JOHN FLAVEL.

DURING the Plague of London, in 1665, a few Christian friends were met for prayer in a private house in Covent Garden; but, as it was an unlawful assembly, the soldiers broke in with drawn swords and arrested the worshippers. They were committed to Newgate prison, where the pestilence was raging; and an old minister from the country, Mr Richard Flavel, and his wife, caught the infection, and were released only to die.

Their eldest son was also at this time a minister. He had been born in a pleasant parsonage in Worcestershire, and on the soft summer evenings, whilst he lay a babe in the cradle, a nightingale kept up such a constant serenade at the chamber window as filled the young mother with all sorts of happy prognostics. Poor lady! she little dreamed that she and her husband were to exchange the orchard and rose-trees of Broomsgrove for a filthy and pestilent prison; but although their first-born did not turn out a musician or a poet, he was destined to a nobler vocation. As a minister and author, he transmitted the joyful sound of the gospel through the dark reigns of Charles and James the Second; and of all who sang songs in that night, few found listeners so eager and grateful as John Flavel.

In 1656, and when he was about twenty-six years of age, the people of Dartmouth, in Devon, chose him as their minister. Going amongst them on their own invitation, and in all the freshness of his affections, he and the inhabitants became ardently attached to one another. With his fund of striking incidents, with his faculty of happy illustration, with a temperament in which cheerfulness and solemnity were remarkably blended, and with a style of address in which

friendly encouragement alternated with grave remonstrance and melting pathos, except among the veriest reprobates his ministry was boundlessly popular; and when he went from home, his plain and arresting discourses were so often the means of awakening or converting careless hearers, that he was induced to extend his labours far beyond the bounds of his own large parish.

The period, however, was brief during which he was allowed to ply such a free and unfettered ministry. Ejected by the Act of Uniformity, for some time he endeavoured to keep together and instruct the members of his flock; but spies and penal laws made their meetings difficult and dangerous. At last the Oxford Act was promulgated, and according to its terms Mr Flavel could no longer reside in Dartmouth. On the day of his departure, the inhabitants accompanied him as far as the churchyard of Townstall, where, amidst prayers and tears, they parted. Nevertheless, his heart was still with his beloved people. He took up his abode as near them as the letter of the law allowed; and, sometimes in Dartmouth itself, sometimes in a quiet apartment in a neighbouring village, and sometimes in a wood or other sheltered spot in the open air, he contrived to meet a detachment of them almost every Sabbath-day.

At last King James's Indulgence permitted the open resumption of his ministry. A commodious meeting-house was built, and there, for the few remaining years of his life, he continued to warn, exhort, and comfort all who came, with a fervour of which the tradition has not yet died out in Devon. His prayers were wonderful. Much of his retirement was spent in devotional exercises; and in the great congregation he was sometimes seized with such agonies of earnestness, or carried away in such a rapture of praise and thanksgiving, that it seemed as if the tabernacle of clay must perish amidst the excessive emotion.

At last, towards the end of June 1691,

A GENTLE DISMISSAL.

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he presided at a meeting of the Nonconformist ministers of Devonshire. The object was to bring about a union of Presbyterians and Independents. The preliminary resolutions. passed unanimously, and "Mr Flavel closed the work of the day with prayer and praise, in which his spirit was carried out with wonderful enlargement and affection." On the 26th, he wrote to a London minister an account of this auspicious meeting, and appeared remarkably cheerful and happy. But that evening, towards the close of supper, one of his hands grew numb, so that he could not raise it to his head. This alarmed his wife and friends, and whilst they were chafing and trying to reanimate the torpid limb, the palsy crept down the whole of that side. They carried him up-stairs, and as they went, he said, "It is the last time; but I know that it will be well with me." They laid him on the bed, and he soon expired, without a movement or a groan.

