Page images
PDF
EPUB

years ago, it had been happy. Thou pretendest to be a preacher of the gospel of peace, and thou hast one foot in the grave. 'Tis time for thee to begin to think what account thou intendest to give; but leave thee to thyself, and I see thou wilt go on as thou hast begun ; but, by the grace of God, I will look after thee. I know thou hast a mighty party, and I see a great many of the brotherhood in corners waiting to see what will become of their mighty don, and a doctor of the party clerking too (Dr Bates) at your elbow; but, by the grace of Almighty God, I

Trials,' except what has been copied from Calamy's as full of sedition as an egg is full of meat. Hadst avridgement of Baxter's Life. His biographers, how-thou been whipped out of thy writing trade forty ever, have collected and recorded the principal facts of the case. In the Biographia Britannica, vol. ii. p. 15, and in Middleton's Biographia Evangelica, vol. ir. pp. 26, 27, pretty copious notes are given of this memorable trial, toward the close of our author's life. To these, and especially Mr Orme's Life of Baxter, | we must refer the reader for more ample details. All in all, the accounts are of a sickening and disgusting character, and a burlesque upon the administration of public justice. All we can attempt in this sketch is a brief specimen or two, of the coarse invective and foul ribbaldry of Baxter's judge, the Lord Chief Jus-will crush you all.' When Jefferies had summed up tice of England, during the trial, which will sufficiently justify the character we have given of the man in the preceding paragraph. On Baxter's counsel moving in court that his trial might be put back for a short time, owing to his severe indisposition, the Lord Chief Justice in wrath replied, "I will not give him a minute's more time to save his life. We have had to do with other sorts of persons, but now we have a saint to deal with, and I know how to deal with saints as well as sinners. Yonder (says he) stands Oates in the pillory, in New Palace garden, and he says he suffers for the truth, and so does Baxter; but if Baxter did but stand on the other side of the pillary with him, I would say that two of the | greatest rogues and rascals in the kingdom stood there.'

the alleged evidence in a violent tirade of profanity and low abuse, that would have disgraced a Turkish tribunal, Baxter said, 'Does your lordship think that any jury will pretend to pass a verdict upon me upon such a trial? Jefferies replied, I'll warrant you, Mr Baxter; don't trouble yourself about that.' The jury accordingly brought him in guilty! On the 29th June he had judgment given against him. He was fined five hundred merks, condemned to lie in prison till it was paid, and bound to his good behaviour for seven years. Jefferies had proposed that he should be whipped through the city; but his brethren would not agree to it. In his fine and imprisonment they acquiesced. In 1686, the king, at the mediation of Lord Powes, granted him a pardon; and on the 24th of November, he was discharged | out of the King's Bench. Securities, however, were required for his good behaviour; but it was entered on his bail-piece, by direction of the king, that his remaining in London, contrary to the Oxford Act, should not be taken as a breach of the peace."*

