Baxter's parenetic writings, I must say that he seems to me never to get upon a doctrinal point without doing mischief. Except in the schoolmen (whom he greatly studied) I have never seen such subtility of distinctions." Vol. I, p. 303.

His expression of thought is often condensed and forcible. "Among many commentators whom I have to consult, I find none like Calvin-he oftenest beards the real 'difficulty, and oftenest knocks it down and drags it out."

In his letters from Europe, his estimates of noted English and Scotch preachers are valuable. Of Spurgeon he says:

"He has none of those captivating intonations which we remember in Summerfield and others; neither should I judge him to have any pathos. His voice is incomparable, and perfect for immense power, sweetness, and naturalness. His pronunciation is admirable with the never-failing ey-ther, knowledge, wōrth, &c. Though very like his likenesses he becomes almost handsome when animated. His gesture is sparing and gentlemanlike. I detect no affectation. The tremendous virtue of his elocution is in outery, sarcasm, and menace, and his voice improves as it grows louder. I seriously think his voice the great attraction. His prayers were concise and solemn; a shade too metaphoric. His short exposition was so so in matter, but well delivered. He preceded his sermon by a shot at Lord Lyndhurst's late remarks on the Obscene Print Bill, and said 'Holywell, &c., had at length found an advocate in Westminster Palace.' He requested the people in the gallery (there are three, one over another) not to lean forward. He said you could tell a Dissenter in church, by his sitting down before the hymn was over. During the sermon he described broken-down preachers spitting blood, going to the continent and traveling at other people's expense. This did not please me, for

"Who e'er felt the halter draw,

With good opinion of the law?"

"He told a very funny story of a minister with a rich wife. He was very severe on the establishment, and rather intimated that the gospel was very little preached. In this part of the discourse he preached himself. Notwithstanding all this, and his dreadful onslaught on written sermons, I think his work here matter of the greatest thankfulness. He preaches a fine gospel, in the most uncompromising manner, with directness, power, and faithfulness; and he preaches it to hundreds of thousands, to beggars and princes. I am at a loss to say what they come for. They seem to be led of God. All strangers go. Some of the nobility are always there. Church ministers abound in every assembly. I ought to have said there is nothing that savors of the rude or illiterate. Such a building, I would beg a year to have in New York, for some stentor. It is the beauideal, being the theater of Surrey Gardens, where Julien has his concerts. It will hold ten thousand seated. Every aisle and corner was filled by a dense mass of standing persons, numbering perhaps a thousand. The attention was unbroken. What struck me was the total absence of the ill-dressed classes. A

person behind me pointed out actors, Waterloo officers, noblemen, &c. Old Hundred, by about ten thousand voices, was really congregational singing. His sermon was fifty minutes, Ezek. xxxvi, 37—on the connection of prayer with blessings. 1, Fact. 2, Reason. The first head was admirable; as simple, scriptural, chaste, direct, winning, and full of Christ as one could wish. Only I wondered all the while it drew the masses so. Then he began to suffer with the terrible heat; said so; and evidently lost his strength of body and mind. The application was common-place, but his felicitous language and glorious voice will carry along anything. I am persuaded he seeks to save souls, and believe that he is as much blessed to that end as any man of our day. . . . . In many points of assurance, dogmatism, conceit, and sarcasm, he reminds one of

to whom he is greatly superior in gentlemanlike bearing, and absence of nasal twang, while he falls far below him in learning, original illustration, and, I think, inventive genius. But Spurgeon preaches the blessed gospel of the grace of God." Vol. I, p. 243.

Of Dr. Guthrie, of Edinburgh, he says:

"He preached from Isaiah xliv, 22: 'Return unto me for I have redeemed thee.' It was fifty minutes, but they passed like nothing. -An impetuous freedom of motion, a play of ductile, and speaking features, and an overflowing unction of passion and compassion, which would carry home even one of my sermons; conceive what it is with his exuberant diction and poetic imagery. The best of all is, it was honey from the comb, dropping, dropping, in effusive gospel beseeching. I cannot think Whitefield surpassed him in this. You know while you listen to his mighty voice, broken with sorrow, that he is overwhelmed with the 'love of the Spirit.' He has a colleague, and preaches only in the afternoon. As to manner, it is his own, but in general like Duff's, with as much motion, but more significant, and less grotesque, though still ungraceful. His English, moreover, is not spoiled so much. The audience was rapt and melting. It was just like his book, all application, and he rose to his hight in the first sentence.' Vol. II, p. 267.

