and James Stuart, the Sixth of Scotland, ascended the English throne. It is with this family, and the times which went over them, that we have mainly to do to-night. First we have, during the reign of James, and the earlier years of his son Charles I., a period of outward ecclesiastical quiet, however discordant elements may have been fermenting beneath the surface. Then comes a period, during the latter days of Charles I., and the Commonwealth, of revo lution, and violent change; then lastly follows the Restoration, and the deadly slumber of regained tranquillity under Charles II.

With the character of one or other of these three periods every one of the preachers of the time was more or less marked, as he was involved in its quarrels, or reposing in its calm. We all belong to the age in which we live, more than we are apt to think; and as family likenesses, untraced by those in the family, are clearly perceived by strangers, so those who look on an age from without it best see how it influenced all who lived in it. We cannot counterfeit a handwriting so well, but that a keen judge will discern the trick of our own pen; and so the men of an age, write as diversely as they will, yet smack of the age, and reflect it more or less in their books.

It will be my endeavour to bring before you one preacher at least out of each of these periods, to give a short notice of each man, and some examples of his preaching.

In our first period, the most prominent figure that challenges our notice is that of JoHN DONNE, dean of St. Paul's. Donne was born in 1573, and was consequently twenty-nine at the death of Elizabeth. He was brought up a Roman Catholic, and was strong in the points of the controversy between the churches. The whole of this controversy he went diligently over on his arriving at man's estate, and

the result was, that he deliberately abandoned the Church of Rome, and attached himself to the reformed faith. In early youth, if one may judge from his poems, he appears to have been wild and licentious in life; but it is, perhaps, not fair thus to judge; for such was the licence allowed to revolting language in that day, that it may be nearly as unfair to suppose a man licentious, who wrote licentious verses, as it would be now to suppose a boy a heathen, because he composed Latin verses in the spirit of the heathen mythologies. However, Donne's own confessions, in after days of penitence, seem to go the length of charging him with something more than mere worldliness and gaiety. This penitence certainly began before mature manhood, and the issue of it seems to have been, that though at this time a layman, and secretary to the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, his thoughts and studies were mainly turned towards religious subjects. He did not enter the ministry of the church till the year 1612, when he was in his fortieth year; and his doing so was at the special request of King James I. In 1617, he became preacher of Lincoln's Inn; and in 1621, Dean of St. Paul's, where he continued till his death, in 1631.

His reputation as a preacher among his contemporaries was exceedingly high. Walton, a frequent hearer of Donne, thus characterizes his preaching:-"A preacher in earnest, weeping sometimes for his auditory, sometimes with them; always preaching to himself like an angel from a cloud, but in none; carrying some, as St. Paul was, to heaven in holy raptures, and enticing others by a sacred art and courtship to amend their lives; here picturing a vice so as to make it ugly to those that practised it; and a virtue, so as to make it beloved even by those that loved it not; and all this with a most particular grace, and an inexpressible addition of comeliness."

In an elegy by Mr. R. B., we read,—

"Methinks I see him in the pulpit standing,

Not ears, nor eyes, but all men's hearts commanding,
When we that heard him, to ourselves did feign
Golden Chrysostom was alive again;

And never were we wearied, till we saw

His hour (and but an hour) to end did draw."

In another by Mr. Mayne, of Christ Church:

"Thou with thy words couldst charm thine audience,
That at thy sermons, ear was all our sense;

Yet have I seen thee in the pulpit stand,

Where we might take notes from thy look and hand;
And from thy speaking action bear away

More sermon, than some teachers use to say.
Such was thy carriage, and thy gesture such.
As could divide the heart, and conscience touch.
Thy motion did confute, and we might see
An error vanquished by delivery."

And I am bound to say, that these eulogies are borne out by his yet remaining sermons. We have in them much of the pedantry and much of the quaintness of the time; but through both these breaks in on every page a fine vein of manly Christian fervour and eloquence. He does not much study nicety of language, or well-balanced periods, though he is given to play upon words, and point, and antithesis. In copiousness of thought, in many-sided and almost inexhaustible views of truth, no English preacher has ever yet surpassed him; nor in the solemnity with which, as if standing on a superior place and blending compassion with severity, he fearlessly, and yet affectionately, lays bare the sins, and vices of his hearers. But it is not in diction, nor in genius, nor in power of thought, that we must look for the crowning excellence of Donne's sermons. We find in them that which we feel to be wanting in some of the great preachers of this, and in almost

all of the succeeding age,—a distinct and clear exposition of the evangelical doctrines of redemption. Allowing for all blemishes of puerility or superstition in Donne's sermons, there yet remains as sound a body of orthodox divinity, animated by a fervid, earnest, tender spirit, as can be found in the whole range of English or foreign divines and preachers. The following extract is from a Christmas sermon on Gal. iv. 4, 5. Speaking of the words, "that we might receive the adoption of sons," he says:

"But who are this We? why, they are the elect of God. But who are they, who are these elect? Qui timidè rogat, docet negare; if a man ask me with a diffidence, can I be the adopted son of God that have rebelled against him in all my affections, that have trodden upon his commandments in all mine actions, that have divorced myself from him in preferring the love of his creatures before himself; that have murmured at his corrections, and thought them too much; that have undervalued his benefits, and thought them too little; that have abandoned and prostituted my body, his temple, to all uncleanness, and my spirit to indevotion and contempt of his ordinances; can I be the adopted son of God, that have done this? Ne timide roges, ask me not this with a diffidence and distrust in God's mercy, as if thou thoughtest, with Cain, thy iniquities were greater than could be forgiven; but ask me with that holy confidence which belongs to a true convert, am not I, who though I am never without sin, yet am never without hearty remorse and repentance for my sins; though the weakness of my flesh sometimes betrays me, the strength of his Spirit still recovers me; though my body be under the paw of that lion that seeks whom he may devour, yet the lion of Judah raises again and upholds my soul; though I wound my Saviour with many sins, yet all these, be they never so many, I strive against, I lament, confess, and for

sake as far as I am able; am not I the child of God, and his adopted son in this state? Roga fidenter, ask me with a holy confidence in thine and my God, et doces affirmare, thy very question gives me mine answer to thee; thou teachest me to say, thou art. God himself teaches me to say so by his apostle, The foundation of God is sure, and this is the seal; God knoweth who are his, and let them that call upon his name depart from all iniquity. He that departs so far, as to repent former sins, and shut up the ways which he knows in his conscience do lead him into temptations, he is of this quorum; one of us, one of them who are adopted by Christ to be the sons of God. I am of this quorum, if I preach the Gospel sincerely, and live thereafter (for he preaches twice a day that follows his own doctrine, and does as he says) and you are of this quorum, if you preach over the sermons which you hear, to your own souls in your meditation, to your families in your relation, to the world in your conversation. If you come to this place to meet the Spirit of God, and not to meet one another; if you have sat in this place with a delight in the word of God, and not in the words of any speaker; if you go out of this place in such a disposition as that, if you should meet the last trumpets at the gates, and Christ Jesus in the clouds, you would not entreat him to go back, and stay another year; to enwrap all in one, if you have a religious and sober assurance that you are his, and walk according to your belief, you are his; and, as the fulness of time, so the fulness of grace is come upon you, and you are not only within the first commission, of those who were under the law, and so redeemed, but of this quorum, who are selected out of them, the adopted sons of that God, who never disinherits those that forsake not him."

Speaking of eternity, he says:-"A day that hath no pridie, nor postridie; yesterday doth not usher it in, nor