would now fall but feebly on the youthful inquiring mind; and even Baxter's own more memorable and powerful Call to the Unconverted, whose piercing earnestness has reached so many hearts, may have lost something of its force and interest to the modern reader. As the thoughts of men are widened, or at least altered in religious range, as in everything else, the argument and appeal fitted to tell most powerfully must be reflected from some new point, and made to bear with a fresh life upon changed feelings and views.

When Baxter was ready for higher studies he was induced, by the persuasion of his teacher, to place himself under the tuition of Mr Richard Wickstead, chaplain to the Council at Ludlow, instead of proceeding directly to the university. The inducement to do this was that the chaplain was permitted to have a single pupil, to whom he could give his undivided attention. But in this case also Baxter was unfortunate; the chaplain paid little or no attention to his pupil. "His business was to please the great ones, and seek preferment in the world; and to that end he found it necessary sometimes to give the Puritans a flirt, and call them unlearned, and speak much for learning, being but a superficial scholar of himself. He never read to me nor used any savoury discourse of godliness; only he loved me, and allowed me books and time enough; so that as I had no considerable helps from him in my studies, yet I had no considerable hindrance." He mentions with gratitude that he was preserved from the temptations that surrounded him in the town. An acquaintance which he formed with a young man was of great service to him. They became fast companions. "We walked together," he says, "we read together, we prayed together, and when we could

we lay together; he was the greatest help to my seriousness of religion that ever I had before, and was a daily watchman over my soul; he was unwearied in reading all serious practical books of divinity; he was the first that ever I heard pray extempore (out of the pulpit), and that taught me so to pray. And his charity and liberality were equal to his zeal; so that God made him a great means of my good, who had more knowledge than he, but a colder heart." The sequel of all this fervency is sad. Baxter's companion fell, in course of time, into habits of drunkenness and even of scoffing. The last he heard of him was that he had become a "fuddler, and reviler of strict men." It is kindly of Baxter to chronicle at length the good he got from one who lived so to disgrace his Christian profession. The reader of Bunyan's life may remember a somewhat similar incident in his early religious

career.

On his return, after a year and a half, to his father's house, he found that his old master, Owen, was dying of consumption; and, at the desire of Lord Newport, he undertook the management of his school, "for a quarter of a year or more." His studies were thereafter continued with Mr Francis Garbet, the "faithful learned minister at Wroxeter." He read logic with him, and entered upon a more severe course of intellectual application than he had yet attempted. His weak health broke down in the attempt. He was seized with a violent cough and spitting of blood; his end seemed near at hand; and anxiety as to his spiritual condition greatly increased. He mourned over his "senseless deadness;" he felt as if he knew nothing of the "incomparable excellency of holy love and delight in God;" and he groaned and prayed for

more "contrition and a broken heart," and most for "tears and tenderness." This was a time of painful and sad experience, but also of great spiritual improvement. It made him realise more the power of redeeming love, and destroyed in him the promptings of mere intellectual and literary ambition, the sin (as he supposed) of his childhood!

From this time his studies were mainly confined to divinity; his idea of going to the university was abandoned; and he gave himself to an active and direct preparation for the Christian ministry, to which he meant to devote himself. The clear direction thus imparted to his studies gave them importance, and stimulated his intellectual interest. But he was in the habit of regretting his loss of a university education. He esteemed himself but a poor scholar. "Besides the Latin tongue, and but a mediocrity in Greek (with an inconsiderable trial at the Hebrew long after), I had no great skill in languages." "And for the mathematics," he adds, "I was an utter stranger to them; and never could find in my heart to direct any studies that way." Logic and metaphysics were his peculiar labour and delight. Both his natural aptitude and his opportunities turned his main studies in this direction. By inborn intellectual tact Baxter was a metaphysician, and the hardest subtleties of the schoolman were to him but natural aliment. He united in his youth, as in after years, that singular mixture of practical fervency and intellectual dryness, which we find in not a few of the schoolmen, and in their Protestant exemplars of the sixteenth century. "Next to practical divinity," he says, "no books so suited with

*This is a fact deserving of some psychological study-the intense and lawless flow of feeling in some of the schoolmen and divines of the

my disposition as Aquinas, Scotus, Durandus, Ockham, and their disciples; because I thought they narrowly searched after truth, and brought things out of the darkness of confusion; for I could never, from my first studies, endure confusion. Till equivocals were explained, and definition and distinction led the way, I had rather hold my tongue than speak; and was never more weary of learned men's discourses than when I heard them long wrangling about unexpounded words or things, and eagerly disputing before they understood each other's minds, and vehemently asserting modes and consequences and adjuncts before they considered of the Quod sit, the Quid sit, or the Quotuplex."

He continued for some time in great weakness of body, and in great anxiety as to his spiritual condition. His inward tremors reflected his outward debility. His spiritual fears and hypochondria, though not induced, were greatly increased by the disorders of his constitu tion. Not only now, but throughout life, he was in ill health. Amid all his labours he bore a weakened and diseased frame; it lasted long, but it never ceased to trouble him; and in his writings everywhere we may trace something of the restlessness and morbid colouring of the Invalid.

About his eighteenth year, his views of life underwent a temporary diversion. Persuaded by his old tutor, Mr Wickstead of Ludlow, to lay aside his pre

seventeenth century, combined with a logic, not merely hard, but arid and barren in its hardness. Among the latter, an example occurs in Samuel Rutherford, who, in his Latin theological polemics, and in his famous letters, shows this singular conjunction of mental qualitieslogical aridity and sentimental fluidity. Polemics more hard and technical than those of Rutherford (as in his Disputatio Scholastica de Divina Providentia, &c.) not even the seventeenth century has bequeathed to us -letters kindling with a more intense and even unhealthy fervour are scarcely to be found in the records of mysticism.

paration for the ministry, he went to London " to get acquaintance at Court, and get some office, as being the only rising way." He says that he himself consented reluctantly to this step; he had no great confidence in his tutor's judgment, who had done his part but ill towards him; but his parents entered heartily into the proposal, and to please them he agreed. Accordingly, he went to town, and stayed at Whitehall with Sir Henry Herbert, then "Master of the Revels," about a month. It is a strange conjunction, Baxter and the Master of the Revels! He does not explain the conjunction, or by what chance his friend selected such an abode for him. If it was meant to give him a taste for Court life, it had, as might be expected, the very opposite effect. He was disgusted with what he saw. He felt quickly that he had "enough of the Court." "When I saw a stage play instead of a sermon on the Lord's-day in the afternoon, and saw what course was then in fashion, and heard little preaching but what was, as to one part, against the Puritans, I was glad to be gone. At the same time it pleased God that my mother fell sick, and desired my return; and so I resolved to bid farewell to those kind of employments and expectations."

On his return home, Baxter found his mother seriously ill, and in the following May (1634) she died.* He describes the severity of the snow storm on his way home, and throughout the winter. His horse. stumbled with him on his journey, and he was nearly crushed under the wheels of an approaching waggon. The home-bound youth, the cheerless season, and the

* His father married a second time "a woman of great sincerity in the fear of God." The connection appears to have been a happy one for Baxter, who speaks of his stepmother in terms of high commendation.