When George Fox took a sharp knife and cut out for himself a pair of leather breeches, and, having done with all the fashions of society, hid himself in a hollow tree, to think by the month together, he was growing into a man before whom the men of the books speedily beat a retreat. What a flutter he made not only among the Poperies, and Prelacies, and Presbyteries of his day, but also among the well-read proprieties of Dissent. He swept no end of cobwebs out of the sky, and gave the bookworms a hard time of it. Thought is the backbone of study, and if more ministers would think, what a blessing it would be! Only, we want men who will think about the revealed truth of God, and not dreamers who evolve religions out of their own consciousness. Now-a-days we are pestered with a set of fellows who must needs stand on their heads and think with their feet. Romancing is their notion of meditation. Instead of considering revealed truth, they excogitate a mess of their own, in which error, and nonsense, and conceit appear in about equal parts; and they call this broth"modern thought." We want men who will try to think straight, and yet think deep, because they think God's thoughts. Far be it from me to urge you to imitate the boastful thinkers of this age, who empty their meeting-houses, and then glory that they preach to the cultivated and intellectual. It is miserable cant. Earnest thought upon the things which are assuredly believed among us is quite another matter, and to that I urge you. Personally, I owe much to many hours, and even days, spent alone, under an old oak-tree by the river Medway. Happening to be somewhat indisposed at the time when I was leaving school, I was allowed considerable leisure, and, armed with an excellent fishing-rod, I caught a few small fishes, and enjoyed many day-dreams, intermingled with searchings of heart, and much ruminating of knowledge gained. If boys would think, it would be well to give them less class work and more opportunity for thought. All cram and no digestion makes flesh destitute of muscle, and this is even more deplorable mentally than physically. If your people are not numerous enough to supply you with a library, they will make fewer demands on your time, and, in having time for meditation, you will be even better off than your brethren with many books and little space for quiet contemplation.

Without books a man may learn much by keeping his eyes open. Current history, incidents which transpire under his own nose, events recorded in the newspaper, matters of common talk-he may learn from them all. The difference between eyes and no eyes is wonderful. If you have not books to try your eyes, keep them open wherever you go, and you will find something worth looking at. Can you not learn from nature? Every flower is waiting to teach you. "Consider the lilies," and learn from the roses. Not only may you go to the ant, but every living thing offers itself for your instruction. There is a voice in every gale, and a lesson in every grain of dust it bears. Sermons glisten in the morning on every blade of grass, and homilies fly by you as the sere leaves fall from the trees. A forest is a library, a corn field is a volume of philosophy, the rock is a history, and the river at its base a poem. Go, thou who hast thine eyes opened, and find lessons of wisdom everywhere, in heaven

above, in the earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth. Books are poor things compared with these.

Moreover, however scant your libraries, you can study yourselves. There is a mystic volume, the major part of which you have never read. If any man thinks that he knows himself thoroughly, he deceives himself; for the most difficult book you will ever read is your own heart. I said to a doubter the other day, who seemed to have got into a maze, "Well, really I cannot understand you; but I am not vexed, for I never could understand myself;" and I certainly meant what I said. Watch the twists and turns and singularities of your own minds, and the strangeness of your own experience; the depravity of your heart, and the work of divine grace; your tendency to sin, and capacity for holiness; how akin you are to a devil, and yet how allied to God himself! Note how wisely you can act when taught of God, and yet how foolishly you behave when left to yourself. You will find the study of your heart to be of immense importance to you as a watcher over the souls of others. A man's own experience should be to him the laboratory in which he tests the medicines which he is to prescribe to others. Even your own faults will instruct you if you bring them to the Lord. Perfect men would be unable to deal with imperfect men and women. Study the Lord's dealings with your own souls, and you will understand others.

