revelation, can supply. The Christian may, however, direct his attention, not merely to these, but to the more wonderful phenomena of the moral world, as manifested it may be, even in his own history, but still more in that of the servants of God generally, not only with an increasing acquaintance with Him who is "wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working;" but with an overwhelming assurance that he shall certainly know more hereafter; that the developements of eternity will bring out results past all present imagining, and at the same time so reflect upon them the glory of the Divine attributes, that, alike to the "redeemed from the earth," and to "principalities and powers in heavenly places, shall be made known, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God." It is therefore his duty, as well as his blessed privilege, to get nearer to his celestial home, by frequently meditating on these things. And though our distance from the throne of Him who "is light" is vast indeed, some glimpse of the great subject, useful to ourselves and to others, we may undoubtedly obtain; some relations in the complex scheme of the Divine administration, it is even here permitted to us to trace out. Thus, that a variety of moral training is adopted in this childhood of our existence, connected with various conditions of future felicity and of future service too-for "they serve Him day and night" in the heavenly temple, we may well imagine; but that there is a course of discipline connected with extensive usefulness even here, we may sometimes distinctly perceive. Just as in the natural world, we often see what is termed a prospective contrivance, apparently of little or no present use, but exquisitely adapted to effect some ultimate result; so when it pleases God to bring about any remarkable purpose, through the medium of human instrumentality, his providential dealings towards the individual, dark and mysterious at the time, are even on this side of eternity occasionally seen to issue in events of surpassing brightness. A few outlines only of the subject can we understand, because we know not how the destinies of eternity, and the happiness of many, may, in the relation of cause and effect, be dependent upon the instrumentality of one; yet that little may well lead us not only to admire and adore, but to have our "loins girded about, and our lights burning," and diligently to improve every talent, however

small, wherewith we may have been intrusted, since we can never know what other talent, or what recompence of reward it may, if diligently improved, be the means of acquiring.

To make a few remarks upon one instance in point only, is our subject at present. As an author, the individual to whom we allude is sufficiently well known. Perhaps the records of his early moral history have not met with the attention they deserve. Certainly he was not made what he was, in consequence of birth, or in the least by education, in the ordinary sense of the term.

At the commencement of the reign of Charles II., amongst the earlier sufferers by the exclusive measures then adopted, an itinerant preacher in the county of Bedford was imprisoned in Bedford jail, where, as is well known, he continued for nearly twelve years. His descent, as he himself tells us, had been "of that rank that is meanest, and most despised of all the families of the land." He had, in fact, been a tinker of low and dissolute habits; early instruction, with the exception of the elements of reading and writing, soon again forgotten, he had received none; with companions calculated to elevate his mind, excepting a Baptist teacher, and a few pious, but very poor people, he had never met. Yet, within the walls of a confined cell in that gloomy prison, unassisted by scarcely any book except his Bible and the Book of Martyrs, apparently unconscious of what he was about, manifestly without any fixed design, did he accomplish at least one work, which may be justly styled immortal, not merely because, in the ordinary sense of that sometimes misused term, it has handed down his name to posterity, but in a far higher one still, because the result of it will only be made manifest when time shall be no more-a work, which Mr. Montgomery has not eulogized too highly, in saying, not merely that it has already exercised, during the two centuries which have nearly rolled away since its production, but that “it will continue to exercise more influence over minds of every class, than the most refined and sublime genius, with all the advantages of education and good fortune has been able to rival in this respect"work, which, taken altogether, may be justly styled unique. Written in a style which has equal charms for the most polished and the most illiterate, for childhood, and for mature age, it seems even

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