These memories-distinct, deep-linedLight up each travelled path behind, Like fitful fire-lights, to the mind.

To some they cling like curse of Cain, Down pressing, on the burdened brain, Some torturing thought of giant pain.

To others, like a falling star,

They bring glad-tidings, rich and far,

From worlds where light and beauty are.

upon

This volume, entitled "Sabbath Chimes," as well as the lectures which Mr. PUNSHON delivered in Exeter Hall, have been published by Messrs. Nisbet and Co., and have attained great popularity. His lecture on Bunyan is one of the most eloquent performances in the language; and those upon Wilberforce and Macaulay are astonishing for richness and splendour. That on Elijah, "the prophet of Horeb," is less ornate, but is distinguished by rare majesty and profound earnestness. Perhaps the most popular of the series, however, was that the Huguenots. From the proceeds of its delivery Mr. PUNSHON gave a donation of a thousand pounds towards the Wesleyan Chapel in Spitalfields. Throughout his whole career he has exhibited a chivalrous generosity and a noble superiority to pecuniary considerations. It has been his delight to work for others, and see his own reward in the result attained. He was struck with the want of accommodation for Wesleyans at several popular Watering-Places, and, in 1862, he announced his determination to raise, if possible, ten thousand pounds within five years, for the erection of chapels in the localities. He had much to contend against, for not only did a

purpose;

commercial crisis and the cotton famine occur within the period, but "nearly £200,000 were raised within the denomination for the Missionary Jublilee." But he achieved his and last August, when the term of five years was completed, he declared that the £10,000 had been collected. His health, however, suffered from the excess of his exertions, and comparative repose become indispensable.

Mr. PUNSHON was married during his early ministry in Newcastle to the daughter of Mr. Vickers, of Gateshead. He has survived this lady, who died in 1858, leaving him several children. He has lately been appointed to proceed to Canada and the United States, to represent the Wesleyans of England and to preside in Conferences. The occasion of his visit to the western continent was seized upon by many of his admirers as suitable for the presentation to him, of a testimonial, in the form of a sum of money, as a recognition of his services to the Wesleyan cause, and a token of esteem for his character and respect for his genius.

He exhibited a reluctance to accept the testimonial, which no one who has learned to understand him will doubt to have been sincere, but his friends wisely determined to over-rule his objections. has earned a more genuine title to the gratitude and admiration of his contemporaries.

No man

He

In person, Mr. PUNSHON has an appearance of great robustness, which conveys the idea of more vigorous health than he seems to enjoy. His features, which are strong and massive rather than delicate, indicate great determination of character, and wear the unmistakable impress of honesty, energy, courage, faithfulness, and kindness of heart. His gesture in oratory is not graceful; but the eye sparkles with the keen ray of genius, and the sustained impetuosity of his torrent of speech overwhelms and carries away the hearer. is a fine specimen of the Protestant preacher : and while her preachers are what he has been— friends of every noble and salutary enterprise, advocates of every good cause, pleaders on behalf of God and of goodness with men, promoters of all that is true and honest, and lovely and virtuous, and of good report, guardians of domestic purity, honoured guests on birthday and at bridal, and consolers at the bed of death,-well may England prize and maintain her Protestant pulpit!

B 2

ELIJAH ON CARMEL.

"Call up that scene before you, with all its adjuncts of grandeur and of power. The summit of the fertile hill, meet theatre for so glorious a tragedy-the idolatrous priests, with all the pompous ensigns of their idol-worship, confronted by that solitary but princely man-the gathered and anxious multitude the deep silence following on the prophet's questionthe appeal to fire-the protracted invocation of Baal -the useless incantations and barbaric rites, from morning even until noon, and from noon until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice-the solemn sarcasm of Elijah-the building of the altar of unfurnished stone--the drenching and surrounding it with water, strangest of all strange preparations for a burnt-sacrifice- the sky reddening as if it blushed at the folly of the priests of Baal-the sun sloping slowly to the West, and falling aslant upon the pale faces of that unweary multitude, rapt in fixed attention, patient, stern, unhungering-the high accents of holy prayer-the solemn pause, agonising from its depth of feeling the falling flame, a fire of intelligence and power' the consuming of all the materials of the testimony and that mighty triumph-shout, rolling along the plain of Sharon, waking the echoes of the responsive mountains, and thrilling over the sea with an eloquence grander than its own,-there it stands history of wonders, and one of the most magnificent and conclusive forthputtings of Jehovah's power! But abstract your contemplations now from the miraculous interposition, and look at the chief actor in the scene. How calm he is! How still amidst that swaying multitude! They, agitated by a thousand emotions he, self-reliant, patient, brave! Priests mad with malice-people wild in wonder-an ominous frown darkening the royal brow-Elijah alone unmoved! Whence this self-possession? What occult principle so mightily sustains him? There was, of course, unfaltering dependence upon God. But there was also the consciousness of integrity of purpose, and of a heart at one.' There was no recreancy in the soul. He had not been the passive observer, nor the guilty conniver at sin. He had not trodden softly, lest he should shock Ahab's prejudices or disturb his repose. He had not shared in the carnivals of Jezebel's table.