6

On the 30th May, 1685, he was brought up to his trial before the Lord Chief Justice Jefferies, at Guildhall. Sir Henry Ashurst, who would not forsake his own and his father's friend,' stood by him all the while. Mr Baxter came first into the court, with all the marks of serenity and composure, waited This farce of a trial was calculated to fix the stain for the coming of the Lord Chief Justice, who ap- of indelible infamy upon the bench of British juspeared quickly after, with great indignation in his tice, and to bring all the principles of civil law into face. He no sooner sat down, than a short cause | universal contempt. What man's property, liberty, was called and tried; after which the clerk began to or life, could be safe in the hands of such a judge, or read the title of another cause. You blockhead proof against the verdict of a packed jury, brow-beat (says Jefferies) the next cause is between the king into an iniquitous decision by an unjust judge, who and Richard Baxter;' upon which Mr Baxter's cause neither feared God nor regarded man? At the was called. The passages mentioned in the infor- close of the second edition of the Paraphrase, upon mation was his Paraphrase on Matt. v. 19; Mark ix. which this prosecution was founded, Baxter inserts 39; xii. 38-40; Luke x. 2; John xi. 57; Acts the following note: Reader, it is like you have xv. 12. These passages were picked out by Sir heard how I was, for this book, by the instigation Roger L'Estrange, and some of his fraternity; and of Sir Roger L'Estrange and some of the clergy, a certain noted clergyman, who shall be nameless, imprisoned nearly two years by Sir George Jefput into the hands of his enemies some accusations feries, Sir Francis Wilkins, and the rest of the judges out of Rom. xiii. &c., as against the king, to touch of the King's Bench, after their preparatory restraints his life; but no use was made of them. The great and attendance, under the most reproachful words, charge was, that in these several passages he reflected as if I had been the most odious person living, and on the prelates of the Church of England, and so not suffered at all to speak for myself. Had not the was guilty of sedition, &c. The king's counsel king taken off my fine, I had continued in prison till opened the information at large, with its aggrava- death. Because many desire to know what all this tions. Mr Wallop, Mr Williams, Mr Rotheram, | was for, I have written the eight accusations, which, Mr Attwood, and Mr Phipps, were Mr Baxter's (after the clergy search of my book) were brought in as seditious. I have altered never a word acLet another brief specimen of this infamous pro- cused, that ye may know the worst. What I said cess suffice. 'Mr Baxter beginning to speak again, of the murderers of Christ, and of the hypocrite Jefferies exclaimed, Richard, Richard! dost thou Pharisees and their sins, the judge said I meant of think we will hear thee poison this court, &c. Rich- | the Church of England, though I have written for it, ard, thou art an old fellow, an old knave. Thou * See Middleton's Lives, vol. iv. pp. 26-30.; and Biograbast written books enough to load a cart, every one phia Britannica.

counsel.

[ocr errors]

and still communicate with it.' Having given the | sels tendered to him by the aged veteran to that passages of scripture, &c., he adds: These were all, young soldier of Jesus Christ, who was then preparby one that knoweth his own name, put into their ing for the field to carry on the conflict. Henry hands, with some accusations out of Rom. xiii. (sup- says: I found him in pretty comfortable circumposed by Dr Sherlock) as against my life; but their stances, though a prisoner in a private house near discretion forbade them to use them, or name them.' the prison, attended by his own man and maid. It was well that Baxter was enabled to maintain a... He is in as good health as one can expect, and portion of 'the meekness and gentleness of Christ,' methinks looks better, and speaks heartier, than when under this vexatious and iniquitous trial; but subse- I saw him last. The token you sent he would by quent generations have had no difficulty to see, that no means be persuaded to accept, and was almost his persecutors, accusers, and judges, were men ac- angry when I pressed it from one ousted as well as tuated by a similar spirit, and influenced by kindred | himself. He said he did not use to receive; and I principles, with those men who accused Paul as a understand since his need is not great. He gave us pestilent fellow, a mover of sedition among all the some good counsel to prepare for trials, and said, Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the the best preparation for them was, a life of faith, sect of the Nazarenes; who also has gone about to and a constant course of self-denial.'. This is a noble profane the temple, whom we took, and would have and lovely spectacle. It is like a well of living wajudged according to our law.' It is long since the ter' in an African wilderness, or an oasis in the midst British public have formed their opinion, and passed of a Lybian desert. Mr Williams, Henry's biotheir verdict, upon his principal judge and his mas- grapher, says of it, 'It is one of those lovely picter, as influenced by prejudices and passions, not far tures of days which are past, which, if rightly viewed, dissimilar to those who 'gnashed upon Stephen with may produce lasting and beneficial effects, emotions their teeth,' and who doomed the Prince of peace to of sacred sorrow for the iniquity of persecution, and the accursed tree, as an enemy to Cæsar, and a animating praise that the demon in these happy days mover of sedition throughout all Jewry. If they of tranquillity is restrained, though not destroyed.' have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more they of the household?'

