Our obituary on Monday last contained the name of Mr. John Saunders, for many years pastor of the Baptist Church Bathurst Street, in this city, who died at Holloway, near London, on the 1st May last. Some particulars of his life and of the circumstances of his death will be of interest to his many friends in this colony.

Mr. Saunders was born in London, in the year 1807. At the early age of nineteen he set his mind on becoming a missionary, but, on the advice of his family and his religious friends, he was induced to adhere to the profession of the law on which he had entered. Soon after, however, being led to conduct regular services for a congregation in London, he felt called upon to resign his profession altogether, and to give himself wholly to the ministry. Some friends of the Baptist Missionary Society who approved of his intentions, recommended him to prepare for a missionary to India, and with this view to study under a private tutor, instead of entering one of the denominational colleges. This advice Mr. Saunders followed, and subsequently attended the winter session of the Edinburgh University in 1832-3.

He was then encouraged to offer himself as a missionary to the Baptist Missionary Society; on his doing so the committee required terms with which he could not comply, and he was not accepted. Shortly after, the Rev. J. Dyer, the late secretary of that society, showed Mr. Saunders a letter from this colony, desiring a minister to be sent out, and Mr. Saunders' health being much impaired by close application to study, and being doubtful whether he could withstand the influence of a tropical climate, determined on proceeding to Sydney, to remain if the indication of Providence appeared favourable, or otherwise to go on to India. He accordingly left Woolwich on the 24th of July, 1834, as chaplain on board the convict ship "George Hibbert," and arrived here on the 1st of December in the same year.

The first congregation of Baptists in Sydney was presided over by Rev. J. McKaeg, a room for preaching being engaged in Hart's Buildings, Pitt Street, where a service was regularly held until the erection of a place of worship on ground which had been granted by the Crown in Bathurst Street. Circumstances arose which compelled Mr. McKaeg to leave the ministry, and on his doing so his congregation addressed the letter to the Baptist Missionary Society to which we have alluded. On arriving in Sydney, therefore, Mr. Saunders found circumstances highly encouraging for his exertions. A month previous a considerable portion of Rev. Mr. Jarrett's congregation had determined to write to England for a minister, and they at once co-operated with Mr. Saunders, who, with Mr. Jarrett's honourable concurrence, cheerfully accepted their help.

The first public ministrations of Mr. Saunders in this city were conducted in the Old Court House, which had been granted for the purpose by Sir Richard Bourke, and where he continued to preach until the place was found too small for the increasing congregation. Meanwhile negotiations were entered into with Mr. McKaeg, which led to the transfer of the chapel then in course of erection to Mr. Saunders. The present chapel in Bathurst Street was commenced in November, 1835, and completed and opened on the 23rd September, 1836. A considerable congregation having been collected, a church was formed in the month of December, over which Mr. Saunders presided with great acceptability and success for more than eleven years.

Towards the close of 1847, a thorough prostration of the system compelled a suspension of his labours, and on the 2nd January, 1848, after the administration of the sacrament, Mr. Saunders gave the right hand of fellowship to the Rev. John Ham, to whom he resigned the pastorate of the church.

A few days before his departure, a public meeting of members of different religious denominations was held, presided over by Mr. Plunkett, then Attorney-General, for the purpose of presenting him with a testimonial. The sum of £300 was subscribed and presented to Mr. Saunders, accompanied with an address, conveying the subscribers' sense of his "zealous and persevering services in the cause of temperance, and also of his exertions to promote the intellectual, social, and moral well-being of the community."

Soon after his arrival in England Mr. Saunders resumed the legal profession, and subsequently entered into partnership with another solicitor in Lawrence Pountney Lane, London. Although busily engaged throughout the week, he officiated for a long time as minister of a congregation in the suburbs, and continued to conduct occasional religious services until incapacitated by utter prostration. It can hardly be questioned that his excessive zeal in labours of usefulness, both in this colony and also in London, hastened on the complaint which caused his death. The nature of that complaint may be inferred from the following passage in a letter from one of his relatives, written nearly three months before his death:- "He has had various physicians, but has derived little benefit from their ministrations, as they can find little that is tangible to work upon, his chief ailment being weakness, occasioned, they think, by the food passing on through the stomach without having extracted from it what ought to give nourishment to the body; the whole, perhaps, occasioned in some measure by the overstraining of the mental powers."