that scene in its entireness-most wonderful even in a

He had not preserved a dastardly neutrality. Every one knew him to be on the Lord's side.' His heart was always in tune; like Memnon's harp, it trembled into melody at every breath of heaven."

A PURPOSE IN LIFE.

"It is not probable that our mission is to beard unfaithful royalties, or to pull down the edifices which are festooned with the associations of centuries. But in the sphere of each of us-in the marts of commerce, in the looms of labour-while the sun is climbing hotly up the sky, and the race of human pursuits and competitions is going vigorously on, there is work enough for the sincere and honest workman. The sphere for personal improvement was never so large. To brace the body for service or for suffering-to bring it into subjection to the control of the masterfaculty to acquaint the mind with all wisdom-to

hoard, with miser's care, every fragment of beneficial knowledge--to twine the beautiful around the true, as the acanthus leaf around the Corinthian pillar-to quell the sinward propensities of the nature to evolve the soul into the completeness of its moral manhood -to have the passions in harness, and firmly curb them to bear the image of the heavenly '-to strive after that mind which was also in Christ Jesus,'— here is a field of labour wide enough for the most resolute will. The sphere of beneficent activity was never so large. To infuse the leaven of purity into the disordered masses-to thaw the death-frost from the heart of the misanthrope-to make the treacherous one faithful to duty-to open the world's dim eye to the majesty of conscience-to gather and instruct the orphans bereft of a father's blessing and of a mother's prayer-to care for the outcast and abandoned, who have drunk in iniquity with their mother's milk, whom the priest and the Levite have alike passed by, and who have been forced in the hotbed of poverty into premature luxuriance of evil,-here is labour, which may employ a man's whole lifetime, and his whole soul.

Young men, are you working? Have you gone forth into the harvest-field bearing precious seed? Alas! perhaps some of you are yet resting in the conventional, that painted charnel which has tombed many a manhood; grasping eagerly your own social advantages; gyved by a dishonest expediency; not doing a good lest it should be evil spoken of, nor daring a faith lest the scoffer should frown. With two worlds to work in-the world of the heart, with its many-phased and wondrous life, and the world around, with its problems waiting for solution, and its contradictions panting for the harmoniser-you are perhaps enchained in the Island of Calypso, thralled by its blandishments, emasculated by its enervating air. Oh, for some strong-armed Mentor to thrust you over the cliff, and strain with you among the buffeting waves ! Brothers, let us be men. Let us bravely fling off our chains. If we cannot be commanding, let us at least be sincere. Let our earnestness amend our incapacity. Let ours not be a life of puerile inanities or obsequious Mammon-worship. Let us look through the pliant neutral in his hollowness, and the churlish miser in his greed, and let us go and do otherwise than they. Let us not be ingrates while Heaven is generous, idlers while_earth is active, slumberers while eternity is near. pose, and let that purpose be one. Without a central principle all will be in disorder. Ithaca is misgoverned, Penelope beset by clamorous suitors, Telemachus in peril, all because Ulysses is away. Let the Ulysses of the soul return, let the governing principle exert its legitimate authority, and the harpy-suitors of appetite and sense shall be slain-the heart, married to the truth, shall retain its fidelity to its bridal-vow, and the eldest-born, a purpose of valour and of wisdom, shall carve its high way to renown, and achieve its deeds of glory. Aim at this singleness of eye. Abhor a life of self-contradictions, as a grievous wrong done to an immortal nature. And thus, having a purpose-one purpose-a worthy purpose-you cannot toil in vain. Work in the inner-it will tell upon the outer world. Purify your own heart-you will have a reformative power on the neighbourhood, Shrine the

