fancy beheld in the evening light of autumn its tapers rekindled, and in the falling shadows marshalled anew the sacerdotal procession-an imagination revelling in all the picturesque and sublime of religion, and a heart responding with harmonious impulse to its loftiest requirements. There was Nicholas Ferrar― the Church-of-England man-closing his eyes on propitious fortune and radiant beauty, and that nothing earthly might distract his gaze, and no rest short of heaven allure his sense, immured in a protestant convent-meting to himself scanty slumbers on the hard pillow of an anchoret — with his goods feeding all the needy except himself, and indulging no luxury save the midnight music of the choristers whom he retained to "praise God nightly" in the oratory of Little Gidding. And Henry Hammond, economizing his time by the abundance of his prayers, and increasing his wealth by the wise munificence of his charities-living for his friends, reducing kindness to a law, and welcoming the interruption which called for its exercise-amidst bodily sufferings, producing works of research and judgment, demanding but sufficient to destroy the most vigorous health-omne jam tulerat punctum, cùm Mors, quasi suum adjiciens calculum, terris abstulit." Among these and many more,* almost as ascetic in his life, but above them all in the largeness of his views and the soundness of his creed, we recognise the gifted author of the following "Contemplations." The art of heavenly meditation," was that which he had chiefly studied. Even among his contemporaries, there were few who combined such density of expression with such amplitude of thought—few who had studied the Fathers so diligently, and who could command them so readily few who had drunk so deeply the classic inspiration-few who had entered into the meaning of Scripture, with the same spirit of quick apprehension and thorough appreciation-and fewer still who had learned to dwell so much on high. The spirit that taught the prophets to speak, taught him to understand. In his company we feel that we are not attended by a perfunctory and hireling guide- but by one whose profession is his passion, whose familiarity with sacred things is reverential whose insight is the result of love and long acquain tance. He was a man of peace, and delighted in the retirement without which it is seldom enjoyed." The court is for honour, the city for gain, the country for quietness; a blessing that need not, in the judgment of the wisest, yield to the other two. Yea, how many have we known that having nothing but a coat of thatch to hide them from heaven, yet have pitied the careful pomp of the mighty? How much more may they who have full hands and quiet hearts pity them both?" "What a heaven," as he elsewhere exclaims, "lives a scholar in, that at once in one close room can daily converse with all the glorious martyrs and fathers! - that can single out at pleasure, either sententious Tertullian, or grave Cyprian, or learned Jerome, or flowing Chrysostom, or divine Ambrose, or devout Bernard, or who alone is all these-heavenly Augustin, and talk with them, and hear their wise and holy counsels, verdicts, resolutions: yea, to rise higher, with courtly Isaiah, with learned Paul, with all their fellow-prophets, apostles: yet more, like another Moses, with God himself!" In such retirement passed the chosen hours of our author, and refreshed by such converse he penned his Contemplations. More sweet than odours caught by him who sails Near spicy shores of Araby the blest, A thousand times more exquisitely sweet, The freight of holy feeling which we meet, In thoughtful moments, wafted by the gale From fields where good men walk, or bowers wherein they rest."+ See Walton's Life of Herbert - Heber's Life of Taylor - Peckard's Life of Ferrar-and Fell's Life of Hammond. For others of the same period, the reader is referred to Lloyd's Memoirs, Walton's Lives, and Dr. C. Wordsworth's interesting collection of "Ecclesiastical Biography." + Wordsworth. The Work now laid before him, the reader will find richly freighted with this "holy feeling." Its value does not consist alone nor chiefly in the acute expositions of Scripture incidentally introduced-in the descriptive vivacity which paints the Bible scenes to the eye of fancy, or enacts its history anew-in the apothegmatical naïvetè, which deals out so calmly yet so pointedly the eager observations of a penetrating eye, on the various wisdom and folly, virtues and vices, with which a long life had made him familiar. Nor is it only in the ardent enforcement of Christian duty, and eloquent statement of Christian privilege, that this book bespeaks the attention of the serious reader. It presents in one view the Bible, and a mind rich in feeling and accomplishments, lovingly exploring and reverently interpreting the Bible; nay, as it were, fraternizing and amalgamating with it. These Contemplations will not be read with advantage by one who peruses them as a common book, as hastily and as unconcerned; nor