benefits to be anticipated, and which experience has always in varying degrees realized, must be allowed immensely to preponderate over the disadvantages. In large towns, a public service on the Sunday evening is an availing and unexceptionable expedient for preventing much shameful profanation of that part of the Sabbath; it affords a convenient opportunity of hearing the word of God to many who have not heard, and to some who could not hear it before; it is a salutary refreshing improvement of time, to many who would otherwise waste it; and, where there are two other previous services, it gives the means of attending the house of God twice on the Lord's day nearly to all; and, with very few exceptions, is exceedingly desirable to many who use it as a third service. In general, the church is a safe place to be found in; and, if there be a few persons who are tempted by it to attend upon a third service, when some other exercise if they should be prevailed with to adopt it, might possibly be still more beneficial to them, these are comparatively few; whilst by far the greater number receive much more spiritual benefit

from public prayer and preaching, than from any other means of edification. Nor is it at all necessary, that these services should preclude their attendants from the performance of other devotional duties in the course of the day.

An evening lecture in the week has distinct grounds of recommendation. The thirsty soul feels the intervals between the Sabbaths long. The public worship of the congregation has its appropriate office and benediction; which that of the closet and of the family by no means supersedes or supplies. The selection of evening, in preference to morning or afternoon, opens this service to men of business; to those who have various worldly avocations, though not engaged in business; and, what is most of all important, to the poor: who must otherwise be excluded from it. The beggar in his rags is not ashamed to be a hearer under the shade of night. Thus many wanderers "in the highways and hedges are compelled to come in;" and, in some instances, become stated and willing guests. I doubt not that a careful and wide investigation would show us many a stray sheep thus

brought back to the fold; many a casual hearer, to whom "the foolishness of preaching," thus administered, has been made "the power of God unto salvation."

.

Mr. Robinson had received letters of recommendation from the late pious Earl of Dartmouth, grandfather of the present Lord; (the well-known advocate, patron and assistant of the more zealous clergy of his day;) which might enable him to apply for the living of St. Mary's held by Mr. Simmons, or of St. Martin's and All Saints, then held by Mr. Haines whom he was serving as curate; according as either of these situations should the sooner become vacant. Mr. Simmons died in the month of August, 1778: the application was made to the Lord Chancellor within a few days after his death; the living remained under sequestration for about four months, and at length on the twenty-first of December in the same year Mr. Robinson was instituted. A friend of Mr. Robinson happened to be occupied in some inferior station about the Chancellor's person; and, on returning with him one day in his coach from the House of Lords, took his opportunity of leading to

the subject of the vacant living of St. Mary's. "Had his Lordship made any disposition of that living?" "O yes;" said his Lordship; “Dartmouth's friend is to have it.” The fiat was accordingly made out, and the presentation completed.

4

Amongst other candidates for the living was one of singular character and of no inconsiderable wit, who had been curate to Mr. Simmons, and was afterwards an occasional assistant to Mr. Haines. In making humble suit to the Chancellor, Mr. Bickerstaff acknowledged that he had no friend or patron amongst the great, through whose intervention he could apply; but that he rested his hopes solely on the strong personal claims which he conceived himself to have upon his Lordship's favour, from his long services in the ministry, and in this particular church. He had been a competitor with Mr. Robinson for the chaplainship of the Infirmary, and when he failed the second time in his contention with him, he could forbear no longer, but exclaimed:

66

2

Is he not rightly named Jacob, for he hath supplanted me these two times? He took away my birth-right, and behold now he

has taken away my blessing!" But he afterwards forgave Mr. Robinson the wrong, and was content to yield him some drudging services in his occasional duty at a stipulated price; receiving half the customary fee for his labour. He was a man of low, and occasionally, as I fear, of very debauched habits; but he possessed much originality of mind; his views of Christian doctrine were sound; and there is reason to believe that he at length died in the faith.

The living of St. Mary's was not a bed of roses to the new incumbent. If he had met with his opponents at St. Martin's, some of these more properly belonged to his charge, and possessed greater means of annoying him, in his new office at St. Mary's. If he had been pursued in a slanderous pamphlet, and bidden to "fly hence as a terrific preacher" by a self-sufficient parish clerk, in his previous ministry; his present services were interrupted and disordered by the dulcet notes of a flourishing choir of singers, which were far from harmonizing with the grave tones and solemn aspirations of his prayings

* Alluding to the term benefice, or benefit, by which livings are sometimes distinguished.