Then again getting sent back from Exeter, when I now see that to have passed the examination then would have been the very worst thing that could have happened to me. Again, our friendship, which for some time had been dormant, renewing itself, and proving so extraordinarily useful .. I fear that the tone of this letter is shockingly boastful, and one which I am not worthy to adopt. You will have to set me back into a lower seat! The Lord keep me humble! How much instruction I stand in need of Cease not to pray for me."

to me!

On the nineteenth of October in this year, 1874, Hannington paid a visit to his correspondent in Surrey. The stress of his great anxiety of mind had left its evident traces upon him. He was far from well, and tired too with his journey. He did not, moreover, find it so easy to talk to an cld companion and sharer of his jests, as it had been to write to him about the secrets of his soul. This just at first: "Well, Colonel."

"Well, Jim."

"How are you, old fellow ?"

"Glad to see you, dear old man.”

Then some conversation upon general subjects, old friends, and old customs. But, by-and-by, when both had settled into their chairs, and looked each other in the face, the subject uppermost in their hearts could no longer be kept in the background. The barriers of reserve were broken down ; and before long they found themselves telling each other without constraint how the Lord had dealt with their souls.

That evening the Curate held a Cottage Lecture in a distant part of the parish. Seeing that Hannington was worn out and haggard-looking, he tried to persuade him to remain at home. He, however, insisted that he should be allowed So arm in arm the two sallied forth. His friend

to go.

Æt. 27.]

A Humbie Disciple.

49

will not easily forget that walk. As they threaded their way among the gravel pits, and crossed the mile of rough common and deep and muddy lanes, Hannington's conversation was always upon the one subject. Having once conquered his shyness, he laid bare his heart in the confidence of that hour. When they reached the cottage he would not be persuaded to take any part in the service. He had come, he said, as a learner; he would sit among the audience. So he quietly waited, while his friend went among the adjoining cottages to gather in some laggards, and then took his place, somewhere in a corner, among the group of poor folk who crowded the little room. He was still, in his own estimation, the humblest of disciples.

I find the following note about this in his diary :

"Evening.-To my great astonishment took a Cottage Lecture. I feared that I never could do a thing of that sort."

His friend now urged him strongly to try, at least when he was addressing small audiences of country people in Devonshire, to preach extempore. Hitherto he had been bound entirely and rigidly to his paper. Even in his private devotions he seldom ventured beyond his book of prayers. To his marked energy and decision of character he united depreciation of himself and distrust of his own motives to a singular degree. This made the study of his religious life peculiarly interesting. Every step made toward spiritual liberty was the result of close and unsparing self-examination. He would remorselessly probe his feelings and every ramification of them before he would permit himself indulgence in any new "liberty." Never did any apply the scalpel and dissecting knife more ruthlessly to his own "vile body" than did James Hannington.

It was not long, however, before he saw plainly that it

was his duty to tell people what he knew, as the Lord had told himself—and to tell it as simply as possible; hence he soon decided to discard the manuscript sermon, and adopt the practice of taking his thoughts only into the pulpit, in the form of notes, leaving the words that were to clothe them to the inspiration of the moment.

That visit was useful to both the friends. The one had realized the meaning of that statement of Carlyle, "It is certain my belief gains quite infinitely the moment I can convince another mind thereof." The other left, encouraged to go back to his charge among the Devonshire moors, and tell all men boldly what great things the Lord had done for him. I may, perhaps, be permitted to repeat here some words written by his companion in recollection of this period :·

"Very touching is it now to me to think of those days in the light of his subsequent life. None who saw his strong nature thus receiving the Kingdom of God as a little child can ever doubt that to him it was granted to see that Kingdom indeed. I shall not readily forget the morning on which he departed. Together we got into the little twowheeled pony cart, and together we drove over the long stretch of breeze-swept cominon which lies between Hale and the Camp Station, at which he purposed to meet his train. As mental impressions sometimes interweave themselves with scenery, and the memory of the one unconsciously revives the other, so can I never dissociate that drive from the interchange of thoughts for which it afforded the opportunity. The white road, which undulates, now past clumps of fir-trees, now between banks tipped with yellow furze, again over long stretches of common, and the bright freshness of that sunny morning, will be to me ever, as it were, the binding of the volume of the book wherein are written many precious words."

CHAPTER VIII.

WORK AT TRENTISHOE AND DARLEY ABBEY.

(1875.)

"There is small chance of truth at the goal when there is not child-like humility at the starting-post." COLERIDGE.

HANNINGTON returned to Trentishoe in a very different frame of mind from that in which he had quitted it. Like that captain of the host of the King of Syria who went back to his master with his flesh "like unto the flesh of a little child," he felt himself to have become a new man. Some little further time, however, was to elapse before he would fully realize all the conditions of his new life, or dare to proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom as one who had himself been admitted to the fellowship of the Founder.

I do not note that his sermons became all at once markedly evangelistic. It would have been very unlike him if they had. Whatever faults he may have had, preaching beyond his own experience was not one of them. Whether or no he had read old John Byrom's advice to preachers, he so far followed it, that

"he never dealt

In the false commerce of a truth unfelt."

In this lay much of the power of his preaching. He proclaimed what he knew. But this very honesty of his forbids the supposition that his sermons were, at this time, upon a higher level of spiritual life than that to which he himself

had attained. The freedom, the "unction," and the blessing were soon to follow. In the meanwhile he resolved that he would try what he could do without his hitherto inseparable pulpit companion, the sermon-case. He says:

"Sunday Morning.—I determined, at the eleventh hour, that, by the help of God the Holy Spirit, I would preach extempore, in spite of myself and my protestations to the contrary. I had not, previous to this morning, prayed to be led to do it, and so I felt it was in answer to

prayers. I succeeded a great deal better than I expected, and have only once since, for the last ten years" (this was written in 1884), "preached a written sermon. My plan has ever since been to make rather copious notes."

Soon after he commenced extempore preaching he was warned by the following painful occurrence, that to preach without a manuscript entails not less preparation but more. He was paying a visit to his father at Hurst, and was, of course, asked to occupy the pulpit of St. George's. He was very nervous, and, moreover, was not well, but, from one cause or another, that sermon never got beyond the text. The young preacher-on this occasion a "stickit minister" indeed-had just sufficient presence of mind to dismiss the astonished and sympathetic congregation with a hymn.

His friends justly attributed the above incident to the fact that he was thoroughly run down in health; and, indeed, he was, by the doctor's orders, confined to his bed for nearly a week. He would not, however, let himself off so easily. He wrote to his friend: "Alas! my spiritual father, what a sickly son you have!-a Mr. Idlebones, Ease-in-the-flesh; a Mr. Chat-and-do-nothing—a carnal professor."

Similar misadventures have been chronicled of great men, from Massillon to David Livingstone; and if this accident were indeed the result of vain confidence and want of