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profligate African youth was thus transformed into the most illustrious saint of the Western Church, how he lived long as the light of his own generation, and how his works have been cherished and read by good men, perhaps more extensively than those of any Christian teacher since the Apostles. It is a story instructive in many ways. It is an example, like the conversion of St Paul, of the fact that from time to time God calls His servants not by gradual, but by sudden changes.

Him before we retire to rest; this is the best security for keeping up our faith and trust in Him in whom we all profess to believe, whom we all expect to meet after we leave this world. It is also the best security for our leading a good and a happy life. It has been well said twice over by the most powerful delineator of human character (with one exception) ever produced by our country, that prayer to the Almighty searcher of hearts is the best check to murmurs against Providence, or to the inroad of worldly passions, because nothing else brings before us so strongly their inconsistency and unreasonableness. We shall find it twice as difficult to fall into sin if we have prayed against it that very morning, or if we thank God for having kept it from us that very evening. It is the best means of denial for the day. It is the best means of gaining congaining strength and refreshment, and courage and selftent, and tranquillity, and rest for the night; for it brings us, as nothing else can bring us, into the presence of Him who is the source of all these things, and who One is that of their greatness, breadth, solidity, vast"The righteous,' says the Psalmist, shall flourish gives them freely to those who truly and sincerely ask for them.

The Last Encampment.*

Our last Sunday in Syria has arrived, and it has been enhanced to us this morning by the sight of those venerable trees which seemed to the Psalmist and the Prophets of old one of the chief glories and wonders of the creation. Two main ideas were conveyed to the minds of those who then saw them, which we may still

bear away with us.

ness.

like a palm tree.' That is one part of our life; to be upright, graceful, gentle, like that most beautiful of oriental trees. But there is another quality added—' He shall spread abroad like a cedar in Libanus.' That is, his character shall be sturdy, solid, broad; he shall protect others, as well as himself; he shall support the branches of the weaker trees around him; he shall cover a vast surface of the earth with his shadow; he shall grow, and spread, and endure; he and his works shall make the place where he was planted memorable for future times.

The second feeling is the value of reverence. It was reverence for these great trees which caused them to be employed for the sacred service of Solomon's Temple, and which has insured their preservation for so long. It was reverence for Almighty God that caused these trees, and these only, to be brought down from this remote situation to be employed for the Temple of old. Reverence, we may be sure, whether to God or to the great things which God has made in the world, is one of the qualities most needful for every human being, if he means to pass through life in a manner worthy of the place which God has given him in the world.

But the sight of the Cedars, and our encampment here, recall to us that this is the close of a manner of life which in many respects calls to mind that of the ancient Israelites, as we read it in the Lessons of this and of last Sunday, in the Book of Numbers and of Deuteronomy, 'How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel'so unlike our common life, so suggestive of thoughts which can hardly come to us again. It brings us back, even with all the luxuries which surround us, to something of the freshness, and rudeness, and simplicity of primitive life, which it is good for us all to feel at one time or other. It reminds us, though in a figure, of the uncertainty and instability of human existence, so often compared to the pitching and striking of a tent. The spots on which, day after day for the last six weeks, we have been encamped have again become a desolate open waste the spirit of the desert stalks in,' and their place will be known no more. How like the way in which happy homes rise, and sink, and vanish, and are lost. Only the great Rock or Tree of Life under which they have been pitched remains on from generation to generation..

May I take this occasion of speaking of the importance of this one solemn ordinance of religion, never to be forgotten, wherever we are-morning and evening prayer? It is the best means of reminding ourselves of the presence of God. To place ourselves in his hands before we go forth on our journey, on our pleasure, on our work-to commit ourselves again to

*From a sermon preached in the encampment at Ehden, beneath the Mountain of the Cedars, May 11, 1862, during Dean Stanley's tour in the East with H. R.H. the Prince of Wales.

