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 remark able, 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. "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 desirable 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 countenance 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 horn mightily, bringing the news of another 'glorious victory!'" Her deep affection for her child, however, prompted her to do all she could to keep him at his books. She got him into the new Free School; and though the instruction was only elementary, it was sound, and formed a good preparation for larger acquirements. 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 The mouth of the pit is seven acres in extent, and it is 500 feet deep-a terrible, vast chasm as you peer over the edge. (See page 18.) hammering away-little pigmies as they seemed with a faint clinking noise, only to be heard when all was still around, as we lay down flat near the edge, and put our heads over to listen. The man who showed the place took us to the engine for lowering the workmen into this pit. It was a rude, creaking wheel, worked by two clumsy oxen that turned a wooden drum, and so wound up or let down a very thin iron rope with an open bucket at the end. After we had gazed for some time into the depth in silence, the man asked, "Would you like to go down?" Each of us looked at the other and smiled. Neither of us wished to go down, but neither of us wished the other to think he was "afraid;' so the jealousy of English and French, and the want of moral courage to say "No!" made us both agree to descend, though nothing new was to be seen below, and indeed nothing was there which could not be seen from above with our telescope. TIGO However, as neither of us dared to draw back, the man hooked the open bucket on the thin iron cord, and the bullocks were barnessed to the crazy wheel, and we stepped into the bucket, and held round each other's waists, for there was scarcely room in the pail for us to stand. Each of us tried to appear composed, and when the Swede said," Are you ready?" we were swung up in an instant, and in another moment were hanging free over this awful depth. As the oxen went round, and the iron wire uncoiled (with horrid jerks, too, that seemed as if they surely must snap it), the bucket went gradually down. The sensation was very peculiar, and quite different from that of going down a coal-pit, or any other mine, where the shaft is only a narrow hole, however deep it may be; for in going down these ordinary mines or coal-pits you cannot see more than a few yards beneath, so the full depth from the dizzy height is never quite realized by the mind. But here it was all daylight, and open on every side; and as the bucket dropped down slowly it turned round and round so as to bring all the hideous abyss into full view, and the crags and caves and jutting points of rock, which seemed to move up and come nearer to us as we went down to them. Presently the bucket began to shake, and the iron wire was quivering. Both of us were trembling too. He said it was my fault, but I was sure that he was giving way. This, however, was certain, that if either of us became giddy, or faint, or even nervous, so as to lose his hold, one, or most likely both, would instantly have tumbled out of the pail. Eight minutes-an hour it seemed-having been spent in the descent, we reached the bottom, where the workmen received us with cheers, and then fired several blasts of gunpowder as a salute. We inspected all the operations carried on in this nether region; but I will own that the pleasure of doing this was clogged by the recollection, "We have to get up again." This feeling spoils much of the delight of visiting a cave, or a difficult or dangerous mine, when you have attained the spot you are to reach, by crawling through some long dark passage with only a few inches or more to spare, and the sensation present all the time: "If the rocks shift here in the least, I shall never get out again." What toil and trouble and danger men will encounter to get at stones that have gold in them! How little do we labour for the true riches which are "better than gold!" Our bucket soon began to go up again, and the cheers of the miners sounded fainter as we left them far below. One could not help feeling, that if any part of the thin, muchworn iron rope,-not thicker than one's little finger, were to snap now, there would be instant death! Thus fragile is the thread of life for all of us, and thus uncertain; and yet we plod on, and laugh, and sleep, and sing. How is it possible that any sensible man can live in any sort of contentment unless he has got a better hope of a better life when this short spell is over! Surely it is a mad infatuation which keeps men careless about eternity, and a heartless ingratitude which keeps them cold to the love of Him who died to make us safe for ever. |