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been recently cut down level with the ground, and a little loose earth strewed over it. Seeing something shooting up I did not like, on attempting to pluck it up, I discovered the deadly remains of the carnal mind, and what a work must be done before I could be 'meet for the inheritance of the saints in light.' What I now wanted was inward holiness."

One night about a year after his conversion, he returned from a meeting greatly distressed with a sense of his unholiness, and turned aside into a lonely barn to wrestle with God; and while kneeling there on the threshing floor he gained a little light, but not enough to burst his bonds and set him free. Shortly after, however, in a prayer meeting, his eyes were opened to see all clearly. "I felt," he says, "that I was nothing, and Christ was all in all. Him I now cheerfully received in all his offices; my Prophet to teach me, my Priest to atone for me, my King to reign over me. O what boundless, boundless happiness, there is in Christ, and all for such a poor sinner as I am! This change took place, March 13th, 1772."

In pencil mark at the bottom of the page, in the memoir from which this extract is taken, a reader has noted "A second conversion precise as to time." This narration, however, is not given simply as an illustration of second conversion, but rather to meet. the special pleading "not for me," on the ground that it is a special endowment for eminent ones. I

wish to show that it is an endowment to make eminent ones. Often and often in the providence of God, it has taken men from the respectable ranks of mediocrity, or the low walks of obscurity, and lifted them to eminence.

Here is a youth just out of an apprenticeship to a farmer a farmer's boy of all work, able to spell out a few words indeed upon the printed page, but unable to write a word or form a letter with the pen. Not an eminent one certainly; and yet he said, "It is for me I must have it; and by the grace of God I will." And by the grace of God he did.

And now mark what follows. The fire kindled in that poor boy's heart burned so glowing and so gloriously, that the angel of the Lord took from that altar the living coals to touch the lips and purge the sins of thousands. Carvosso married and became a pilcher fisherman in the obscure fishing village of Mouse-hole on the coast of England — a fisher of men, too, and few more successful than he. Four months of the year he plied his seine for pilchers, but he caught pilcher catchers the whole year round. Their first chapel was a small room in a fisher's hut; the next an offensive fish-drying cellar; the next a large upper room, made ready, but so frail as to crumble and tumble and crash, a heap of ruins, under the weight of the first assembly. Numbers grew, and zeal with numbers and ability with zeal,

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and they built a fine chapel. The whole place was transfor ned.

Tired of fishing, he became a farmer. The parish where his farm lay was unbroken fallow ground; weeds rank, stones ungathered, fields unhedged, a heath in the desert. Soon, however, under the diligent hand of Carvosso, it began to blossom as the rose. The few scattered sheep grew into three flourishing classes. His hands were full. From abroad they sent for him, and at one place, Cambuslang, where he went from house to house through the day, and held class-meetings at night, seven hundred or more were hopefully converted to God.

For sixty years this farmer boy, made eminent by grace, wrought on. And yet, strange to say, until he was sixty-five years old, the forming of the letter P in his class-book, to mark the presence of the members of his classes, was his utmost effort in the art of writing. His wife used to rally him about his penmanship, saying, "All you can do is to make P's."

A simple circumstance induced him after he was sixty-five, to make extraordinary effort and learn to write. He mastered the art, and used it too. His letters and his autobiography are quite voluminous and very respectable in style; and, what is more than all, have been first and last the means, perhaps, of more good than his personal labors during all the sixty years of his distinguished usefulness.

Comment is needless. Let Carvosso persuade you that faith and grace can raise even the obscure to eminence, while unbelief paralyzes even those distinguished for native abilities and superior opportunities and positions, and leaves them to float along in mediocrity or sink into obscurity.

This upon the assumption of your plea that this is à limited matter. But in fact, this assumption is entirely groundless. Nay, more. It limits God, and God's holy word, and God's boundless grace. Not for me? Why not? Is not Christ able? Is he unwilling? Are the promises limited? Are the commands binding only upon a few? Can any enter heaven without holiness? Is there any other way of becoming holy? Is your name mentioned as an exception in the promises and invitations of the Word? Do you find any such phenomena as a proclamation like this, "Look unto me, ye few, and be ye saved, for I am God?" Or like this, "Whosoever will, let him drink of the waters of life freely

· except yourself?" or like this, "For the promise is, not unto you and your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call," but only to a few eminent ones, or a few of peculiar temperament, or a few in favorable circumstances?

Favorable circumstances! Not for me! My circumstances, my associations, my calling, my position so unfavorable! Ah, if only I was a minister

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with nothing to do but to do good, and study how to do it!

Now let another of the Lord's eminent ones witness for him.

The gallant soldier and heroic Christian Havelock, was converted on board the "General Kyd,” outward bound for India. He was young, and only a lieutenant, with an untried sword both as a sol

* A friend objects to Havelock as an example, because he was a military man a man of blood. And asks, “Can any man be a whole hearted Christian, and yet a military man ? Under the gospel economy of the Kingdom of God can any one deliberately select the profession of arms, or of his own choice remain in it, after his conversion, taking part in the bloody scenes of war as Havelock did, and yet live in the smiles of Divine approbation and love from day to day?”

This is a grave question in ethics, and involves also the still broader one of the allowability of war under any circumstances. Of course in a foot-note questions so broad cannot be discussed at large. To answer the objection in a manner the briefest is all that can be thought of.

Is the objection good?

If it is good against Havelock, it is good also against Captain Vicars, Colonel Gardiner and General Burns all men of valor, both in the cause of their country, and in the cause of their God.

Nay, more; if good against these, it is equally good against men highly commended in the New Testament for their devotion and faith.

The first Gentile to whom the gospel was preached, as a Gentile, was a Roman military officer, Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian Band, stationed at Cesarea, which was then the local seat