PROFESSOR MAURICE.

efforts for the education of the working-classes, In metaphysics and theology, and in practical the REV. JOHN FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE (1805-1872) was strikingly conspicuous. He was the son of a Unitarian minister, and educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He declined a Fellowship, not being able to declare himself a member of the Church of England; but he afterwards entered the church, and became chaplain of Lincoln's Inn and Professor of Divinity in King's College, London. In consequence of what were considered heterodox opinions, Mr Maurice had with

to

vacate his professorial chair, but out forfeiting his popularity. His views on the question of the atonement and the duration of future punishments lost him the Professorship of Theology. Among the works of this author are -Lectures delivered at Queen's College, London, published in 1849; The Religions of the World and their Relations to Christianity, being the Boyle Lecture Sermons, 1846-47; Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, reprinted from the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, three volumes, 1850-56 (characterised by Mr Thomas Hughes as 'a mine of learning made living and human, and of original thought made useful for the humblest student, such as no other living man had produced'); Christian Socialism, tracts and lectures by Maurice, Kingsley, and others, 1851; The Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament, 1853; The Word Eternal' and the Punishment of the Wicked, a pamphlet, 1853; Lectures on Ecclesiastical History, and The Doctrine of Sacrifice, 1854; Learning and Working, six lectures, and The Religion of Rome, four lectures, 1855; Administrative Reform, a pamphlet, 1855; Plan of a Female College, 1855; with Theological Essays, and several volumes of Sermons. Maurice, like his friend Kingsley, had a high standard of duty and patriotism:

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'The action in the heathen world,' he said, which has always inspired most of admiration in true minds, is the death of the three hundred Spartans who guarded the pass of Thermopylæ against the army of Xerxes (480 B.C.); and it was recorded on the graves of these three hundred, that they died in obedience to the laws of their country. They felt that it was their business to

REV. W. J. CONYBEARE, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Rev. J. S. HowSON, two volumes quarto, 1852. The purpose of this work_is_described to be to give a living picture of St Paul himself, and of the circumstances by which he was surrounded.' The biography of the apostle must be compiled from two sources-his own letters and the narrative in the Acts. Mr Conybeare translates the epistles and speeches of the apostle; and his coadjutor, Mr Howson, contributes the narrative, archæological, and geographical portions. The difficulties of the task are thus stated by Mr Cony

be there; that was all. They did not choose the
post for themselves; they only did not desert
the post which it behoved them to occupy. Our
countrymen heartily respond to the doctrine. The
notion of dying for glory is an altogether feeble
one for them. They had rather stay by their
comfortable and uncomfortable firesides, than
suffer for what seems to them a fiction. But the
words, "England expects every man to do his
duty," are felt to be true and not fictitious words.
There is power in them. The soldier or sailor
who hears them ringing through his heart will
meet a charge, or go down in his ship, without
dreaming that he shall ever be spoken of or re-beare:
membered, except by a mother, or a child, or an
old friend. So it is in private experience. Women
are found sacrificing their lives, not under a sudden
impulse of feeling, but through a long course of
years, to their children and their husbands, who
often requite them very ill; whose words are
surly, who spend what affection they have on
other objects. The silent devotion goes on; only
one here and there knows anything of it; it is
quite as likely that the world in general spends
its compassion upon those to whom they are
ministering; none count their ministries so en-
tirely matters of course as themselves.'

BISHOP BLOMFIELD-REV. C. HARDWICK, ETC.

The scholarship of Cambridge was well supported by the late Bishop of London, DR CHARLES JAMES BLOMFIELD (1786-1857), a native of Bury St Edmunds, in Suffolk, where his father was a schoolmaster. Having distinguished himself at Trinity College, Cambridge (of which he was elected Fellow), Dr Blomfield evinced his philological and critical attainments by his editions of Eschylus and Callimachus (1810-1824), and by his editing the Adversaria Porsoni. In 1828 he compiled a Greek Grammar for schools. He was author also of Lectures on the Acts of the Apostles and of numerous sermons and charges. His efforts to increase the number of churches were most meritorious and highly successful. He began this pious labour when Bishop of Chester, and continued it in London with such energy, that during the time he held the see more churches were erected than had been built by any other bishop since the Reformation. In 1856 Dr Blomfield resigned his bishopric, but was allowed to retain for life his palace at Fulham, with a pension of £6000 a year. A Memoir of the prelate was published by his son in 1863.

