No words are necessary to introduce the name of Bishop Wilson to the members of that Church, of which he was in his day, and has been since, in sacred language, "a burning and a shining light." Burning indeed and shining, like the Baptist, in an evil time, he seemed as if a beacon lighted on his small island, to show what his Lord and Saviour could do in spite of man ;-how He could at will make for Himself a dwelling-place upon the waves, and a garden in the barren sea, and, when a nation had fallen into his enemies' hands, could preach to it even off its shores, and be nigh at hand, when they would fain leave Him "not so much as to set His foot on." The English soil indeed had its own witnesses and teachers at the time; but none at once so exalted in station and so saintly in character, so active and so tried in his life-time, and so influential in his works, as Bishop Wilson. Of these works not the least important is that which is now submitted to the reader entire ;-those Devotional Exercises, which or the like of which were the groundwork of whatever name and influence he has obtained in the Church of God. These Exercises, while edifying on their own account, are valuable also, as affording a model of what good judges have pronounced to be the best form in which serious persons may keep a record of their own spiritual state; in that prayers against particular failings, such as are here found, at once suggest to the framer what his failings are and have been, and yet are secure, as being prayers, from the various dangers to which the direct enlarging upon failings, without the immediate thought of God's presence, is likely to lead. ORIEL COLLEGE, J. H. N. |