will they be read aright without adverting continually to the peculiar mode of their execution, to their author and their end. In the former particular, they closely resemble the Confessions of his favourite Augustin, consisting of reflections and ejaculations, so mingled as to blend devotion with instruction. The author, whom we have already attempted to pourtray, recurs to our imagination as the gentle, self-denied, and benignant parish priest, whom his neighbours met and eyed reverentially as he took his stated evening walk, cheerful at times, but oftener pensive, in the fields near Waltham parsonage - a man of that calm resolution and ardent faith, which could at any warning have followed the Saviour whom he loved to prison and to death, and whose aspirations often soared so high as to forget the Meshech where he sojourned. And the end will be answered, if we who read them, learn for ourselves to live the same divine life, and acquire the same skill in heavenly meditation an art little esteemed and less practised in an age which would not be too busy if it thought as much as it toils; and an art concerning which a great proficient* has left a testimony which may compensate for our omissions, and form the appropriate introduction to the work that follows. "Be acquainted with this heavenly work, and thou wilt in some degree be acquainted with God; thy joys will be spiritual, prevalent, and lasting, according to the nature of their blessed object; thou wilt have comfort in life and death: when thou hast neither wealth, nor health, nor the pleasure of this world, yet wilt thou have comfort: without the presence or help of any friend, without a minister, without a book, when all means are denied thee, or taken from thee, yet mayest thou have vigorous, real comfort. Thy graces will be mighty, active, and victorious; and daily joy, which is thus fetched from heaven, will be thy strength. Thou wilt be as one that stands on the top of an exceeding high mountain; he looks down on the world as if it were quite below him- fields and woods, cities and towns, seem to him but little spots. Thus despicably wilt thou look on all things here below. The greatest princes will seem but as grasshoppers; the busy, contentious, covetous world, but as a heap of ants. Men's threatenings will be no terror to thee, nor the honours of this world any strong enticement: temptations will be more harmless, as having lost their strength; and afflictions less grievous as having lost their sting; and every mercy will be better known, and better relished." Baxter. CONTEMPLATIONS. BOOK I. CONTEMPLATION I.-THE CREATION. WHAT can I see, O God, in thy creation, but miracles of wonders? Thou madest something of nothing, and of that something all things. Thou, which wast without a beginning, gavest a beginning to time, and to the world in time. It is the praise of us men, if, when we have matter, we can give fashion: thou gavest a being to the matter, without form; thou gavest a form to that matter, and a glory to that form. If we can finish but a slight and imperfect matter according to a former pattern, it is the height of our skill: but to begin that which never was, whereof there was no example, whereto there was no inclination, wherein there was no possibility of that which it should be, is proper only to such power as thine the infinite power of an infinite Creator! With us, not so much as a thought can arise without some matter; but here, with thee, all matter arises from nothing. How easy is it for thee to repair all out of something, which couldst thus fetch all out of nothing! Wherein can we now distrust thee, that hast proved thyself thus omnipotent? Behold, to have made the least clod of nothing, is more above wonder, than to multiply a world! But now the matter doth not more praise thy power, than the form thy wisdom. What beauty is here! what order! What order in working! what beauty in the work! Thou mightest have made all the world perfect in an instant, but thou wouldst not. That will, which caused thee to create, is reason enough why thou didst thus create. How should we deliberate in our actions, which are so subject to imperfection; since it pleased thine infinite perfection (not out of need) to take leisure? Neither did thy wisdom herein proceed in time only, but in degrees: at first thou madest nothing absolute; first, thou madest things which should have being without life; then, those which should have life and being; lastly, those which have being, life, reason: So we ourselves, in the ordinary course of generation, first live the life of vegetation, then of sense; of reason afterwards. That instant wherein the heaven and the earth were created in their rude matter, there was neither day nor light but presently thou madest both light and day. While we have this example of thine, how vainly do we hope to be perfect at once! It is well for us, if, through many degrees, we can rise to our consummation. But, alas! what was the very heaven itself without light? How confused! how