Let us have a pur

eye, and there is passion in his soul. He writes as if joy did make him write.' He has felt all the fulness of his story. The pen moves too slowly for the rush of feeling as he graves his own heart upon the page. There is beating over him a storm of inspiration. Great thoughts are striking on his brain, and flushing all his cheek. Cloudy and shapeless in their earliest rise within his mind, they darken into the gigantic, or brighten into the beautiful, until at length he flings them into bold and burning words. Rare visions rise before him. He is in a dungeon no longer. He is in the palace Beautiful with its sights of renown and songs of melody, with its virgins of comeliness and of discretion, and with its windows opening for the first kiss of the sun. His soul swells beyond the measure of its cell. It is not a rude lamp that glimmers on his table. It is no longer the dark Ouse that rolls its sluggish waters at his feet. His spirit has no sense of bondage. No iron has entered into his soul. Chainless and swift he has soared to the Delectable Mountains-the light of Heaven is around him-the river is the one, clear as crystal, which floweth from the

throne of God and of the Lamb-breezes of Paradise blow freshly across it, fanning his temples and stirring his hair from the summit of the Hill Clear he catches rarer splendours-the new Jerusalem sleeps in its eternal noon-the shining ones are there, each one a crowned harper unto God-this is the land that is afar off, and THAT is the King in his beauty; until prostrate beneath the insufferable splendour, the dreamer falls upon his knees and sobs away his agony of gladness in an ecstacy of prayer and praise. Now, think of these things-endearing intercourse with wife and children, the ever-fresh and ever-comforting Bible, the tranquil conscience, the regal imaginings of the mind, the faith which realized them all, and the light of God's approving face shining broad and bright upon the soul, and you will understand the undying memory which made Bunyan quaintly write 'I was had home to prison.':

VERSIONS OF THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. "One of the most amusing and yet conclusive proofs of the popularity of this wonderful allegory is to be found in the liberties which have been taken with it, in the versions into which it has been rendered, and in the imitations to which it has given rise. Mr. Offor, in his carefully-edited and invaluable edition of Bunyan's works, has enumerated between thirty and forty treatises, mostly allegorical, whose authors have evidently gathered their inspiration from the tinker of Elstow. The original work has been subjected to a thousand experiments. It has been done into an oratorio for the satisfaction of playgoers; done into verse at the caprice of rhymesters; donc into elegant English for the delectation of drawing-rooms; done into catechisms for the use of schools. It has been quoted in novels; quoted in sermons innumerable; quoted in Parliamentary orations; quoted in plays. It has been put upon the Procrustes' bed of many who have differed from its sentiments, and has been mutilated or stretched as it exceeded or fell short of their standard. Thus there has been a Supralapsarian supplement, in which the Interpreter is called the Enlightener, and the House Beautiful is Castle Strength. There has been a Popish edition, with Giant Pope left out. There has been a Socinian parody, describing the triumphant voyage, through hell to heaven, of a Captain Single-eye and his Unitarian crew; and last, not least note-worthy, there has been a Tractarian travesty, in which the editor digs a cleansing well at the wicket-gate, omits Mr. Worldly Wiseman, ignores the town of Legality, makes no mention of mount Sinai, changes the situa,

tion of the cross, gives to poor Christian a double burden, transforms Giant Pope into Giant Mahometan, Mr. Superstition into Mr. Self-indulgence, and alters, with careful coquetry towards Rome, every expression which might be distasteful to the Holy Mother."

6

THE BIBLE.

