of Eton college. When fitted for the university, his master recommended that, instead of being sent to it, he should be put under the tuition of Mr. Richard Wickstead, chaplain to the council at Ludlow, who was allowed by the king to have a single pupil. But he also neglected his trust. The only advantage young Baxter had with him, was the enjoyment of time and books. "Considering the great neglect," says Mr. Orme, his biographer, "of suitable and regular instruction, which Baxter experienced in his youth, it is wonderful that he ever rose to eminence. Such disadvantages are very rarely altogether conquered. But the strength of his genius, the ardor of his mind, and the power of his religious principles, compensated for minor defects, subdued every difficulty, and bore down, with irresistible energy, every obstacle that had been placed in his way.

During his short residence at Ludlow castle, Baxter made a narrow escape from acquiring a taste for gaming, of which he gives a curious account. The best gamester in the house undertook to teach him to play. The first or second game was so nearly lost by Baxter, that his opponent betted a hundred to one against him, laying down ten shillings to his sixpence. He told him there was no possibility of his winning, but by getting one cast of the dice very often. No sooner was the money down, than Baxter had every cast which he wished; so that before a person could go three or four times round the room, the game was won. This so astonished him that he believed the devil had the command of the dice, and did it to entice him to play; in consequence of which he returned the ten shillings, and resolved never to play more. Whatever may be thought of the fact, or of Baxter's reasoning on it, the result to him was important and beneficial.

On returning from Ludlow castle to his father's house, he found his old schoolmaster, Owen, dying of a consumption. At the request of Lord Newport, he took charge of the school till it should appear whether the master would die or recover. In about a quarter of a year, his death relieved Baxter from this office, and as he had determined to enter the ministry, he placed himself under Mr. Francis Garbet, then minister of Wroxeter, for further instruction in theology. With him he read logic about a month, but was seriously and long interrupted, by symptoms of that complaint which attended him to his grave. He was attacked by a violent cough, with spitting of blood, and other indications of consumption. The broken state of his health, the irregularity of his teacher, and his want of an university education, materially injured his learning and occasioned lasting regrets. He never acquired any great knowledge of the learned languages. Of Hebrew he scarcely knew anything; his acquaintance with Greek was not profound; and even in Latin, as his works show, he must be regarded by a scholar as little better than a barbarian. Of mathematics he knew

nothing, and never had a taste for them. Of logic and metaphysics he was a devoted admirer, and to them he dedicated his labor and delight. Definitions and distinctions were in a manner his occupation; the quod sit, the quid sit, and quotuplex-modes consequences and adjuncts, were his vocabulary. He never thought he understood anything till he could anatomize it, and see the parts distinctly; and certainly very few have handled the knife more dexterously, or to so great an extent. His love of the niceties of metaphysical disquisition plunged him very early into the study of controversial divinity. The schoolmen were the objects of his admiration. Aquinas, Scotus, Durandus, Ockham, and their disciples, were the teachers from whom he acquired no small portion of that acuteness for which he became so distinguished as a disputer, and of that logomachy by which most of his writings are deformed. "Early education," says Mr. Orme, "exerts a prodigious power over the future pursuits and habits of the individual. Its imperfections or peculiarities will generally appear, if he attempt to make any figure in the literary or scientific world. The advantages of a university or academical education will never be despised, except by him who never enjoyed them, or who affects to be superior to their necessity. It cannot be denied, however, that some of our eminent men, in all departments and professions, never enjoyed these early advantages.

Among these was Richard Baxter. In answer to a letter of Anthony Wood, inquiring whether he was an Oxonian, he replied with dignified simplicity: "As to myself, my faults are no disgrace to any university, for I was of none; I have little but what I had out of books, and inconsiderable helps of country tutors. Weakness and pain helped me to study how to die that set me on studying how to live; and that on studying the doctrine from which I must fetch my motives and comforts. Beginning with necessities, I proceeded by degrees, and now am going to see that for which I have lived and studied."

The defects of early education Baxter made up by greater ardor of application and energy of purpose. He never attained the elegant refinements of classical literature, but in all the substantial attainments of sound learning he excelled most of his contemporaries. The regrets which he felt, at an early period, that his scholarship was not more eminent, he thus expresses:

That so my praise might go before thy grace
Preparing men thy messages to embrace;
Also my work and office to adorn,

And to avoid profane contempt and scorn.

But these were not thy thoughts; thou didst foresee
That such a course would not be best for me,

Thou mad'est me know that man's contempt and scorn,

In such a cross as must be daily borne."

The principal scene of Baxter's pastoral labors was Kidderminister. Here he resided about fourteen years, and his labors were attended with remarkable success. "It was a great advantage to me," says Baxter, "that my neighbors were of such a trade as allowed them time to read or talk of holy things. For the town liveth upon the weaving of Kidderminister stuffs; and they stand in their looms, the men can set a book before them, or edify one another; whereas ploughmen, and many others are so wearied, or continually employed, either in the labors or the cares of their callings, that it is a great impediment to their salvation. Freeholders and tradesmen are the strength of religion and civility in the land; and gentlemen and beggars, and servile tenants, are the strength of iniquity. Though among these sorts, there are some also that are good and just, as among the other there are many bad. And their constant converse and traffic with Lonaon, doth much promote civility and piety among tradesmen.

