His Person, Views of Himself, and General Character
Having proceeded to the grave, and committed his” remains to their long and final resting-place, it will be proper to present the views which were formed of his character, both by himself and friends.
“His person,” Mr. Sylvester states, “was tall and slender, and stooped much; his countenance composed and grave, somewhat inclining to smile. He had a piercing eye, a very articulate speech, and his deportment rather plain than complimentaJ. He had a great
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command over his thoughts. His character answered the description given of him by a learned man dissenting from him, after discourse with him; that ’ he could say what he would, and he could prove what he said.’
Some few years before his death, Baxter took a minute and extensive survey of his own character, and committed it to paper. From this paper the following extracts are taken: —
As it is soui-experiments which those that urge me to this kind of writing expect I should especially communicate to others, and I have said little of God’s dealing with my soul since the time of my younger years, 1 shall only give the reader what is necessary to acquaint him truly what change God has made upon my mind and heart since those earlier times, and wherein I now differ in judgment and disposition from my former self. And, for any more particular account of heart-occurrences, and God’s operations on me, I think it somewhat unsuitable to recite them; seeing God’s dealings are much the same with all his servants in the main, and the points wherein he varieth are usually so small, that I think such not proper to be repeated. Nor have I any thing extraordinary to glory in, which is not common to the rest of my brethren, who have the same Spirit, and are servants of the same Lord. Ana the true reason why I do adventure so far upon the censure of the world as to tell them wherein the case is altered with me, is, that I may prevent young inexperienced Christians from being over-confident in their first apprehensions, or overvaluing their first degrees of grace, or too much applauding and following unfurnished inexperienced men, and that they may be in some measure directed what mind and course of life to prefer, by the judgment of one that has tried both before them.
“The temper of my mind has somewhat altered with the temper of my body. When I was young, 1 was more vigorous, afteclionate, and fervent in preaching, conference, and prayer, than ordinarily I can be now; my style was more extemporary and lax, but by the advantage of affection, and a very familiar moving voice and utterance, my preaching then did more affect the auditory than many of the last years before I gave over preaching; but yet what I delivered was much more raw, and had more passages that would not bear the trial of accurate judgments, and my discourses had both less substance and less judgment than of late.
“in my younger years my trouble for sin was most about my actual failings, in lliought, word, or action; now I am much more troubled for inward defects, and omission or want of the vital duties or graces in the soul. My daily trouble is so much for my ignorance of God, and weakness of belief, and want of greater love to God, and strangeness to him and to the life to come, and want of a greater willingness to die, and oi a longing to be with God in heaven, — that I take not some immoralities, though very great, to be in themselves so great and odious sins, if iliey could be found separate from these. Had I all the riches of the world, how gladly should I give them for a fuller knowledge, belief, and love of God and everlasting glory! These wants are the greatest burdens of my life, which often make my life itself a burden. And I cannot find any hope of reaching so high in these while 1 am in the flesh, as I once hoped before this time to have attained; which makes me the more weary of this sinful
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world, which is honored with so little of the know ledge of God.
“Heretofore I placed much of niy religion in tenderness of heart, and grieving for sin, and penitential tears; and less of it in the love of God, and studying his love and goodness, and in his joyful praises, than I now do. Then I was little sensible of the greatness and excellency of love and praise, though I coldly spake the same words in its commendation as I now do. And now I am less troubled for want of grief and tears, though I more value humility, and refuse not needful humiliation; but my conscience now looks at love and delight in God, and praising him, as the height of all my religious duties, for which it is that I value and use the rest.
“My judgment is much more for frequent and serious meditation on the heavenly blessedness, than it was in my younger days. I then thought that sermons on the attributes of God and the joys of heaven were not the most excellent; and was wont o say, ‘Every body knows this, that God is great and good, and that heaven is a blessed place; I had rather hear how I may attain it.’ And nothing pleased me so well as the doctrine of regeneration, and the marks of sincerity, because these subjects were suitable to me in that state; but now I had rather read, hear, or meditate on God and heaven, than on any other subject; for I perceive that it is the object that changes and elevates the mind, which will be like what it most frequently feeds upon; and that it is not only useful to our comfort to be much in heaven in our believing thoughts, but that it must animate all our other duties, and fortify us against every temptation and sin j and that a man is no more a Christian indeed, than as he is heavenly.