The Varied Life of St Paul.

To comprehend the influences under which he grew to manhood, we must realise the position of a Jewish family in Tarsus, 'the chief city in Cilicia;' we must understand the kind of education which the son of such a family would receive as a boy in his Hebrew home, or in the schools of his native city, and in his riper youth at the feet of Gamaliel' in Jerusalem; we must be acquainted with the profession for which he was to be prepared by this training, and appreciate the station and duties of an expounder of the law. And that we may be fully qualified to do all this, we should have a clear view of the state of the Roman empire at the time, and especially of its system in the provinces; we should also understand the political position of the Jews of the 'dispersion;' we should be, so to speak, hearers in their theology. And in like manner, as we follow the apostle synagogues-we should be students of their rabbinical in the different stages of his varied and adventurous career, we must strive continually to bring out in their true brightness the half-effaced forms and colouring of the scene in which he acts; and while he 'becomes all things to all men, that he might by all means save some,' we must form to ourselves a living likeness of the things and of the men among whom he moved, if we would rightly estimate his work. Thus we must study Christianity rising in the midst of Judaism; we must realise the position of its early churches with their mixed society, to which Jews, proselytes, and heathens had each contributed a characteristic element; we must qualify ourselves to be umpires, if we may so speak, in their violent internal divisions; we must listen to the strifes of their schismatic parties, when one said, 'I am of Paul-and another, I am of Apollos;' we must study the true character of those early heresies which even denied the resurrection, and advocated impurity and lawlessness, claiming the right to sin 'that grace might abound,' 'defiling the mind and conscience' of their followers, and making them abominable and disobedient, and to every good work reprobate;' we must trace the extent to which Greek philosophy, Judaising formalism, and Eastern superstition, blended their taintinfluence with the pure fermentation of the new leaven which was at last to leaven the whole mass of

civilised society.

The REV. CHARLES HARDWICK, of St Catha-ing rine's Hall, has written a History of the Thirtynine Articles, 1851; a valuable History of the Christian Church, 1853; and Sermons, 1853.To this formidable list of requirements must be The REV. WILLIAM GOODE, Rector of Allhallows, added some knowledge of the various countries and London, has been a vigorous opponent of the Oxford Tractarians, and author of other theolog-places visited by Paul; and as relating to the wide ical works-The Gifts of the Spirit, 1834; The Established Church, 1834; The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice, 1842; &c.

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range of illustration, Mr Howson mentions a cir

In the account of the apostle's voyage to Italy, when overtaken by the storm (Acts xxvii.), it is mentioned that the ship was anchored by the stern; Mr Howson cites some cases in which this has been done in modern times, adding: 'There is still greater interest in quoting the instance of Copenhagen, not only from the accounts we have of the precision with which each ship let go her

cumstance connected with our naval hero Nelson.

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anchors astern as she arrived nearly opposite her appointed station, but because it is said that Nelson stated after the battle, that he had that morning been reading the twenty-seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.'

The Martyrdom of Paul.