"Brothers, nothing will avail to preserve you amid the strife of tongues, but to cherish, as a habit engrained into the soul-as an affection enfibred with your deepest heart-continual reverence for the Divine Word. We do not claim your feudal submission to its sovereignty. It recks not a passive and unintelligent adhesion. Inquire by all means into the evidences which authenticate its divinity. Bring keenest intellects to bear upon it. Try it as gold in the fire. Bring its august and important matters to the scrutiny. Satisfy yourselves by as searching a process as you can, that the eternal has really spoken it, and that there looms from it the shadow of a large immortality; but do this once for all. Don't be 'ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." Life is too short to be frittered away in endless considerings and scanty deeds. There can be no more pitiable state than that of the eternal doubter, who has bid the sad vale, vale, in æternum vale,' to all the satisfactions of faith, and who is tossed about with every wind of doctrine-a waif upon the wreckage of a world. Settle your principles early, and then place them on the shelf,' secure from subsequent assault or displacement. Then in after years, when some rude infidel argument assails you, and busied amid life's activities you are unable, from the absorption of your energies otherwhere, to recall the train of reasoning by which you arrived at your conclusion, you will say, 'I tried this matter before-I threw these doctrines into the crucible, and they came out pure-the assay was satisfactory-the principles are on the shelf,' and when the Sanballats and Tobiahs gather malignantly below, you will cry with good Nehemiah, girt with the sword, and wielding the trowel the while, and therefore fit for any emergency, 'I am doing a great work I cannot come down-why should the work stop while I come down to you?' Oh it will be to you a source of perennial comfort that in youth, after keen investigation of the Bible—the investigation, not of frivolity or prejudice, but of candour, and gravity, and truth-loving, and prayer-you bowed before it as God's imperishable utterance, and swore your fealty to the monarch-word. Depend upon it the Bible demands no inquisition, and requires no disguises. It does not shrink before the light of science, nor crouch abashed before the audit of a scholarly tribunal. Rather does it seem to say, as it stands before us in its kingliness, all pride humbled and all profanity silenced in its majestic presence-Error fleeing at its approach— Superstition cowering beneath the lightning of its eye, Twill arise, and go forth, for the hour of my domin

ion is at hand.""

BUNYAN'S INTREPIDITY.

"It remains only that we present Bunyan before you as a CONFESSOR FOR THE TRUTH. One would anticipate that a character like his would be sustained in its bravery during the hour of trial, and that, like Luther, whom in many points he greatly resembled, he would witness a good confession before the enemies of the Cross of Christ. A warrant was issued for his apprehension in the dreary month of November. The intention of the magistrate was whispered about beforehand, and Bunyan's friends, alarmed for his safety, urged him to forego his announced purpose to preach. Nature pleaded hard for compliance, and urged the claims of

a beloved wife and four children, one of them blind. Prudence suggested that, escaping now, he might steal other opportunities for the preaching of the truth. He took counsel of God in prayer, and then came to his decision. If I should now run, and make an escape, it will be of a very ill savour in the country; what will my weak and newly-converted brethren think of it? If God, of His mercy, should choose me to go upon the forlorn hope, if I should fly, the world may take occasion at my cowardliness to blaspheme the Gospel.' At Samsell, in Bedfordshire, the people assembled; there were about forty persons present. Some of the timid sort advised, even then, that the meeting should be dismissed. Bravely he replied, 'No, by no means! I will not stir, neither will I have the meeting dismissed. Come, be of good cheer, let us not be daunted; our cause is good; we need not be ashamed of it; to preach God's word is so good a work, that we shall be well rewarded if we suffer for that.' Accordingly he was cast into prison. After seven weeks' imprisonment the session was held at Bedford, and Bunyan was arraigned at the bar. This was his sentence; You must be had back again to prison, and there lie for three months following; and then if you do not submit to go to church to hear divine service, you must be banished the realm; and after that, if you should be found in the realm, without the special licence of the King, you must stretch by the neck for it, I tell you plainly.' So spake the rude and arbitrary Justice Kelynge, who, like Scroggs and Jeffreys, enjoys the distinction, rare among English judges, of being in infamy immortal. Bunyan answered, inspired with Lutheran and Pauline courage, 'I am at a point with you; if I were out of prison to-day, I would preach the Gospel again to-morrow, by the help of God.' His spirit blenched not with the lapse of time, though he lay twelve years in that foul dungeon, the discovery of whose abominations, a century afterwards, first started John Howard in his circumnavigation of charity.' Towards the close of his imprisonment, we hear the dauntless beatings of the hero-heart 'I have determined-the Almighty God being my help and my shield-yet to suffer, if frail life might continue so long, even until the moss shall grow over my eye-brows, rather than violate my faith and my principles. Oh, rare John Bunyan! thy frail life' has become immortal; the world will not let thee die. Thou art shrined in the loving memory of thousands, while thy judges and persecutors are forgotten, or remembered only with ridicule and shame. righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance, but the memory of the wicked shall rot.'"

