sacrament of love which makes all Christian hearts feel their everlasting oneness in Christ. And very beautiful is it, as we picture the scene in that venerable and antiquated house of prayer, with its huge pillars,-dark oaken pulpit and pews, and mural tablets and hatchments, to meet with the little incident recorded by Harmer; that the learned pastor pleaded as a precedent in favor of his devolving such a duty upon another, the case of Polycarp, who did the like at Rome, at the request of the Bishop Anicetus-"a graceful management of antiquity," as Harmer says, an agreeable correspondence in modern practice.* How Doddridge's love for Mr. Scott and his family was reciprocated by them, is seen from the following extract of an unpublished letter, written by Miss Scott, in 1746:

"We regard you, we will not say as the chief ornament and support of the Dissenting interest, but of vital, powerful Christianity in a degenerate land. How indulgent has Providence been to spare you! I and my dear father have been joining in our most affectionate thanks to Heaven, and we now join in our most earnest entreaties to yourself, to do all that in you lies for the preservation of so important (oh! how important!) a life of future years of usefulness."+

Taking a summer tour through the midland counties,

*Harmer's Miscellaneous Works, p. 183.

There are in the published Correspondence some beautiful letters to Miss Scott, when she was in deep spiritual depression.

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down into Somersetshire, his letters disclose many a touching incident; and to take one out of several, we find a notice of his welcome from Fawcett and Darracott, cordial in both cases,-rapturous in the latter; the seraphic-hearted apostle of the west bursting into tears, if about to lose his father," when Doddridge seemed as if he would accept the invitation of old Mr. Marshall, who struggled to be first to say, "Dear Doctor, make my house your home." And then, to the Northamptonshire brethren, how strong and tender was his attachment! "Long," said he to them, "have we beheld, and, blessed be God, long have we felt, how good and how pleasant a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. Long has the odor of this precious ointment filled our little tabernacles with its perfume." Some of Harborough, and Norris of Welford, were cherished names in the long list of his endeared companions and fellow-laborers in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ.

With affection most intense did he love his own domestic circle. With a fondness almost excessive did he dote on his dear wife, Mercy,—writing to her when from home, after long years had matured their union, with all the flush and fervor of a first attachment. To his daughter, during a visit at Walthamstow, he says, "Indeed you are so dear to me, that everything which looks like danger to you, afflicts me sensibly in its most distant approach. It has pleased God so to form my heart, that I question whether any man living feels more

exquisitely on such occasions. The life of either of my children, and of such a child, is more to me than the treasures of a kingdom; and there is hardly anything in which your excellent mamma is not immediately concerned, which I so much desire, as that you may all live to bless the world many years after I have left it." And never was there paid a tribute of paternal love, blended with submissive piety, more exquisitely tender and manly than that which Doddridge offered in his incomparable sermon on the death of his darling Elizabeth, in her fifth year, which is said to have been written, in part, upon the coffin which inclosed her remains.*

Some characters in the history of their social life shine with a forbidding grandeur. Their virtues are stern, awful, majestic. They seem to retire from us. They are fenced round with a superiority that keeps us at a distance. Their brilliant points are points of repulsion. Others beam with a mild, attractive light: their virtues are of the gentle cast: they seem to approach. The distance between us lessens the longer we look. Their goodness is magnetic. Before the former we uncover our heads, and kneel down; the latter we embrace as friends. We need not say to which class Doddridge belongs.

* My venerable friend, the Rev. T. P. Bull, has in his possession the original MS. of this discourse, which he brought to show us at the Northampton meeting, when this memorial was presented. In Dr. Doddridge's private account-book, in the possession of Mr. Charles Reed, there occurs the following item, under the proper date :-" For funeral expenses, £12 7s. 3d."

CHAPTER V.

HIS SPIRITUAL LIFE.

RICH, ripe fruits of holy, Christ-like labor borne by Doddridge, plainly indicated the existence and vigor of a corresponding inward life. It is not necessary for our satisfaction respecting the vital grace of Christian character, that there should be disclosed to us the secret processes of the soul's experience, any more than that for us to know that a tree is living we should see its roots. But the penetralia of the inner man has been opened in the case of Doddridge, and the sacred things there disclosed are too precious to be passed by without some looks of lingering admiration. His private papers reveal the rise and progress of religion in his soul, like a river-course cleansing itself from its first impure admixtures, and swelling into a broad, deep flood of silvery splendor. As we turn over his diary and letters, his growth in grace is manifest: from year to year he increases in Christian stature. He puts away childish things; he drops his boyish follies, and rises into the grave, earnest, strong-willed, consistent man of God.

No man ever became what Doddridge was by accident. The methods he adopted for the growth and government of spiritual life are notable. Taking God's writhe, like many other

ten word as his Magna Charta law, good men, and not unwisely, enacted for himself, in harmony with these, certain bye-laws for the better carrying out the spirit of his supreme obligations. He framed rules for the employment of time, the order of business, his reading, his prayers, his self-examination, and the whole range of his daily conduct. These were reduced to writing, and in them were embodied the definite standard he meant to aim at-the minute laws he meant to work by. If the ideal excellence proposed be not defined and lofty, and the rules adopted in its pursuits strict and exact, the actual excellence attained will be irregular and low. Material builders work by lines of mathematical correctness, and spiritual builders must work by lines of moral perfection. When we forget Divine rules, and go on building without reference to them, such faith and holiness as we so erect, soon become "as a bowing wall and tottering fence." Deviating from the perpendicular, the work falls down, and our labor is all lost. And never does the spiritual workman, any more than the mechanical one, in his happiest efforts attain to the ideal standard at which he aims; but it would be idle and foolish on that account, in either case, to throw aside the plumb-line, and say, aiming at perfect exactitude is useless. Rather, after