6 this which makes his novel position so untraceable and yet beguiling. He tells us account. CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON, whose name is a household word the world over, is the most remarkable minister of Christ now living, taking all things into the He was born at Kelvedon, Essex, June 19th, 1834. His father and grandfather were Congregational pastors, and his mother was an uncommonly earnest Christian, who took great pains to form the character and seek the salvation of her children. Charles's aunt, whom he named Mother Ann,' loved him tenderly and fostered him as her own child. Early he had a passion for books and pictures, and at the age of six delighted in Bunyan. The likeness of Bishop Bonner, whom he called Old Bonner,' stirred his dislike because of his cruelty; and as a child he manifested great self-possession, decision, His strong passions and will. education was limited, being confined chiefly to a private academy at Colchester, kept by Mr. Leeding, a Baptist, and to a year in an agricultural school at Maidstone. His parents pressed him to enter Cambridge, but he refused, on the conviction that duty called him to active life. At fifteen he became deeply interested in his salvation, and was converted on hearing a sermon preached from Isa. xlv: 22, by an unlettered Primitive Methodist local preacher, in a little country chapel. He then became deeply interested in Bible baptism, and laid the matter before his father. Becoming convinced that it was his duty to be immersed on a confession of Christ, he walked from New Market to Is!cham, seven miles, on May 3th, 1850, where Rev. Mr. Cantlow buried him with Christ in baptism. His mother mourned his loss to the Independents, and told him that she had prayed earnestly for his conversion, but REV. C. H. SPURGEON. not that he should be a Baptist. He replied: 'Well, dear mother, you know that the Lord is so good, that he always gives us more than we can ask or think.' At this time, he was a tutor in Mr. Leeding's school at New Market, which school was removed to Cambridge, and young Spurgeon accompanied it there, becoming a member of the Baptist Church in St. Andrew's Street, where Robert Hall had so long been pastor. That Church had a 'Lay Preachers' Association,' for the supply of thirteen neighboring villages with preaching. Of this he became a member, preaching his first sermon in a cottage at Teversham. From the first crowds flocked to hear the Boy Preacher,' and at eighteen he became pastor of the Baptist Church at Waterbeach, a village of about 1,300 people. His fame soon reached London, and he was invited to preach at the New Park Street Chapel in 1853, where, by a unanimous call, he became successor to Gill, Rippon and other worthies. His success was immediate and wonderful; without parallel he sprang to the highest rank, but not without the severest trials. He possessed some youthful eccentricities, which to the eyes of many staid folk savored of boldness and self-conceit. On this plea, every sort of indecent attack was made upon him; he was denounced as a 'young clown,' 'mountebank,' etc., without stint; and the writer well remembers the time, when but two or three ministers in London treated him with common respect, to say nothing of Christian courtesy. But God was with him, and that was enough; his ministry has simply been a marvel, all the solemn nobodies notwithstanding. His talent for organization and administration is very large; his heart is all tenderness for destitute children, hence his orphanages; is all sympathy for poor young ministers, hence his college; and his head is a miracle amongst heads for common sense, hence his magnetic influence. Without starch, self-conceit or sanctimonious clap-trap, he acts on living conviction. As a preacher, he deals only in what Christ and his apostles thought worthy of their attention; tells what he knows about God and man, sin and holiness, time and eternity, in pure ringing Saxon; uses voice enough to make people hear, speaks out like a man to men, lodging his words in their ears and hearts, instead of making his own throat or nose their living sepulcher. He fills his mind with old Gospel truth, and his memory with old Puritanic thought, calls the fertility of his imagination into use, believes in Jesus Christ with all the power of his being, loves the souls of men with all his heart and acts accordingly. He carries the least amount of religion possible in the whites of his eyes, but a living well of it in the depth of his soul; and the real wonder is not that God has put such honor upon him, for if his life had been very dif. ferent from what it has been, even partial failure in the hands of such a man of God would have been a new and unsolvable mystery in the reign of a faithful Christ. CHAPTER XI. BRITISH BAPTISTS.-THE WELSH BAPTISTS. HE works of Welsh bards form the best annals of Wales down to the four TH teenth century, but as they trace no line of 'heretics,' it is difficult to tell what isolated lights shone there through the Dark Ages. Nowhere in Europe was the moral night darker than in Wales in those ages. The ignorance and depravity of the Welsh clergy were shocking. Even as late as 1560 Meyrick, Bishop of Bangor, said that in all his diocese there were but two clergymen who preached. At that time the clergy were allowed to marry, but by paying a pension they could keep concubines, and a large number of his clergy kept them. Strype, in his 'Life of Archbishop Parker,' says that in 1565 two Welsh Bishops were to be appointed for the sees of Bangor and Llandaff. The queen left the archbishop to name the men for these vacancies, but he found it difficult to secure honest clergymen to fill them, and he was earnestly pressed to appoint a man to Bangor who openly kept three concubines. The primate found it necessary to commission Dr. Yale to visit that bishopric before he ventured to appoint any one. Besides, there was no Bible there and the Reformation itself scarcely affected Wales for nearly a century. For thirty years after Elizabeth had established Protestantism by law there was no Bible in the Welsh tongue. Portions of the Scriptures were translated into manuscript before the Reformation, but some of them were lost. Taliesin, a bard of note in the sixth century, gave a paraphrase in verse of a few passages, and it is said that there was a manuscript translation of the Gospels in the library of St. Asaph's Cathedral. In the latter part of the thirteenth century it was already looked upon as old, and the Archbishop of Canterbury allowed the priests to exhibit it as a sacred thing. Bishop Goldwell, of St. Asaph, was deprived of his see on the accession of Elizabeth, because he refused to become a Protestant and went to Rome, taking the manuscript with him. He died there, and possibly it is in the Vatican to-day. Dafydd Ddu, another bard, wrote a poetical paraphrase in the fourteenth century on a part of the Psalms, the song of Zacharias, the angel's greeting to Mary and the song of Simeon, found in Luke's Gospel. Some other fragments of Scripture were given by others. But Dr. Llewelyn says, in his 'History of Welsh Versions,' that 'for upward of seventy years from the settlement of the Reformation by Queen Elizabeth, for near one hundred years from Britain's separation from the Church of Rome, there were no Bibles in Wales, but only in the cathedrals or in the parish churches and chapels.' The |