As the martyr and his executioners passed on, their way was crowded with a motley multitude of goers and comers between the metropolis and its harbour-merchants hastening to superintend the unloading of their cargoes-sailors eager to squander the profits of their last voyage in the dissipations of the capital-officials of the government, charged with the administration of the provinces, or the command of the legions on the Euphrates or the Rhine-Chaldean astrologers Phrygian eunuchs-dancing-girls from Syria, with their painted turbans-mendicant priests from Egypt howling for Osiris-Greek adventurers, eager to coin their national cunning into Roman gold-representatives of the avarice and ambition, the fraud and lust, the superstition and intelligence, of the imperial world. Through the dust and tumult of that busy throng, the small troop of soldiers threaded their way silently, under the bright sky of an Italian midsummer. They were marching, though they knew it not, in a procession more truly triumphal than any they had ever followed, in the train of general or emperor, along the Sacred Way. Their prisoner, now at last and for ever delivered from his captivity, rejoiced to follow his Lord 'without the gate.' The place of execution was not far distant; and there the sword of the headsman ended his long course of sufferings, and released that heroic soul from that feeble body. Weeping friends took up his corpse, and carried it for burial to those subterranean labyrinths, where, through many ages of oppression, the persecuted church found refuge for the living and sepulchres for the dead. Thus died the apostle, the prophet, and the martyr; bequeathing to the church, in her government and her discipline, the legacy of his apostolic labours; leaving his prophetic words to be her living oracles; pouring forth his blood to be the seed of a thousand martyrdoms. Thenceforth, among the glorious company of the apostles, among the goodly fellowship of the prophets, among the noble army of martyrs, his name has stood pre-eminent. And wheresoever the holy church throughout all the world doth acknowledge God, there Paul of Tarsus is revered, as the great teacher of a universal redemption and a catholic religion-the herald of glad tidings to all

mankind.

Period, 1839; with a series of Theological Lectures, 1834

DEAN HOWSON, associated with the Rev. W. J. Conybeare in the valuable work on St Paul, was born in 1816, educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, became Principal of the Collegiate Institution, Liverpool, in 1849, and Dean of Chester in 1867.

DEAN ALFORD.

The REV. DR HENRY ALFORD, of Trinity, Vicar of Wimes would, Leicestershire, like Dr Trench, commenced author as a poet-Poems and Poetical Fragments, 1831; The School of the Heart, 1835; &c.-but his Hulsean Lectures, 1841, his various collections of Sermons, Greek Testament with notes, &c., gave him a reputation as a divine and a scholar. Dr Alford was a contributor to various periodicals, and was cut off suddenly in the midst of a busy and useful life. This excellent divine was a native of London, born in 1810, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge; from 1841 to 1857 he acted as Examiner in Logic and Moral Philosophy in the university of London; and in 1857 was appointed by Lord Palmerston to the deanery of Canterbury. He died January 12, 1871.

Dean Alford is believed to have had considerable effect, though indirectly, on the textual criticism of the country. According to Bishop Ellicott, his present and future fame both is and will be connected with his notes and exegesis. Here the fine qualities of his mind, his quickness, keenness of perception, interpretative instinct, lucidity, and singular fairness, exhibit themselves to the greatest possible advantage. Rarely, if ever, does he fail to place before the reader the exact difficulties of the case, and the true worth of the different principles of interpretation.'

The Prince Consort's Public Life.

He came to us in 1840 fresh from a liberal education; and in becoming one of us, and that in an undefined and exceedingly difficult position, he determined to bend the great powers of his mind, and to use the influence of his exalted station to do us good. The early days of his residence among us were cast upon troubled timesthe gloomy years between 1840-1848. First, before we speak directly of his great national work, deserves mention the high example of that royal household, whose unstained purity, and ever cautious and punctual propriety in all civil and Christian duties, has been to this people a greater source of blessing than we can appre ciate. At last the hour of trial came, and the eventful year 1848, which overturned so many thrones, passed was beyond danger, for its foundations rested in the powerless over our favoured land. Our royal house hearts and prayers of the people. And now a period of calm succeeded, during which our Prince's designs for the good of our people found scope and time to unfold themselves.