formless! like to a goodly body without a soul, like a soul without thee. Thou art light, and in thee is no darkness. Oh! how incomprehensibly glorious is the light that is in thee, since one glimpse of this created light gave so lively a glory to all thy workmanship! This even the brute creatures can behold! that, not the very angels,— that shines forth only to the other supreme world of immortality; this to the basest part of thy creation. There is one cause of our darkness on earth and of the utter darkness of hell;-the restraint of thy light. Shine thou, O God, into the vast corners of my soul, and in thy light I shall see light. But whence, O God, was that first light? The sun was not made till the fourth day light the first. If man had been, he might have seen all lightsome; but, whence A it had come, he could not have seen; as, in some great pond, we see the banks full; we see not the springs from whence the water ariseth. Thou madest the sun; madest the light without the sun, before the sun, that so light might depend upon | thee, and not upon thy creature. Thy power will not be limited to means. It was easy to thee to make an heaven without | sun, light without an heaven, day without a sun, time without a day. It is good reason thou shouldst be the Lord of thine own works. All means serve thee: why do we, weak wretches, distrust thee, in the want of those means which thou canst either command or forbear? How plainly wouldst thou teach us, that we creatures need not one another, so long as we have thee! One day we shall have light again without the sun: Thou shalt be our sun: thy presence shall be our light: "Light is sown for the righteous." The sun and light is but for the world below itself: thine only for above. Thou givest this light to the sun, which the sun gives to the world that light which thou shalt once give us, shall make us shine like the sun in glory. : Now this light, which for three days was thus dispersed through the whole heavens, it pleased thee, at last, to gather and unite into one body of the sun. The whole heaven was our sun, before the sun was created: but now one star must be the treasury of light to the heaven and earth. How thou lovest the union and reduction of all things of one kind to their own head and centre! so the waters must, by thy command, be gathered into one place, the sea: so the upper waters must be severed by these airy limits from the lower: so heavy substances hasten downward, and light mount up: so the general light of the first days must be called into the compass of one sun: so thou wilt once gather thine elect from all coasts of heaven, to the participation of one glory. Why do we abide our thoughts and affections scattered from thee, from thy saints, from thine anointed? Oh! let this light, which thou hast now spread abroad in the hearts of all thine, once meet in thee. We are as thy heavens, in this their first imperfection; be thou our sun, unto which our light may be gathered. Yet this light was by thee interchanged with darkness, which thou mightest as easily have commanded to be perpetual. The continuance, even of the best things, cloyeth and wearieth: there is nothing but thyself, wherein there is not satiety. So pleasing is the vicissitude of things, that the intercourse even of those occurrents, which in their own nature are less worthy, gives more contentment than the unaltered estate of better. The day dies into night, and rises into the morning again, that we might not expect any stability here below, but in perpetual successions. It is always day with thee above: the night savoureth only of mortality. Why are we not here spiritually, as we shall be hereafter? Since thou hast made us children of the light, and of the day, teach us to walk ever in the light of thy presence, not in the darkness of error and unbelief. Now, in this thine enlightened frame, how fitly, how wisely are all the parts disposed; that the method of the creation might answer the matter and the form both Behold all purity above; below, the dregs and lees of all. The higher I go, the more perfection; each element superior to other, not more in place than dignity; that, by these stairs of ascending perfection, our thoughts might climb unto the top of all glory, and might know thine imperial heaven, no less glorious above the visible than those above the earth. Oh! how miserable is the place of our pilgrimage, in respect of our home! Let my soul tread awhile in the steps of thine own proceedings; and so think as thou wroughtest. When we would describe a man, we begin not at the feet, but the head. The head of thy creation is the heaven; how high! how spacious! how glorious! It is a wonder that we can look up to so admirable a height, and that the very eye is not tired in the way. If this ascending line could be drawn right forwards, some, that have calculated curiously, have found it five hundred years' journey unto the starry heaven. I do not examine their art; O Lord, I wonder rather at thine, which hast drawn so