period saw that castle exalted into a sanctuary, and heard it reëcho with worship rapt and high. And the third blended all the rest and added one thing more: in the cottage, castle, sanctuary, it planted a pious family living for either world-diligent but tranquil, manly but devout, self-contained but not exclusive, retired but redundant with blithest life; and in this creation it produced the most blessed thing on earth-a happy Christian English home. Would our readers care for the short story how this last era began? Have they leisure for a flying sketch of the principal personages to whom, as the instruments of God, it owes its rise? Never has century risen on Christian England so void of soul faith as that which opened with Queen Anne, and which reached its misty noon beneath the second George-a dewless night succeeded by a sunless dawn. There was no freshness in the past, and no promise in the future. The memory of Baxter and Usher possessed no spell, and calls to revival or reform fell dead on the echo. Confessions of sin, and national covenants, and all projects towards a public and visible acknowledgment of the Most High were voted obsolete, and the golden dreams of Westminster worthies only lived in Hudibras. The Puritans were buried and the Methodists were not born. The philosopher of the age was Bolingbroke, the moralist was Addison, the minstrel was Pope, and the preacher was Atterbury. The world had the idle, discontented look of the morning after some mad holiday; and like rocket-sticks and the singed paper from last night's squibs, the spent jokes of Charles and Rochester lay all about, and people yawned to look at them. It was a listless, joyless morning, when the slip-shod citizens were cross, and even the merry-Andrew joined the incurious public, and, forbearing his ineffectual pranks, sat down to wonder at the vacancy. The reign of buffoonery was past, but the reign of faith and earnestness had not commenced. During the first forty years of that century, the eye that seeks for spiritual life can hardly find it; least of all that hopeful and diffusive life which is the harbinger of more. "It was taken for granted that Christianity was not so much as a subject for inquiry, but was at length discovered to be fictitious. And men treated it as if this were an agreed point among all people of discernment."* Doubtless there were divines, like Beveridge, and Watts, and Doddridge, men of profound devotion and desirous of doing good; but the little which they accomplished only shows how adverse was the time. And their appearance was no presage. They were not the Ararats of an emerging economy. a dreary interval-after the boisterous irreligion of | and converted his cottage into a castle. The second the latter Stuarts and the cold flippancy which so long outlived them, came the evangelical revival of last century. Full-hearted and affectionate, sometimes brisk and vivacious, but always downright and practical, the gospel of that era spoke to the good sense and warm feelings of the nation. In the electric fire of Whitefield, the rapid fervor of Romaine, the caustic force of Berridge and Rowland Hill, and the fatherly wisdom of John Newton and Henry Venn-in these modern evangelists there was not the momentum whose long range demolished error's strongest holds, nor the massive doctrine which built up the tall and stately pile of Puritan theology. That day was past, and that work was done. For the Christian warfare these solemn iron-sides and deep-sounding culverines were no longer wanted; but, equipped with the brief logic and telling earnestness of their eager sincerity, the lighter troops of this modern campaign ran swiftly in at the open gate, and next instant huzzaed from the walls of the citadel. And for spiritual masonry the work was too abundant and the workers too few to admit of the spacious old temple style. Run up in haste and roofed over in a hurry, its earlier piety too often dwelt in tents; and before the roaming architect could return, his work would sometimes suffer loss. But when growing experience urged more pains, and increasing laborers made it possible, the busier habits of the time could still be traced in the slighter structure. The great glory of this recent gospel is the sacred element which it has infused into an age which, but for it, would be wholly secular, and the sustaining element which it has inspired into a community which, but for its blessed hope, would be toil-worn and lifeweary. No generation ever drudged so hard as this, and yet none has worked more cheerily. None was ever so tempted to churlish selfishness, and yet none has been more bountiful, and given such strength and wealth away. And none was ever more beset with facilities for vice and folly, and yet none has more abounded in disinterested characters and loving families full of loveliness. Other ages may surpass it in the lone grandeur and awful goodness