As a preacher, though not perhaps eloquent in the common application of that term, Mr. Saunders' pulpit ministrations were characterised by great power and impressiveness. His style was clear and methodical, his manner earnest and solemn, and his discourses were full of instructive illustrations drawn from natural objects and from scientific discovery. But Mr. Saunders' labours in this colony were by no means confined to the pulpit or to the denomination with which he was identified. Arriving in the colony at a time when every form of immorality prevailed, by his benevolent Christian impulses, force of character, and singleness of purpose, he took at once a prominent and influential position. His staunch and unceasing advocacy of total abstinence which, for the sake of furthering by his example, he practised until positively forbidden by his medical advisers, earned for him the name of 'the Apostle of Temperance.'

He also gave his ready assistance to the various religious and philanthropical movements then struggling for existence; and much of the improved moral tone of this community, which had become manifest long before the immigration caused by the gold discovery, was attributable to the labours of the small and energetic band with which Mr. Saunders co-operated. Mr. Saunders possessed considerable scientific attainments, together with the faculty of rendering abstruse subjects interesting, and some valuable lectures he delivered at the School of Arts are well remembered by several of its early members.

One feature of his character that will long endear his memory was the generous and indefatigable exertions he would use on behalf of friendless strangers arriving in the colony, whose cause he would make his own, never resting until ha had obtained for them the employment or other assistance they required. His exertions in this respect might be said to have continued after his departure from the colony, for the fervent interest he felt in its welfare down to the last hour of his life, combined with an intelligent observation of the openings which it afforded for the capital and energies of his countrymen, induced him readily to give seasonable advice to persons contemplating emigration, and letters of introduction to those who would offer them a friendly hand on landing. Mr. Saunders' kind services on these occasions are gratefully remembered by many in this colony.

In view of the high and universal esteem in which Mr. Saunders was held we deem it right to refer to a circumstance which none of his friends would wish to be concealed. The circumstance is so touchingly noticed by his widow in a letter to a gentleman in Sydney, written under the prostrating sorrow of her bereavement, that it spares us any further allusion to the painful subject. The letter was a private one, but the public position which Mr. Saunders occupied abundantly justifies our giving the following extract: -

"He died on Sunday, the 1st of May, at half-past eleven in the evening. Some days before he told me that the 1st of May was always a joyous day for him, and the approaching one might be his natal day. For the last few weeks he declined rapidly, though he only kept his bed for two days. On Sunday he seemed waiting every hour for his departure, often enquiring what time it was. At nine in the evening he prayed with us. It was fearfully solemn; he seemed to be already at the very portals of heaven. The hand was stretched out upon the bed in worship, and the arm was already becoming cold in death."

"His ardent love for the colonies, and all connected with Sydney, continued until the last day of his existence, and his desire to return thither was intense. Only three weeks before his death he consulted another physician, solely with the hope of getting him to consent to his going to Australia. The physician told him it would be certain death in his weak state, and this prohibition was indeed his death-blow. In his prayers he always spoke of the colony as that 'bright land' and it was sad to him to think that he should never see it again. Yet he had long expected death, and always spoke of it as 'going home;" it had no gloom to him, but he would have liked to have his poor dust laid to rest in 'that bright land'."

"He was buried at Highgate, on Saturday, the 7th, and the evening before it was announced to me by his partner that there were no funds - nothing left even to pay funeral expenses, and I was left desolate and penniless. Kind and generous as he was to others, he had not been able to save anything for his family. His income ceased with his death, and there were no funds to go on with. I felt stupefied and horror-stricken, and what to do I knew not; nor do I now know. One or two friends are endeavouring to collect a few pounds to pay funeral expenses."

"God alone can tell what will become of us. I have thought that amongst the friends of John Saunders in Sydney some little subscription might perhaps be made to help us in our time of need, and I have written to you with this hope. I do desire to keep a roof over my head till I have heard from Australia, but it is not likely I shall be able to do so. May the Lord direct our kind friends in Sydney! I put my cause in their hands - the cause of the fatherless and the widow."

Immediately on the distressing circumstances becoming known in Sydney simultaneous offers of assistance were made. A sum adequate for the immediate wants of Mrs. Saunders and her daughter will be forwarded by to-morrow's mail, and a meeting has been convened for Thursday afternoon, at four o'clock, at the "Herald" office, to consult the views of several gentlemen who have expressed their desire to demonstrate in a most appropriate manner their esteem for Mr. Saunders' character and services.