*

* Hard as often was Baxter's lot, and roughly as he was sometimes handled for conscience sake,' of which the preceding sketches furnish only a few specimens; and though, from his commanding talents, and wide range of influence, he was often black-balled as a wicked man, yet he was by no means the greatest sufferer among the ejected ministers, and poor persecuted nonconformists. He was sometimes under softer skies than some of his brethren. He was certainly a man of moderation. Some of his brethren thought nions on both sides. He sometimes enjoyed the sunny side him so to a fault. He contended with men of extreme opiof the hill, when some others more bitterly felt the blast. This arose from the character of his mind, but not from a We may present to the reader a bird's-eye view, by a modesertion of his principles, nor a dastardly dread of the cross, dern writer, of the nameless sufferings and sanguinary persecutions to which the nonconformists were subjected, in both quarters of the United Kingdom, under the second Charles.

The last two years of Baxter's imprisonment yielded him more tranquillity and composure to pursue his studies, and complete some of his works, than he had enjoyed since the Restoration; and although his physical strength was greatly exhausted, his frame much attenuated, his infirmities daily multiplying, and the shadows of the evening were stretching out upon him; and although he had not now Mrs Baxter to nurse and cheer him, and convert the solitude of a cell, and the gloom of a prison, into a palace or a paradise, yet he enjoyed solid confidence in God; he found 'consolation in Christ, comfort of love, fellowship of the Spirit, bowels of mercies,' joy in the Holy Ghost, and the hallowed hope of eternal life. While tribulation for Christ abounded, consolation by Christ much more abounded.' A large portion of the pious in London and its vicinity, some in, and many of different denominations out of, the Establishment, sin-Tales of a Grandfather, and Old Mortality. Neale, says the cerely sympathised with him, visited him in prison, and did not fail to minister to him in his bonds.' Among these was the celebrated Matthew Henry, the well known commentator, when quite a young man. He communicated, in a letter to his father, dated 17th November, 1685, an outline of his interview with this aged disciple,' and 'now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ.' As young Henry had come up from the country, it might have been supposed that a thousand objects would have seized his fancy, and engaged his inquiries before Richard Baxter, an aged emaciated man, shut up in prison, under the odium of heresy against the polity of the church, and sedi-Many transported themselves and their effects to Holland, tion against the state. But like another Onesiphorus, when he came to London 'he sought out' Baxter very diligently, and found him.' We have no doubt but he refreshed him, and was not ashamed of his chain;' and it is obvious from Henry's letter to his father Philip, that he found himself well repaid in the solemn, seasonable, and affectionate coun

Charles II., on his restoration, renewed all the persecutions of his bloody race. He pursued the Scottish Covenanters to the mountains and morasses with fire and sword, enacting all the horrors of racks, thumb-screws, and the iron boot, as may be seen vividly detailed in Sir Walter Scott's writer of the preface to Mr De Laune's Plea for Nonconformists, states: "That De Laune was one of near eight thousand who had perished in prison in the reign of Charles II.; and that merely for dissenting from the church in some points, for which they are able to bring good reason." As for the severe penalties inflicted on them for seditious and riotous assemblies, designed only for the worship of God, he adds: "That they suffered in their trades and estates, within the compass of five years, at least two millions of money!" Another writer adds, that Mr Jeremy White had carefully collected a list of the dissenting sufferers, and of their sufferings, and had the names of sixty thousand persons who had suffered on a religious account, between the restoration of Charles II. and the revolution of king William, five thouthose who suffered in their own country, great numbers resand of whom died in prison. It is certain, that besides tired to the plantations and different parts of America.