He heard Dr. Bruce, of Free St. Andrews', Edinburgh:

"Sermon on Christ's two quellings of storms, in Matt. viii, and xiv. General doctrine, that afflictions are ordered not only to try our faith, but to try our utmost faith; in the second case Jesus let them go alone. It was a profound piece of experience, viewed philosophically; strong meat; dense; witty at times; unexpected turns like Foster; no elegance of manner, but immense impression. The prayers were almost inspired. Oh, here is the true Eutaxia, without printed worship! I have no remembrance of any preaching so analytically experimental as Dr. Bruce's, except my own dear blessed father's. At each step he seemed to assume all that an ordinary preacher would have preached, and to go on beyond that. His prayers were the same; so searching in confession, that I winced, and so paternal and pastoral in intercession, that I could not but fancy his hand feeling all around and gathering sorrows out of every heart to bring

before God. His sternness in no degree modified the graciousness of his gospel freedom, as I have too often seen to be the case with vigorous casuists in America." Vol. II, p. 267.

Those who have heard Dr. Alexander pray, at the head of his congregation, will instantly be struck with the fitness of this description as applied to his own prayers. His great heart flowed out in eloquent beseeching for the needs of his flock, and he seemed to lay the case of each individual soul before God.

His preaching was the result of much study, and cultivation of his naturally fine intellect, much mingling with human nature, and understanding of it, and much love for Christ and the souls he died to save. His own rich Christian experience attuned his sermons in the latter part of his life to a perfect harmony.

He had sometimes looked forward to the hour of death with dread, from the apprehension that in the final struggle his faith would fail. But his mind remained unclouded to the last moment; and the realization of the great truths upon which his soul had been nourished brought his life to a serene and triumphant close. Such a man is a precious gift from the Lord to his church. We must mourn his departure, while we are thankful that he lived.

ARTICLE VI.-PRIMITIVE EVANGELIZATION AND ITS LES

SONS.

THE work of Foreign Missions seems likely to stagnate in its first successes. By that periodicity which pertains too much to our religious zeal, a high missionary enthusiasm is followed by the inaction of a spent force. But for the timely occurrence of the Jubilee, it would have been impossible during the current year to have paid off the debt of the American Board, or to have awakened any adequate interest in the perilous crisis which that debt had produced. The most hopeful condition of the missions themselves and their most urgent wants, have failed to evoke from the churches a fit response of financial contribution. The re-opening of Japan to the intercourse of Christian nations; the signs of religious inquiry among the Mohammedan population of Turkey; the exploration of Africa from every side; the increased security and facility of Christian labor in India; the enlargement of the sphere of missionary operations in every land-all this, which would have fired the souls of Mills, Hall, Newell, Judson, like the opening of the last seal of prophecy, and the call of angelic voices to join the victorious word of God-kindles hardly a perceptible enthusiasm in the churches, and excites little more than common-place remark at the Monthly Concert. It is regarded as an affair of the Missionary Boards and Societies, whose province it is to see that the world is duly and methodically evangelized.

Yet, at this very time, we have seen these Boards and Societies embarrassed in their finances and disturbed by questions of organization and policy;-this Jubilee of the American Board overhung by a thick cloud of debt, which at one time seemed almost impenetrable; ecclesiastical organization insisted upon as the only Scriptural agency for missions-and this by some who once renounced that very principle for the sake of voluntary association; a vague, unreasoning distrust of

incorporated and routine methods of Christian benevolence; perhaps even a growing skepticism as to the obligation and urgency of missionary effort-a skepticism nourished by Millenarian views of prophecy, and by theories of the salvability of the heathen without the Gospel; of a probation for such after death, or of the annihilation of the wicked at the close of the present dispensation.

In many minds, also, a too sanguine expectation from certain modes, agencies, or occasions of missionary effort, has been followed by suspicion and despondency as to the success of any mode or agency of propagating the Gospel. The revulsion of John Foster in this respect was by no means peculiar. "No one," he says, "who did not witness it, can have any adequate conception of the commotion there was in susceptible and inflammable spirits when the missionary enterprise was commenced. The proclamation went forth, 'overturn, overturn, overturn,' and there seemed to be a responsive earthquake in the nations. The vain, short-sighted seers of us had all our enthusiasm ready to receive the magnificent change, the downfall of all old and corrupt institutions; the explosion of prejudices; the demolition of the strongholds of ignorance, superstition, and spiritual, with all other despotism; man, on the point of being set free for a noble career of knowledge, liberty, philanthropy, virtue, and all that, and all that. . . . These elated presumptions so possessed themselves of the mind as to prepare it to feel a bitterness of disappointment as time went on through so many lustrums, and accomplished so niggardly a portion of all the dreams." Then, in that vein of despondency which was the morbid habit of his later years, he adds, "a little cool arithmetic will suffice to dispel the dream of the conversion of the world in our generation, and to show us that at the rate of the progress hitherto of genuine Christianity on the globe, thousands of years may pass away before that millenium can arrive." Such despondency, as the reaction of the mind from early missionary enthusiasm, may be a secret cause of much of the delinquency or rather the insufficiency of the churches in the missionary work. There is too much "cool arithmetic "-too much of the calculating spirit