No period of English history has been so fruitful in religious literature as the half-century between the commencement of the Parliamentary War and the glorious Revolution; or, we might say, the period included in the publishing career of Richard Baxter. But amidst that enormous authorship there are few books which retain so much attraction for modern readers as some of Flavel's practical treatises; such as "The Mystery of Providence," "A Token for Mourners," "A Saint Indeed," and the two volumes on "Husbandry" and Navigation Spiritualised." For their enduring popularity they are, no doubt, in some degree indebted to their kind, affable, and earnest tone; but still more, we presume, is due to the skill and felicity with which matters of the greatest moment are expounded. With a view to be useful, the writer's great anxiety was to be understood, and he sought out the words and the modes of representation which might suit the sailors of Dartmouth and Plymouth, and the farmers of Devon and Dorset. His books abound in anecdote, and they are rich in those

homely metaphors and ingenious comparisons which are an effective ingredient in popular oratory. Above all, they command the reader's attention, by the importance of the themes which they handle; they secure his confidence, by their unaffected seriousness and deep sincerity; and they win his heart, by the evangelical warmth and personal kindness with which they are all aglow.

Mr Flavel had a happiness far beyond all literary renown. His books were useful. One day, when in London, his publisher, Mr Boulter, told him the following incident :-There came into the shop "a sparkish gentleman," inquiring for play books. Mr Boulter did not keep such books, but shewed him Mr Flavel's treatise "On Keeping the Heart," and begged him to read it, as it would do him more good than a comedy. The gentleman read the title, and glanced into a few pages here and there, and, in terms sufficiently profane, exclaimed at the fanatic who could make such a book. How

read it." Boulter.

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ever, he bought it, at the same time saying, "I don't mean to "And what, then, will you do with it?" asked Mr "I shall tear it, and burn it, and send it to the devil." "Then," said the bookseller, you shall not have it." The upshot was that he promised to read it—Mr Boulter promising, that if he did not like it, he should receive back his money. About a month after, the gentleman returned, although by no means so gaily attired as on his former visit. Addressing Mr Boulter, he said--" Sir, I most heartily thank you for putting this book into my hands, and I bless God that moved you to do it: it has saved my soul." At the same time, he bought a hundred copies of the publication to which he was so much indebted, in order to distribute to the poor.

Our first extracts are from the work entitled, "Divine Conduct; or, The Mystery of Providence." Its lessons are very happily enforced by the selection of striking incidents from history sacred and profane.

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Man's Extremity God's Opportunity.

We find a multitude of providences so timed to a minute, that, had they fallen out ever so little sooner or later, they had signified but little in comparison of what they now do. Certainly it cannot be casualty, but counsel, that so exactly nicks the opportunity. Contingencies keep no rules.

How remarkable to this purpose was the tidings brought to Saul, that the Philistines had invaded the land, just as he was ready to grasp the prey (1 Sam. xxiii. 27). The angel calls to Abraham, and shews him another sacrifice, just when his hand was giving the fatal stroke to Isaac (Gen. xxii. 10, 11). A well of water is discovered to Hagar just when she had left the child as not able to see its death (Gen. xxi. 16-19). Rabshakeh meets with a blasting providence, hears a rumour that frustrated his design, just when ready to give the shock against Jerusalem (Isaiah xxxvii. 7, 8). So when Haman's plot against the Jews was ripe, and all things ready for execution, "On that night could not the king sleep" (Esther vi. 1). When the horns are ready to gore Judah, immediately carpenters are prepared to fray them away (Zech. i. 18-21). How remarkable was the relief of Rochelle, by a shoal of fish that came into the harbour when they were ready to perish with hunger, such as they never observed either before or after that time. Mr Dodd could not go to bed one night, but feels a strong impulse to visit (though unseasonably) a neighbouring gentleman, and just as he came he meets him at his door, with a halter in his pocket, just going to hang himself. Dr Tate and his wife, in the Irish Rebellion, flying through the woods with a sucking child, which was just ready to expire; the mother, going to rest it upon a rock, puts her hand upon a bottle of warm milk, by which it was preserved. A good woman, from whose mouth I received it, being driven to a great extremity, all supplies failing, was exceedingly plunged into unbelieving