people that, in wild disorder, they began to run out of the church. In the midst of the confusion, Mr. Baxter, without any visible emotion, sat down in the pulpit. When the hurry was over, and the congregation was in some degree tranquillized, he resumed his discourse, and said, 'We are in the service of God, to prepare ourselves, that we may be fearless at the great noise of the dissolving world, when the heavens shall pass away, and the elements melt with fervent heat, the earth also, and the works therein shall be burnt up.'

BUNYAN.

A student of Cambridge observing a multitude flock to a village church on a working day, inquired what was the cause. On being informed that one Bunyan, a tinker, was to preach there, he gave a boy a few halfpence to hold his horse, resolved, as he said, to hear the tinker prate. The tinker prated to such effect that, for some time, the scholar wished to hear no other preacher, and through his future life gave proofs of the advantages he had received from the humble ministry of the author of the Pilgrim's Progress.

Bunyan, with rude but irresistible zeal, preached throughout the country, and formed the greater part of the Baptist churches in Bedfordshire, until on the Restoration he was

was

thrown into prison, where he remained twelve years. During his confinement, he preached to all to whom he could gain access; and when liberty was offered to him, on condition of promising to abstain from preaching, he constantly replied, 'If you let me out to-day, I shall preach again to-morrow.'

Bunyan, on being liberated, became pastor of the Baptist Church at Bedford; and when the kingdom enjoyed a portion of religious liberty, he enlarged the sphere of his usefulness by preaching every year in London, where he excited great attention. On one day's notice, such multitudes would assemble that the places of worship could not hold them. 'At a lecture at seven o'clock, in the dark mornings of winter,' says one of Bunyan's contemporaries, 'I have seen about 1200; and I computed about three thousand that came to hear him on a Lord's-day, so that one-half of them were obliged to return for want of room.'

Bunyan's great work as an author we have noticed elsewhere.

TILLOTSON.

The published sermons of Tillotson rank among the best in the English language; and it is probable that there would not have been a bad one from his pen to complain of, had his ability in delivering his sermons been equal to his ability in

ones, and were accustomed to them. He replied, 'My lord, I will show you my sermon,' and immediately gave it to the bishop. The text was, 'He that uttereth a slander is a liar,' and the sermon was divided into two parts, one treating on slander and the other on lies. The dean desired him to preach the first part of it only; and to this he consented, though not without some reluctance. This half sermon took him an hour and a half in the delivery.

At another time, Dr. Barrow preached in the Abbey on a holiday. It was then customary for the servants of the church upon all holidays except Sundays, betwixt the sermon and evening prayer, to show the tombs and monuments in the Abbey to such strangers or other persons as would purchase the privilege for twopence. Per

ceiving Dr. Barrow in the pulpit after the hour was past, and fearing to lose time in hearing, which they thought they could more profitably employ in receiving, the servants of the church became impatient, and most indecently caused the organ to be struck up against him; nor would they cease playing until the Doctor was silenced, which was not until he despaired of being heard, or of exhausting the organ-blower.

It is scarcely necessary to observe that the length of Dr. Barrow's sermons was their only fault. 'In him,' says that excellent critic, Dr. Blair, 'one

admires more the prodigious fecundity of his invention, and the uncommon strength of his conceptions, than the felicity of his execution or his talent in composition. We see a genius far surpassing the common, peculiar indeed almost to himself; but that genius often shooting wild, and unchastised by any discipline or study of eloquence. On every subject he multiplies words with an overflowing copiousness, but it is always a torrent of strong ideas and significant expressions which he pours forth.'

Charles II. was wont in his humorous way to say of Dr. Barrow, that he was the most unfair preacher in England, because he exhausted every subject, and left no room for others to come after him.' It was indeed too much the Doctor's way: when he got hold of a topic, he never knew how to leave anything unsaid upon it.

One of his best discourses, that on 'The duty and reward of bounty to the poor,' actually took him up several hours in delivering!

DR. SOUTH.

The celebrated Dr. South, one of the chaplains of Charles II., preaching on a certain day before the Court, which was composed of the most profligate and dissipated men in the nation, perceived in the middle of his discourse that sleep had gradually taken possession of

his hearers. The Doctor immediately stopped short, and changing his tone of voice, called out to Lord Lauderdale three times. His lordship standing up, 'My lord,' said South, with great composure, 'I am sorry to interrupt your repose, but I must beg of you that you will not snore quite so loud, lest you awaken his Majesty.'

On another occasion, when preaching before the King, he chose for his text these words: 'The lot is cast into the lap, but the disposing of it is of the Lord.' In this sermon he introduced three remarkable instances of unexpected advancement, those of Agathocles, Masaniello, and Oliver Cromwell.

Of the latter he said: 'And who, that beheld such a bankrupt, beggarly fellow as Cromwell, first entering the Parliament House with a threadbare, torn cloak, greasy hat (perhaps neither of them paid for), could have suspected that, in the space of so few years, he should, by the murder of one King and the banishment of another, ascend the throne?' At this the King is said to have fallen into a violent fit of laughter, and turning to Dr. South's patron, Mr. Laurence Hyde, afterwards created Lord Rochester, said: 'Oddsfish, Lory, your chaplain must be a bishop; therefore put me in mind of him at the next death.'

Bishop Kennet says of South, that he laboured very much to compose his sermons; and

in the pulpit worked up his body when he came to a piece of wit, or any notable saying.'

His wit was certainly the least of his recommendations; he indulged in it to an excess which often violated the sanctity of the pulpit. When Sherlock accused him of employing wit in a controversy on the Trinity, South made but a sorry reply: 'Had it pleased God to have made you a wit, what would you have done?'

MATTHEW HENRY.

Matthew Henry ranks as one of the most celebrated of biblical commentators. He was born in Flintshire in 1662.

Matthew Henry did not live to finish his great undertaking; but to the researches of his biographers we are indebted for some interesting particulars regarding the commencement and progress of the work. It was a labour of love, and, like the best productions of the pen, flowed from the abundance of the author's mind. The commentary was all in Matthew Henry before a word of it was written down. In his father's house, the Bible was expounded every day, and he and his sisters had preserved ample notes of their father's terse and aphoristic observations. Then, during his own Chester ministry, he went over more than once the whole Bible in simple explanations to his people. Like the Spartan babe, whose cradle