“I was once wont, lo meditate most on my own heart, and to dwell all at home, and look little higher. I was still poring either on my sins or wants, or examining my sincerity; but now, though I am greatly convinced of the need of heart-acquaintance and employment, yet I see more need of a higher work; and that I should look oftener upon Christ, and God, and heaven, than upon my own heart. At home I can find distempers to trouble me, and some evidences of my {)eace; but it is above that I must find matter of delight and joy, and love and peace itself. Therefore I would have one thought at home, upon myself and sins, and many thoughts above, upon the high, and amiable, and beatifying objects.
“Heretofore 1 knew much less than now, and yet was not half so much acquainted with my ignorance. I had a great delight in the daily new discoveries which I made, and in the light which shined upon me, like a man that comes into a country where he never was before; but I little knew either how imperfectly I understood those very points, whose discovery so much delighted me, nor how much might be said against them, nor how many things I was yet a stranger to; but now I find far greater darkness upon all things, and perceive how very little it is that we know in comparison of that which we are ignorant of, and 1 have far meaner thoughts of my own understanding, though I must needs know that it is better furnished than it was then.
“I now see more good and more evil in all men than heretofore I did. I see that good men are not so good as I once thought they were, but have more im-LIFE OF BAXTER.
perfections; and that nearer approach, and fuller trial, doth make the best appear more weak and faulty than their admirers at a distance think. And I find that few are so bad as either their malicious enemies or censorious separating professors do imagine.
“J less admire gifts of utterance and bare profession of religion than I once did; and have much more charity for many, who, by the want of gifts, do make an obscurer profession than they. I once thought that almost all that could pray movingly and fluently, and talk well of religion, were saints. But more observation has opened to me what odious crimes may consist with high profession; and I have met with divers obscure persons, not noted for any extraordinary profession or forwardness in religion, but only to live a quiet, blameless life, whom I have after found to have long lived, as far as I could discern, a truly godly and sanctified life; only their prayers and duties were, by accident, kept secret from other men’s observation. Yet he that, upon this pretence, would confound I’.e godly and the ungodly, may as well go about to lay heaven and hell together.
“I am not so narrow in my special love as heretofore. Being less censorious, and talking more than I did for saints, it must needs follow that 1 love more as saints than I did before.
“I am much more sensible how prone many young professors are to spiritual pride and self-conceitedness, and unruliness and division, and so to prove the grief of their teachers, and firebrands in the church; and how much of a minister’s work lies in preventing this, and humbling and confirming such young inexperieniied professors, and keeping them in order ia their progress ia religion.
“I am more deeply afflicted for the disagreements of Christians, than 1 was when I was a younger Christian. Except the case of the infidel world, nothing is so sad and grievous to my thoughts as the case of the divided churches; and therefore I am more deeply sensible of the sinfulness of those prelates and pastors of the churches who are the principal cause of these divisions. 0 how many millions of souls are kept by them in ignorance and ungodliness, and deluded by faction, as if it were true religion! How is the conversion of infidels hindered by them, and Christ and religion heinously dishonored!
“I am much less regardful of the approbation of man, and set much lighter by contempt or applause, than I did long ago. I am often suspicious that this is not only from the increase of self-denial and humility, but partly from my being glutted and surfeited with human applause; and all worldly things appear most vain and unsatisfactory when we have tried them most. But as far as I can perceive, the knowledge of man’s nothingness, and God’s transcendent greatness, with whom it is that I have most to do, and the sense of the brevity of human things, and the nearness of eternity, are the principal causes of this effect, which some have imputed to self-conceitedness and moroseness.
“I am more and more pleased with a solitary life; and though, in a way of self-denial, I could submit to the most public life, for the service of God, when he requires it, and would not be unprofitable that I might be private; yet, I must confess, it is much more pleasing to myself to be retired from the world, and to have very little to do with men, and to converse with God and conscience, and good books.
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“Though I was never much templed to the sin of covelousiiess, yet my fear of dying was wont to leil me that I was not suHiciently loosened from the world. Dul I find that it is comparaiively very easy to me to be loose from this worid, but hard to lile by faith above. To despise earlii is easy to me; but not so easy to be acquainted and conversant wiih heaven. 1 have nothing in this world which I could not easily let go; but, to get satisfying apprehensions of the other world is the great and grievous difficulty.
I am much more apprehensive than long ago of the odiousness and danger of the sin of pride: scarce any sin appears more odious to me. Having daily more acqiuiinlance with the lamentable naughiiness and frailty of man, and of the mischiefs of that sin, and especially in matters spiritual and ecclesiastical, I think, so far as any man is proud, he is kin to the devil, and a stranger to God and to himself. It is a wonder that it should be a possible sin, to men that still carry about with them, in soul and body, such humbling matter of remedy as we all do.
