are strictly founded on facts that have come under the author's immediate notice. Once, he himself was a wanderer without the fold of Holy Church, and well he knows the path of a Truth-seeker is not strewn with flowers, though aware of nothing in the way of anxiety so easy to be borne, because so flattering to human pride as exercising the faculty of Rationalism. If any thoughtful mind shall be benefited by this effort to expose error, detect false views of truth and remove prejudices, the author will think himself well repaid for the hours of anxiety he has passed when groping after the light, and even reflect with satisfaction on his journey through the desert, if thereby he be the means of helping but one poor wanderer to the same land of rest in which he by God's mercy has at last found a settled home.

CHAPTER I.

EBENEZER CHAPEL, MERLINGTON.

not situated up a

EBENEZER was court. Why meeting-houses of the Calvinistic persuasion should generally hide up courts is a mystery. One might think it was due to modesty, but that can hardly be the reason, as Calvinists are not generally overburdened with that grace. Our little Ebenezer had once lived the violet's life, and had bloomed unseen long enough, and at the time we introduce it to our readers' notice had recently emerged from its retirement and asserted its claims to the notice of the world at large, by pulling down the row of little chandlery shops that hid it from view, and extending the structure till it reached the street, with a fine Italian façade. For Ebenezer was looking up. Pastor Green had gone to his long account and was gathered to his fathers, or at any rate to his "brothers" and "sisters" in the faith, in the little dark and damp burying-ground beside the chapel. After many fruitless attempts to meet with a worthy successor, our somewhat fastidious Ebenezerites were "suited," as Deacon Smith observed. Not without much anxiety and debate on the part of the congregation was this important business accomplished. Merlington was a rising little town in the Midland counties, and there were some people of no mean standing in the place who patronized the Gospel according to Ebenezer. Now some of these good people, much as they "were

fed,” as they termed it, under Brother Green's preaching, were inclined to the rather heretical idea that the doctrines of Free Grace would not lose their unction to any great extent if a more legitimate use of the letter H were imported into their pulpit ministrations, and that a little more Lindley Murray, even if it did spoil the flavour of some of their highly-spiced exhortations, would make them more palatable to the "occasional hearers" who dropped in. Moreover, some of the wealthier members had sons who learned Latin, and daughters well grounded in Mangnall's Questions and Lempriere's Dictionary, and it was not pleasant to hear them criticizing good old Mr. Green on their way home from chapel in terms that showed clearly that they held him in very small esteem for his learning, whatever they might think of his doctrine. He was a preacher of the old Strict Baptist school, had been in early life a shoemaker, but when about turning the middle point of life had received a "call," as he declared, to become an itinerant preacher. His reading was not extensive nor very varied. He was well up in the Old Testament Scriptures, especially Solomon's Song and the minor Prophets, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and one or two writers of the sourest school of Puritans; besides, he had long subscribed to the periodical literature of his sect, and greedily devoured all that was to be had out of "The Earthen Vessel," "The Heavenly Manna Pot,” and the “Believer's Bread Basket." Fortified with this, he felt he could afford to despise "college learning," and considered himself fully competent to become the channel of "the Spirit" for teaching the elect in and around Merlington. He soon found he was “accept

1 All these publications have existed within the last few years.

able" to these good folks, and gradually gave up his cottage meetings in the country districts and confined his attention to the worshippers at Ebenezer, who in a few months, in solemn meeting assembled, elected him to be their pastor at 50%. per annum, besides perquisites, a quarter's notice or a quarter's pay on either side to be the plan of terminating the connexion, should such a proceeding ever become desirable. Brother Green had a wife and eight children, so he wisely continued the shoe business until he should make Ebenezer pay rather better, for he managed to make the "cure of soles" not altogether unprofitable, as it would have been an infallible proof of "reprobation" had an Ebenezerite patronized any other disciple of St. Crispin when their understandings needed his care.

He was what was generally known amongst Particular Baptists as a "High Doctrine Man,"-that is, he seldom condescended to descant on any subject that did not embrace one or other of the five points of Calvinism, viz., Predestination, Particular Redemption, Total Depravity, Effectual Calling, and Final Perseverance. If you had desired to make the poor man angry, you need only have presumed to hint at the necessity of good works for salvation, or have been daring enough to assert that man had free-will or power to comply with God's command to obey the Gospel. When he first began to preach, he sometimes found a slight difficulty with such words as he met with in the Bible of more than two syllables; and one day, reading and expounding as he facetiously termed it, the text "No sorcerers, &c., shall inherit the kingdom of God," he, being entirely unacquainted with so unfamiliar a word, mis-read it "scorers," Now that required a moment's reflection

ere the meaning could be clearly apprehended. At last the happy thought struck him that the passage was clearly directed against his Arminian opponents, who thought to run up a score of good works on the credit side of God's books, and he boldly gave it that interpretation, which, by the majority of his hearers, was eminently relished, and added to the list of their proof passages in favour of their great Reformer's teaching. Some of the better educated of the little flock were slightly shocked at this rendering, but recovered their equanimity by reflecting that it was "the weak things of this world" that the Scripture declared were "to confound the wisdom of men,' and that "not many wise men after the flesh were called," so they swallowed the "scorer" gloss, and were not so hurt as they might have been when, a few months after, they were gravely informed that all the words in the Protestant version of the Holy Scriptures written in italics were intended to be emphasized! and in some cases they thought it did certainly improve the unction of the sentences. Pastor Green had presided over his Merlington flock for seventeen years, when the gout, from which he had suffered much during the later years of his pastorate, incapacitated him from preaching, and gave him a year's rest from pulpit work ere apoplexy carried him off. When he gave up his ministrations, some of the flock were for calling in the aid of the students from a newly-started Baptist college in London, as occasional supplies "on trial," but this was strenuously opposed by the stricter and elder members, on the ground that book-learning was only head-knowledge, and "didn't feed the souls of the hearers," however much it might tickle their fancy, and for the graver reason that study and reading hindered the "free operation”