of hours spent with him as "the happiest, holiest, and most profitable spent under the College roof."

66

In his Thirty Years' History of the Church and Congregation in Princes Street Chapel, he gives us an account of his first visit to and subsequent residence in Norwich. From that source we learn that early in the year 1817 he received an invitation to preach for a few Sabbaths in the Tabernacle, and that on Friday, April 4th, 1817 (the day on which a fatal steam-packet catastrophe occurred by which many lives were lost), he entered Norwich. On the following Sunday evening he preached from the text, Therefore be ye also ready; for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of Man cometh." The place was crowded; and, says he, "The Lord stood by me and strengthened me." At the expiration of three Sabbaths he returned to London, promising to visit Norwich again, and preach during the whole of the Midsummer vacation. He resumed his labours with very great encouragement at the Tabernacle on July 6th; and some legal difficulties occurring as to the power of appointing the minister, he consented, with the approbation of his tutors, to continue them till the disputed point was settled, which was not till the following December. The legal decision was such as necessitated him to give notice, the very day it arrived, that in the evening he should preach his last sermon in the Tabernacle. On that occasion he chose as his text words which the people believed to have been divinely suggested to his mind: "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." That text, it was soon afterwards remarked, built the new chapel.

At length the site on which Princes Street Chapel now stands was purchased, and the foundation-stone laid on the 16th of March, 1819. It was opened on December 1st in the same year, and thenceforward, for the space

of about five and forty years, it continued to be the scene of the living and life-quickening ministry of one whose "praise is in all the churches."

Having lived to see the jubilee of his ministry, he resigned the pastoral office, and was presented with an annuity of £200, and a magnificent epergne, on which a suitable inscription was engraved. With trembling emotion, the venerable man read his reply and acknowledgment, in which, after recording the goodness of God and the kindness of his friends through the long period of fifty years, he stated that during his pastorate more than a thousand members had been added to the Church, two chapels had been added to the one in Princes Street, four Sunday-schools had been raised and supplied with a hundred teachers and with nearly a thousand children, and eight members of the Church had become ministers of the Gospel.

The last sermon Mr. Alexander preached was delivered in Princes Street Chapel on April 22, 1866, from 2 Cor. ii. 14-17. The last time that he spoke in St. Andrew's Hall was a few months before his death on the occasion of the Mayor's invitation to the Sunday-school teachers, and the last public religious service he attended, was in the Old Meeting House, on Sunday evening, July 19, 1868, where his presence was ever as welcome as in his own chapel.

Of his history since his retirement into private life, little only can be said. At first the ease and seeming uselessness imposed on him, by the infirmities of age, had a depressing influence on his mind, but latterly this gave place to his wonted calm confidence in God, and his usual joyousness of heart. Occasionally, to the grief of his friends, the decline of his mental powers was painfully visible, but this was often relieved by his still sparkling and felicitous utterances, and his fervent devotional exercises.

And now the time drew nigh that he

cannot be any policy of human invention, inasmuch as if there were no laws of men, yet this religious affection to worship God, and the fear of Him, would and doth remain written by the finger of God in the hearts and consciences of all men living, how rude, savage, or barbarous soever they be.-Henry Smith.

THE "VADE-MECUM."

The greater and wiser a Christian man becomes, the fonder he gets of his Bible. As he nears the grave, the satchel of worldly books falls to the earth, and the Bible becomes his precious "Vade-Mecum," and it is even found to occupy the post of honour at his dying pillow.-" Pulpit Echoes," by John McFarlane, LL.D.

FASHIONABLE MANNERS.

There is a set of people whom I cannot bear-the pinks of fashionable proprietywhose every word is precise, whose every movement is unexceptionable; but who, though versed in all the categories of polite behaviour, have not a particle of soul or cordiality about them. We allow that their manners may be abundantly correct. There may be elegance in every gesture, and gracefulness in every position; not a smile out of place, and not a step that would not bear the measurement of the severest scrutiny. This is all very fine, but what I want is the heart and the gaiety of social intercourse, the frankness which spreads ease and animation around it, the eye that speaks affability to all, that chases timidity from every bosom,

and tells every man in the company to be confident and happy. This is what I conceive to be the virtue of the text "Be courteous," and not the sickening formality of those who walk by rule, and would reduce the whole of human life to a wirebound system of misery and constraint.Dr. Chalmers.

THE POWER OF REPETITION.

