Some instances came to Venn's own knowledge. Soon after its publication he was sitting at the window of an inn in the west of England. A man was driving some refractory pigs, and one of the waiters helped him, whilst the rest looked on and shouted with laughter. Mr Venn, pleased with this benevolent trait, promised to send him a book, and sent him his own. Many years after, a gentleman staying at an inn in the same part of England, on Saturday night asked one of the servants if they ever went to a place of worship on Sunday. He was surprised to find that they were all required to go at least once a-day, and that the master of the house not only never failed to attend, but maintained constant family prayer. It turned out that he was the waiter who had helped the pig-driver—that he had married his former master's daughter, and that he, his wife, and some of their children, owed all their happiness to the Complete Duty of Man." The gentleman told the landlord that he knew Mr Venn, and soon intended to visit him, and in the joy of his heart the host charged him with a letter detailing all his happy history. Once at Helvoetsluys, when waiting for a fair wind to carry him to England, he accosted on the shore a gentleman whom he took for an Englishman; he was a Swede, but having lived long in England, knew the language well. He turned out to be a pious man, and asked Mr Venn to sup with him. After much interesting conversation he opened his portmanteau, and brought out the book to which he said that he owed all his religious impressions. Mr Venn recognised his own book, and it needed all his humility not to betray the author.

66

WILLIAM ROMAINE* began his course as Gresham Professor of Astronomy, and editor of the four folios of Calasio's Hebrew Concordance. But after he caught the evangelic fire he burned and shone for nearly fifty years-so far as the Establishment is

* Born 1714. Died 1795.

It needed all his strength of

concerned the light of London. character to hold his ground and conquer opposition. He was appointed Assistant Morning Lecturer at St George's, Hanover Square; but his fervent preaching brought a mob of people to that fashionable place of worship, and on the charge of having vulgarised the congregation and overcrowded the church, the rector removed him. He was popularly elected to the Evening Lectureship of St Dunstan's ; but the rector there took possession of the pulpit in the time of prayer, so as to exclude the fanatic. Lord Mansfield decided that after seven in the evening Mr Romaine was entitled to the use of the church; so, till the clock struck seven, the church-wardens kept the doors firm shut, and by drenching them in rain and freezing them in frost, hoped to weary out the crowd. Failing in this, they refused to light the church, and Mr Romaine often preached to his vast auditory, with no light except the solitary candle which he held in his hand. But, "like another Cocles, he was resolved to keep the pass, and if the bridge fell to leap into the Tiber." Though for years his stipend was only £18, he wore home-spun cloth, and lived so plainly, that they could not starve him out. And though they repeatedly dragged him to the courts of law, they could not force him out. And though they sought occasion against him in regard to the canons, they could not get the bishop to turn him out. He held his post till, with much ado, he gained the pulpit of Blackfriars, and preached with unquenched fire till past four-score, the Life, the Walk, the Triumph of Faith. For a great while he was one of the sights of London, and people who came from Ireland and elsewhere to see Garrick act, went to hear Romaine discourse; and many blessed the day which first drew their thoughtless steps to St Dunstan's or St Ann's. And in his more tranquil evening there was a cluster of pious citizens about Ludgate Hill and St Paul's Churchyard who exceedingly revered the abrupt old

man.

Of all the churches in the capital, as in the days of

Gouge, a hundred years before,* his was the one towards which most home-feeling flowed. It shed a Sabbatic air through its environs, and the dingy lanes around it seemed to brighten in its religion of life and hope. Full of sober hearers and joyful worshippers, it was a source of substantial service to the neighbourhood in times of need; and whilst the warm focus to which provincial piety and travelled worth most readily repaired, it was the spot endeared to many a thankful memory as the Peniel where first they beheld that great sight, CHRIST

CRUCIFIED.

