Puslapio vaizdai
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himself anew to the sacred office. In February, 1829, he thought the Church of England retained too much of the spirit of popery. In

March, 1833, he received Christ merely as

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our moral king." In December, 1834, he recorded himself a deliberate Unitarian!

But his satisfaction in his reception of the frigid creed of Unitarianism was singularly shortlived.

In 1836 he began HABITUALLY to wish for death and death with him had a terrible meaning.

His sufferings, sorrows, bitter regrets, reiterated complaints, and unrestrained impatience for death, alike point one weighty and too much forgotten moral- the self-destructive character of infidel speculations.

The man whose course we are tracing had knowledge various and well digested—an unselfish disposition kindly impulses - rare delicacy of feeling-considerable grasp of intellect great aptness in catching new impressions and enviable facilities in retaining

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them-all overborne by that desolating and exhausting power with which unbelief lays waste the mind of its victim. His history and fate recal vividly the wisdom of the injunction -"Be not highminded, but fear."

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CHAP. VII.

The Female Champion for Truth.

CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH.

"When the celebrated Whitfield was in America, Mr. Tennent, an American divine, paid him a visit, as he was passing through New Jersey, and one day dined in his company, along with other parties more or less connected with the pastoral office. After dinner, Whitfield adverted to the difficulties attending the path of a religious teacher; lamented that all his zeal availed but little; affirmed that he was wearied and worn out with the burden of the day; declared that his great consolation arose from the fact that in a short time his work would be done, when he should depart and be with Christ. He then appealed to his fellow-labourers present if it was not their great comfort that they should go to rest. They all assented, with the exception of Mr. Tennent, who sat by the side of Whitfield, absorbed and silent, but, by his countenance, testifying little pleasure in the conversation. On which Whitfield, tapping him on the knee, said, 'Well, brother Tennent, you are the oldest man among us. Do you not rejoice to think that your time is so near at hand when you will be called home?' Mr. Tennent bluntly answered, 'I have no wish about it!' Whitfield pressed him again; and the other replied, 'No, Sir, it is no pleasure to me at all;

and if you knew your duty it would be none to you. I have nothing to do with death; my business is to live as long as I can-as well as I can - and to serve my master as faithfully as I can, until he shall think proper to call me home.' Whitfield still urged an explicit answer to his question, in case the time of death were left to his own choice. Mr. Tennent replied, 'I have no choice about it. I am God's servant, and have engaged to toil in his cause so long as he pleases to continue me therein. And now, brother Whitfield, permit me, in turn, to put to you a question. What, think you, I should say if I were to send my man into the field to plough, and if at noon I should find him lounging under a tree, and complaining—“Master, the sun is very hot, and the soil is very stiff, and the ploughing very hard; I am weary of the work you have appointed me, and am overdone with the burden and heat of the day: do, Master, let me return home; discharge me; free me from this hard service; and, though the work you have entrusted to me is hardly begun, let me begone. What should I say to him? Say to him! that he was a lazy fellow, and that it was his business to do the work that I had appointed him until I should think fit to call him home.' The important truth conveyed by this pleasant reproof was at once admitted by the auditors."-Remains of the Good and Great.

CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH BROWN, born towards the close of the last century, was the only daughter of a minor canon of the ca

thedral church of Norwich. Her birth at Norwich is an important feature in her biography; for by that circumstance much of the complexion of her future character was, probably, determined. The dark old gateway of the strong building in which the glorious martyrs of Mary's day were imprisoned was one of the objects which in early childhood daily met her eye; daily was she accustomed to pass beneath the " Martyr's Gateway" into the splendid garden of the Episcopal Palace : and if her unwavering protestantism may not be traced to that locality, her tastes on the subjects of architecture and gardening were materially influenced by it. She was a creature gifted, almost from infancy, with an imagination rich and vivid. She was an ardent worshipper of nature; exulted in fine scenery; loved flowers as if she had been a fairy; delighted in music; held it "a gift to be prized, cherished, and cultivated;" and believed with Martin Luther, that "the great Enemy of Mankind hates music."

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