“I more than ever lament the unhappiness of the nobility, gentry, and great ones of the world, who live in such temptation to sensuality, curiosity, anrt wasting of their time about a multitude of little things; and whose lives are too often the transcript of the sins of Sodom — pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness, and want of compassion to the poor. And I more value the life of the poor laboring man. but especially of him that hath neither poverty nor riches.
“I am much more sensible than heretofore, of the breadth, and length, and depth of the radical, universal, and odious sin of selfishness, and therefore have written so much against it; and of the excellency auU necessity of self-denial, and of a public mind, and of loving our neighbor as ourselves.
I am more and more sensible that most controversies have more need of right stating than of debating; and if my skill be increased in any thing, it is in narrowing controversies by explication, and separating the real from the verbal, and proving to many conlenders that they in fact differ less than they liiink they do.
*’I am more solicitous than I have been about my duty to God, and less solicitous about his dealings with me, as being assured that lie will do all things well, acknowledging the goodness of all the declarations of his holiness, even in the punishment of man, and knowing that there is no rest but in the will and goodness of God.
“Though my habitual judgment, and resolution, and scope of life be still the same, yet I find a great mutability as to actual apprehensions and degrees of grace; and consequently find that so mutable a thing as the mind of man would never keep itself, if God were not its keeper.
“Thus much of the alterations of my soul, since my younger years, I thought best to give the reader, instead of all those experiences and actual motions and affections which I suppose him rather to have expected an account of. And having transcribed thus much of a life which God has read, and conscience has read, and must further read, I humbly lament it, and beg pardon of it, as sinful, and too unequal and unprofitable. And I warn the reader to amend that in his own, which he finds to have been amiss in mine; confessing, also, that much has been amiss which I have not here particularly mentioned, and that I have not
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lived according to the abundant mercits of the Lord. But what I have recorded, lias been especially to perform my vows, and to declare his praise to all generations, who has filled my days with his invaluable favors, and bound rne to bless his name for ever.
‘’But having mentioned the changes which I think were for the better, I must add, that as I confessed many of my sins belore, so, I have been since guilty oi m.any, which, because materially they seemed small have had the less resistance, and yet, on the review, do trouble me more than if they had been greater, done in ignorance. It can be no small sin which is committed against knowledge, and conscience, and deliberation, whatever excuse it have. To have sinned whilst I preached and wTOte against sin, and had such abundant and great obligations from God, and made so many promises against it, lays me very low: not SD much in fear of hell, as in great displeasure against myself, and such self-abhorrence as would cause revenge against myself, were it not forbidden. When God forgives me, I cannot forgive myself; especially for any rash words or deeds, by which I have seemed injurious, and less tender and kind than I should have been to my near and dear relations, whose love abundantly obliged me; when such are dead, though we never differed in point of interest, or any great matter, every sour or cross provoking word which I gave them makes me almost irreconcileable to myself
I mention all these faults that they may be a warning to others to take heed, as they call on myself for repentance and watchfulness. O Lord, for the merits, and sacrifice, and intercession of Christ, be merciful to me a sinner, and forgive my known and unknown sins 1”
Dr Bates has drawn a full-length portrait of the -character of his venerable friend in his funeral sermon, from which some extracts will now be given.
“He had not the advantage of academical education; but, by the Divine blessing upon his rare dexterity and diligence, his eminence in sacred knowledge was such as few in the university ever arrive to.”
“Conversion is the excellent work of Divine grace: the efficacy of the means is from the Supreme Mover. But God usually makes those ministers successful in that blessed work, whose principal design and delight i& to glorify him in the saving of souls. This was the /eigning affection in his heart; and he was extraordinarily qualified to obtain his end.
“His prayers were an effusion of the most lively melting expressions, growing out of his intimate arflent affections to God: from the abundance of his heart, his lips spake. His soul took wing for heaven, and wrapped up the souls of others with him. Never did I see or hear a holy minister address himself to God with more reverence and humility, with respect lo his glorious greatness; never with more zeal and fervency, correspondent to the infinite moment of his requests; nor with more filial affiance in the Divine mercy.”