of some preeminent name; but in the diffusion of piety, in the simplicity and gladness of domestic religion, and in the many forms of intelligent and practical Christianity, it surpasses them all. With "GOD IS LOVE" for the sunny legend in its open sky, and with Bible-texts efflorescing in every-day duties round its agile feet, this latter gospel has left along its path the fairest specimens of talents consecrated and industry evangelized. Nor till all missionaries like Henry Martyn and John Williams, and all sweet singers like Kirke White and Jane Taylor, and all friends of humanity like Fowell Buxton, and Elizabeth Fry, have passed away; nor till the Bible, tract, and missionary societies have done their work, will it be known how benign and heart-expanding was that gospel largess which a hundred years ago began to bless the land. Three evangelic eras have come, and two of them are gone. The first of these made its subjects Biblereaders, brave and free. The second made them Bible-singers, full of its deep harmonies and high devotion, and from earthly toil and tumult hid in the pavilion of its stately song. The third made them Bible-doers, kind, liberal, and active, and social withal-mutually attractive and mutually confiding-loving to work and worship together. The first found the English commoner little better than a serf; but it gave him a patent of nobility, The zone of piety grew no wider, and they saw no symptoms of a new world appearing. But like the Coral Islands of the Southern Pacific, slowly descending, they were the dwindling peaks of an older dispensation, and felt the water deepening round them. In their devout but sequestered walk, and in their faithful but mournful appeals to their congregations and country, they were the pensive mementoes of a glory departed, not the hopeful precursors of a glory to come. Remembrance and regret are feeble reformers; and the story of godly ancestors has seldom shamed into repentance their lax and irreverent sons. The power which startles or melts a people is zeal fresh-warmed in the furnace of Scripture, and baptized with the fire of Heaven-that fervor which, incandescent with hope * Bishop Butler. and confidence, bursts in flame at the sight of a glo- | piety; and a compassionate solicitude for the souls rious future. of men, often rising to a fearful agony, was his Of this power the splendid example was WHITE- ruling passion; and strong in the oneness of his aim FIELD.* The son of a Gloucester inn-keeper, and the intensity of his feelings, he soon burst the and sent to Pembroke College, his mind became so regular bounds, and began to preach on commons burdened with the great realities, that he had little and village greens, and even to the rabble at Lonheart for study. God and eternity, holiness and don fairs. He was the prince of English preachers. sin, were thoughts which haunted every moment, Many have surpassed him as sermon-makers, but and compelled him to live for the salvation of his none have approached him as a pulpit orator. Many soul; but, except his tutor Wesley and a few gowns- have outshone him in the clearness of their logic, men, he met with none who shared his earnest- the grandeur of their conceptions, and the sparkling ness. And though earnest, they were all in error. beauty of single sentences; but in the power of Among the influential minds of the University darting the gospel direct into the conscience he there was no one to lead them into the knowl- eclipsed them all. With a full and beaming counedge of the gospel, and they had no religious guides tenance, and the frank and easy port which the except the genius of the place and books of their English people love-for it is the symbol of honest own choosing. The genius of the place was an purpose and friendly assurance-he combined a ascetic quietism. Its libraries full of clasped school-voice of rich compass, which could equally thrill men and tall fathers, its cloisters so solemn that a over Moorfields in musical thunder, or whisper its hearty laugh or hurried step seemed sinful, and its terrible secret in every private ear and to this halls lit with medieval sunshine, perpetually invited gainly aspect and tuneful voice he added a most extheir inmates to meditation and silent recollection;pressive and eloquent action. Improved by consciwhilst the early tinkle of the chapel bell and the entious practice, and instinct with his earnest nature, frosty routine of winter matins, the rubric and the this elocution was the acted sermon, and by its panfounder's rules, proclaimed the religious benefits of tomimic portrait enabled the eye to anticipate each bodily exercise. The Romish postern had not then rapid utterance, and helped the memory to treasure been reöpened; but with no devotional models, save up the palpable ideas. None ever used so boldly, the marble Bernards and de Wykhams, and no nor with more success, the highest styles