the wit of others, especially when directed against what he looked upon as error. Marvell's inimitable reply to the High Church pretensions of Parker fairly overcame his habitual gravity, and he several times alludes to it with marked satisfaction; but, for himself, he had no heart for pleasantry, His writings, like his sermons, were the earnest expostulations of a dying man with dying men. He tells us of no other amusement or relaxation than the singing of psalms. "Harmony and melody," said he, "are the pleasure and elevation of my soul. It was not the least comfort that I had in the converse of my late dear wife, that our first act in the morning and last in bed at night was a psalm of praise.”

One of the warmest admirers and ablest commentators of Baxter designates the leading and peculiar trait of his character as unearthliness. In our view, this was its radical defect. He had too little of humanity, he felt too little the attraction of this world, and lived too exclusively in the spiritual and the unearthly, for a full and healthful development of his nature as a man, or of the graces, charities, and loves of the Christian. He undervalued the common blessings and joys of life, and closed his eyes and ears against the beauty and harmony of outward nature. Humanity, in itself considered, seemed of small moment to him; "passing away" was written alike on its wrongs and its rights, its pleasures and its pains; death would soon level all distinctions; and the sorrows or the joys, the poverty or the riches, the slavery or the liberty of the brief day of its probation seemed of too little consequence to engage his attention and sympathies. Hence, while he was always ready to minister to temporal suffering wherever it came to his notice, he made no efforts to remove its political or social causes. In this respect he differed widely

from some of his illustrious contemporaries. Penn, while preaching up and down the land, and writing theological folios and pamphlets, could yet urge the political rights of Englishmen, mount the hustings for Algernon Sydney, and plead for unlimited religious liberty; and Vane, while dreaming of a coming Millennium and Reign of the Saints, and busily occupied in defending his Antinomian doctrines, could at the same time vindicate, with tongue and pen, the cause of civil and religious freedom. But Baxter overlooked the evils and oppressions which were around him, and forgot the necessities and duties of the world of time and sense in his earnest aspirations towards the world of spirits. It is by no means an uninstructive fact, that with the lapse of years his zeal for proselytism, doctrinal disputations, and the preaching of threats and terrors, visibly declined, while love for his fellow-men and catholic charity greatly increased, and he was blest with a clearer perception of the truth that God is best served through His suffering children, and that love and reverence for visible humanity is an indispensable condition of the appropriate worship of the Unseen God.

But, in taking leave of Richard Baxter, our last words must not be those of censure. Admiration and reverence become us rather. He was an honest man. So far as we can judge, his motives were the highest and best which can influence human action. He had faults and weaknesses, and committed grave errors, but we are constrained to believe that the prayer with which he closes his Saints' Rest, and which we have chosen as the fitting termination of our sketch, was the earnest aspiration of his life.

"Oh, merciful Father of Spirits! suffer not the soul of thy unworthy servant to be a stranger to the joys which he describes to others, but keep me while I remain on earth in

daily breathing after thee, and in a believing affectionate walking with thee ! Let those who shall read these pages not merely read the fruits of my studies, but the breathing of my active hope and love; that if my heart were open to their view, they might there read thy love most deeply engraven upon it with a beam from the face of the Son of God; and not find vanity or lust or pride within where the words of life appear without, that so these lines may not witness against me, but proceeding from the heart of the writer, be effectual through thy grace upon the heart of the reader, and so be the savour of life to both. '

RICHARD BAXTER'S REVIEW OF HIS OWN

CHARACTER.

BECAUSE it is soul-experiments which those that urge me to this kind of writing do expect that I should especially communicate to others, and I have said little of God's dealing with my soul since the time of my younger years, I shall only give the reader so much satisfaction as to acquaint him truly what change God hath made upon my mind and heart since those unriper times, and wherein I now differ in judgment and disposition from myself. And for any more particular account of occurrences, and God's operations on me, I think it somewhat unsavoury to recite them; seeing God's dealings are muchwhat the same with all His servants in the main, and the points wherein He varieth are usually so small, that I think not such fit to be repeated nor have I anything extraordinary to glory in, which is not common to the rest of my brethren, who have the same spirit, and are servants of the same Lord. And the true reason why I do adventure so far upon the censure of the world as to tell them wherein the case is altered with me is, that I may take off young unexperienced Christians from being over-confident in their first apprehensions, or over-valuing their first degrees of grace, or too much applauding and following unfurnished, unexperienced men; but may somewhat be directed what mind and course

of life to prefer by the judgment of one that hath tried both before them.

The temper of my mind hath somewhat altered with the temper of my body. When I was young, I was more vigorous, affectionate, and fervent in preaching, conference, and prayer, than (ordinarily) I can be now; my style was more extemporate and lax, but by the advantage of affection, and a very familiar moving voice and utterance, my preaching then did more affect the auditory than many of the last years before I gave over preaching; but yet what I delivered was much more raw, and had more passages that would not bear the trial of accurate judgments; and my discourses had both less substance and less judgment than of late.

My understanding was then quicker, and could easilier manage anything that was newly presented to it upon a sudden; but it is since better furnished and acquainted with the ways of truth and error, and with a multitude of particular mistakes of the world, which then I was the more in danger of because I had only the faculty of knowing them, but did not actually know them. I was then like a man of a quick understanding that was to travel a way which he never went before, or to cast up an account which he never laboured in before, or to play on an instrument of music which he never saw before and I am now like one of somewhat a slower understanding (by that præmatura senectus which weakness and excessive bleedings brought me to) who is travelling a way which he hath often gone, and is casting up an account which he hath often cast up and hath ready at hand, and that is playing on an instrument which he hath often played on so that I can very confidently say, that my judgment is much sounder and firmer now than it was then; for though I

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