favourable reasons he could find to justify himself in the proposed course, and also certain objections to be taken against it. Amongst others we find the following, which, considering at the time that he was a solicitor in full practice, and well knew what the law exacted both of him and his clients, is curious and worth knowing:

"I certainly think I ought not to change but for strong reasons. There is no honest situation in which a man may not glorify God and do good, and it seems a mere temptation to think I could do more in another, and thus to neglect my own. If I did neglect my own, I should think so; but these thoughts only make me more diligent in striving to benefit the souls of my companions and to do good in my present sphere; seeing that, if I improve the talents God now gives, he may be pleased to give me more. As to my present business, there are certainly very strong objections to it, as I have found. I can hardly conceive any in which there are stronger temptations. It is a system of hostility. Christianity says:-Give all you can'-the law in every one of its branches, says 'Get all you can.' act up to Christian principles, I think my principles are likely to keep me poor: I shall offend worldly men, for I will never gratify their worldly passions; and it is chiefly by worldly men that attornies are supported. There is another great evil which I have found the multitude of affidavits that are necessary and the short time there is for preparing them. I sometimes shudder to think how often I have been carelessly called upon to say, 'So help me God!' to an affidavit-obliged to be drawn in haste and sworn immediately."

In a letter to his sister, Charlotte, he says:

If I

"You know how customary it is to make emulation the grand moving and exciting principle in schools; for, to corrupt nature, it is of all others the most effectual and animating, yet of all others the most dangerous, as laying such a foundation for pride as it is difficult ever afterwards to eradicate, and perhaps there is no sin so common to us all, and yet so ruinous, as pride. It is the sin which, of all others, most assimilates us to the father of lies, and I think is one of the last that the Christian overcomes.

"I had the pleasure of hearing two interesting sermons from Mr. Fancourt on two successive Fridays, on the text, Christ is all, and in all. He divided the subject in this way-Christ is all to the believer, and in all believers. I was much struck with one part, when he said something to this effect- Blot the sun out of the material world, and all is thick gloom, chilling damps, and black darkness. Blot the sun also out of the Christian world, and all is equally gloomy, cold, and dark; fear and despair occupy the places of love and joy-there is no hope, no comfort, Blot the sun also out of the heavenly world, and the golden harps would lose their sweetest notes, and be laid aside; heaven would cease to be heaven, if Christ were not there.' I think his observations were equally good and affecting.—Believe me, dearest sister, heartily and affectionately yours, E. BICKERSTETH."

In a letter to his parents we find the following beautiful passage:

"What rich, what unspeakable benefits a hearty reception of Christianity gives us! At first, it appears harsh, and says, Take up the cross daily, forsake all, and follow me.' Cut off the right-hand, enter the straight gate; but how abundant the recompense! If there is a cross, there is a crown-if we leave all, we obtain all; if we cut off the right-hand, we enter the kingdom of heaven; if we pass the straight gate, we obtain eternal life; and we have only to ask, in sincerity and faith, for strength to overcome all difficulties, and the battle is as it were won, the race is run, and the prize obtained."

From a lawyer, who was hard at work daily from nine. o'clock till five, it is not, we believe, customary to address such a letter as the following to a sister; and we here produce it as a specimen of familiar correspondence:-

"My dearest Charlotte-You know, in our sad employment, we fatten on the miseries and distresses of others; the consequence of the recent distresses in trade has been a vast increase of business, and I am kept very closely at work, and yet am not able to keep it under. Living in the quiet of the country, you can have no idea of the harrassing bustle of London. Were it not that God has promised, As our day is, so shall our strength be;' and that his grace never forsakes us in the path of duty, I should expect that all concern about salvation or eternity would be banished; but though I hope it is not so, yet I cannot but think I suffer much from this pressure of business. O sister, what a longing look I sometimes cast out after that heavenly world where we shall enjoy the presence of our God, free from the curse of labour, and above all, the curse of sin-the dead in the Lord rest from their labours; blessed are they. I expect not ease or happiness in this world. I look not for it now. I expect every day to bring its cross and its labour, which I must take up patiently and cheerfully, and, after all, I find troubles by far the most profitable of all the events that befal me. Praise puffs me up and ruins me; success gives me self-conceit; ease and joy call forth levity and folly; but trouble solemnizes and composes my mind, leads soul out in prayer to God, makes me dependent on him, humbles me, and increases my faith. Were it not for trouble, I should not have known half of what I now know of the mercy, faithfulness, and overruling providence of God. I am sure to be delivered from any difficulty, if I find myself in the spirit of prayer, in the midst of it, and have sometimes gone on my work, quite confident that all would go on well, and so I have found it......When we plead guilty, Satan can say no more against us : that is the sum of his accusations-he cannot answer the argument, Christ died for the guilty, therefore he died for me; and the best way of resisting temptation is to say in faith-My Saviour bled for me; how then can I do this for which he died."

my

There was a question in those times which was much more

discussed then than now, whether, if a man could not, according to his opinion, hear the Gospel preached in the Church, he ought to go to Dissenters for it. Mr. Bickersteth accounted the question to be one of difficulty, and chiefly from two considerations :

"1st. Whether you are not encouraging Separatists. 2nd. Whether you are not rendering evangelical religion suspicious, as if it were impossible to be evangelical, and yet a church-goer; but I confess the importance of obtaining the bread of life, and the water of life, appears to me to outweigh every other consideration; and if the Church here were quite without the Gospel I should feel little scruple in going once a day to chapel. The great thing is, how can our souls be best quickened, warned, strengthened, directed, and assisted in their pilgrimage; and I think it is very clear we require continually to be roused and stirred up by hearing the Gospel freely and fully proclaimed from the pulpit, as well as all other means of grace.'