of imperspiritual illumination except what came in by the sonation. His " Hark! hark!" could conjure up north windows of the past, it is not surprising that Gethsemane with its faltering moon, and awake ardent but reverential spirits should in such a place again the cry of horror-stricken Innocence; and an have unwittingly groped into a Romish pietism. apostrophe to Peter on the holy mount, would light With an awakened conscience and a resolute will, up another Tabor, and drown it in glory from the young Whitefield went through the sanatory spe- opening heaven. His thoughts were possessions, cifics of A-Kempis, Castanza, and William Law; and his feelings were transformations; and if he and in his anxiety to exceed all that is required by the spake because he felt, his hearers understood berubric, he would fast during Lent on black bread cause they saw. They were not only enthusiastis and sugarless tea, and stand in the cold till his nose amateurs, like Garrick, who ran to weep and tremwas red and his fingers blue, whilst, in the hope of ble at his bursts of passion, but even the colder temptation and wild beasts, he would wander through critics of the Walpole school were surprised into Christ Church meadows over-dark. It was whilst momentary sympathy and reluctant wonder. Lord pursuing this course of self-righteous fanaticism that Chesterfield was listening in Lady Huntingdon's he was seized with alarming illness. It sent him pew when Whitefield was comparing the benighted to his Bible, and whilst praying and yearning over sinner to a blind beggar on a dangerous road. His his Greek Testament, the " open secret" flashed little dog gets away from him when skirting the edge upon his view. The discovery of a completed and of a precipice, and he is left to explore the path gratuitous salvation filled with ecstasy a spirit pre- with his iron-shod staff. On the very verge of the pared to appreciate it, and, from their great deep cliff this blind guide slips through his fingers, and breaking, his affections thenceforward flowed, im-skims away down the abyss. All unconscious, its petuous and uninterrupted, in the one channel of owner stoops down to regain it, and stumbling forlove to the Saviour. The Bishop of Gloucester ward-" Good God! he is gone!" shouted Chesterordained him, and on the day of his ordination he field, who had been watching with breathless alarm wrote to a friend, "Whether I myself shall ever the blind man's movements, and who jumped from have the honor of styling myself a ' prisoner of the his seat to save the catastrophe. But the glory of Lord' I know not; but indeed, my dear friend, I Whitefield's preaching was its heart-kindled and can call heaven and earth to witness that when the heart-melting gospel. But for this all his bold bishop laid his hand upon me, I gave myself up to be strokes and brilliant surprises might have been no a martyr for Him who hung upon the cross for me. better than the rhetorical triumphs of Kirwan and Known unto Him are all future events and contin- other pulpit dramatists. He was an orator, but he gencies. I have thrown myself blindfold, and, I only sought to be an evangelist. Like a volcano trust, without reserve, into his Almighty hands; where gold and gems may be darted forth as well as only I would have you observe, that till you hear common things, but where gold and molten granite of my dying for or in my work, you will not be ap-flow all alike in fiery fusion, bright thoughts and prized of all the preferment that is expected by George Whitefield." In this rapture of self-devotion he traversed England, Scotland, and Ireland, for four-and-thirty years, and crossed the Atlantic thirteen times, proclaiming the love of God and His great gift to man. A bright and exulting view of the atonement's sufficiency was his theology; delight in God and rejoicing in Christ Jesus were his *Born 1714. Died 1770. splendid images might be projected from his flaming pulpit, but all were merged in the stream which bore along the gospel and himself in blended fervor. Indeed, so simple was his nature, that glory to God and good-will to man having filled it, there was room for little more. Having no church to found, no family to enrich, and no memory to immortalize, he was the mere ambassador of God; and inspired with its genial piteous spirit-so full of heaven reconciled and humanity restored-he soon himself became a living gospel. Radiant with its benignity, pony and trot away again. In his aërial poise, and trembling with its tenderness, by a sort of spir- Whitefield's eagle eye drank lustre from the source itual induction a vast audience would speedily be of light, and loved to look down on men in assembrought into a frame of mind-the transfusion of bled myriads; Wesley's falcon glance did not his own; and the white furrows on their sooty faces sweep so far, but it searched more keenly and told that Kingswood colliers were