THE difference between Luther and Wolsey lies here. Luther toiled for the people, and for God and Christ in the people;-Wolsey laboured for himself and for all other objects as they found shrine and temple for himself. Luther obeyed his conscience-Wolsey gave heed to passion. Luther asked what is right-Wolsey inquired what is expedient for myself. Luther was led on by the light of a divine idea-Wolsey was attracted by the glimmer of an ignis fatuus. Both being dead, yet speak :Luther, in the triumph of his principles, : saith, "Follow me;"-and Wolsey cries, "Mark but my fall, and that that ruined me." Luther did "Hasten to the goal of fame between the posts of duty," and Luther lives in endless renown. Wolsey crossed the course, and Wolsey sinks in deserved contempt.—S. Martin. There is a great deal in being in harmony with what you have to do, or what you go anywhere to listen to or enjoy. You learn more from a discourse on any subject with which you have already some acquaintance; — and you experience satisfaction and delight, and receive and retain impressions of pleasure, in proportion as you have an inward sympathy with anything you read, see, or hear. This law of your nature is applicable to religion and religious engagements. You can do much to promote in yourselves and to seek from God, that "preparation of heart" for your public sabbath-worship, which being possessed, you will find that neither the day nor the duty can be felt as "a weariness." It makes every prayer instructive as a sermon; and a true sermon, though ineloquent, subduing as devotion and sweet as song. Many a poor discourse is rich to them whose hearts are right; and many a good one appears bad from causes existing only in the hearer.-T. Binney. SUN RISES & SETS CHRONOLOGICAL PAGE FOR MAY, 1849. FAMILY BIBLE READING. MEMORANDA. Ann. Meet. Church Mission, Exeter Hall. Sunday School Union Lessons, Religious Tract Soc. breakfast, Lond.Tavern. S. S. U., Matt. xii. 1-21, Mark ii. 23, iii. [6, Exodus xx. Moon rises, 36 m. past 1, morning. Moon sets, 4 m. past 10, morning. Moon's last quarter, 30 m. past 10, morning. Prince Albert to preside at Serv. Prov. Mg. 1803, Buonaparte appointed Emperor. Moon rises, 57 m. past 2, morning. Moon sets, 56 m. past 3, afternoon. S. S. U., Mark iii. 9-19, Luke vi. 12-19, National Temperance Society, Exeter Hall. 1805, Dr. Paley died. 1846, Princess Helena born. Moon rises, 29 m. past 8, morning. S. S. U., Matt. v. 1-12, Luke vi. 20-26, [Psalm 1xxiii. Whitmonday. Moon's first quarter, 23 m. past 11, night. 1660, Charles II. restored. Quarterly Meeting of Baptist Board. 2 P REVIEW S. Memoirs of Mr. JOHN STEVENS, late Pastor | ance, and made so favourable an im of the Baptized Church of Christ at Meard's Court, Dean Street, Soho, London. With a Selection from his Spiritual Correspondence. Compiled at the Request and under the Direction of his bereaved Church. London: Houlston and Stoneman. 8vo. pp. 304. pression on the rector, who sometimes heard him without entering the place in which the auditors generally were assembled, that the doctor offered to procure his admission to the university if he would consent to be a clergyman. This from conscientious motives he declined, and became pastor of baptist churches, at Oundle two years, at St. Neot's five years, and at Boston six years. In all these places his ministry appeared to be successful. In 1811, Mr. Burnham having been removed by death, Mr. Stevens accepted an invitation to the pastorate at Grafton Street; the church at Boston, though deeply regretting his removal, THE subject of these pages was born at Aldwinkle, in the year 1776. His father was a pious shoemaker, and the son was trained to the same employment. Dr. Haweis, one of the chaplains to the Countess of Huntingdon and a well known writer, was rector of the parish, and under his ministry the lad received serious impressions. When he was about sixteen years of age he visited London with a view to improve-yet "expressing their entire acquiescence ment in his business, and became connected with some dissenters. Zealous for the established church, and persuaded that it would be easy to show these people their error, he sought for arguments against their notions in the scriptures; but "the more he laboured to prove them wrong the more deeply he became convinced that they were right." He then attended the ministry of Mr. Burnham, pastor of the baptist church in Grafton Street, Soho, and entered into its fellowship. It was not long before he was encouraged to exercise his gifts as a preacher, and, though he failed in his first attempt, he speedily acquired such readiness and freedom, that when he was but nineteen years of age he received the sanction of the church at Grafton Street "to preach the gospel as the providence of God might open a door of usefulness to him." Returning to Northamptonshire he preached at Aldwinkle and the neighbouring villages with such accept in the event, as involving his increased comfort, extended usefulness, and the consequent glory of God, through his future ministrations in a more arduous field of labour." At Grafton Street Mr. Stevens continued till the place became too small for the increasing congregation, when he and his friends engaged at a rent of £200 per annum, a very spacious chapel in York Street, St. James's, which had formerly belonged to the Spanish ambassador. Here he continued to labour from 1813 to 1824, when he took possession of a large building which he had erected on his own responsibility in Meard's Court, Wardour Street, Soho. His friends, however, fully concurred in the design, and contributed liberally to defray the expense. After the lapse of some years, the debt on the chapel became sufficiently reduced to render a mortgage easy to obtain, and the chapel was forthwith placed in trust for the use of the church and congregation." This place he occupied till his exertions were terminated by illness about a fortnight before his dismission from the body, which was on the 6th of October, 1847. "He was employed in the work of the ministry," says his biographer, "about fifty-one years; and the blessed results of his labours, both in extending the cause of Christ and in establishing believers in the faith of the gospel, it is impossible fully to estimate. His early ministry was abundantly owned of God in various places; and in the metropolis, where he laboured with assiduity and zeal during a period of thirty-six years, he maintained an honourable standing, and successfully advocated the great principles of absolute and discriminating grace. He occupied the chapel in Meard's Court exactly twenty-three years; having preached his first sermon on Sept. 19, 1824, and delivered his last discourse on the same date in 1847. During the entire period of his ministry, he baptized about 737 persons, which with ten baptized by Mr. Thornley, and five by Mr. Murrell at Salem, make the number of 752 persons baptized during the whole