quent remarks to their instruction on any passage which seemed most to interest or affect them. It also supplied him with a more thorough knowledge of his discourse, and enabled him by alteration and addition, to render it more lucid, pungent, or practical, to his congregation.

He was considered uncommonly able and acute in argument, and as the colony rose from infancy, to accessions of wealth and vigor, his society was courted by those who could appre ciate the treasures of a superior and well-stored mind. Though a man of learning, he could successfully simplify his style to the humblest capacity, when circumstances required. Not unfrequently has the untutored Indian wept and trembled at hearing from his lips the first sounds of salvation. Thus he continued in assiduous labor for fourteen years, as colleague with the Rev. Mr. Hooker, and for sixteen after his death.

The approach of the destroyer of his earthly tabernacle, occasioned no dismay. "Heaven," he said, "is the more desirable since such men as Hooker and Shepherd, have taken

up

their abode there." On the 20th of July, 1663, he quietly fell asleep, lamented and beloved.

He wrote much, but published few of his compositions. Mention is made by the historians of that day, of an elaborate body of divinity arranged by him, parts of which were occasionally transcribed by candidates for the ministry, who had studied under his supervision. Other works of his are alluded to by cotemporary writers.

A plain monument erected to his memory, in the most ancient burial place at Hartford, is still in a gcod state of preservation, though the tempests of almost two centuries have tried it, and its epitaph characterizes him in the quaint dialect of the age, as

"New England's glory, and her radiant crown.'

1615

REV. RICHARD BAXTER.

RICHARD BAXTER was born at Rowton, a small village near Shrewsbury, England, on the 12th of November, 1615. His father was a man of small property, but of an intellectual and religious character; and parental influence doubtless aided the contemplative and pious disposition which was early developed in this son. His advantages for obtaining knowledge during childhood were exceedingly circumscribed; but he afterwards compensated for this deficiency by unusual severity of application. In the station of Master of the Free School in Dudley, he made such exertions for ,the good of those entrusted to his care, and devoted his intervals of leisure so strictly to

study, that his health and strength declined. Under the impression that his life would be short, he acquired such a sense of the vanity of earthly allurements and possessions, and of the surpassing value of the duties and consolations of religion, as never faded or forsook him.

At the age of twenty-five, he became the pastor of Kidderminster, and notwithstanding his feeble health, entered on a laborious course of pulpit duty and parochial visitation. There was at first but little to cheer him in his labors. Ignorance and profanity abounded; and the daily service of prayer rose up from few family altars. But during the sixteen years of continuance there, his efforts were so signally blessed, that he gathered a church of six hundred communicants; and the Sabbath which had long been so desecrated in that region, became marked by such strictness of observance, that those who during the intervals of divine worship passed through the streets, might hear from the open casements in summer, hundreds of families engaged in singing psalms, reading the Scriptures, or recapitulating the

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