, until at length we find him in his twenty-third year returning to the family-abode, and entering into the combined businesses of wool-buying and malting.

Of his religious experience in youth we have no record. But during the early period of his settlement in Melbourne, in the year 1827, he was baptized and united with the church there. He immediately threw himself with energy into Christian work in Melbourne and its adjacent villages. In this work he had at that time a zealous associate in Mr. Thomas Cook, of Leicester, now of worldwide fame, who, in a recent letter to Mr. Earp's son, thus gives his reminiscences of those days:-"I was at that time most heartily united with your father in his attempts to spread the gospel in the neighbourhood, and especially at Hartshorn, where he was principally engaged and regarded almost as a regular minister. We began our preparation for Sabbath-work at a very early hour in the morning; and as a sort of rehearsal of our public work we got access into the chapel by the back windows at about five o'clock in the morning, and by way of exercise alternately mounted the pulpit or occupied a seat as hearer. To the young people who found us out it was ludicrous enough to hear one or other addressing the seats as "Brethren"; but, I assure you, our purpose was one of great earnestness."

A daily diary of the year 1829 in Mr. Earp's handwriting remains, and it reveals a life full of beneficent activity, social and business engagements, preaching, school-teaching, tract-distributing, and visiting of the sick. For some years his engagements in preaching took a rather wide range, including such places as Shardlow, Sheepshed, Measham, and Burton. Later in life his public ministrations became less numerous and were restricted for the most part to the old meetinghouse at Tickenhall, or to Hartshorn, where he was the main instrument in rearing a regular chapel instead of the cottage-room which had been the previous place of meeting.

Indeed to Mr. Earp the extension of the kingdom of Christ continued through life to be a subject of absorbing interest.

* Abridged from a memorial by his son-Mr. H. W. Earp-printed for private circulation.

In the year 1832 he married the elder daughter of Mr. Tomlinson, of Derby Hills, and became an exemplary husband and devoted father. His varied secular occupations required his constant attention, but the claims of the church of Christ were never forgotten. A believer in organized effort, he was accustomed to take a prominent part in the deliberations of Conferences and Associations; and his persistent energy has left its mark on the Denominational Year Book, in the columns devoted to statistics of church contributions. A liberal contributor to the General Baptist Foreign Mission, and a frequent attendant at its committees, he was at the same time an active and enterprising leader in Home Mission work. Swadlincote, where now we have a thriving church, owes much to his advocacy of its claims; and pre-eminently the establishment of the church in North Street (formerly Byron Street), Leeds, was due to the exertions he put forth.

But perhaps in no department of Christian effort was Mr. Earp more generally useful than in connexion with the system of weekly offering in Church Finance. Beginning at home, he secured the services of the late Rev. John Ross, and soon had the satisfaction of seeing the system in vigorous operation in the Melbourne church. Thenceforward he made it his mission to commend it to others, and to him more than to anyone else may be ascribed its general acceptance in his own denomination.

Our limited space will not allow us to give illustrations of his Catholic spirit as manifested outside his own Connexion-save only to mention his visit to Copenhagen in the year 1857 as one of a deputation to wait upon the King of Denmark respecting the persecution of the Baptists in that country; nor can we speak at length of his active interest in political and social questions both national and local. But a few words must be added relative to his later years and the closing scenes of his life.

He had scarcely passed the period of ripe manhood when symptoms of nervous disorder manifested themselves, which presently became chronic, and beclouded the decline of his days. Deprived by a fall of the use of his limbs, for the last few years of his life he was confined to his chamber. Complete loss of sight supervened. He was, however, mercifully freed from acute pain. His nervous disorder also gradually assumed a milder and more intermittent form, and did not prevent his continuing to take a warm interest in the affairs of the church and of the world. One day his son entering his room found him in a very placid happy frame of mind. "I've come," said he, "to the end of my journey. I'm going to a better country." The day following a stroke of paralysis deprived him of the power of speech and of swallowing. In this state he lingered ten days. Then the breathing grew gradually feebler. His sorrowing wife and children gathered around his bed and lifted up their hearts in prayer for their loved one. One flicker of light on the calm face, as an expression of expectancy passed over it,-the raised eye-lid seeming to respond to the touch of some awakening vision, and the weary one fell asleep.

Thus passed to the better life our brother in Christ John Earp, of Melbourne, on the 15th of September, 1883, in the 80th year of his age. W. R. STEVENSON.

Seaside Voices.

"Tell me, O hoary Sea, the number of thy years?"
"Count every drop a year till all the sum appears."

"Tell me, O voiceful Sea, thy song each night and morn?"
"The mystery Divine whence heaven and earth are born."

"Tell me, O shining Sea, who gave thee all thy hues?"
"He who with Beauty's soul great Nature's form imbues."

"Tell me, O quiet Sea, why smiles thy mighty face?

"To show how matchless might can blend with gentlest grace."

D. BURNS.