As a specimen of his prayers, two quotations from his published writings may be given. Addressing the Divine Spirit, he says,” As thou art the Agent and Advocate of Jesus my Lord, O plead his cause effectually in my soul against the suggestions of Satan and my unbelief; and finish his healing, saving work, and let not the flesh or world prevail. Be in me the resident witness of my Lord, the Author of my prayers, the Spirit of adoption, the seal of God, and the earnest
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of mine inheritance. Let not my nights be so long, and my days so short, nor sin eclipse those beams which have often illuminated my soul. Without these, books are senseless scrawls, studies are dreams, learning is a glow-worm, and wit is but wantonness, impertinence and folly. Transcribe those sacred precepts on my heart, which by thy dictates and inspirations are recorded in thy holy word. I refuse not thy help for tears and groans; but O shed abroad that love upon my heart; which may keep it in a continual life of love. Teach me the work which I must do in heaven; refresh my soul with the delights of holiness, and the joys which arise from the believing hopes of the everlasting joys. Exercise my heart and tongue in the holy praises of my Lord. Strengthen me in sufferings; and conquer the terrors of death and hell. Make mc the m()re heavenly, by how much the faster I am hastening to heaven; and let my last thoughts, words, and works on earth, be most like to those which shall be my first in the state of glorious immortality; where the kingdom is delivered up to the Father, and God will for ever be all, and in all; of whom, and through whom, and to whom, are all things, to whom be glory for ever. Amen.”
Another specimen may be given from Baxter’s conclusion of his work on the “Saints’ Rest.”
“O Thou, the merciful Tather of spirits, the attractive of love, and ocean of delight! draw up these drossy hearts unto thyself, and keep them there till they are spiritualized and refined! Second thy servant’* weak endeavors, and persuade those that read these lines to the practice of this delightful, heavenly work! O! suffer not the soul of thy most unworthy servant to be a stranger to those joys which he describes to others; but keep me, while I remain on earth, In daily breathing after thee, and in a believing, affectionate walking with thee. And, when thou comest, let me be found so doing; not serving my flesh, nor asleep with my lamp unfurnished, but waiting and longing for my Lord’s return. Let those who shall read these pages, not merely read the fruit of my studies, but the breathing of my active hope and love; that if my heart were open to their view, they might there read thy love most deeply engraven with a beam from the face of the Son of God; and not find vanity, or lust, or pride within, where the words of life appear without; that so these lines may not witness against me; but proceeding from the heart of the writer, may they be effectual, through thy grace, upon the heart of the reader, and so be the savior of life to both.”
Dr. Bates says: “In his sermons there was a rare union of arguments and motives to convince the mind and gain the heart. All the fountains of reason and persuasion were open to his discerning eye. There was no resisting the force of his discourses, without denying reason and Divine revelation. He had a marvellous felicity and copiousness in speaking. There was a noble negligence in his style; for his great mind could not stoop to the affected eloquence of words: ho despised flashy oratory, but his expressions were clear and powerful; so convincing the understanding, so entering into the soul, so engaging the affections, that those were as deaf as adders who were not charmed by so wise a charmer. He was animated by the Holy Spirit, and breathed celestial fire, to inspire heat and life into dead sinners, and to melt the obdurate in their frozen tombs. Methinks I still hear him speak those powerful words: ‘A wretch that is condemned to die
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to-morrow cannot forget it: and yet poor sinners, that continually are uncertain to live an hour, and certain speedily to see the majesty of the Lord, to their inconceivable joy or terror, as sure as they now live on earth, can forget these things, for which they have their memory; and which one would think, should drown the matters of this world, as the report of a cannon does a whisper, or as the sun obscures the poorest glow-worm. 0 wonderful stupidity of the unrenewed soul! O wonderful folly and madness of the ungodly! That ever men can forget — I say again, that they can forget eternal joy, eternal wo, and the eternal God, and the place of their eternal unchangeable abode?, when they stand even at the door; and there is but that thin veil of flesh between them and that amazing sight, that eternal gulf, and they are daily dying and stepping in.”
To this may be added a quotation from a sermon preached before the judges at the assizes:” Honorable, worshipful, and well-beloved, it is a weighty employment that occasions your meeting here to-day. The estates and lives of men are in your hands. But it is another kind of judgment which you are all hastening towards; when judges and juries, the accusers and the accused, must all appear upon equal terms, for the final decision of a far greater cause. The case that is then and there to be determined, is not whether you shall have lands or no lands, life or no life, in our natural sense; but whether you shall have heaven or hell, salvation or damnation, and endless life of glory with God and the Redeemer, and the angels of heaven, or an endless life of torment with devils and ungodly men. As sure as you now sit on those ^eatp- you shall shortly all appear before the Judge ol all the world, and there receive an irreversible sentence to an unchangeable state of happiness or misery. This is the great business that should presently call up your most serious thoughts, and set all the powers of your souls on work for the most effectual preparation; that, if you are men, you may acquit yourselves like men, for the preventing of that dreadful doom which unprepared souls must there expect. The greatest of your secular affairs are but dreams and toys to this. Were you at every assize to determine causes of no lower value than the crowns and kingdoms of the monarchs of the earth, it were but as children’s games to this. If any man of you believe not this, he is worse than the devil that temptelh him to unbelief; and let him know that unbelief is no prevention, nor will put off the day, or hinder his appearance; but will render certain his condemnation at that appearance.
