The retirement into which he was forced by the Restoration was attended with most of the hardships incident to an ejected minister, to which were added sufferings and sorrows of his own. He never was in prison, but he knew what it was to lead the life of a fugitive; and, after making a narrow escape from dragoons sent to arrest him, he was compelled to quit his rural retreat, and seek a precarious refuge in the capital. In 1676 he lost his wife, but before this they had mingled their tears over the coffins of ten out of their eleven children; and the only survivor, a pious daughter, returned from the house of an unkind husband, to seek beside her father all that was left of the home of her childhood. Soon after he married again; but though the lady was good, and affectionate, and rich withal, no comforts and no kind tending could countervail the effects of bygone toils and privations, and from the brief remainder of his days weakness and anguish made many a mournful deduction. Still the busy mind worked on. To the congregation, which had already shewn at once its patience and its piety by listening to Caryl's ten quartos on Job, and which was afterwards to have its patience further tried and rewarded in the long but invalid incumbency of Isaac Watts, Dr Owen ministered as long as he was able; and, being a preacher who had "something to say," it was cheering to him to recognise among his constant attendants persons so intelligent and influential as the late Protector's brother-in-law and son-in-law, Colonel Desborough and Lord Charles Fleetwood, Sir John Hartopp, the Hon. Roger Boyle, Lady Abney, and the Countess of Anglesea, and many other hearers who adorned the doctrine which their pastor expounded, and whose expectant eagerness gave zest to his studies and animation to his public addresses. Besides, during all this interval, and to the number of more than thirty volumes, he was giving to the world those masterly works which have invigorated the theology and sustained the devotion of unnumbered readers in either hemisphere. Amongst others,

LAST LABOURS AND DEATH.

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folio by folio, came forth that "Exposition of the Hebrews," which, amidst all its digressive prolixity, and with its frequent excess of erudition, is an enduring monument of its author's robust understanding and spiritual insight, as well as his astonishing industry. At last the pen dropped from his hand, and on the 23d of August 1683, he dictated a note to his likeminded friend, Charles Fleetwood: "I am going to Him whom my soul has loved, or rather who has loved me with an everlasting love, which is the whole ground of all my consolation. I am leaving the ship of the Church in a storm; but while the great Pilot is in it, the loss of a poor under-rower will be inconsiderable. Live, and pray, and hope, and wait patiently, and do not despond; the promise stands invincible, that He will never leave us nor forsake us. My affectionate respects to your lady, and to the rest of your relations, who are so dear to me in the Lord. Remember your dying friend with all fervency." The morrow after he had sent this touching message to the representative of a beloved family was Bartholomewday, the anniversary of the ejection of his two thousand brethren. That morning a friend called to tell him that he had put to the press his "Meditations on the Glory of Christ." There was a moment's gleam in his languid eye, as he answered, I am glad to hear it: but, O brother Payne! the long-wishedfor day is come at last, in which I shall see that glory in another manner than I have ever done, or was capable of doing in this world." A few hours of silence followed, and then that glory was revealed. On the 4th of September, a vast funeral procession, including the carriages of sixty-seven noblemen and gentlemen, with long trains of mourning coaches and horsemen, took the road to Finsbury; and there, in a new burying-ground, within a few paces of Goodwin's grave, and near the spot where, five years later, John Bunyan was interred, they laid the dust of Dr Owen. His grave is with us to this day; but in the crowded Golgotha, surrounded with work

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shops, barracks, and blind brick walls, with London cabs and omnibuses whirling past the gate, few pilgrims can distinguish the obliterated stone which marks the resting-place of the mighty Nonconformist.*

Some of our readers may remember Robert Baillie's description of Dr Twiss, the Prolocutor of the Westminster Assembly: "The man, as the world knows, is very learned in the questions he has studied, and very good-beloved of all, and highly esteemed-but merely bookish, . . . . . and among the unfittest of all the company for any action." In this respect Dr Owen was a great contrast to his studious contemporary; for he was as eminent for business talent as most ministers are conspicuous for the want of it. It was on this account that he was selected for the task of re-organising the universities of Dublin and Oxford; and the success with which he fulfilled his commission, whilst it justified his patron's sagacity, shewed that he was sufficiently master of himself to become the master of other minds. Of all his brethren few were so "fit for action." To the same cause to which he owed this practical ascendency, we are disposed to ascribe his popularity as a preacher; for we agree with the latest of his biographers + in thinking that Owen's power in the pulpit must have been greater than is usually surmised by his modern readers. Those who knew him describe him as a singularly fluent and persuasive speaker; and they also represent his social intercourse as peculiarly vivacious and cheerful. From all which our inference is, that Owen was one of those happy people who, whether for business or study, whether for conversation or