period of his pastorate." Mr. Stevens appears to have been a sincere, devout, and industrious servant of him whom we delight to recognize as the Great Master. His habits, in preparing for his public work, appear to have been those of a diligent and faithful steward. "Sometimes," we are told, "he wrote his thoughts at considerable length,-at all times he conscientiously devoted considerable attention to the study and arrangement of his subjects. In his estimation pulpit work was solemn work. To present a sacrifice to the Lord that had cost him little or nothing was inimical to his faith and repugnant to his feelings. If under any uncontrollable circumstances he had to appear in the pulpit without due preparation, or, as was sometimes the case, with frustrated intentions, he found a supply in the Lord's fulness, and the streams not unfrequently became a fulness to others. But of such unpreparedness in his public ministrations he made no fulsome boast; rather did he secretly deplore the necessity of that which some ministers are exceedingly anxious that everybody should know, but of which they seldom need give people information,—that they preach without study and premeditation. pp. 99, 100. The doctrines which we regard as essential to the Christian system, Mr. Stevens held firmly, and while he proclaimed the important truth that salvawith it a constant recognition of the tion is entirely of grace, he combined necessity of obedience to the divine will. Yet, it seems, that between him and the baptist ministers of the metropolis in general there was from the first a mutual indisposition to close fellowship or co-operation, and this arising from doctrinal differences. His biographer tells us that— "While the truths which he regarded of paramount importance were denounced by the leading men of our denominational societies; and their agents were notoriously imbued with Arminian principles, and were employed in giving currency to the most flagrant errors; he considered that truth, conscience, and consistency, required him to stand alone, rather than by co-operating with those brethren to use his influence in advancing a system of error, which he honestly believed was fast tending to the extinction of the distinguishing truths of the gospel, in the generality of the baptist churches." And again, it is said, "It seems impossible to mark the rapid progress which error has made, and the shameless effrontery with which in the high places of our denomination its advocates are undermining the most vital and precious doctrines of the gospel, without feeling that honour is due to the men who, foreseeing the tendency of the incipient evil, fearlessly lifted up their voice against it, and as conscientiously refrained from identifying themselves with that popular movement which, doubtless, has materially conduced to its magnitude and prevalence." p. 52. The truth was, that Mr. Stevens, like many of his contemporaries, not only delighted in the important truths which are prominent in the system technically called Calvinism, but that he disbelieved as firmly certain other truths which seemed to him to be incompatible with them. To some of his brethren in the ministry these sentiments appeared to be scriptural and harmonious; but to Mr. Stevens they seemed to be so inconsistent that he who taught the one must renounce or at least undervalue the other. He regarded it as a denial of certain principles, to assert what was in his judgment at variance with those principles. Nor was this all: Mr. Stevens deduced from those principles certain inferences which to others did not appear to flow from them necessarily, and then he was as tenacious of the inferences as he was of the principles themselves. In these circumstances, much cordial co-operation between the parties was impracticable. With his views, we think that he was quite right in standing aloof from our principal denominational societies. However much we may regret what we regard as misapprehension of facts and errors of judgment, we honour the stedfastness which led him to make a decided stand against sentiments which he supposed to be "inimical to the gospel of free grace." Mr. Stevens, however, was not alone in these views. There are surviving ministers of the same class; and they and their hearers know as little of us and our proceedings as though we were avowedly of two distinct denominations. But it has struck us as remarkable, in going through this volume, that these brethren are so very little able to cooperate harmoniously with each other. There are names which, in passing through the streets, we have been accustomed to see on handbills, as to preach with each other at certain places, and which we meet with in this book; but it is a mistake, apparently, to suppose that they are the united advocates of certain definite theological views. If we may judge from what we read here, they agree far better in repudiating what they understand to be our doctrine than in establishing their own. Of the numerous controversial publications issued by Mr. Stevens, it is worthy of observation, how many of them were directed against writers of his own class, and how often he had to defend himself against men who agreed with him in preserving a marked separation from us. They appear to be generally men fond of peculiarities-each one very fond of his own peculiarity, and each one rather intolerant of the peculiarities of his brother. Their phraseology in reprehending each other, and the manner in which they describe each other's imputed deviations from orthodoxy, may serve to reconcile us, in some degree, to the manner in which they speak of such theologians as ourselves. Thus we find one of the most popular among them, now deceased, describing Mr. Stevens's favourite notion of the pre-existence of the human soul of Christ, prior to his incarnation, as "a delusion of the most dreadful kind 99 _66 cqually awful to any thing that can be supposed"-"a daring heresy "-"absurd and preposterous." Another conducted his portion of the controversy in such a manner as to elicit from Mr. Stevens the remark"This may appear to you good scheming, but honest men must, on seeing it, at once condemn your artifice. I had always imagined you to be a very different man to what your measures represent you to be." By another, the biographer declares, "the writings of Mr. Stevens were maliciously mis-represented, and the pre-existerians were malignantly defamed and persecuted. His defamatory book would, perhaps, have remained unanswered, but for the eulogium it received from the pen of the reviewer in the Spiritual Magazine; which described the performance as being 'a superior little book, the author of which displayed more than ordinary critical acumen, &c.'" All these were men who cordially agreed with Mr. Stevens in his want of confidence in the conductors of our denominational societies, and whose language in denouncing those whom they call "the advocates of a yea and |