Beside the London Mansion House there is a church with two truncated square towers-to all appearance the stumps of amputated steeples-suggesting St Mary Woolnoth, and St Mary Wool-Church-Haw. Could the reader have visited it sixty odd years ago, he would have seen in the heavy pulpit a somewhat heavy old man. With little warmth he muttered through a pious sermon-texts and trite remarks -till now and then some bright fancy or earnest feeling made a momentary animation overrun his seamy countenance, and rush out at his kind and beaming eyes. From Lombard Street bankers and powdered merchants lolling serenely at the end of various pews, it was evident that he was not deemed a Methodist. From the gaunt north-country visage which peered at him through catechetic spectacles, and waited for something wonderful which would not come, it was likely that he was a Calvinist, and that his fame had crossed the Tweed. And from the fond up-looking affection with which many of his hearers eyed him, you would have inferred that himself must be more interesting than his sermon. next Friday evening to No. 8, Coleman Street Buildings, and there, in a dusky parlour, with some twenty people at tea, will you meet again the preacher. He has doffed the cassock, and * See "Christian Classics," vol. i., p. 331.

Go

'TIS SIXTY YEARS AGO.

251

in a sailor's blue jacket, on a three-legged stool, sits, like the successor of St Peter, in solitary state, at a little table of his own. The tea is done, and the pipe is smoked, and the "teathings" give place to the Bible. The host inquires if any one has got a question to ask; for these re-unions are meetings for edification as well as for friendship. And two or three have come with their questions cut and dry. A retired old lady asks, "How far a Christian may lawfully conform to the world?" And the old sailor says many good things to guide her scrupulous conscience, although it may be rather surmised that the question was asked for the sake of the young gentleman with the velvet coat and frilled wrist-bands next the door. "When a Christian goes into the world because he sees it is his call, yet while he feels it also his cross, it will not hurt him." Then guiding his discourse towards some of his city friends "A Christian in the world is like a man transacting business in the rain; he will not suddenly leave his client because it rains; but the moment the business is done he is gone; as it is said in the Acts, 'Being let go, they went to their own company." This brings up Hannah More and her book on the "Manners of the Great ;" and the minister expresses his high opinion of Miss More. Some of the party do not know who she is, and he tells them that she is a gifted lady, who used to be the intimate friend of Johnson, Horace Walpole, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, the idol of the West-end grandees, and the writer of plays for Drury Lane, but who has lately come out with some faithful appeals to her aristocratic acquaintances on the subject of heart-religion, and which are making a great sensation. "Aweel," says an elder from Swallow Street, "Miss Moore is very tawlented, and I hope has got the root of the matter; but I misdoubt if there be not a laygal twang in her still." And the minister smiles quaintly, and in partial assent to the criticism, but repeats his admiration and his hope for the accomplished authoress. And

then he opens his Bible, and after singing one of the Olney hymns, reads the eighteenth chapter of the Acts. "You see that Apollos met with two candid people in the Church; they neither ran away because he was legal, nor were carried away because he was eloquent." And after a short but fervent prayer, catholic, comprehensive, and experimental, and turning into devotion the substance of their colloquy, it is as late as nine o'clock, and the little party begins to separate. Some are evidently constant visitors. The taciturn gentleman who never spoke a word, but who, at every significant sentence, smacked his lips, as if he were clasping a casket over a gem, and meant to keep it, occupied a prescriptive chair, and so did the invalid lady who has ordered her sedan to Bedford Row. In leave-taking, the host has a kind word for every one, and, recognising a north country pilgrim, he says, "I was a wild beast on the coast of Africa; but the Lord caught me and tamed me, and now you come to see me as people go to look at the lions in the Tower." Never was lion so entirely tamed as JOHN NEWTON.* Commencing life as a desperado and dread-nought, and scaring his companions by his peerless profanity and heaven-daring wickedness, and then by his remarkable recovery signalising the riches of God's grace, you might have expected a Boanerges to come out of the converted buccaneer. But never was transformation more complete. Except the blue jacket at the fireside, and a few sea-faring habits -except the lion's hide, nothing survived of the African lion. The Puritans would have said that the lion was slain, and that honey was found in its carcass. Affable, and easy of access, his house was the resort of those who sought a skilful spiritual counsellor, and knowing it to be the form of service for which he was best fitted, instead of fretting at the constant interruption, or nervously absconding to some calm retreat, his consulting-room, in London's most trodden thoroughfare, was

* Born 1725. Died 1807.