large a line about this little point of earth: for, in the plainest rules of art and experience, the compass must needs be six times as much as half the height. We think one island great, but the earth immeasurable. If we were in that heaven, with these eyes, the whole earth (were it equally enlightened) would seem as little to us, as now the least star in the firmament seems to us upon earth: and, indeed, how few stars are so little as it? And yet, how many void and ample spaces are there beside all the stars" The hugeness of this thy work, O God, is little inferior for admiration to the majesty of it. But, oh, what a glorious heaven is this which thou hast spread over our heads! With how precious a vault hast thou walled in this our inferior world! What worlds of light hast thou set above us! Those things | sudden fires unto all tne parts of the earth' astonishing the world with the fearful noise of that eruption: out of the midst of water thou fetchest fire, and hard stones out of the midst of thin vapours: another while, as some steel glasses, wherein the sun looks, and shews his face in the variety of those colours which he hath not; there are thy streams of light, blazing and falling stars, fires darted up and down in many forms, hollow openings, and (as it were) gulfs in the sky, bright circles about the moon and other planets, snows, hail: in all which it is enough to admire thine hand, though we cannot search out thine action. There are thy subtile winds, which we hear and feel, yet neither can see their substance, nor know their causes; whence, and whither they pass, and what they are, thou knowest. There are thy fowls of all shapes, colours, notes, natures: whilst I compare these with the inhabitants of that other heaven, I find those stars and spirits like one another: Behold then in this high and stately build- these meteors and fowls, in as many varieties ing of thine, I see three stages: this lowest as there are several creatures. Why is this? heaven for fowls, for vapours, for meteors: Is it because Man (for whose sake these the second for the stars: the third for thine are made) delights in change, thou in conangels and saints. The first is thine out- stancy? or is it, that in these thou mayest ward court, open for all: the second is the shew thine own skill, and their imperfecbody of thy covered temple, wherein are tion? There is no variety in that which is those candles of heaven perpetually burn- perfect, because there is but one perfection? ing: the third is thine holy of holies. In and so much shall we grow nearer to perthe first is tumult and vanity: in the second, fectness, by how much we draw nearer to immutability and rest: in the third, glory unity and uniformity. From thence, if we and blessedness. The first we feel, the go down to the great deep, the womb of second we see, the third we believe. In moisture, the well of fountains, the great these two lower is no felicity; for neither pond of the world; we know not whether the fowls nor stars are happy. It is the to wonder at the element itself, or the guests third heaven alone, where thou, O blessed which it contains. How doth that sea of Trinity! enjoyest thyself, and thy glorified thine roar and foam and swell, as if it spirits enjoy thee. It is the manifestation would swallow up the earth? Thou stayest of thy glorious presence, that makes heaven the rage of it by an insensible violence; and, to be itself. This is the privilege of thy by a natural miracle, confinest his waves: children, that they here, seeing thee (which why it moves, and why it stays, it is to us art invisible) by the eye of faith, have al- equally wonderful: what living mountains ready begun that heaven, which the perfect (such are thy whales) roll up and down in sight of thee shall make perfect above. Let those fearful billows: for greatness of nummy soul then let these heavens alone, till ber, hugeness of quantity, strangeness of it may see as it is seen. That we may de- shapes, variety of fashions, neither air nor scend to this lowest and meanest region of earth can compare with the waters. I say heaven, wherewith our senses are more ac- nothing of thy hid treasures, which thy quainted; what marvels do even here meet wisdom hath reposed in the bowels of the with us? There are thy clouds, thy bottles earth and sea: how secretly and how basely of rain, vessels as thin as the liquor which are they laid up! secretly, that we might is contained in them: there they hang and not seek them; basely, that we might not move, though weighty with their burden: over-esteem them: I need not dig so low how they are upheld, and why they fall, as these metals, mineries, quarries, which here, and now, we know not, and wonder. yield riches enough of observation to the Those thou makest one while, as some airy soul. How many millions of wonders doth seas, to hold water: another while as some the very face of the earth offer me? Which airy furnaces, whence thou scatterest thy of these herbs, flowers, trees, leaves, seeds, |