&c. If we admit the dissenting families of the several deand filled the English churches of Amsterdam and the Hague, nominations in England to be one hundred and fifty thou sand, and that each family suffered no more than the loss of the whole will amount to twelve or fourteen millions, a prothree or four pounds per annum, from the Act of Uniformity, digious sum for those times. But these are only conjectures. The damage done to the trade and the property of the nation was undoubtedly immense; and the wounds that were made in the estates of private families were deep and

d

When Baxter obtained his full enlargement from the rules of the King's Bench, where young Henry had visited him, which he did in February, 1687, he removed to his house in the Charterhouse Yard. For about four years and a half he continued to assist Mr Silvester, until bodily debility rendered it requisite for him to confine himself to his room. He preached gratuitously for him while his ability admitted, on the mornings of the Lord's day, and every alternate Thursday morning. Preaching was Baxter's proper element. He loved his Master, his work, and the souls of men, and 'he was willing to spend, and be spent, though the more abundantly he loved, the less he was loved.' Like a star of the first magnitude, in the right hand of Him who walks in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, his life, his light, and his lustre, remained undiminished almost to the latest stages of his mortal career. In old age, when others fade, he was fat and full of sap, and always flourishing, to show (to succeeding generations) that the Lord is a rock, and there is no unrighteousness with him.' And when unable to travel to the place of worship, and officiate in public, he, as on former occasions, when interdicted by "the powers that be,' opened 'his own hired house, and received all that came in to him, preaching the kingdom of God, and the things which concern the Lord Jesus, with all confidence, no man forbidding him.'

[ocr errors]

ing star of a bloodless revolution dawn through a dark horizon, and promise a brighter and better day to the interests of civil freedom and religious liberty, under the mild lustre of which he might for a short time walk, and, like a shock of corn fully ripe,' be gathered to glory, and descend to the grave in a good old age in peace. It was so. There can be no doubt but Baxter's soul rejoiced in this happy change, though his bodily weakness precluded him from making any conspicuous appearance in those singular, merciful, and memorable events. He had no doubt been taught since the Restoration, in tones solemn as thunder, and in characters glaring as the lurid lightning, not to trust in princes nor men's sons, in whom there is no stay,' &c. After the snows of threescore years and ten had blanched his locks, he should have learned many mortifying lessons to little purpose, if he had not learned to 'cease from man, whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he to be accounted of?" Yet it was a solace to the soul of this venerable servant of Christ, after weathering the storms of a long, dark, dreary night, to see a prince ascend the British throne, who, though he had breathed republican air, had sucked the breasts of freedom, was a thorough paced Protestant, enlightened advocate of civil liberty, and the fast friend of religious freedom to all the loyal subjects of the civil state. When Jacob saw the waggons' which his son had sent, his spirit revived;' 'he said, It is enough, Joseph is yet alive; I will go down, and see him before I die.'

We come at last to witness this venerable man in his sick chamber, and upon his death-bed. We see him close his career like the summer setting sun; the glare of his beams are softened; but his disc large, calm, and clear, he descends, in silent majesty, under the horizon. To such a man as Richard Baxter, who, for more than half a century, had walked with God, lived a life of faith upon the Lord Jesus, whose

In the latter part of James II.'s reign, Baxter took little or no part in public affairs. It was an evil time; it was wise to say little. They could make a man an offender for a word, and lay a snare for him who reproved in the gate, and turn aside the just for a thing of nought.' Matters were rapidly ripening, and rushing on to a crisis. The Stuart dynasty was upon the eve of being broken up, which, for three successive reigns, had thrown the nation into fits of fever and ague, by their king-craft, the golden image of uniformity, which they had set up for universal'affections' were so uniformly and incessantly set on worship, and their monkish and inquisitorial maxims of church polity. They had set every man's hand against his brother, and made the flower of the nation writhe upon the rack, and bleed at every pore. But as the deepest darkness sometimes precedes the approaching dawn, so it was in this case. Baxter nad long and fruitlessly laboured to reconcile jarring parties, and amalgamate materials which had no common principle of affinity, no doubt with the best intentions; but he lived long enough to see, that 'that which is crooked cannot be made straight; and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.' It is likely at last he tried what prayer to God could do, when persuasion with men had failed. At eventime it was light. He lived to see the last of the Stuarts desert the British throne, and to witness the morn

large, many of whom, to my knowledge, wear the scars of them to this day.

