treasure, and shall always remember there was nothing of death to be seen in his face, but rather something of a smile. How is the gold become dim, and the fine gold changed! That head, that hand so fitted for service, now cold and moveless. Lord, what is man, the greatest, the best? When God bids Moses go up and die on Mount Nebo, it is observable he adds, 'As Aaron thy brother was gathered to his people.' Sure this should mind me of my own dissolution, as sprung from the same good olive, and spending our childhood together in much comfort and pleasure, under that dear and benign shadow. I have reason to think he loved me the best of all his sisters, and it is with satisfaction I think of the love I had for him, and the great unity that was amongst us then, so that I do not remember one angry or unkind word betwixt us. Though I well remember that I have thought my dear mother had most tenderness and love for my brother, yet I was so far from envying for his sake that I complied with her, and loved him with a pure heart fervently. I remember the many cares and fears I had for him when he was ill of a fever at London, at Mr. Doolittle's, and the strong cries and tears I offered in secret to my heavenly Father, accompanied with a purpose of a particular act of religion that I would be found in, if God should hear prayer for him, and spare him to us, greatly dreading how my dear parents could bear the stroke. God was graciously pleased then to hearken to our petitions, and give him to us again; but, after a time, my good purposes (to my shame) proved abortive."

"Friday, June 25.—We gathered up the mantle of this dear Elijah, took the remains to Chester, lodged them in

the silent tomb, 'the house appointed for all living.' We laid him in Trinity Church, by his dear first wife, accompanied with a vast crowd desiring to pay their tribute to his blessed memory."

In 1687 Mr. Henry married Miss Hardware, a young lady remarkable for her beauty and piety; but when they had been only eighteen months united she was seized with the small-pox, and died. His second wife was Miss Warburton, of Grange, the virtuous daughter of a respected family. By this marriage a son and five daughters survived him. The son inherited the estate of Grange, and assumed the maternal name. It is feared that he did not inherit his father's piety. For some time he represented the city of Chester in Parliament.

By his sermons, and his abundant personal labours, Matthew Henry served his generation; by his industrious and ingenious pen he has done a service to the world. From time to time he published tracts and treatises, which met with some attention even in that drowsy age, and many of which have been highly valued since. The "Pleasantness of a Religious Life" has been often republished, and no treatise on the Lord's Supper is better known or prized than the "Communicant's Companion." The present volume contains other specimens of his practical theology, which, though they have not gone into oblivion, have not got into the wide circulation to which their solid worth and earnestness entitle them. In reading his " Directions for Daily Communion with God," the interest and profit of the perusal will be augmented by remembering that it was his own daily effort to "walk with God."

However, these and all his other treatises-enough to engross the leisure hours of any other pastor, if not to immortalize any other divine-were incidental efforts on the part of this herculean student, and mere episodes in a colossal undertaking. His industry, piety, and sanctified genius, have left their peerless memorial in "An Exposition of the Old and New Testament;" and like the Penseroso, and other poems, which are read with double interest because their author wrote "Paradise Lost," the following tracts, if excellent themselves, should be read with keener expectation by those who remember that their author wrote Henry's Exposition.

It is with literary monuments as with architectural trophies; we like not only to know who reared them, but how they went to work, and we would be glad to learn how far they enjoyed their labour, and what were their emotions when the task was done. Kennicott's process in collating the Hebrew text, and Johnson's operations in compiling his mighty Lexicon, are among the most interesting curiosities of literature, and few passages in autobiography are more thrilling than those, for instance, in which Gibbon records his moon-light musings when the "Decline and Fall" was finished, and Pollok describes the rapture in which he completed the "Course of Time." Few achievements can be so vast as a continuous commentary on the Bible. We are therefore grateful to Dr. Adam Clarke's biographer for telling us how, during the forty years that his book was in building, he would sometimes be so absorbed that he did not observe the knock at the study-door, but was discovered on his bended knees with the pen in his

hand and the paper before him; and how, when the last sentence was written, he led his son into the library, and surprised him by the new spectacle of the great table, cleared of all its folios, and nothing but a Bible remaining. "This, Joseph, is the happiest period I have enjoyed for years. I have written the last word. I have put away the chains that would remind me of my bondage. And there have I returned the deep thanks of a grateful soul to the God who has shown me such great and continued kindness." And we can sympathize with his family, who, sharing in his emancipation, testified their joy by presenting him with a silver vase. And it exceedingly enhances our interest in Scott's Notes, when we remember the circumstances of bodily suffering and financial anxiety in which they were written, and if we sometimes deem them common-place or meagre, we rebuke our discontent by asking, "How could they be better when the press was always clanking at his heels, and he often rose from a bed of sickness to write them?" Matthew Henry did not live to finish his great undertaking, but to the research of his biographer, we are indebted for some interesting particulars regarding the commencement and progress of the work. It was a labour of love, and like the best productions of the pen, flowed from the abundance of the author's mind. The commentary was all in Matthew Henry before a word of it was written down. In his father's house, as we have seen, the Bible was expounded every day, and he and his sisters had preserved ample notes of their father's terse and aphoristic observations. Then during his own Chester ministry he went over more than

once the whole Bible in simple explanations to his people. Like the Spartan babe whose cradle was his father's shield, it would be scarcely a figure to say that the Bible was the pillow of his infant head, and familiar with it from his most tender years it dwelt richly in him all his days. It was the pivot round which his meditations, morning, noon, and evening, turned, and whatever other knowledge came in his way, he pounced on it with more or less avidity as it served to elucidate or enforce some Bible saying. What has been remarked of an enthusiast in Egyptian antiquities that he had grown quite pyramidal-may be said of the Presbyterian minister at Chester; he had grown entirely biblical. He had no ideas which had not either been first derived from Scripture, or afterwards dissolved in it. And as his shrewd sense, his kindly nature, his devotional temperament, and his extensive information were all thoroughly scripturalized, it needed no forcing nor straining. It was but to draw the spigot, and out flowed the racy exposition. "The work has been to me its own wages, and the pleasure recompense enough for all the pains."

Much was incidentally jotted down, and the materials lay affluent about him, before he commenced writing for the press. It was the advice of the Rev. Samuel Clarke and other friends which moved him to begin, and the following entry in his journal announces the commencement of the work. "Nov. 12, 1704. This night, after many thoughts of heart, and many prayers concerning it, I began my Notes on the Old Testament. It is not likely I shall live to finish it, or if I should, that it should be of public