"His own trials at Norwich, and the state of the Church in Liverpool, led him to dwell much at this time on the importance of faithful preaching. I want (he wrote) when I go to the house of God, to be warned, excited, exhorted, reproved, instructed, and directed. want to have the kernel of religion, and not the mere outside shell. I can live upon the one, but not upon the other. Yet, after all, much depends on previous preparation, and the state of mind in which we go. If we have been half-an-hour in private before church-time, we shall not go in vain: we shall find God in the midst of his holy temple, and we shall return, saying, "It was good for us to have been there." My judgment is decidedly in favour of the Establishment in all the main points, especially in its Liturgy, which is invaluable; yet I dare not condemn the Dissenters. Sorry, indeed, should I be to think worse of another man's religious state because he was a Dissenter-(I do not speak of Socinians and Papists). The Bible Society has been an invaluable instrument if it had only removed the prejudices which subsist between good men of various denominations.' "When he heard that his family were likely to enjoy a faithful ministry at Liverpool, he wrote: We have just received dear Charlotte's letter. I had heard of your bright prospects before. A faithful ministry is an immense help in keeping alive that flame of devotion which the Holy Spirit has kindled in the heart of the believer it is not the oil, but it is the continual trimming, without which the lamp burns dim, and the light hardly shines before others. Yet the great thing is fervent private prayer: thence we draw fresh supplies of that blessed Spirit which keeps all alive; and, however we may feel, and mourn for, a wandering and cold heart in our devotions, distracted and feeble as our prayers may be, they reach the ear of our heavenly Father, through an all-prevailing Mediator, and obtain for us all we need: we should soon find the difference, if our great enemy could prevail on us to leave them off'"

It is tolerably well known that Mr. Bickersteth's whole strength for many years had been directed to the work of missions; and, perhaps, no single person had done more to awaken an interest in labours for the heathen through the length and breadth of the land; and that, from his youth even, he looked forward, as most serious Christians did, to the gradual conversion of the world by the spread of missions and a larger blessing on the ordinary means of grace. About the year 1833, he had greatly changed his opinions on this subject, and no longer considered that missionary agencies would, or could, secure the gradual conversion of the world. His inquiries into the unfulfilled prophecies had given to him new views on this as on other subjects, and he became a Millenarian-that is, he believed that the second coming of Christ will precede the Millennium--that the first resurrection is literal, and that Christ shall establish a glorious kingdom of righteousness on earth at his return before the resurrection of the wicked and their final judgment. He believed also that the whole tenor of Scripture was opposed to the idea, which had latterly prevailed in the Church, of a fixed interval of a thousand years before the promised return of Christ. The tone of all his writings on the subject (says his editor) was practical, loving, and holy; and there was no one whose character and example had so wide an influence in rescuing the study of prophecy, alike from the censure of its opponents and the perversions of mistaken friends, as a nursery of censoriousness and dogmatism, and of crude unprofitable speculation. Prophetic truth (he himself says), deeply but humbly studied, does not weaken our hold of any saving doctrine of revelation, but rather enlarges the mind to fuller views of divine righteousness and goodness; but, after the mistakes of so many in ages past, the differences of the most diligent modern students, and the positive declaration of our Lord (Matthew xxiv. 36-44), he dreads attempting to fix the exact time of the coming of our Lord at the Millennium.

His conviction continued to increase with his years that Christ's coming was at hand, and this formed the subject of many of his sermons in the latter days of his life. In 1834 he says "I have found the doctrine of the personal coming of Christ before the Millennium quickening and profitable to my soul; and, believing it to be divine truth, I pray that I may see it with greater clearness and power, hold it more firmly, confess it more boldly, and live in its joyful hope as well as in its awakening and stirring influence."

Subsequently he adds-"My mind has been led very much to a contemplation of the coming of the Lord, with hearty desires that I may have the oil in my vessel and be ready for his coming." In 1842, he writes-"The battles of the Lord are becoming more hot and more general; for the Captain of our salvation is near and means soon to win his last triumph." In 1846, he says "The temporary triumph of ungodliness seems close at hand. It is my view of the Scriptures rapidly joined with the Lord's return. Let us make it, then, our constant and great aim, at every cost and sacrifice, to be approved of Christ, and accepted in his sight at his appearing." In 1848, we have the following-"It becomes more and more evident that the day of the Lord is approaching, and that all his ministers should be energetic and zealous, and sound an alarm in his holy mountain, for the day of the Lord cometh;" and in his last illness he said to his son- "You preach the pre-millennial advent. I know you do, because you believe it. I have never regretted the Lord's giving me to grasp that blessed truth."

How strange the following, from the pen of Mr. Bickersteth, now reads to us!" I have been to the Isle of Wight and have enjoyed many mercies with my beloved brethren Sibthorp and Woodroofe, and I hope have gained some help in the Christian life." Of another of those who once held the faith which he himself did, but who has since joined himself to the Church of Rome, Mr. Bickersteth thus speaks

-"I see in dear Dodsworth's Tracts' how difficult it is to maintain the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left. The great danger of the day is lawlessness: we see it on all sides. But here is a brother holding the truthseeing the danger-and yet, in his zeal against it, fighting against the grand Protestant principle of the word of God as a light to our feet and a lamp to our path; thus returning by another devious path to Papal darkness."

His well known "Tract" against the "Tracts for the Times" needs no quoting here to shew how well-founded were his apprehensions of the results of those tracts and of their tendency to exalt and extol the Church of Rome. "We never had-(he says in a letter to General Marshall)-in Wellington's warfare sharper fighting than Christians now have with error on all sides: no neutrality will soon be allowed to any one. My correspondence is quite remarkable in this view. The state of the masses of the people is increasingly fearful: truly, the unclean spirits are all at work, obviously enough to the spiritual. But HE must increase