The nature of the Christian religion is essentially free, and the voice of Christ proclaims to men, "the truth shall make you free." The spirit of Christianity shrinks from the touch of the iron and blood-stained hand of political rule. It is so boundless in its aspirations, and expansive in its energies, that it must stand on the broad champaign of civil and intellectual liberty, ere it can stretch its wings effectively for that flight which is destined to encompass the earth, and end only in eternity.'-Neale and Hewitt,

things that are above;' who was almost a daily, but patient, martyr to the stone; whose shattered frame kept him constantly hovering upon the confines of the eternal world; whose unearthly life, and unparalleled labours, demonstrated, in ten thousand different ways, 'whose he was, and whom he served,'—the gleanings of the sick chamber, and the records of the death-bed, can add little to the ample blaze of such accumulated evidence. He feared the Lord from his youth,' if he was not, as his father supposed, sanctified from the womb.' Baxter was emphatically a living epistle of Christ, known and read of all men. His works praise him in the gates.' His gigantic labours attest him to have been a man of astonishing calibre of mind. His Devotional and Practical Works attest the worth of his character, and have immortalised his name. They form a monument to his memory more durable than the pyramids of Egypt. His Christian friends, Silvester, Calamy, Dr Bates, Mather of New England, &c. &c., who witnessed the closing scene of the venerable saint, have culled and collected a few flowers of his 'last sayings,' to strew around his tomb; but it is unnecessary, in this brief sketch, to give them in de

tail.

[ocr errors]

His last days and dying hours were in har

6

mony and proper keeping with his life. His end was calm and comfortable, without raptures. When asked, on the eve of dissolution, how he did, he distinctly replied, Almost well.' He expired on Tuesday morning, 8th December, 1691, aged seventy-six years. 'Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the latter end of that man is peace. They enter into peace, they rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness.'

Few pious men ever more steadily and conscientiously gave all diligence to make their calling and election sure, than did Richard Baxter. At a very early period of his mortal career, he thus judged, that if one died for all, then were all dead; and that he died for all, that they who live should not hence forth live unto themselves, but to him who died for them, and rose again.' Nothing could surpass his undivided and unwavering consecration of heart, of head, of hand, of time, and talents of a high order; of powers, and person, and property, to the glory of God, the benefit of the church of Christ, and the best interests of his species, than were put and kept in constant requisition by this singularly devoted Like Howard and Clarkson, he had one great object to occupy a life time, and it completely absorbed him. His great practical maxim seems to have been, Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; or whether we die, we die unto the Lord; living or dying, we are the Lord's.' Write, Blessed are the dead who died in the Lord; yea, saith the Spirit, for they do rest from their labours, and their works follow them.' 'Here are the patience and faith of the saints; here are they who keep the commandments of God, and the faith of the Lord Jesus.'

man.

[ocr errors]

XXV

piety, the warmth of his heart, the strength of his sensibilities, the wide range of his mental and moral resources, the fire and force of his genius, and the weight and worth of his moral character. The reader who enters into the spirit of his devotional and practical works, which succeed this sketch, will naturally inquire what were the cardinal elements that entered into the composition of that master mind, that fitted him for grappling with all the wiles of satan, and the subtleties of error; that fitted him for laying bare the moral anatomy of the heart; that qualified him to make the thunders of Sinai burst upon the uncircumcised ear, and the terrors of Tophet to alarm the slumbering conscience; and that equally fitted him for pouring the balm of mercy into the broken heart, and the oil of gladness into the lacerated spirit? The secret lay in his preeminent personal piety. Although we have already exceeded our intended limits, yet there are still a few points in the character of Baxter upon which we beg leave briefly to touch.