weeping, or the marked more minutely where it pierced. A mas quivering of an ostrich plume bespoke its elegant ter of assemblies, Whitefield was no match for the wearer's deep emotion. And coming to his work isolated man ;-seldom coping with the multitude, direct from communion with his Master, and in all but strong in astute sagacity and personal ascendthe strength of accepted prayer, there was an eleva-ancy, Wesley could conquer any number one by one. tion in his mien which often paralyzed hostility, and All force and impetus, Whitefield was the powder a self-possession which only made him, amid uproar blast in the quarry, and by one explosive sermon and fury, the more sublime. With an electric bolt would shake a district, and detach materials for he would bring the jester in his fool's-cap from his other men's long work; deft, neat, and painstaking, perch on the tree, or galvanize the brick-bat from Wesley loved to split and trim each fragment into the skulking miscreant's grasp, or sweep down in uniform plinths and polished stones. Or, taken crouching submission and shame-faced silence the otherwise, Whitefield was the bargeman or the whole of Bartholomew Fair; whilst a revealing wagoner who brought the timber of the house, flash of sententious doctrine or vivified Scripture, and Wesley was the architect who set it up. would disclose to awe-struck hundreds the forgotten Whitefield had no patience for ecclesiastical polity, verities of another world, or the unsuspected arcana no aptitude for pastoral details; with a beaver-like of their inner man. "I came to break your head,propensity for building, Wesley was always conbut, through you, God has broken my heart," was a sort of confession with which he was familiar; and to see the deaf old gentlewoman, who used to mutter imprecations at him as he passed along the street, clambering up the pulpit-stairs to catch his angelic words, was a sort of spectacle which the triumphant gospel often witnessed in his day. And when it is known that his voice could be heard by 20,000, and that ranging all the empire, as well as America, he would often preach thrice on a working-day, and that he has received in one week as many as a thousand letters, from persons awakened by his sermons; if no estimate can be formed of the results of his ministry, some idea may be suggested of its vast extent and singular effectiveness. | The following codicil was added to Whitefield's will: "N. B.-I also leave a mourning ring to my honored and dear friends, the Rev. John and Charles Wesley, in token of my indissoluble union with them, in heart and Christian affection, notwithstanding our difference in judgment about some particular points of doctrine." structing societies, and with a king-like craft of ruling, was most at home when presiding over a class or a conference. It was their infelicity that they did not always work together; it was the happiness of the age and the furtherance of the gospel that they lived alongside of one another. Ten years older than his pupil, Wesley was a year or two later of attaining the joy and freedom of gospel-forgiveness. It was whilst listening to Luther's Preface to the Romans, where he describes the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, that he felt his own heart strangely warmed; and finding that he trusted in Christ alone for salvation, "an assurance was given him that Christ had taken away his sins, and saved him from the law of sin and death." And though in his subsequent piety a subtle analyst may detect a trace of that mysticism which was his first religion; even as to his second religion, Moravianism, he was indebted for some details of his eventual church-order-no candid reader will deny that "righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost," The "points of doctrine" were chiefly the ex- had now become the religion of the Methodist; tent of the atonement and the perseverance of the and for the half century of his ubiquitous career, saints; the "indissoluble union" was occasioned his piety retained this truly evangelic type. A cool by their all-absorbing love to the same Saviour, observer, who met him towards the close, records, and untiring efforts to make his riches known." So fine an old man I never saw. The happiness They quarrelled a little, but they loved a great of his mind beamed forth in his countenance. deal more. Few characters could be more com- Every look showed how fully he enjoyed the gay pletely the converse, and in the church's exigen- remembrance of a life well spent; and wherever cies, more happily the supplement of one another, than were those of George Whitefield and JOHN WESLEY and had their views been identical, and their labors all along coincident, their large services to the gospel might have repeated Paul and Barnabas. Whitefield was soul, and Wesley was system. Whitefield was a summer-cloud which burst at morning or noon in fragrant