Our Church Portrait Gallery. I. THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK: II. THE BISHOP OF RIPON: III. THE REV. F. PIGOU, D.D.: IV. THE REV. W. BOYD CARPENTER. HOTOGRAPHY is certainly one of God's good gifts to the nineteenth century. It has done much to promote and aid the cultivation of the affections. The scattered members of families seem by its ministry to be brought very near, and we believe many a heart prayer which might never have been offered has been prompted by these faithful mementoes of the absent. Outside the home circle also this wonderful art, united with that of the engraver, has greatly helped to make us acquainted with the leading men of the time, who in one way or another have done good service to the common-weal. During 1881 we hope to introduce in "Our Church Portrait Gallery" many of the Bishops and Clergy of our Church, who are writing their lives of active zeal and earnest ministry in the memories and hearts of those amongst whom they labour. This month we give portraits of the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of Ripon, the Rev. Dr. Pigou, and the Rev. W, Boyd Carpenter. The Archbishop of York (Dr. William Thomson), has literally won all hearts in the province over which he presides. Eminent as a theologian, he is equally distinguished as a philosopher and man of science. He has acted throughout his career on the conviction that in all knowledge, as in "all labour," there is "profit." Certainly no Archbishop of the English Church has ever held so high a place in the affection and esteem of working men. He is also a leader in the great Temperance movement. He was born in 1819, and educated in Shrewsbury School. In 1861 he became Bishop of Gloucester, and in 1862 Archbishop of York. The Bishop of Ripon (Dr. Robert Bickersteth), was born in 1816. His uncle, the Rev. Edward Bickersteth, was the famous rector of Watton, who did so much for missionary work at home and abroad by his ministry and life and published works. The Bishop, who was appointed to the see of Ripon in 1856, has truly walked in the same steps. He preaches with great power and feeling, and wonderful simplicity, and has accomplished an immense amount of work in his Diocese, where he is greatly beloved. The name of the Rev. Dr. Pigou is closely identified with the Evangelistic Missions which have taken place during the past ten years. His earnest and touching appeals give him great power and influence with the masses. When Dr. Vaughan vacated the vicarage of Doncaster, Dr. Pigou was selected to succeed him, and after six years removed to Halifax. He is greatly interested in Sunday-school work, and his parish is the centre of a circle of useful agencies which owe not a little of their success to the Vicar's never-failing tact and energy. The Rev. W. Boyd Carpenter is a son of the late Rev. H. Carpenter, whose faithful ministry at Liverpool in the days of Hugh McNeile, is still gratefully remembered, and a nephew of Dean Boyd of Exeter. Mr. Carpenter succeeded the Rev. W. B. Mackenzie at St. James's, Holloway, and after labouring there for about nine years, was promoted to the important Vicarage of Christ Church, Paddington, towards the close of 1879. He. is widely known as one of the most eloquent preachers of the day: and in the midst of an active life has found time to write the "Prophets of Christendom," and other works which have secured a wide circle of readers. M. N. Our Father's House. OW, passed within the Church's door, Where poor are rich, and rich are poor, We say the prayers, and hear the Word, Which there our fathers said and heard. 'Tis something that we kneel and pray Thomas Cooper : FROM SCEPTICISM TO CHRISTIANITY: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. CHAPTER I. EARLY LIFE. HOMAS COOPER is in himself an embodiment of Christian Evidence. His life is a story of how a man, after receiving a pious rearing, may lapse into unbelief, and then finally triumph over every difficulty and arrive at that steadfast faith in Christ which nothing can undermine. Before yielding to scepticism, those who claim to be "honest doubters" should become familiar with his experience, and should read what he has said on the Resurrection of Christ and kindred topics. Portions of what he has written are among the best things of their kind in the language.* From Mr. Cooper's Autobiography + we learn that he was born at Leicester on the 20th of March, 1805. His father was a dyer; his mother bore the old Saxon name of Jobson. In 1806 the family removed to Exeter. His memory as a child must have been remarkable, for Mr. Cooper tells us he "remembers most distinctly and clearly" a rescue from drowning in the Leate at the age of two years. Before the age of three, also, he recollects having been taken "at five o'clock on Christmas morning to hear the great organ of St. Peter's Cathedral." He learned to read almost without instruction. "At three years old I used to be set on a stool, in Dame Brown's school, to teach one Master Bodley, who was seven years old, his letters. At the same age I could repeat by heart several of the fables of Esop, as they were called, contained in a little volume purchased by my father. I possess the dear relic, though tattered and torn, and minus the title-page, together with my father's old silver watch, the silver spoon he bought for me at my birth,-I don't think I was born with one in my mouth,-and the darling little hammer he bought for me at Exeter, and with which I used to work in my childish way when tired of reading and rehearsing fables and other stories, and hearing my father rehearse his in turn." But "the sunny days of childhood" soon passed away. At the age of four his mother became a widow, and the lone woman struggling in the battle of life thought it best to remove to Gainsborough, the home of her youth and family connections. Here she continued the trade of a dyer in a very humble home. Small-pox soon after dealt severely with the child, and measles and scarlet-fever followed. Now, instead of the kindly words he was wont to hear at Exeter from passersby, who called him a "pretty boy," his "marred visage" led, others to avoid him. The home life of the mother, too, was one of unceasing toil and anxiety. unceasing toil and anxiety. "Yet for me," he writes with filial affection; "she had ever words of tenderness; my altered face had not unendeared me to her." As soon as he was strong