if they would give him leave.

But he is farther than

ever from expecting great matters of unity, splendour, or prosperity to the Church on earth.

One other change in his mind, which indeed makes much for charity, Baxter notices: "I am much more cautious," he says, "in my belief of history than heretofore." The prodigious lies published as matters of fact in his own age, and that with unblushing confidence, made him incredulous of the statements of past ages, unless there were freedom at the time to challenge such statements, and both sides had a hearing. "Therefore, I confess, I give but halting credit to most histories that are written, not only against the Albigenses and Waldenses, but against most of the ancient heretics, who have left us none of their own writings, in which they speak for themselves; and I heartily lament that the historical writings of the ancient schismatics and heretics (as they are called) perished, and that partiality suffered them not to survive, that we might have had more light in the Church affairs of those times, and been better able to judge between the Fathers and them. And as I am prone to think that few of them were so bad as their adversaries made them, so I am apt to think that such as the Novatians and Luciferians, and Indians, &c., whom their adversaries commend, were very good men, and more godly than most Catholics, however mistaken in some one point." Baxter's discreet and charitable scepticism has its application to civil as well as to ecclesiastical history. The lost causes have not always been the worst.

Finally, he considers some of the faults of his later

years. He grieves especially over any rash words uttered to those who were near and dear to him. There is a pathos of a beautiful kind in his tender passion of remorse: "When such are dead, though we never differed in point of interest or any great matter, every sour or cross provoking word which I gave them, maketh me almost unreconcilable with myself, and tells me how repentance brought some of old to pray to the dead whom they had wronged, to forgive them in the hurry of their passion." He perceives in himself, and mentions by way of penitent confession, that in his controversial writings he has even of late been much inclined to words that are too keen and provoking. It may partly be that age has soured his spirit, partly that much thought and study has wearied him, and rendered him impatient, partly that he revolts from the flattering humour of the time; but doubtless the principal cause is, that being accustomed to address common, ignorant, and ungodly people, who need the plainest and keenest language, he has acquired a habit which is liable to abuse: "I repent of it, and wish all over-sharp passages were expunged from my writings, and ask forgiveness of God and man.” In truth, he cares now less than ever for disputation, and most approves a learning or a teaching way of

converse.

Such, reduced from its large dimensions in the autobiography, is Baxter's "Eirenicon." Eirenicon." It is no array of intellectual formulæ, no piece of moving rhetoric; it is a simple record of personal experience, an account of the growth of character. When these pages were written

the close of Baxter's life was still remote, and he had much work, as a Christian teacher and as a great Englishman, still to do. But he had already learnt the deepest lessons of life, and was ready to depart. Ripeness," in Hamlet's phrase, "is all.”

VIII

JOHN BUNYAN

I

To consider Bunyan merely as a representative of English Puritanism or Nonconformity in the second half of the seventeenth century would be to do an injustice to his genius and his work. Had he interpreted only what was peculiar to a special period and a particular phase of religious thought and feeling, what he has written might still be valuable as a document for historical students, but it could not be a living power with successive generations of readers of every class and in almost every region of the globe. What gives vitality to the "Pilgrim's Progress" is not its Puritanism as such, but rather its Christian spirit and more than this its profound humanity. Yet the "Pilgrim's Progress" is a characteristic product of Puritan faith and feeling; and to bring this fact home to ourselves we have only to imagine what Bunyan would have been if all his life had been passed as that of a member of the Anglican communion; or, rather, we have to put the question to ourselves" Would an Anglican Bunyan have been possible?" If we desire to see a typical representative of Anglican piety in Bunyan's century we may find such a representative in George Herbert. It is a beautiful

type of religious temper, ardent within appointed bounds, spiritual, and finding in forms and ceremonies an aid to spiritual life, exalted without extravagance, regardful not only of holiness but of the visible beauty of holiness, delicate, pure, not driven to passionate extremes, not the prey of intolerable terrors and blissful raptures; a type of piety as it lives and moves in an organised and cultivated community, with a high tradition, and making use of all those adjuncts to the inward life which are afforded by habit and rite and emblem, those regular means of relieving and systematising the emotions, those calculated channels and aqueducts which irrigate and refresh the soul. Gracious flower in the garden of the Master, we are not unmindful of its comeliness or its fragrance.

In such a community there is reasonable scope for the play of individual feeling; yet individual feeling is directed and controlled by a general method and order. In the smaller religious communities a public opinion exists, which is stricter in reference to conduct, and may even result in a close and tyrannous surveillance; but in the drama of the private passions of religion there is often an intenser energy; religion is less of a complex, organised institution, and more of a personal unique experience; the relations of the soul to God are less determined in appointed ways; hence wilder aberrations become possible; but also there may be an incandescence of the inward life, unallayed in its glow, a flame of devout passion which touches heights and depths beyond what can be safely approached in forms suited for the general and habitual uses of religion.