Gospel. He at once made a profession of his faith in Christ; and the next year, the seventeenth of his age, at the call of the church of St. John's, by his father, Lewis Williams, and by David Stiles, he was ordained to the work of the Gospel ministry. In the early years of his ministry, he was married to her who, while he lived, was the devoted sharer of his toils and sacrifices as a public servant of Christ; and who, now that the Master has called her husband first, waits in sadness but in hope to join him where unions are never broken.

The part that this young minister was to act in this rising State, the influence that he was destined to wield in our denomination generally, and the large place he was to occupy in the esteem and respect of the wide circle of Christians of all beliefs and citizens of all classes, who loved to honor him as an able and devoted man of God, were not promised in these early days of his ministry. But God had designated him to fill a position of great importance. He was to become the leader of our Baptist hosts in this State. Prophecies true of him which none thought or dared to utter, were to be fulfilled. In working out his mission and destiny, great difficulties were to be encountered and over

come.

Without the prestige of means, social position or education, he was to carve his way through the world. If ever a young minister, destined to attain eminence in the profession, was put upon his own resources exclusively in the beginning of his career, that young man was the late Alvin Peter Williams. But God had endowed him with rare intellectual powers, and had kindled in his soul an insatiable desire for knowledge. These promising and foreshadowing possibilities of his being thoroughly consecrated to Christ, he at once began the work of making the most of himself as a minister of the Word. For a brief period, young Williams was a pupil of that great and good man, John M. Peck, the impress of whose strong, honest and thorough character and the inspiration of whose rich soul and intense life doubtless had much to do with the development of his mind and the type of his character. No young man could fall

under the shadow of such a nature and life without being strongly affected for good. To whatever cause assigned, or whatever be the philosophy of the fact, young Williams lost no time nor opportunity for improvement. Though at once entering upon the absorbing activities of his ministerial

calling, sometimes laboring as a pastor, and at others as an evangelist, in both of which relations he was eminently successful in winning souls to Christ; and though obliged to do manual labor for the partial support of his family and to provide himself with the facilities for study, he found time, in a few years, to gain a sufficient knowledge of the Greek language to enable him to read the New Testament in its original tongue and to make himself, like Apollos, "Mighty in the Scriptures." With Bible in hand he studied as he rode on horseback on his preaching excursions-a habit, we are told, which he followed to his death.

He was endowed with most extraordinary powers of memory. What he saw, heard or read he retained with astonishing distinctness. As to his retention of Bible phraseology, a ministerial brother who knew him long and intimately tells us that he believes Dr. Williams could repeat half of the Old and New Testaments at pleasure. We are told by another friend that our departed brother used to say that, if the New Testament were lost, he thought he could replace it from memory. Considering the obstacles with which he struggled and the constancy of his pastoral and initerant labors, his mental discip

line and culture and his general knowledge, especially his Scriptural knowledge, were really wonderful.

He possessed a strong, penetrative and well-poised mind. He was a profound thinker and an able logician. He quickly discerned the salient points in the argument of an opponent. For the purpose of arriving at truth and setting it forth in plain and impressive relief, he was, we imagine, a lover of controversy, yet was never addicted to the slightest unfairness, nor to the display of the least ill-nature in debate. He had a keen relish for the exegeses of difficult texts and passages of Scripture. Probably but few men in our land could equal him as an exhaustive and safe expositor of God's Word. His expositions were original and his own; and in this respect, as well as in the calm, careful, Christian thoroughness with which he dealt, by speech or pen, with those from whom he differed, he bore a more striking resemblance to Andrew Fuller than can be predicated of any other theologian on this side of the Atlantic. From this comparison, the great modesty of Dr. Williams constrained him to shrink, as one unfit to be instituted. Yet before suggested by any other person in our knowledge, and before we knew that he had ever remonstrated against the

mention of his name in such honored connection, we have felt that, in careful thought, sound judgment, and unfaltering devotion to truth; in the general structure of their minds, and in ready ability, from the fullness of their knowledge, to authoritatively settle the ever-recurring disputed questions of Scriptural order and denominational polity, as well as in rare tact, quick acumen, and convincing assertion, oral or written, the two ought to be associated together. We think it not an extravagant tribute to his ability to say that the American, under like favoring conditions, would have made on his age an impression as profound, salutary and perpetuative as that made upon his generation and times by the great theologian of Kettering.

As a preacher, especially as an expository preacher, Dr. Williams had but few equals. His sermons were thoroughly prepared, abounded in illustration, and were always so plain that all could understand them. His discourses left upon the minds of his auditors distinct impressions of Scriptural truth. To preach the Gospel was his delight, and, when dwelling upon the great themes of grace, and especially in the closing passages of his discourses, he was frequently very eloquent. His