* A copious Latin epitaph was inscribed on his tomb-stone, of which Mr Orme speaks, in 1826, as "still in fine preservation." ("Memoirs,” p. 346.) We are sorry to say that three letters, faintly traceable, are all that can now be deciphered. The tomb of his illustrious colleague, Goodwin, is in a still more deplorable condition: not only is the inscription effaced, but the marble slab, having been split by lightning, has never been repaired.

↑ Dr A. Thomson in his "Life of Owen," p. cvi.

public speaking, can bring all their faculties forward for the immediate occasion, and who do justice to themselves and the world by doing justice to each matter as it successively comes to their hand.

A well-informed and earnest speaker will always be popular if he be tolerably fluent, and if he "shew himself friendly;" but no reputation and no talent will secure an audience to the automaton who is unconscious of his hearers, or to the misanthrope who despises or dislikes them. And if, as Anthony à Wood informs us, "the persuasion of his oratory could move and wind the affections of his admiring auditory almost as he pleased," we can well believe that he possessed the "proper and comely personage, the graceful behaviour in the pulpit, the eloquent elocution, and the winning and insinuating deportment," which this reluctant witness ascribes to him. With such advantages, we can understand how, dissolved into a stream of continuous discourse, the doctrines which we only know in their crystallised form of heads and particulars became a gladsome river; and how the man who spoke them with sparkling eye and shining face was not shunned as a buckram pedant, but run after as a popular preacher.

And yet, to his written style Owen is less indebted for his fame than almost any of the Puritans. Not to mention that his works have never been condensed for modern use by any congenial Fawcett,* they never did exhibit the pathetic importunity and Demosthenic fervour of Baxter. In his Platonic loftiness Howe always dwelt apart; and there have been no glorious dreams since Bunyan passed away to the beatific vision. Like a soft valley, where every turn reveals a cascade or a castle, or at least a picturesque cottage, Flavel lures us

* The "Exposition of the Hebrews" was reduced from four folios to four octavos by Dr Edward Williams, himself a master-spirit in the field of theological literature; but there is much of the life of the original which the admirers of Owen miss in the abridgement.

along by the vivid succession of his curious analogies and interesting stories; whilst all the way the path is green with kind humanity, and bright with gospel blessedness. And, like some sheltered cove, where the shells are all so brilliant, and the sea-plants all so curious, that the young naturalist can never leave off collecting, so profuse are the quaint sayings and the nice little anecdotes which Thomas Brooks showers from his "Golden Treasury," from his "Box," and his “Cabinet," that the reader needs must follow where all the road is so radiant, and every step is rewarded by its several gem. But Owen has no adventitious attractions. His books lack the extempore felicities and the reflected fellow-feeling which lent a charm to his spoken sermons; and on the table-land of his controversial treatises sentence follows sentence like a file of Ironsides, in buff and rusty steel-a sturdy procession, but a dingy uniform; and it is only here and there, where a son of Anak outpeers his comrades, that you are arrested by a thought of uncommon vigour or grandeur. Like candidates for the modern ministry, in his youth Owen had learned to write Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; but then, as now, English had no place in the academic curriculum. And had he been urged in maturer life to study the art of composition, most likely he would have frowned on his adviser. He would have urged the "haste" which "the King's business" requires, and might have reminded us that viands are as wholesome on a wooden trencher as on a plate of gold. He would have told us that truth needs no tinsel, and that the road over a bare heath may be more correct than the pretty windings of the valley. Or, rather, he would have said, as he has written, "Know that you have to do with a person who, provided his words but clearly express the sentiments of his mind, entertains a fixed and absolute disregard of all elegance and ornaments of speech."

True; gold is welcome even in a purse of the coarsest canvas; and although it is not in such caskets that people