penetrate into the recesses of an eternal world. At the close of a sermon delivered at Clipstone, the people were unable to read a hymn, or to unite as usual in a song of praise; and the preacher found it necessary to relieve the overpowering solemnity, by offering prayer at the conclusion of the service. Similar impressions were often made during his ministry at Leicester. Subsequently, at Bristol, when discoursing on Christ's second appearance, from 1 John iii. 2, we are told the effect was almost indescribable. The sublimity of his conceptions on the transforming influence of the second advent, like the rising sun gilding the tops of the mountains and imparting to them a portion of its own brightness, was wrought up to such a pitch as to produce a sort of religious crisis in the congregation. A clergyman, it is said, who had not heard Mr. Hall before, observed afterwards, that he never heard any thing like it; and that he could hardly tell whether he was in the body or out of it. Several of the deacons and other of the hearers made similar remarks, and some were actually taken ill from the extraordinary excitement. One gentleman in particular secluded himself for a day or more, under the force of the impression, and others were similarly affected. Yet when Mr. Hall was afterwards reminded of this extraordinary sermon, he said that he knew of nothing remarkable in it, and should not have been surprised if he had been told it was one of an inferior description.

Q

An anonymous writer has truly said, “there was nothing very remarkable in Mr. Hall's manner of delivering his sermons. His simplicity, yet solemnity of deportment, engaged the attention, without promising any of his most rapturous effusions. His voice is feeble, but distinct; and as he proceeds it trembles beneath his images, and conveys the idea that the spring of sublimity and beauty in his mind are exhaustless, and would pour forth a more copious stream, if he had a wider channel than can be supplied by the bodily organs. The plainest and least inspired of his discourses are not without delicate gleams of expression. He expatiates on the prophecies with a kindred spirit, and affords awful glimpses into the valley of vision. He often seems to conduct his hearers to the top of the delectable mountains,' whence they can see from afar the glorious gates of the eternal city. He seems at home among the marvellous revelations of St. John; and while he expatiates on them, leads his hearers breathless through every varying scene of mystery, far more glorious and surpassing than the wildest of ancient fables. He stops, when they most desire that he should proceed,-when he has just disclosed the dawnings of the inmost glory to their enraptured minds; and leaves them full of imaginations of things not seen,' of joys too ravishing for smiles, and of impulses which wing their hearts along the line of limitless destiny."

About this time a very serious but unexpected attack was preparing to be made on the rights and liberties of dissenters, by the interference of the government. The dissenters generally, and the methodists, had long been in the habit of itinerating in the villages, and of diffusing religious knowledge among the neglected and illiterate population, by the distribution of testaments and tracts, and the support of sabbath schools. The high-church party, alarmed at the peaceful and growing success of their labours, infused into a leading member of the government their own fears and apprehensions, and induced him to bring into parliament a bill to disqualify uneducated preachers, and otherwise to abridge the exercise of religious liberty. The attempt was however completely frustrated by the unanimous and prompt exertions of the whole dissenting body, who at the same time secured to themselves an enlargement of their rights and privileges.

During this crisis some sceptical writers, under the guise of socinianism, joined in the clamour against itinerant preaching, as injurious to the interests of 'rational christianity,' and the wellbeing of civil society. One of them, especially, affected to pour the utmost contempt on what he denominated the evangelical' system, as ineffably absurd and fanatical, and seemed to intimate that its abettors were scarcely entitled to toleration, and that the government would do well

to limit the labours of a set of men so annoying to the established clergy.

Mr. Hall had been repeatedly urged to publish a defence of Village preaching, and had two or three years before this time written a few thoughts on this and on other kindred subjects, which had been announced by a public advertisement. The triumph eventually obtained over religious intolerance by the defeat of lord Sidmouth's bill, rendered the contemplated defence no longer necessary, and Mr. Hall destroyed the greater part of what he had previously written. The Fragments that were saved have already appeared in the third volume of his works.

Before the triumph had been fully achieved however, a friend of Mr. Hall's replied to one of these antagonists, who had published several pieces on the inexpediency of permitting indiscriminate preaching in the villages by uneducated men, and even some highly respectable ministers contemplated the possibility of their being silenced by some new act of the legislature. In the defence alluded to, the author prevailed on Mr. Hall to add a few paragraphs on a most important part of the controversy, affecting the truth and consistency of the evangelical doctrine, which it had been attempted to ridicule and despise. These remarks are of so permanent and interesting a nature, so independent of all political discussion, that they ought not to be consigned to oblivion with an

anonymous pamphlet, long since published and forgotten. They are therefore preserved in the following extract, which displays the usual acumen of the venerated author, and cannot fail to be highly gratifying to the reader.

MR. HALL

ON THE MYSTERIES OF REVELATION.

A Mystery may be defined, A DECLARATION UPON

DIVINE AUTHORITY OF A MATTER OF FACT, THE MODE OF WHICH WE ARE UNABLE TO COMPREHEND. Now you allow that there are, in the first principles of Natural Religion, truths of unquestionable certainty which yet are mysterious. You acknowledge the being of a God to be a truth of this sort, namely, that the truth of his existence cannot be called in question, yet that of the mode of his existence we know nothing. Why may not this be the case with respect to certain facts attested in the word of God? Why may not their truth be evident from divine testimony, though the mode of their existence remain a profound secret? You have yourself effectually refuted your superficial declamation on this subject, by admitting, with respect to Natural Religion, what you deny with respect to Revealed. If in the former there may be mysteries, but not in the latter, it can only be because the testimony of God is not a sufficient inducement