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Christians. He knew them to be holy, and he felt that they were happy. "It was one of the first things," said he, "which struck my mind in profligate state, that, in spite of all the folly and hypocrisy and fanaticism which may be seen among religious professors, there was a mind after Christ, a holiness, a heavenliness, among real Christians." He added, on another occasion, "My first convictions on the subject of religion were confirmed from observing that really religious persons had some solid happiness among them, which I had felt that the vanities of the world could not give. I shall never forget standing by the bed of my sick mother. 'Are not you afraid to die?" I asked her: 'No.' 'No! Why does the uncertainty of another state give you no concern? Because God has said to me, Fear not: when thou passest through the waters I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.' The remembrance of this scene has oftentimes since drawn an ardent prayer from me, that I might die the death of the righteous."

His mind opened very gradually to the truths of the Gospel: and the process through which he was led is a striking evidence of the imminence of his past danger. "My feelings," he said, "when I was first beginning to recover from my infidelity, prove that I had been suffered to go great lengths; and, to a very awful degree to believe my own lie. My mind revolted from Christianity. God did not bring me to himself, by any of the peculiar motives of the Gospel. When I was about twenty years old, I became utterly sick of the vanity, and disgusted with the folly, of the world. I had no thought of Jesus Christ, or of Redemption. The very notion of Jesus Christ or of Redemption repelled me. I could not endure a system so degrading. I thought there might possibly be a Supreme Being; and if there were such a Being, he might

hear me when I prayed. To worship the Supreme Being seemed somewhat dignified. There was something grand and elevating in the idea. But the whole scheme and plan of redemption appeared mean, and degrading, and dishonorable to man. The New Testament, in its sentiments and institutions, repelled me; and seemed impossible to be believed, as a religion suitable to man."

The grace of God triumphed, however, over all opposition. The religion, which began in this disgust with the world and disaffection to the peculiar doctrines of the Gospel, made rapid advances in his mind. The seed sown in tears by his inestimable mother, though long buried, now burst into life, and shot forth with vigor: and he became a preacher of that truth, which once he labored to destroy! Yet grace did not annihilate the natural character and qualities of the mind; though it regulated and directed them. The Christian's feelings and experience were modified by the constitution of the man. After a long course of spiritual watchfulness and warfare, he spoke thus of himself:

"There is what Bacon calls a DRY LIGHT, in which subjects are viewed, without any predilection, or passion, or emotion, but simply as they exist. This is very much my character as a Christian. I have great constitutional resistance. Tell me such a thing is my DUTY-I know it is, but there I stop. Talk to me of HELL-my heart would rise with a sort of daring stubbornness. There is a constitutional desperation about me, which was the most conspicuous feature in my character when young, and which has risen up against the gracious measures which God has all my life taken to subdue and break it. I feel I can do little in religion without ENCOURAGEMENT. I am persuaded and satisfied, tied and bound, by its truth and importance and value; but I view the subject in a DRY LIGHT. strong sense of DIVINE FRIENDSHIP goes a vast

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way with me. When I fall, God will raise me. When I want, God will provide. When I am in perplexity, God will deliver. He cares for inepities me-bears with me-guides me-loves me!” But the energy of Divine Grace was most conspicuous, in the control and mastery of this resisting and high spirit of which our friend complained. Nay, if there were any one Christian virtue in which he was more advanced than any other, it appears to me to have been HUMILITY-not that humility which debases itself that it may be exalted, and which is offended if its professions be believed: but the humility which arose from abiding and growing conviction of his infinite distance from the standard of perfection, and the little comparative use which he had made of his many means and helps in approaching that standard-an humility that expressed itself, therefore, in a teachableness of mind, a ready acknowledgment of excellence in others, and a candor in judging of other persons, which are seldom equalled; and which were rare endowments in a mind that could not but feel its own powers, and its superiority to that of most other men. But God has a thousand unseen methods of forming and cherishing those graces in his servants, which seem most opposed to their constitution, and least to be expected in their circumstances.

Mr. Cecil gave me one day the following remarkable illustration of this subject in his own case:

"A friend, who knew him for thirty or forty years, has informed me," 39 says Mr. Wilson, in the Sermons preached on occasion of Mr. Cecil's death, "that he was more ready to hear of his faults from persons whom he esteemed, than most men. When any failings were pointed out to him, he usually thanked the reprover, and anxiously inquired for further admonitions. I have observed myself, that, when he gave advice, which he did with acuteness and decision, he was quite superior to that little vanity which is offended if the counsel be not followed.”

It is a nice question in casuistry.-How far a man nay feel complacency in the exercise of talent. A awk exults on his wing: he skims and sails, deighting in the consciousness of his powers. I know othing of this feeling. DISSATISFACTION accomanies me, in the study and in the pulpit. I never nade a sermon, with which I felt satisfied: I never reached a sermon, with which I felt satisfied. I ave always present to my mind such a conception f what MIGHT be done, and I sometimes hear the hing so done, that what I do falls very far beneath what it seems to me it should be. Some sermons which I have heard have made me sick of my own or a month afterwards. Many ministers have no Conception of any thing beyond their own world: hey compare themselves only with themselves; and, erhaps they must do so: if I could give them my iews of their ministry, without changing the men, hey would be ruined; while now they are eminent nstruments in God's hands. But some men see too much beyond themselves for their own comfort. Perhaps complacency in the exercise of talent, be it what it may, is hardly to be separated, in such a wretched heart as man's, from pride. It seems to me that this dissatisfaction with myself, is the messenger sent to buffet me and keep me down. In other men, the separation between complacency and pride may be possible; but I scarcely think it is so in me."*

I have alluded to Mr. Cecil's READY ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE WORTH OF OTHERS; and I

* Mr. Churton has a remark on Dr. Johnson, somewhat of a similar nature to this of Mr. C. on himself. He thinks that "Johnson's morbid melancholy and constitutional infirmities were intended by Providence, like St. Paul's thorn in the flesh, to check intellectual conceit and arrogance; which the consciousness of his extraordinary talents, awake as he was to the voice of praise, might otherwise have generated in a very culpable degree."-Boswell's Life of Johnson, 2d Edit. 8vo. vol. iii, p. 564.

must add, that he cultivated that discrimination of excellence, which leads a man to discover and esteem it in the midst of imperfections. He had an unfeigned regard to real worth, wherever it was found. The powers of the understanding have often fascinated men of inferior wisdom, and lessened the odiousness of an immoral state of heart too plainly seen in others; but if the excellencies of the head and the heart must be disjoined, he never failed to value that which is most truly valuable. He would say "Such a friend of ours is what many men look down on, as a weak man; but I honor his wisdom and his devotedness. He throws himself out, and all the powers which God has given him, into the service of his Master, in all those ways which seem to him best; and, though perhaps he and I should for ever differ on the best way, and though I see in him many peculiarities and weaknesses, yet I honor and love the man: I revere his simplicity and his piety. He is what God has made him; and all that he is he puts into action for God." If Mr. Cecil was at any time severe in his remarks on others, his severity was chiefly directed against that ignorant vanity and affectation, which push a man forward where great men would retire, and which make him dogmatical where wise men would speak with humility and candor.

Closely allied with his humility, was that OPENNESS TO CONVICTION, which Mr. Cecil possessed in an unusual degree. He had dived so deeply into his own heart, and had read man so accuratelyhis short-sightedness, his scanty span, his pride, and his passions-that he was, more than most men, superior to that little feeling which makes us quit the scholar's form. Many men speak of themselves and of all around them as in a state of pupilage and childhood, but I never approached a man, on whose mind this conviction had a more real and practical influence.