CHILD AND MAN.

The

"When, in these times, we ask after a man's parentage, it is not that we may know by how many removes he is allied to the Plantagenets, nor how many quarterings he is entitled to grave upon his shield. It is morally certain that most of us had ancestors who distinguished themselves in the Wars of the Roses, and that most of us will have posterity who shall be engaged in the last strife of Armageddon. But estates and names are not the only inheritances of children. They inherit the qualities by which estates are acquired or scattered, and by which men carve out names for themselves, the prouder because they are self-won. Influences which are thrown around them in the years of early life are vital, almost creative, in their power upon the future of their being. You look upon a child in the rounded dimples of its happiness, with large wonder in its eyes, and brow across which sun and shadow chase each other ceaselessly, It is all unconscious of its solemn stewardship, and of the fine or fatal destiny which it may achieve; but you take the thoughts of responsibility and of in

fluence into account, and you feel that of all known and terrible forces, short of Omnipotence, the mightiest may slumber in that cradle, or look wistfully from out those childish eyes. You look at it again when the possible of the child has developed into the actual of the man. The life-purpose has been chosen, and there is the steady strife for its accomplishment. The babe who once slumbered so helplessly has become the village Hampden, or the cruel Claverhouse; the dark blasphemer, or the ready helper of the friendless; the poet, in his brief felony of the music of Paradise, or the missionary in his labour to restore its lost blessings to mankind. You might almost have predicted the result, because you knew the influences, subtle but mighty, which helped to confirm him in the right, or which helped to warp him to the wrong. And who shall say in the character of each of us, how much we are indebted to hereditary endowments, to early association, to the philosophy of parental rule, and to that retinue of circumstances which guarded us as we emerged from the dream-land of childhood into the actual experiences of life?"

A CLAPHAM GATHERING.

Take

"We are in the house of Henry Thornton, the wealthy banker, and for many years the independent representative of the faithful constituency of Southwark. The guests assemble in such numbers, that it might almost be a gathering of the clan. They have disported on the spacious lawn, beneath the shadow of venerable elms, until the evening warns them inside, and they are in the oval saloon, projected and decorated, in his brief leisure, by William Pitt, and filled, to every available inch, with a well-selected library. notice of the company, for men of mark are here. There is Henry Thornton himself, lord of the innocent and happy revels, with open brow and searching eye; with a mind subtle to perceive and bright to harmonize the varied aspects of a question; with a tranquil soul, and a calm, judicial, persevering wisdom, which, if it never rose into heroism, was always ready to counsel and sustain the impulses of the heroism of others. That slight, agile, restlesss little man, with a crowd about him, whose rich voice rolls like music upon charmed listeners, as if he were a harper who played upon all hearts at his pleasure-can that be the apostle of the brotherhood? By what process of compression did the great soul of Wilberforce get into a frame so slender? It is the old tale of the genius and the fisherman revived. He is fairly abandoned to-night to the current of his own joyous fancies; now contributing to the stream of earnest talk which murmurs through the room, and now rippling into a merry laugh, light-hearted as a sportive child. There may be seen the burly form, and heard the sonorous voice of William Smith, the active member for Norwich, separated from the rest in theological beliefs, but linked with them in all human charities; who at threescore years and ten could say that he had no remembrance of an illness, and that though the head of a numerous family, not a funeral had ever started from his door. Yonder, with an absent air, as if awakened from some dear dream of prophecy, sits Granville Sharp, that man of chivalrous goodness; stern to indignation against every form of wrong-doing, gentle to tenderness towards the individual wrong-doer. The author of many publications, the patron of many societies, the exposer of many abuses, there was underlying the earnest purpose of his life, a festive humour which made the world happy to him, and which gladdened the circle of his home. His leisure was divided, when he was not called to the councils of Clapham, between his barge, his pencil, and his harp, the latter of which he averred was after the precise pattern of David's; and strollers through