and a fearful succession of rugged and awful crises. Yet the mightiest intellects of that age were the most willing to acknowledge his matchless powers and not one of those energencies or crises came without finding him fully prepared to meet it. The attempt to explain his ascendency by a reference to the "fanaticism" or religious zeal of the times, is absurd. Did this zeal impel people-the Covenanters, the Independents, the Baptists, the Quakers and other sects-all in the same direction? Far from it. The truth is that no person can fully appreciate the very greatest of all the difficulties which beset Cromwell's path, who is not thoroughly familiar with the ecclesiastical and theological disputes of the day and with their potent bearings upon the politics of the times. Never was a man's success more directly and legitimately the result of capacity, character and conduct than his. He overcame obstacles which would probably have been insuperable to any other man described on the page of history. Less grasp of intellect, less prompitude of decision and tenacity of purpose, less courage, energy and tact, less justice, magnanimity and sensibility of heart, less sublimity of motive and strenuousness of endeavor, or less reputation and influence founded on Christian character, would have made a marked difference in the result.

There was in his mind a remarkable variety and compass of power and susceptibility. This has led some writers to ascribe mystery and self-contradiction to his character. Qualities really belonging to the human mind and increasing its capacity for usefulness and enjoyment, are not, however, to be deemed incompatible with each other or destructive of mental harmony and soundness, merely because they are rarely found largely developed in the same individual. Their union is, on the contrary, essential to true mental greatness of the highest order and an evidence, wherever it exists, of the best development of the soul. That Cromwell should have been sometimes terribly stern and sometimes gentle as a dove, that he should have been now deeply moved in contemplation of things on which the seraphim gaze with trembling ecstasy and now have laughed aloud in view of things ludicrous, that he should have frowned with awful severity upon armed traitors and insurgent murderers and yet have wept in sympathy with the persecuted Waldenses, that he should on some occasions have appeared like majesty impersonated and on others have been as carless of his dignity as a child, may, perhaps, shock persons with narrow views of mental greatness or with tastes formed on some model of prim, official propriety or of studied, heartless sanctimony, but there is really no mystery in all this, save the mystery of a large, noble mind alive and active in all its faculties and exhibiting emotions and putting forth exercises appropriate to the objects and circumstances with which it was conversant. His vast variety of endowments so conspicuous in each particular, fully justifies the remark that "A LARGER SOUL HATH SELDOM DWELT IN

A HOUSE OF CLAY THAN HIS WAS."

"The house of clay" in which he dwelt was very suitable for such an inhabitant. Carlyle's description of his person as it was in 1653 is well authenticated and just. The Protector "stands some five feet ten or more; a man of strong solid stature, and dignified, now partly military carriage: the expression of him, valor and devout intelligence-ENERGY and DELICACY on a basis of SIMPLICITY. Fifty-four years old, gone April last; brown hair and moustache are getting gray. A figure of sufficient impressiveness;-not lovely to the man-milliner species nor pretending to be so. Massive stature; big massive head of somewhat leonine aspect; wart above the right eyebrow; nose of considerable blunt-aquiline proportions; strict yet. copious lips, full of all tremulous sensibilities, and also, if need were, of all fiercenesses and rigors; deep loving eyes, call them grave, call them stern, looking from under those craggy brows as if in lifelong sorrow, and yet not thinking it sorrow, thinking it only labor and endeavor: on the whole, a right noble lion-face and heroface; and to me royal enough."

The prominent evidences of Cromwell's patriotism have been adduced and need not be repeated. Against all the facts demonstrating his sincerity and magnanimity, shall it be sufficient merely to say that he became Protector?—that in a revolutionary period he obeyed the law of a momentous public necessity, and, for the sake of a higher good, sometimes disregarded legal forms? True, a good end cannot sanctify a means which, in itself, is morally wrong. But who will say that the setting aside of legal formsis in all circumstances wrong? Were not the life and body of England more than her tattered raiment of regal and parliamentary habits? There are cases in which the circumstances, the end, the motive ought to be allowed great weight in estimating the character of means. It is, for example, absurd to put the technically illegal measures of Cromwell in the same category with the arbitrary acts of Charles I. The one sought to make his country free, and to found her liberties on virtue and intelligence quickened and irradiated by Religion; and, amid difficulties the most discouraging, actually gave her a better constitution than any nation had then ever known. The other labored to change the government into an unlimited monarchy and perpetrated illegal acts and inflicted cruel wrongs for the sake of breaking down the spirit of the Nation and of establishing a despotism on popular ignorance and degradation. The one, by his acts as well as his words, proclaimed his purpose, while taking no thought for his personal dignity, to "make the name of an Englishman as great with foreign countries as ever that of Roman had been." The other, indifferent to England's glory abroad and her prosperity at home, betrayed, in all his conduct, a tyrant's littleness of soul and a despot's desire merely to exalt himself.

Let the use which Cromwell made of his power, shed its light upon his motives in assuming it. In his policy whether domestic or foreign, could he have been more beneficently patriotic? Even

in affairs less public, he exhibited the same noble, unselfish spirit. With the most tempting opportunities to enrich himself he did not increase his private wealth during his Protectorate. His income was scarcely adequate, notwithstanding the temperance of his habits and the simplicity of his style of living, to meet the draughts of his philanthropic munificence. It has been computed that he distributed for charitable uses not less than forty thousand pounds a year from his private purse.

His self-control though not perfect, was most admirable. "His temper was exceeding fiery as I have known," says Maidstone, "but the flame of it (was) kept down for the most part or soon allayed with those moral endowments he had." In such men as Cromwell, Luther and Paul, not only possessed of vast intellectual might but moved by a grand impulsive power, there is much to control. The great river swollen by a thousand streams and marching with all its force of waters ocean-ward, requires high and strong embankments to keep it from breaking forth from its channel.

One grand source of the greatness of Cromwell was the moral power which regulated and directed his energies. I refer to the enlightening and motive influence which Christianity had over his mind. As a religious and political reformer he took the Bible for his standard and measure of improvement As a statesman he learned wisdom by studying the great principles of that righteousness which exalteth a nation. As a revolutionist, he kept his eye steadily upon the course of God's providence contemplating it from the lofty observatory of History and Prophecy. Hence his great advance before his age. Hence the loftiness of his aims and the grandeur of his views. Hence his strength for perilous, ardous service in the "good old cause," so that "in the dark perils of war, in the high places of the field," and amid the tremendous labors and trials of the Protectorate, "hope shone in him like a pillar of fire when it had gone out in all the others." His grandest resolves, his most wonderful exhibitions of intuitive genius, and his greatest deeds followed his profoundest humiliations and went hand in hand with his intensest emotions in waiting on the Eternal. This has been a stumbling-block to those who strangely imagine that to be habitually awed yet delighted in supplicatory communion with Infinite Intelligence, is incompatible with the highest practical wisdom.

As an intended disparagement, it has sometimes been said that he was "a Christian of the Old Testament rather than of the New;" and that he resembled "David rather than the Apostle John." This criticism has been uttered by some who might well afford to sit at the feet of such a man, to learn the design and import of both the Testaments. Was not religion essentially and generically the same in the king-after-God's-own-heart as in the beloved disciple?-in Joshua as in Peter ?-in Hezekiah as in James?We should repudiate the idea that any servant of God is to be imitated not only in the spirit of his whole life but also in all his specific