Mr Conybeare, in 1855, published a volume of Essays Ecclesiastical and Social, reprinted with additions from the Edinburgh Review. In these he treats of the Mormons, the Welsh Clergy, Church Parties Temperance, &c. His views on church parties and on the different phases of infidelity are further displayed in a novel-Perver sion, three volumes, 1856-a very interesting and clever tale of the times.' The ingenious author died prematurely in 1857. The father of Mr Conybeare, WILLIAM DANIEL CONYBEARE, Dean of Llandaff (1787-1857), was one of the The Great Exhibition of 1851, the effects of which earliest promoters of the Geological Society, and for good have been so many and so universally ac a frequent and distinguished contributor to its knowledged, is believed to have been his own conceppublished Transactions. His papers on the Coal- tion; and the plan of it, though filled in by many fields were highly valuable; and he was the dis- hands, was sketched out by himself, and constantly coverer of the Plesiosaurus, that strange ante- presided over and brought to maturity by his unwearied diluvian animal, the most singular and the most regard to the intercourse and interdependence of foreign The event of that year opened to us views with anomalous in its structure, according to Cuvier, nations and ourselves, unknown to English minds that had been discovered amid the ruins of before, and suggested to us improvements which have former worlds. To the Bampton Lectures the shewn new paths of industry and advancement to Dean was also a contributor, having written a thousands of families among us. To him we owe, as a work On the Fathers during the Ante-Nicene | direct consequence of this his plan, our schools of design,

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care.

able

which have called out so many a dormant mind, and brought blessing and competence to so many a household in the lower ranks of life. Of one great society, the 'Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce,' he was to the last the active and indefatigable president.

Only a week before his death, he determined an important point connected with the building designed for the Exhibition. Besides these efforts, you will all remember the interest which he took in our agricultural progress, and in a matter of more vital import to our national wellbeing-the better construction, for decency and comfort, of the cottages of the labouring classes. He has left us his views to be carried out, his schemes to be completed, his example to be followed. Each citizen, each head of a family, ought long to remember, and will long remember, the lessons of his life; we shall not go back again from the higher level to which he has raised us, but shall, I am persuaded, go on in the same course, with more earnest endeavour, with more scrupulous anxiety, because to all other motives is added that of not doing dishonour to his memory, nor violence to what were his own wishes.

Toll out thy towers, toll on, thou old Cathedral,
Filling the ambient air with softest pulses of sorrow;
Toll out a nation's grief, dole for the wail of the people.
Bursting hearts have played with words in the wildness of

anguish,

Gathered the bitter herbs that grow in the valley of mourning,
Turned the darksome flowers in wreaths for the wept, the lost one.
Toll for the tale that is told, but for the tale left untold;
Toll for the unreturning, but toll tenfold for the mourning;

and

penetrate their secrets, figure forth spiritual truths;
her highest and noblest arrangements are but the repre-
sentations of the most glorious of those truths. That
very state out of which the household springs, is one,
as Scripture and the Church declare to us, not to be
taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, seeing
that it sets forth and represents to us the relation
between Christ and his Church. The household is a
representation, on a small scale, as regards numbers,
but not as regards the interests concerned, of the great
family in heaven and earth. Its whole relations and
mutual duties are but reflections of those which subsist
between the Redeemer and the people for whom He
hath given Himself. The household, then, is not an
institution whose duties spring from beneath-from the
necessities of circumstances merely; but it is an ap-
pointment of God, whose laws are His laws, and whose
members owe direct account to Him. The father of a
household stands most immediately in God's place. His
is the post of greatest responsibility, of greatest influence
for good or for evil. His it is, in the last resort, to fix
and determine the character which his household shall
bear. According as he is good or bad, godly or un-
godly, selfish or self-denying, so will for the most part
the complexion of the household be also. As he values
that which is good, not in his professions, for which no
one cares, but in his practice, which all observe, so will
it most likely be valued also by his family as they grow
up and are planted out in the world. Of all the influ-
ences which can be brought to bear on man, paternal

Toll for the Prince that is gone, but more for the house that is influence may be made the strongest and most salutary;

widowed.

Recognition after Death.

With respect to the subject which furnished us matter for two or three conversations-the probability of meeting and recognising friends in heaven-I thought a good deal, and searched Scripture yesterday. The passage, 1 Thess. iv. 13-18, appears to me almost decisive. Tennyson says:

To search the secret is beyond our lore,

And man must rest till God doth furnish more.