His

Read other men; they are as instructive as books. Suppose there should come up to one of our great hospitals a young student, so poor that he could not purchase surgical books; it would certainly be a great detriment to him; but if he had the run of the hospital, if he saw operations performed, and watched cases from day to day, I should not wonder but what he might turn out as skilful a surgeon as his more favoured companions. observation would show him what books alone could not; and as he stood by to see the removal of a limb, the binding up of a wound, or the tying up of an artery, he might, at any rate, pick up enough practical surgery to be of immense service to him. Now, much that a ininister needs to know he must learn by actual observation. All wise pastors have walked the hospitals spiritually, and dealt with inquirers, hypocrites, backsliders, the despairing, and the presumptuous. A man who has had a sound practical experience in the things of God himself, and watched the hearts of others, other things being equal, will be a far more useful man than he who knows only what he has read. It is a great pity for a man to be a sort of college Jack-a-dandy, who comes out of the class-room as out of a band-box, into a world he never saw before, to deal with men he has never observed, and handle things with which he has never come into personal contact. "Not a novice," says the apostle; and it is possible to be a novice and yet a very accomplished scholar, a classic, a mathematician, and a theoretical theologian. We should have practical dealings with men's souls; and if we have much of it, the fewness of our books will be a light affliction. "But," says an inquiring brother," how can you read a man?" I have heard of a gentleman of whom it was said that you could never stop five minutes under an archway with him but what he would teach you something. That was a wise man; but he would be a wiser man still who would

never stop five minutes under an archway without learning from other people. If you are wise enough you can learn as much from a fool as from a wise man. A fool is a splendid book to read from, because every leaf is open before you, and there is a dash of the comic in the style, which entices you to read on; and if you gather nothing else, you are warned not to publish your own folly.

Learn from experienced saints What deep things some of them can teach to us younger men ! What instances God's poor people can narrate of the Lord's providential appearances for them; how they glory in his upholding grace and his faithfulness to his promises! What fresh light they often shed upon the promises, revealing meanings hidden from the carnally wise, but made clear to simple hearts! Know you not that many of the promises are written with invisible ink, and must be held to the fire of affliction before the letters will show themselves? Tried spirits are instructors to those

of us whose ways are less rough. And as for the inquirer, how much is to be gathered from him! I have seen very much of my own stupidity while in conversation with seeking souls. I have been baffled by a poor lad while trying to bring him to the Saviour; I thought I had him fast, but he has eluded me again and again with perverse ingenuity of unbelief. Sometimes inquirers who are really anxious surprise me with their singular skill in battling against hope; their arguments are endless and their difficulties countless. They put us to a non plus again and again. It is only the grace of God that at last enables us to bring them to the light. In their strange perversities of unbelief, the singular constructions and misconstructions which they put upon their case and upon scriptural statements, you will often find a world of instruction. I would sooner give a young man an hour with inquirers than a week in the best of our classes, so far as practical training for the pastorate is concerned.

Once more, be much at death-beds; they are illuminated books. There shall you read the very poetry of our religion, and learn the secrets thereof. What splendid gems are washed up by the waves of Jordan! What fair flowers grow on its banks ! The everlasting fountains in the glory-land throw their spray aloft, and the dew-drops fall on this side the narrow stream! I have heard poor humble men and women talk as though they were inspired, uttering strange words, aglow with immortal glory. These they learned from no lips beneath the moon; they must have heard them while sitting in the suburbs of the New Jerusalem. God whispers them in their ears amid their pain and weakness; and then they tell us a little of what the Spirit has revealed. I will part with all iny books, if I may see the Lord's Elijahs mount their chariots of fire.

Is not this enough upon our subject? If you desire more, it is time I remembered the sage saying, that it is better to send away an audience longing than loathing, and, therefore, Adieu!

The Farmer of St. Ives.

R. PAXTON HOOD is a man of many sides and faculties.

One

Me day he is wisely lecturing upon homiletics, and producing

Lamps, Pitchers, and Trumpets," and the next he is in another mood, pouring forth worlds of religious and irreligious anecdotes; he sends "Blind Amos" to the front, to prove that he can excel as a storyteller, and "Swedenborg" to claim for him a place among biographers. The man can do anything and everything, and do it well, too, and afterwards show you how it could have been done better. He must have read at least as much literature as could be found in two-thirds of the British Museum Library. His talk and his books show that he is an omnivorous reader; he swallows things clean and unclean, and on the whole has a fine discriminating digestion, and does not take up into his soul the grosser part of the material which his ravenous mental appetite devours by the ton. We have heard him poetise before this, and heard him sing his sonnets too, but we have not till this moment seen a volume of poems from his pen. Perhaps we break the rules of etiquette when we publicly acknowledge the receipt of "THE MAID OF NUREMBURG, AND OTHER VOLUNTARIES, by EDWIN PAXTON HOOD, sometime Minister of Queen Square Church, Brighton. Privately printed for the Author." If we do so, we beg pardon: the excellence of one of the poems has driven us into the error, and we hope to be forgiven. The subject is one with which we are in such deep sympathy, and one so worthy to be kept before the minds our young people, that we feel the utmost pleasure in adorning our pages with it.