There is often much gained by frequent repetition. It is by going over his lessons again and again that the schoolboy masters his tasks, and becomes so much wiser than he was before. It is by the oft hearing of a thought that it becomes rooted in our hearts, and welds itself to our souls as a part of our mental life. The success of the pulpit, and the benefit of our weekly attentions upon the sanctuary, depend much more upon the continuous reiteration of the same great truths of the gospel, than upon any power of invention in the preacher. It is not so much the presentation of new thoughts and brilliant originalities that converts men and builds them up in holiness, as the clear and constant exhibition of the plain doctrines of grace. When Dr. Chalmers was asked to what he attributed his success in the ministry, he answered, "Under God, to one thing-repetition, repetition, repetition." And so, God, in His law, reiterates and repeats in details and in summaries, line upon line, and precept upon precept, to ground His people well in all the great facts of His will and purposes.-Seiss.

what He did say, and to abide by it; and the principle on which alone it is safe to carry on investigations into doctrine on any point is, I am fully persuaded, to go to the Scriptures, not for the startingpoint of thought alone, but for the substance of thought as well, or for the rounded and concrete development of the doctrine in all its elements: and these will be found in Christ's sayings, if we but patiently investigate them. It is not then to the Christian consciousness that I appeal with some modern teachers, nor to Christian feeling and Christian reason

with others, but to the sayings of the Great Teacher, and of His commissioned servants, employed as His organs of revelation to the Church of all time." We wish we could regard the execution of this work as equal to its conception. But no task could be more difficult than for a Scottish Free Church Professor, bound as he is by a severely Calvinistic Confession of Faith, his mind saturated with its doctrines, and surrounded with brethren who are nervously sensitive to the minutest departure from the Westminster standards, to expound the sayings of Christ on the Atonement without importing into his exposition and discussion of them his foregone conclusions. Mr. Smeaton has not proved himself equal to this task. He has not "reproduced our Lord's thoughts by the exact interpretation of language" alone. We wish he had. The great doctrine for which he contends, the central truth of our faith, would have thereby gained both proof and illustration. We hope that Mr. Smeaton's work will call attention to a subject which has not been sufficiently studied; and though itself deficient in severity of exegesis, and moreover not sufficiently condensed in thought and style, we accept it gratefully as a contribution to the defence of evangelical truth. The student of Scripture, if in some respects disappointed by it, will find it useful in suggesting and guiding inquiry.

The Hermits. By the Rev. CHARLES KINGSLEY. Parts I., II., III., being Volume Second of the "Sunday Library." London: MacMillan & Co.

In this volume the apostle of Muscular Christianity, as he is commonly regarded, edits the Biographies of some of the chief ascetics of Christian story; and he does it with his usual enthusiasm.

"After an acquaintance (he says) of now five-andtwenty years with the wonderful treasury of early Christian mythology, to which all fairy tales are dull and meagre, I am almost inclined to sympathise with M. de Montalembert's question-'Who is so ignorant, or so unfortunate, as not to have devoured these tales of the heroic age of monasticism?"" Having no sympathy with asceticism, he has sympathy with the heroism even of ascetics. And we agree with him so far, that a knowledge of these "athletes of penitence" is important not only to the ecclesiologist but to the psychologist and the historian. But we are disposed to ask the "Cui Bono" question when it is provided for popular reading. And as to " Sunday" reading,

ew stories could be more unhealthy for

both intellect and heart. So strange a mixture of the absurd and grotesque, the true and false, the pious and impious, is most perplexing and bewildering to all who are not content to read it for mere amusement. We can recommend the volume only as a cheap and convenient means of information to those who desire to know what the hermits were, and how they lived.

Seekers after God. Parts I., II., III., being Volume Third of the "Sunday Library." By the Rev. F. W. FARRAR, M.A., F.R.S. London: MacMillan & Co. THIS is by far the most satisfactory volume of the 66 Sunday Library" which has appeared. And it is one to which we attach a very high value. The only question that can be raised about it is as to the propriety of calling Seneca, even as here pourtrayed, a seeker after God. A more painful history could scarcely be written than that of this great man, this man of great thoughts and pure and lofty ideas. And a more palpable proof could not be found of the world's need of that new life which was being poured into it from heaven in Seneca's own days. With Seneca, Mr. Farrar associates Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. Epictetus came to Rome as a poor, lame, Phrygian slave-boy, deformed and mean-looking, and in a servile capacity may often have waited on Seneca in the house of his master, the Secretary or Librarian of Nero. Marcus Aurelius was an Emperor. And in this volume "the life of the noblest of Pagan Emperors follows that of the noblest of Pagan slaves.” Epictetus showed that a Phrygian slave could live a life of the loftiest exaltation; Aurelius proved that a Roman Emperor could live a life of the deepest humility." And both proved, what the life of Seneca proved, though not quite in the same way, the world's deep need of the Christianity, which, when it came, was despised. We have spoken of the "Lives of the Hermits" as unhealthy reading; we consider the volume now before us as eminently healthy. It is written with a thorough knowledge of the time to which it refers, a reverent appreciation of all the good that can be found in heathendom as a gift of God, and a deep sense of that which was defective in the best heathen philosophy and morals; while its style is pure, lofty, and eloquent. The exceptions which we might take to a few passages in the book are not worth mentioning. Christianity finds in these pages a more effective defence and advocacy than in many volumes of professed evidences.