Many

The face, the figure, and the form of a writer who has interested and profited us, are minor points, which more or less awaken the curiosity of the most of readers; 'the soul,' however, is the measure of the man.' Both Baxter and his biographers have reserved a few fragments to gratify this feeling among those who feel interested in his mental productions. The great Architect of the human frame and 'face divine,' sometimes lodges a soul of superior power and opulence in a casement of the firmest texture, and the most elegant and masterly mould. instances will occur to the reader. Baxter's constitution was originally sound. Though early, deeply, As might be expected, ' many devout men carried' and long afflicted, he was a personable man. He the remains of Baxter 'to his burial, and made great was tall of stature, spare of flesh, had a considerable iamentation over him.' He was buried in Christ | share of bone and muscle; had rather an agreeable Church, where the ashes of his wife and mother-in-intelligent countenance, and a clear, piercing, meltlaw had been mouldering. His funeral was nume-ing eye. rously attended by persons of different ranks, especially of ministers, conformists as well as nonconformists. All were eager to testify their respect to the memory of a man who had as strong a head, and as sound a heart, as any man of the age in which he lived; and of whom it might have been said, with as much truth as was said by a Scotch Earl of the intrepid Knox, Here lies one who never feared the face of man.'

In order to maintain continuity in the preceding imperfect outline of Baxter's eventful life, and to present the narrative and the facts with some degree of coherence to the mind of the reader, we have followed the fortunes of our author over an extended tract, from his birth to his burial, through a lapse of 'threescore years and ten,' of one of the most important epochs of British history. Still our sketch, though it has already exceeded the limits we originally prescribed for ourselves, is very imperfect. We have been necessitated to pass over many important and memorable transactions in his life. His character inust be taken in all its length, and breadth, and depth, and lofty moral bearing, to fit us for forming an accurate estimate of the vigour of his mind, the acuteness of his reasoning powers, the depth of his

He

Toward the latter part of his life, he stooped forward. In early life he was the subject of numerous and complicated bodily complaints. was successively in the hands of no fewer than thirtysix gentlemen of the healing art. He was long the victim of medical treatment and experiment. Doctors differed on the character of his case; and after he had taken drugs without number, and all prescriptions failed, he discontinued all these attempts, except in taking advice for some particular symptom. He was literally diseased from head to foot; his stomach flatulent and acidulous; violent rheumatic headachs; profuse bleedings at the nose; his blood so thin and acrid, that it oozed out from the points of his fingers, and kept them often raw and bloody; his legs swelled and dropsical, &c. His physicians called it hypochondria, he himself considered ft primatura senectus-premature old age; so that at twenty he had the symptoms, in addition to disease, of fourscore.

Seldom has there been an instance in which the quenchless energy and ardour of the soul has more illustriously triumphed over the countless and complicated infirmities of the body, and constrained its enfeebled organs to yield an amount of service to her superior dictates, that astonishes and confounds succeeding generations. It is doubtless 'the Lord's doings,' and it may well be wondrous in

our eyes.' Baxter had a soul of fire, and it would have required a frame of flint to sustain its pressure, and execute its multifarious and stupendous functions. He had some reason, like Paul, to glory even in his infirmities, that the power of Christ might rest upon him.'

without dishonour to himself, and disgrace to his country, skulk into the shade. It may be styled the Augustan age of Great Britain. Some of the noblest characters for piety, integrity, talent, and moral courage, that grace the annals of our country, were Baxter's contemporaries. Though he was chiefly a companion of those who feared the Lord, and 'his delight' was principally with the saints and the excellent of the earth,' yet he was often in the society of men of the, first order of intellect, talent, and rank in society. Had the bar, the senate, or the court, been the object of his taste, his talents were of such an order as might have raised him to distinction in either. Had mere science, literature, and scholarship, been the objects of his ambition, even at the eleventh hour,' under all his early disadvantages, his talents might have clothed him with the honours of either of the universities, and planted him in some of the principal chairs. Seest thou a man diligent in his business, he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men. Had Baxter lived at an early age, he would have ranked among 'the fathers.' While the Nonconformists called 'no man father' or master upon earth,' yet Baxter's mind and talents were of such an order, as to call forth the affectionate respect of such men as Drs Owen, Bates, Howe, Manton, Goodwin, and others among the Nonconformists, and some of the most distinguished men for piety and talent in the Church of England. His intimacy with, and moral influence among, some of the most pious and talented laymen, such as Sir Matthew Hale and Sir Robert Boyle, both within and without the church; and his correspondence with several of the pious and literati of Europe, all go to show, that Baxter was no ordinary man, both as to piety, talent, and moral influence.