enough he went to a dame's school, and soon became her favourite scholar. "She used to say I could The Standard says:-"There is no living writer that reminds us more forcibly of Paley-so plain and simple in his style, so pertinent and close in his reasoning, and so full of apt illustration in his arguments." Lord Shaftesbury remarked some time ago, that he believed the most effectual means of dealing with scepticism was to "get working men to go amongst their own class and teach the truth to them." It would be a wise step to place Mr. Cooper's valuable works on the Christian Evidences. comprising five volumes, in every library connected with our artisans and working men throughout the kingdom. Nothing would be more calculated to win the attention of the great working population of our land nothing would more effectually guard them against the folly of atheism and infidelity, by establishing them in the faith and hope of the Gospel. The writer hopes this Biographical Sketch of Mr. Cooper, who has been known to him for many years, may tend to the promotion of this desirablo result. "The Life of Thomas Cooper." Written by Himself. (London: Hodder & Stoughton.) JANUARY THE STORY OF THE MONTH. ORDS often have a history: so that January gets its name from the heathen god Janus, to whom the Romans dedicated this season of the year. They represented the idol with two faces: the one that of an old man looking back upon the past, and the other, a youthful counte. nance looking forward to the future. He had a key in one hand and a staff in the other: the symbols of his opening and governing the year. The Saxons called January Wolf-monat or Wolfmonth. Happily, the wolves are all gone now; but a thousand years ago they infested the British forests, and, especially in winter time, attacked any one they met. Our ancestors used to represent Janus as a woodman, carrying faggots or an axe, and shivering and blowing his fingers "To warm them if he may, For they were numbed with holding all the day." -SPENSER. Sleep is a good friend to the animal world in winter. Some, like the dormouse, sleep throughout the inclement season, whilst frogs and snakes become benumbed and in appearance even dead, till the return of warmth. A lesson of prudence and thrift is taught by others, which, like the squirrel and fieldmouse, and ants and bees, lay up a store of provisions for the cold days. The birds, most of them, migrate to warmer climes; but a few remain, and amongst them the robin hovers timidly about our windows and doors. January may well teach us all to be thankful for "the tidings of great joy" which tell of One who is able to save us from the sins of the past, and to help us over all the difficulties of the future. As we thus learn to love God who "first loved us," we shall never fail to open our hearts and hands, not only to feed the tender grateful robin, but to minister as far as we are able to the wants of all who need. "Amidst the freezing sleet and snow In pity drive him not away, All have to spare, none are too poor, C. A. H. B. read the tenth chapter of Nehemiah, with all its hard names, like the parson in the church.'" Happily, amid all her cares, his mother forgot not the chief household treasure-the family Bible. "On rainy Sundays my mother would unwrap from its careful cover a treasure which my father had bought, and which she took care to bring with her from Exeter-Baskerville's quarto Bible, valuable for its fine engravings from the old masters: and I was privileged to gaze and admire while she repeated what my father had said about them." The dyeing business answered but poorly. What with illness, the dearness of living, and the excessively severe winters of the French war time-including the thirteen weeks' frost in 1814-Mrs. Cooper could only, by putting forth all her energy, find the little household in bread. At one time wheaten flour rose to six shillings per stone. Meat was so dear that his mother could not buy it, and often their dinner consisted of potatoes only. "Those years of war were terrific years of suffering for the poor, notwithstanding their shouts and rejoicings when Matthew Goy, the postman, rode in, with his (To be hat covered with ribbons, and blowing his He became also at this time a choir-boy, and learned to play so well on a dulcimer that he could take up any tune by the ear he heard in the church or in the streets. As an example of the influence of religious school training, we notice Mr. Cooper's testimony referring to this period. "From a child I felt religious impressions. Often during our reading of the Gospels, verse by verse, as we stood in class at the Free School, the Saviour seemed almost visible to me as I read of His deeds of mercy and love. The singing of our morning and evening hymns, and repetition on our knees of the Lord's Prayer, had always a solemnizing effect on me; and, doubtless, seeds of spiritual good were sown thus early in my mind, never to be really destroyed." continued.) Down in the Dannemora Mine. BY JOHN MACGREGOR, M.A. (ROB ROY), CAPTAIN OF THE ROYAL CANOE CLUB: HERE is a deep iron mine in Sweden, very celebrated for its ore, which is said to be the best in the world, and is all brought to England. In one of my former visits to Sweden a Frenchman was travelling with me, when a visit to this mine of Dannemora was proposed; so we hired a carriage and went together; and as it was a curious place to see, perhaps the reader would like to hear about it. The appearance of the place was quite different from that of any iron mine that I have visited. It was something like the slatequarries near Penrhyn in Wales-a large and open pit, the edges of which are perfectly vertical, and go down, down, down into the darkness five hundred feet below. The mouth of the pit is seven acres in extent a terrible vast chasm as you peer over the edge. For three centuries men have been mining there; and the deeper they dig the richer is the ore. It is a wonderful thing to look into the crater of Vesuvius, and far more wonderful to gaze into the crater of Etna, that smoking bowl a mile and a half round the edge; but to see into this iron mine, where human hands had dug so deep, was a grand sight truly. If you took St Paul's Cathedral in London, and set it in this pit, the cross on the top of the dome would still be far below the surface: and yet we could see many men at the bottom, or clinging to ledges at the sides, and |