exhilaration over an ample tract, and took the rest of the day to gather again; Wesley was the polished conduit in the midst of the garden, through which the living water glided in pearly brightness and perennial music, the same vivid stream from day to day. After a preaching paroxysm, Whitefield lay panting on his couch, spent, breathless and death-like; after his morning sermon in the foundry, Wesley would mount his pony and trot and chat and gather simples till he reached some country hamlet, where he would bait his charger, and talk through a little sermon with the villagers, and re-mount his *Born 1703. Died 1791. he went, he diffused a portion of his own felicity. Easy and affable in his demeanor, he accommodated himself to every sort of company, and showed how happily the most finished courtesy may be blended with the most perfect piety. In his conversation, we might be at a loss whether to admire most, his fine classical taste, his extensive knowledge of men and things, or his overflowing goodness of heart. While the grave and serious were charmed with his wisdom, his sportive sallies of innocent mirth delighted even the young and thoughtless; and both saw, in his uninterrupted cheerfulness, the excellency of true Religion."* To a degree scarcely paralleled, his piety had supplanted those strong instincts-the love of worldly distinction, the love of money, and the love of ease. The answer which he gave to his brother, when refusing to vin dicate himself from a newspaper calumny, Broth er, when I devoted to God my ease, my time, my life, did I except my reputation?' was no casual * Alexander Knox, and active, which reared it, the founder's most remarkable memorial is his living monument. Wesley has not passed away; for, if embalmed in the connection, he is reembodied in the members. Never did a leader so stamp his impress on his followers. The covenanters were not such fac-similes of Knox; nor were the imperial guards such enthusiastic copies of their little corporal, as are the modern Methodists the perfect transmigration of their venerated father. Exact, orderly, and active; dissident but not dissenters; connectional but catholic; carrying warmth within, and yet loving southerly exposures; obliging without effort, and liberal on system; serene, contented, and hopeful—if we except the master-spirits, whose type is usually their own-the most of pious Methodists are cast from Wesley's neat and cheerful mould. That goodness must have been attractive as well as very imitable, which has survived in a million of living effigies. 66 sally, but the system of his conduct. From the moment that the Fellow of Lincoln went out into the highways and hedges and commenced itinerant preacher, he bade farewell to earthly fame. And perhaps no Englishman, since the days of Bernard Gilpin, has given so much away. When his income was thirty pounds a year, he lived on twentyeight, and saved two for charity. Next year he had sixty pounds, and, still living on twenty-eight, he had thirty-two to spend. A fourth year raised his income to a hundred and twenty pounds, and steadfast to his plan the poor got ninety-two. In the year 1775, the accountant-general sent him a oopy of the excise order for the return of plate; "REV. SIR,-As the commissioners cannot doubt but you have plate, for which you have hitherto neglected to make an entry," &c.; to which he wrote this memorable_answer:-"SIR,-I have two silver tea-spoons at London, and two at Bristol. This is all the plate which I have at present; and I shall not buy any more while so many around me want bread. I am, sir, your most humble servant, JOHN WESLEY." 'And though it is calculated that he must have given more than twenty thousand pounds away, all his property, when he died, consisted of his clothes, his books, and a carriage. Perhaps, like a ball burnished by motion, his perpetual activity helped to keep him thus brightly clear from worldly pelf; and when we remember its great pervading motive, there is something subAime in this good man's industry. Rising every morning at four, travelling every year upwards of 4000 miles, and preaching nearly a thousand sermons, exhorting societies, editing books, writing all sorts of letters, and giving audience to all sorts of people, the ostensible president of Methodism and pastor of all the Methodists, and amidst his ceaseless toils betraying no more bustle than a planet in its course, he was a noble specimen of that fervent diligence which, launched on its orbit by a holy and joyful impulse, has ever afterwards the peace of God to light it on its way. Nor should we forget his praiseworthy efforts to diffuse a Christianized philosophy, and propagate useful knowledge among religious people. In the progress of research most of his compilations may have lost their value; but the motive was enlightened, and the effort to exemplify his own idea was characteristic of the well-informed