Certainly if there has been one hope which has borne the hearts of Christians up more than another in trials and separations, it is this. It has in all ages been one of the loveliest in the checkered prospect of the future, nor has it been confined to Christians; I mean the idea. You will excuse me, nay, you will thank me, I know, for transcribing an exquisite passage from Cicero's treatise on Old Age. It is as follows: O glorious day when I shall go to that divine assembly and company of spirits, and when I shall depart out of this bustle, this sink of corruption; for I shall go not only to those great men of whom I have before spoken, but also to my dear Cato [his son], than whom there never was a better man, or one more excellent in filial affection, whose funeral rites were performed by me, when the contrary was natural-namely, that mine should be performed by him. His soul not desiring me, but looking back on me, has departed into those regions where he saw that I myself must come; and I seem to bear firmly my affliction, not because I did not grieve for it, but I comforted myself, thinking that the separation and parting between us would not be for long duration.' The passage from Cicero is considered one of the finest, if not the finest passage in all the heathen authors. It certainly is very fine; but now, when you have admired it enough, turn to 2 Tim. iv. 6-8, and compare the two. Blessed be He indeed who has given us such a certainty of hope!

The Household of a Christian.

From Quebec Chapel Sermons. The household is not an accident of nature, but an ordinance of God. Even nature's processes, could we

and whether so made or not, is ever of immense weight one way or the other. For remember, that paternal influence is not that which the father strives to exert merely, but that which in matter of fact he does exert. That superior life, ever moving in advance of the young and observing and imitative life of all of us, that source from which all our first ideas came, that voice which sounded deeper into our hearts than all other voices, day by day, year by year, through all our tender and plastic childhood, will all through life, almost in spite of ourselves, still keep in advance of us, still continue to sound no other example will ever take so firm hold, no other superiority be ever so vividly and constantly felt. And again remember, this example goes for what it is really worth. Words do not set it-religious phrases do not give it its life and power-it is not a thing of display and effort, but of inner realities, and recurring acts and habits. It is not the raving of the wind round the precipice-not the sunrise and sunset, clothing it with golden glory-which moulded it and gave it its worn and rounded form: but the unmarked dropping of the silent waters, the melting of the yearly snows, the gushing of the inner springs. And so it will be, not that which the outward eye sees in him, not that which men repute him, not public praise, nor public blame, that will enhance or undo a father's influence in his household; but that which he really is in the hearts of his family: that which they know of him in private: the worth to which they can testify, but which the outer world never saw; the affections which flow in secret, of which they know the depth, but others only the surface. And so it will be likewise with a father's religion. None so keen to see into a man's religion as his own household. He may deceive others without; he may deceive himself: he can hardly long succeed in deceiving them. If religion with him be merely a thing put on; an elaborate series of outward duties, attended to for expediency's sake-something fitting his children, but not equally fitting him: oh, none will so soon and so thoroughly learn to appreciate this, as those children themselves: there is not any fact which, when discovered, will have so baneful an effect on their young lives, as such an appreciation. No amount of external devotion will ever counterbalance it: no use of religious phraseology, nor converse with religious people without. But if, on the other hand,

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DR ROWLAND WILLIAMS.

This eminent Welsh scholar and divine was a native of Flintshire, Wales, born in 1817. He was educated at Eton and at King's College, Cambridge, in which he was distinguished as a classical scholar. He was elected to a Fellowship of his college, and was classical tutor in it for eight years from 1842 to 1850. He then removed to St David's College, Lampeter, in which he became Vice-principal and Professor of Hebrew, was appointed chaplain to the Bishop of Llandaff in 1850, and select preacher to the university of Cambridge in 1855. In the latter year he published a volume of his sermons under the title of Rational Godliness after the Mind of Christ and the written Voices of his Church. His views on the subject of inspiration were considered unorthodox, and led him into controversy, ultimately causing his withdrawal from Lampeter, where he had lived twelve years, greatly benefiting the college there, and discharging his duties as parish minister with exemplary diligence and popular acceptance. In 1860 appeared the volume entitled Essays and Reviews; Dr Williams was one of the writers, contributing an article on Bunsen's Biblical Researches, for which he was prosecuted in the Court of Arches, and sentenced to a year's suspension. The Privy Council, however, reversed the decision, and Dr Williams continued his pastoral labours and studies until his death in 1870. He died at a vicarage he held near Salisbury, but his friends in Wales sent flowers from the land of his birth to be laid on his coffin. The works of Dr Williams are numerous. The best is his Hinduism and Christianity Compared, 1856; a learned and able treatise. He was engaged in his latter years on a more elaborate work, part of which was published in 1866 under the title of The Prophets of Israel and Judah during the Assyrian Empire. A second volume was published after his death, entitled The Hebrew Prophets, translated afresh from the Original, 1872. He also wrote various essays on the Welsh Church, Welsh Bards, and Anglo-Saxon Antiquities.