[ocr errors]

As to the character of his mind, it was eminently acute, discriminating, and capacious. In the early part of his career he had dipped pretty deeply into the dialectics of the old school. He loved at times to indulge his metaphysical predilections. If these studies tended to sharpen and polish his powers, and improve his love of order and arrangement in his controversial and theological discussions, they were the chief advantages which he derived from them. In most other respects they are more a blemish than a beauty in his writings, and are felt a burden, rather than a benefit, to nine-tenths of his readers. It is certain that the most arid pages of his voluminous writings are those in which he indulges in his metaphysical disquisitions; and the most rich and racy are those far more numerous pages in which he seems to forget his metaphysical and logical distinctions, and opens all the fountains of pious feeling, and the rich stores of theological lore with which his mind was replenished, and carries his reader captive at pleasure. It is then that his mind is in its proper element. It moves with the majesty of a vessel richly laden, under a spring tide, a fair gale, all her canvass spread, and the port in full view. His sentiments then came warm from the heart, and readily find their way to it. The elements of his intellect were simplicity, transparency, and downright honesty. Richard Baxter was a straight-forward honest man, in the spirit of his mind.' His mind loved order, and generally aimed at it. The plan, the division, the parts and proportions of several of his treatises But Baxter's genius early obtained a sacred and and sermons, are by no means sufficiently simple, sublimated character. It was wisely and well diclear, and accurate. This usually arose from the rected to the glory of its great Author who conmultiplicity and pressure of his labours. He seldom ferred it; to the honour of the Saviour who had had leisure deliberately to form a plan, calmly to cor- lived, and laboured, and died for the redemption of rect its defects, and deliberately to fill it up. Bax- a lost world; it was consecrated to the elucidation ter possessed an active, vigorous, and fertile mind. and publication of the unsearchable riches of Christ ;' He seems to have had an inexhaustible spring of to the conversion and sanctification of perishing souls; ideas. His mind went from the centre to the whole and to the establishment and enlargement of the spicircumferences of revealed religion. No section of ritual kingdom of God in the world. His genius the vast field was left unexplored. He was a student did not run in a new, but it ran in a noble channel. con amore. Theology, in all its departments, was It is a cause so sacred, a subject so sublime, and a his native element. His accumulations were vast work so arduous and stupendous, as to be worthy of and varied. He was more 'a ready scribe' in the the best energies of an archangel. His choice was principles and laws of the kingdom of Christ and of 'to prophesy over the dry bones.' He carried the God, than a profound and elegant scholar. He had vestal fire of his genius into the pulpit. He studied, as much exquisite pleasure in the communication, as he prayed, and he preached, like an angel who had he had delight in the acquisition, of divine know-lighted from a distant orb. His searching sermons, ledge. He was like a giant refreshed with wine,' while wielding the weapons of inspired truth, and his soul exulted in its anticipated success, as a strong man who runs a race.' The weapons of the Christian warfare he could and did use with great dexterity and effect.

his solemn tones, and pointed appeals to the heart, were sanctioned by heaven, and kindled conviction and concern into the most callous consciences. His inventive mind plied every scriptural measure to make evangelical truth to bear with effect upon the people of his charge. He in good earnest 'did the The extent and variety of Baxter's talents were work of an evangelist. He taught' the mass of the of a very high order. He lived in an age of great people 'publicly, and from house to house,'' preachThe character of the times in which they ing repentance toward God, and faith toward our lived, put them all in requisition. No man of toler- Lord Jesus Christ.' Kidderminster, which had long able talent, of decided piety and patriotism, could, | been a moral desert, by the divine blessing soon be→

men.

« PreviousContinue »