and energetic man. In Christian authorship he is not entitled to rank high. Clear as occasional expositions are, there is seldom comprehension in his views, or grandeur in his thoughts, or inspiration in his practical appeals; and though his direct and simple style is sometimes terse, it is often meagre, and very seldom racy. His voluminous journals are little better than a turnpike log-him eager to transmit the benefit. But his frame miles, towns, and sermon-texts-whilst their au- was feeble. It was all that he could do to get thoritative tone and self-centring details give the through one sermon every Sabbath in his little record an air of arrogance and egotism which, we church of Weston-Favell; and the more his spirit doubt not, would disappear could we view the ven- glowed within, the more shadowy grew his tall and erable writer face to face. Assuredly his power wasted form. He could not, like his old tutor and was in his presence. Such fascination resided in his his college friend, itinerate; and so he was consaintly mien, there was such intuition in the twin-strained to write. In Indian phrase, he pressed his kle of his mild but brilliant eye, and such a dis- soul on paper. With a pen dipped in the rainbow, solving influence in his lively, benevolent, and in- and with aspirations after a celestial vocabulary, he structive talk, that enemies often left him admirers proceeded to descant on the glories of his Redeemand devotees. And should any regard the Wesley-er's person, and the riches of his great salvation. an system as the mere embodiment of Mr. Wesley's He published his Meditations, and then the Diamind, it is a singular triumph of worth and firm-logues between Theron and Aspasio; and then he ness. Never has a theological idiosyncracy per- grew too weak even for this fireside work. Still petuated itself in a church so large and stable. the spirit burned, and the body sank. But though every pin and cord of the Methodist only a few minutes to live," said the doctor; "spare tabernacle bears trace of the fingers, concinnate *Born 1714, Died 1758. Whilst a college tutor, Mr Wesley numbered among his pupils, along with George Whitefield, JAMES HERVEY. To his kind and intelligent teacher he owed superior scholarship, and along with a knowledge of Hebrew, a taste for natural science; but at Oxford he did not learn theology. Pure in his conduct and correct in his clerical deportment, his piety was cold and stiff. It had been acquired among the painted apostles and sculptured martyrs, the vitrified gospels and freestone litanies of Alma Mater, and lacked a quickening spirit. Talking to a ploughman who attended Dr. Doddridge, he asked, "What do you think is the hardest thing in religion?" "Sir," said the ploughman, "I am a poor man, and you are a minister; will you allow me to return the question?" Well," said Mr. Hervey, "I think the hardest thing is to deny sinful self;" and enlarged at some length on the difficulties of self-mortification. At last the ploughman interposed-" But, Mr. Hervey, you have forgotten the most difficult part of self-denial, the denial of righteous self." Though conscious of some defect in his own religion, the young clergyman looked with disdain at the old fool, and wondered what he meant. Soon afterwards, however, a little book, on Submission to the righteousness of God," put meaning into the ploughman's words; and Mr. Hervey wondered how he could have read the Bible so often and overlooked its revelation of righteousness. When he saw it he rejoiced with exceeding joy. It solved every problem and filled every void. It lit up the Bible, and it kindled Christianity. It gave emancipation to his spirit and motion to his ministry; and whilst it filled his own soul with happiness it made 66 "You have 492 yourself." "No, doctor, no; you tell me that I derived its great impulse from the three now named. Devon, Augustus Toplady; in Shropshire, was Fletcher of Madeley; in Bedfordshire, there was Berridge of Everton; in Lincolnshire, Adams of Wintringham; in Yorkshire, were Grimshaw of don was William Romaine-besides a goodly numHaworth, and Venn of Huddersfield; and in Lonber who, with less renown, were earnest and wise enough to win many souls. Last century was the first in which pious people cared for style. The Puritans had apple-trees in their orchard, and savory herbs in their kitchen-garden, but kept no green-house, nor parterre; and, amongst evangelical authors, Hervey was about to be curate of the gay little capital of Western In the summer of 1746, SAMUEL WALKER came the first who made his style a study, and who Cornwall. He was clever and accomplished-had sought, by planting flowers at the gate, to allure learned from books the leading doctrines of Chrispassengers into the garden. It is not, therefore, tianity, and whilst mainly anxious to be a popular surprising that his ornaments should be more dis- preacher, and a