"Another furtherance of my work, was the books which I wrote and gave away among them. Qf some small books I gave each family one, which came to about eight hundred; and of the larger, I gave fewer; and every family that was poor, and had not a Bible, I gave a Bible to. I had found myself the benefit of reading to be so great, that I could not but think it would be profitable to others. "God made use of my practice of physic among them also as a very great advantage to my ministry; for they that cared not for their souls did love their lives, and care for their bodies; and by this, they were made almost as observant, as a tenant is of his landlord. Sometimes I could see before me in the church, a very considerable part of the congregation, whose lives God had made me a means to save, or to recover their health; and doing it for nothing, so obliged them that they would readily hear me. Another help to my success, was the small relief which my low estate enabled me to afford the poor; though the place was reckoned at near two hundred pounds per annum, there came but ninety pounds, and sometimes but eighty pounds to me. Beside which, some years I had sixty or eighty pounds a year of the booksellers for my books; which little dispersed among them, much reconciled them to the doctrine that I taught. I took the aptest of their children from the school, and sent divers of them to the universities; where for eight pounds a year, or ten, at most, by the help of my friends, I maintained them. Some of them are honest, able ministers, now cast out with their brethren; but, two or three having no other way to

live, turned great conformists, and are preachers now. In giving the little I had, I did not enquire whether they were good or bad, if they asked relief; for the bad had souls and bodies that needed charity most. And this truth I will speak to the encouragement of the charitable, that what little money I have now by me, I got it almost all, I scarce know how, at that time when I gave most, and since I have had less opportunity of giving, I have had less increase. "My public preaching met with an attentive, diligent auditory. Having broke over the brunt of the opposition of the rabble before the wars, I found them afterwards tractable and unprejudiced. Before I entered into the ministry, God blessed my private conference to the conversion of some, who remain firm and eminent in holiness to this day; but then, and in the beginning of my ministry, I was wont to number them as jewels; but since then I could not keep / any number of them. The congregation was usually full, so that we were fain to build five galleries after my coming thither; the church itself being very capacious, and the most commodious and convenient that ever I was in. Our private meetings, also, were full. On the Lord's days there was no disorder to be seen in the streets; but you might hear a hundred families singing psalms and repeating sermons as you pass through them. In a word, when I came thither first, there was about one family in a street that worshipped God and called on his name, and when I came away, there were some streets where there was not one poor family in the side that did not so; and that did not, by professing serious godliness, give us hopes of their sincerity. And in those families which were the worst, being inns and ale-houses, usually some persons in each house did seem to be religious. Though our administration of the Lord's supper was so ordered as displeased many, and the far greater part kept away, we had six hundred that were communicants; of whom there were not twelve that I had not good hopes of as to their sincerity."

In accounting for these signal and blessed effects of his ministry, his biographer remarks with great justice, that "Baxter never spoke like a man who was indifferent whether his audience felt what he said, or considered him in earnest on the subject. His eye, his action, his every word, were expressive of deep and impassioned earnestness, that his hearers might be saved. His was eloquence of the highest order; not the eloquence of nicely selected words, -or the felicitous combination of terms and phrases-or the music of exquisitely balanced periods, (though these properties are frequently to be found in Baxter's discourses,) but the eloquence of the most important truths, vididly apprehended, and energetically delivered. It was the eloquence of a soul burning with ardent devotion to God, and inspired with the deepest compassion for men, on whom the powers of the worlds of darkness and light, exercised their mighty influence; and spoke through his utterances, all that

was tremendous in warning, and all that was delightful in invitation and love. The gaining of souls to Christ was the only object for which he lived. Hence, amidst the seeming variety of his pursuits and engagements, there was a perfect harmony of design. His ruling and controling principle was the love of his Master, producing the desire of a full and faithful discharge of his duty, as his approved minister. This was the centre around which every thing moved, and by which every thing in his circumstances and character was attracted or repelled. This gave unity to all his plans, and constituted the moral force of all his actions.

Baxter died December 8, 1691. He left the world in joyful assurance of entering into the saint's everlasting rest. During his sickness, when the question was asked, How he did? his reply was, Almost well.

In reviewing the life of this extraordinary man, we see what powerful and numerous difficulties a resolute mind can overcome. Baxter, during his whole life, might be almost said to die daily. Hardly ever was such a mind connected with so frail an earthly lodging-place. He was the sport of medical treatment and experiment. At about fourteen years of age he was seized with the small-pox, and soon after, by improper exposure to the cold, he was affected by violent catarrh and cough. This continued for about two years, and was followed by spitting of blood, and other phithisical symptoms. One physician prescribed one mode of cure, and another a different one; till, from first to last, he had the advice. of no less than thirty-six professors of the healing art. He was diseased literally from head to feet; his stomach acidulous, violent rheumatic headaches, prodigious bleeding at the nose, his blood so thin and acrid that it oozed out from the points of his fingers, and often kept them raw and bloody. His physicians called it hypochondria. He himself considered it to be premature old age; so that at twenty he had the symptoms, in addition to disease, of four-score. He was certainly one of the most diseased and afflicted men that ever reached the ordinary limits of human life. How, under such circumstances, he was capable of making the exertions which he almost incessantly made, appears not a little mysterious.

Baxter lived also in one of the most stormy periods of English history. Men were bound, and in "deaths oft," for conscience sake. For preaching the truth, as they honestly believed it to be, no less than two thousand ministers were, on one occasion, ejected from their pulpits. Civil wars raged with fearful violence, and many were the men whose hands were imbrued in fraternal blood. Baxter was in all these tumultuous scenes; now in the army of the Protector, now showing his dexterity in logical warfare before councils and synods, now in prison, and now in his pulpit at Kidderminister. In short, he lived at the time of Selden, and Milton, and Hampden, and Pyn-at the time of the breaking up of the dark