"Raise up, raise up, the pillar! some grand old granite stone,
To the king without a sceptre, to the prince without a throne!
To the brave old English hero who broke our feudal gyves,
To the leader of the good old cause,' the Farmer of St. Ives.

"The old Plantagenets brought us chains; the Tudors frowns and scars; The Stuarts brought us lives of shame; the Hanoverian wars;

But this brave man, with his strong arm, brought freedom to our lives—
The best of princes England had was the Farmer of St. Ives.

"Oh, holy, happy homestead, there where the Farmer dwelt!
Around his hearth, around his board, the wearied labourers knelt;
Not there the jest, the curse, the song-in prayer each spirit bides,
Till forth they come, a glorious throng, the brave old Ironsides.
"Walk proudly past these hedges, for this is holy ground;
Amidst these lowly villages were England's bravest found;
With praying hearts and truthful, they left their homes and wives,
And ranged for freedom's cause, around the Farmer of St. Ives.
"Hark! England feels his tramping, our own Achilles comes;
His watchword, ' GOD IS WITH US!' it thunders through our homes.
High o'er the raging tumult, hark! to the Farmer's cry-

FEAR NOT, BUT PUT YOUR TRUST IN GOD, AND KEEP YOUR POWDER DRY.'
"Ho! Marston, 'neath the moonlight thy thousands owned his power.
Ho! Naseby, there the sceptre fell from out the monarch's power.
Ho! Preston! Dunbar! Worcester! Lo, there his spirit strives;
Hurrah! the tyrants fly before the Farmer of St. Ives.

"On many a Norman turret stern blows the hero dealt,

And many an old cathedral nave his echoing footsteps felt:

In many a lonely mansion the legend still survives,

How prayers and blows pell mell came down from the Farmer of St. Ives.

"He wrapped the purple round him, he sat in chair of state,

And think ye was not this man King? The whole world named him Great! The wary fox of Italy, and Bourbon's sensual slave,

And the old bluff Dutchman, owned the power of England's bold and brave. "He was the true defender of Freedom and of Faith;

When through the Vaudois valleys brave martyrs died the death,
He threw his banner o'er their homes and wrapt in it their lives;
And the Alpine summits sung the praise of the Farmer of St. Ives.
"His was the wizard power, he held it not in vain ;

He broke the tyrants' iron rule, and lashed them with their chain.
Oh! the shade of earth's great heroes, in all their pomp looked dim
When rose in Whitehall's palaces our great Protector's hymn.
"He died! the good old monarch died! Then to the land returned
The cruel, crownèd, reptile thing, that men and angels spurned;
He seized the bones as reptiles seize upon the buried dead,
And a fiend's malice wreaked upon that venerable head.
"And England, while from age to age fresh freedom she achieved,
Forgot the hand that wrote the page in which her heart believed;
From age to age earth held his dust, a life like other lives:
Lo, you! at length he breathes again, this Farmer of St. Ives.
"His name shall burn-no meteor, no comet hurrying by-
It shall return to light our world to future liberty,

Let tyrants dare to trample hearts and liberties and lives;
One name shall bid them tremble yet-the Farmer of St. Ives.
"Unfurl that drooping banner! Lo, let it float again;

Ye winds receive it in your clasp! waft it, thou surging main!
His watchword, 'GOD IS WITH US!' see ye it still survives;
The pulse of England beats like his-the Farmer of St. Ives.
"Raise up, raise up the pillar! some grand old granite stone,
To the prince without a sceptre, to the king without a throne!
To the brave old English hero, who broke our feudal gyves,
To the leader of the good old cause,' the Farmer of St. Ives."

The Object of Sabing Faith."

BY G. ROGERS, PRINCIPAL OF THE PASTORS' COLLEGE.

(Continued from page 418.)

IV. In what degree must the object of saving faith be known? We have seen that the salvation must be in the object, that this object must be in the Scriptures, and what that object is as contained in the Scriptures. Now, as this object may be presented in different degrees,

*We must apologise for permitting the second part of Mr. Rogers' article to stand over so long. It was an oversight. The paper is in the highest degree important and weighty. A more outspoken deliverance we have seldom read.-C. H. S.