favorite with his fashionable heartinguished for profusion and brilliant hues than for ers, had a distinct desire to do them good-but did simplicity and grace. Most people admire tulips them none. and peonies, and martegon-lilies, before they get on was a man of splendid scholarship, and the most The master of the grammar-school to love store-cups, and mosses, and ferns. We famous teacher in that county, but much hated for used to admire them ourselves, and felt that sum- his piety. mer was not fully blown till we saw it sure and cer- Conon a note, with a sum of money, requesting him One day Mr. Walker received from Mr. tain in these ample and exuberant flowers. Yes, to pay it to the custom-house. For his health he and even now we feel that it would make a warmer had been advised to drink some French wine, but June could we love peonies and martegons once on that smuggling coast could procure none on more. Hervey was a man of taste equal to his which duty had been paid. Wondering whether age, and of a warmth and venturesomeness beyond this tenderness of conscience pervaded all his charit. He introduced the poetical and picturesque acter, Mr. Walker sought Mr. Conon's acquaintinto religious literature, and became the Shenstone ance, and was soon as completely enchained by the of theology. And although he did what none had sweetness of his disposition, and the fascination of dared before him, the world was ready, and his suc- his intercourse, as he was awed and astonished by cess was rapid. The Meditations evangelized the the purity and elevation of his conduct. It was natural sciences, and the Dialogues embowered the from the good treasure of this good man's heart old divinity. The former was philosophy in its that Mr. Walker received the gospel. Having right mind and at the Saviour's feet; the other learned it, he proclaimed it. Truro was in uproar. was the Lutheran dogma relieved from the aca- To hear of their general depravity, and to have demic gown, and keeping healthful holiday in shady urged on them repentance and the need of a new woods and by the mountain stream. of his writings was to open the believer's eye in gayeties, and been the soul of genteel amusement, The tendency nature by one who had so lately mingled in all their kindness and wonder on the works of God, and was first startling and then offensive. The squire their effort was to attract to the incarnate mystery was indignant; fine ladies sulked and tossed their the heart surprised or softened by these works. heads; rude men interrupted him in the midst of We cannot, at the distance of a century, recall the his sermon; and the rector, repeatedly called to fascination which surrounded them when newly dismiss him, was only baffled by Mr. Walker's published-when no similar attempts had forestalled urbanity. But soon faithful preaching began to their freshness, and no imitations had blown their tell; and in Mr. Walker's case its intrinsic power vigor into bombast. But we can trace their mellow was aided by his insight into character, and his influence still. We see that they have helped to ascendancy over men. make men of faith men of feeling, and men of piety 800 parishioners had called on him to ask what men of taste. Over the bald and rugged places of they must do for their soul's salvation; and his In a few years upwards of systematic orthodoxy, they have trained the sweet- time was mainly occupied in instructing large est beauties of creation and softest graces of piety, classes of his hearers who wished to live godly, and over its entire landscape have shed an illumina- righteous, and sober in this evil world. The firsttion as genial as it is growthful and clear. If they fruits of his ministry was a dissolute youth who had be not purely classical, they are perfectly evangeli- been a soldier, and amongst this description of peocal and singularly adapted to the whole of man. ple he had his greatest success. Their cadence is in our popular preaching still, and a body of troops arrived in his parish for winter may their spirit never quit our Christianity! It is quarters. One November, the spirit of securest faith, and sunniest hope, and noon sermon for their special benefit. He found He immediately commenced an aftermost seraphic love. And though it may be danger- them grossly ignorant. Of the seven best instructed ous for young divines, like Samuel Parr, to copy six were Scotchmen, and the seventh an English their descriptive melody, it were a blessed ambition to emulate their author's large and lightsome piety -his heart" open to the whole noon of nature," and through all its brightness drinking the smile of a present God. In the middle of last century evangelical religion] dissenter. And they were reluctant to come to hear him. At first, when marched to church, on arriving at the door, they turned and walked away. But when at last they came under the sound of hi *Born 1714. Died 1761. |