thing there can be hung a jest; from the star to the grass blade, all things can be covered with the flickering light of clever and kindly banter. It is by no means unpleasant to meet a disciple of this school; he is sure to be witty, cheery, sparkling, devoid of all pretense, blithe as a canary. No less exhilarating is the same spirit when breathed from the page of literature. Sydney Smith was perhaps its most signal embodiment; allied with genius still more rare and delicate, we are sensible of its subtle enchantment in the softly glowing paragraphs of Eothen. Yet this whole phenomenon is one of unquestionable sadness; perhaps few things could be more melancholy. Fichte and Carlyle proclaim rightly that there is a grandeur in noble sorrow; it is ill with him who is incapable of spiritual anguish, even of lofty despair. That very pain is, we repeat, a proof of devotion to truth; as the keenness of the slighted lover's distress tests the depth of his affection. Better bow before a vailed Isis than care not whether the Divine can be known at all! This is the second peril, and many are there in our day, whose best existence, whose soul's life, is by it put in jeopardy.

But for him who doubts sincerely, and will nowise fail from his faith in truth itself, there may be ordained the breaking forth of a great glory of deliverance and of dawn. True it is, his doubt is to be hated, and he can never fairly take the road until it is no more. But the brightness of the morning may be proportioned to the length and the darkness of the night. The overwearied dove long winged its aimless way, over an earth that was but one wide waste of waters, under a streaming and darkened sky; and now its tired pinions flapped heavily, the heart within had almost failed, the last ray of hope was fading from the eye; but even then the olive twig emerged, and from a rift in the thick cloud a beam of light fell on the fainting

breast, and gradually the earth again unvailed her face, and the triumphant embrace of the returning light kindled a glory which eclipsed all other dawns. Need we apply the parable?

In the following chapters of this Book, we shall, amid much else, have occasion to note several of the phases of Modern Doubt, and to observe whether and how the Christian life can spring amid it, triumph over it, or stand unassailed by it.

CHAPTER II.

JOHN FOSTER.

JOHN FOSTER, peasant in the west of Yorkshire, and father of the subject of these paragraphs, was one of those undoubting Christians, whose lives, unnoticed by the world and unconsciously to themselves, are yet faithful transcripts from apostolic or patriarchal times. He no more questioned the stability of that path on which he went toward eternity, than he questioned the firmness of the ground along which, with solid measured tread, he walked to his daily toil. For twenty years before his death, he prayed, every year, that God, if it seemed good to Him, would terminate his earthly career. And this strength of character was finely shaded by a tendency toward reflection, a love of meditation and retirement. There was a lonely spot on the banks of the river Hebden, whither he used to retire in meditative hours, and which became known as Foster's cave. His wife Ann was the fitting spouse of such a husband. Her piety was of the same order as his; her decision still more conspicuous. One day, before their marriage, Mr. Foster happened, in her presence, to be in a desponding mood. "I can not," he said, "keep a wife.”— "Then I will work and keep my husband," rejoined Ann. Prudence would join with love in recommending such a union.

On the 17th of September, 1770, their son John was born.

It soon became evident that the child inherited, more or less, the disposition of either parent. He was a quiet, retiring boy, who loved to separate himself from the boisterous circle of youthful mirth, and commune with his own heart alone; his sympathies were not diffusive, his likings were few, we hear but of one friend of his own age; he lacked the glad buoyancy of early youth, and soon learned to wander musing by the brook side, or in the lonely wood. In this we recognize the son of that John Foster who used to meditate and to pray in the cave beside the murmuring Hebden. He was, however, nowise destitute of acute feelings or strong energies; here he took after his other parent. When he did love or hate, he did either well.

But it soon became manifest that he possessed elements of character distinctively his own. He was not merely shy and silent, heedless of boyish sports; he was not only an observ ant, sagacious, precociously wise, and as neighbors said, “oldfashioned" little man: he was conscious, besides, of feelings with which no sympathy was to be expected from any one, of pensive yearnings, and half-defined longings, which shut him. by the barrier of a strong individuality from the throng. His sensibilities—we mean his unselfish and kindly sensibilitieswere tender to a degree very rare in boyhood; he "abhorred spiders for killing flies, and abominated butchers;" his imagination tyrannized over him, painting to his eye the scene of torture, or the skeleton, or the apparition, until he shrunk in loathing and terror from their ghastly distinctness. This delicate sensibility, manifesting itself in a fellow-feeling with every being that did or could suffer pain, and this eye-to-eye clearness of imaginative vision, were determining elements in his developed character.

He was about fourteen years of age, when he heard what we

must regard as the first direct monition from Heaven, the first call to pause and consider. About that time, he ventured so far to unbosom himself to his friend Henry Horsfall, as to let him know that the peace of his heart had been disturbed, and that it was only by taking to himself as a garment the robe of Christ's righteousness, that he could regain calmness of mind. This was unquestionably the turning-point of his life, the occasion of his first and irrevocably determining to enlist in the army of light. A long period elapsed ere his whole system of belief evolved itself, and many a change passed over his spirit before he finally reached a station in which he could calmly feel and act, unshackled by fear and unshaken by doubt; but he had taken the step of separation, he had lifted his eye from earth to heaven, and whatever change-of circumstance, of opinion, of feeling—may afterward have taken place—however he may have doubted, whithersoever he may have wandered— we can firmly say, that this direction was never altered.

When he attained his seventeenth year, he became a member of the Baptist congregation at Hebden Bridge, and about the same time resolved to dedicate himself to the Christian ministry. For three years, he devoted himself to theological and general study in Brearley Hall, an educational institute in the neighborhood. While here, he continued, as in his early boyhood, to lend his parents occasional assistance in their labors at the loom.

He now applied himself to the acquisition of knowledge with intense earnestness. For whole nights he read and meditated, choosing as his retreat on such occasions a grove in Dr. Fawcett's garden. His mind was tardy in its operations. He performed his scholastic exercises with extreme slowness. But his efforts were unremitting and determined; and we doubt not it was here that he acquired much of that extensive,