He was a various as well as a profound scholar, but chiefly excelled in Hebrew and in his ancient native tongue, the Cymric or Welsh. The Life and Letters of Dr Williams were published by his widow, two volumes, 1874; and Mrs Williams claims for her husband having done good service by advocating an open Bible and free reverential criticism, and by maintaining these to be consistent with the standards of the English Church. He helped much to vindicate for the Anglican Establishment the wide boundary which he, Dean Stanley, and others considered to be her lawful

inheritance.

'Dean Milman,' he says, 'once wrote to me, that what the world wants is a keener perception of the poetical character of parts, especially the earlier parts of the Bible. "This work," he added, "will be done slowly, but, in my opinion, surely."

In other words, what the world seems to me to want, is a perception that the religion with which the Bible, as a whole, impresses us, is a true religion; but that in its associations, accidents, and personal shortcomings, it has had no supernatural exemption from those incidents of human nature which we find in the transmission of our moral sentiments in general, strengthened as these are by historical examples, but having a fresh germ in ourselves, and yet needing a constant glance heavenward, a tone of mind compounded of prayer and of resolve, in order to keep them sound, and free from all warping influences. Again, to vary the expression, the great object to be set always before our consciences is, "the Father of our spirits," the Eternal Being; and it is an infinite aid to have the records of words and deeds of men who have lived in a like spiritual faith, and who can kindle us afresh.'

REV. FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON.

The REV. F. W. ROBERTSON of Brighton (18161853) was a clergyman of the Church of England whose life was devoted to the intellectual and spiritual improvement of the working-classes, and whose writings have enjoyed a degree of popularity rarely extended to sermons and theological treatises. He was a native of London, son of an officer, Captain Robertson, R.A. He was educated at Edinburgh and Oxford, taking his degree of M.A. at Brasenose College in 1844. Having entered the Church, he was successively curate at Winchester and Cheltenham, and incumbent of Trinity Chapel, Brighton. At the latter he continued six years till his death. In 1848 he assisted in establishing a working-man's Institute, and his address on this occasion, which was afterwards published, attracted, as he said, more notice than it deserved or he had expected: it was read by Her Majesty, distributed by nobles and Quakers, sneered at by Conservatives, praised by Tories, slanged by Radicals, and swallowed, with wry faces, by Chartists!" Within six months, it was said Mr Robertson had put himself at variance with the whole accredited theological world of Brighton on the questions of the Sabbath, the Atonement, Inspiration, and Baptism! His talents, sincerity, and saint-like character were, however, acknowledged by all parties, and his death was mourned as a public calamity. His funeral was attended by more than two thousand persons. Four volumes of Mr Robertson's Sermons have been published; also his Life and Letters, two volumes, by the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. Robertson's Sermons have gone through numerous large editions both in England and America.

Christian Energy.

'Let us be going.' There were two ways open to Christ in which to submit to his doom. He might have waited for it: instead of which He went to meet the soldiers, He took up the cross, the cup of anguish was not forced between His lips. He took it with his own years the disciples understood the lesson, and acted on hands, and drained it quickly to the last drop. In afterit. They did not wait till persecution overtook them; they braved the Sanhedrim, they fronted the world, they proclaimed aloud the unpopular and unpalatable doctrines of the Resurrection and the Cross. Now in

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