“He that knows the law and the fact, may know before your assize what will become of every prisoner, if the proceedings be all just, as in our case they will certainly be. Christ will judge according to his laws; know, therefore, whom the law condemns or justifies, and you may know whom Christ will condemn or justify. And seeing all this is so, does it not concern us all to make a speedy trial of ourselves in preparation for this final trial? I shall, for your own sakes, therefore, take the boldness, as the officer of Christ, to summon you to appear before yourselves, and keep an assize this day in your own souls, and answer at the bar of conscience to what shall be charged upon you. Fear not the trial; for it is not conclusive, final, or a peremptory irreversible sentence that must now pass. Yet slight it not; for it is a necesFsary preparative to that which is final and irreversible.”
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After describing the vanities of the world, he bursts forth: “What! shall we prefer a mole-hill before a kingdom? A shadow before the substance? An hour before eternity? Nothing before all things? Vanity and vexation before felicity? The cross of Christ hath set up such a sun as quite darkeneih the light of worldly glory. Though earth were something, if there were no better to be had, it is nothing when heaven standeth by.”
Dr. Bates further remarks: “Besides, his wonderful diligence in catechising the particular families under his charge was exceeding useful to plant religion in them. Personal instruction, and application of divine truths, has an excellent advantage and efficacy to insinuate and infuse religion into the minds and hearts of men, and, by the conversion of parents and masterri to reform whole families that are under their imnie diate direction and government. His unwearied industry to do good to his flock, was answered by correspondent love and thankfulness. He was an angel in their esteem. He would often speak with great complacence of their dear affections; and, a little before his death, said, ‘He believed they were more expressive of kindness to him, than the Christian convertfs were to the apostle Paul, by what appears in hia writings.’”
“His books, for their number and the variety of matter in them, make a library. They contain a treasure of controversial, casuistical, positive, and practical divinity. Of them I shall relate the words of one whose exact judgment, joined with his moderation, will give a great value to his testimony; they are those of Dr. Wilkins, afterwards bishop of Chester. He said thai Mr. Baxter had ’ cultivated every subject he handled and ‘if he had lived in the primitive times, he had been one of the fathers of the church,’ and ’ that it was enough for one age to produce such a person as Mr. Baxter.’ Indeed, he had such an amplitude in his thoughts, such a vivacity of imagination, and such solidity and depth of judgment as rarely meet in one man. His inquiring mind was freed from the serviln dejection and bondage of an implicit faith. He adhered to the Scriptures as the perfect rule of faith, and searched whether the doctrines received and taught were consonant to it. This is the duty of every Christian according to his capacity, especially of ministers, and the necessary means to open the mind for Divine knowledge, and for the advancement of the truth.”
“His books of practical divinity have been effectual for more numerous conversions of sinners to God than any printed in our time; and while the church remains on earth, will be of continual efficacy to recover lost souls. There is a vigorous pulse in them that keeps the reader awake and attentive. His book of the ‘Saints’ Everlasting Rest,’ was written by him when languishing in the suspense of life and death, but has the signatures of his holy and vigorous mind. To allure our desires, he unveils the sanctuary above, and discovers the glory and joys oi’ the blessed in the Divine presence, by a light so strong and lively, that all the gl.ttering vanities of this world vanish in that comparison, and a sincere believer will despise them, as one of mature age does the toys and baubles of children. To excite our fear he removes the skreen, and makes the everlasting fire of hell so visible, and represents the tormenting passions of the damned in those dreadful colors, that, if duly considered, would check and
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control the unbridled licentious appetites of the most
sensual.”
Baxter’s practical writings alone occupy four ponderous folio, or twenty-two octavo volumes. If a complete collection of his controversial and practical writings were made, they would occupy fully sixty volumes of the same size. “His industry was almost incredible in his studies. He had a sensitive nature, desirous of ease, as others have, and faculties like others, liable to lire; yet such was the continual application of himself to his great work, as if the labor of one day had supplied strength for another, and the willingness of the spirit had supported the weakness of the flesh.” His painful and incessant afflictions would have prevented an ordinary nianfrom attempting any thing; but he persevered with unwearied industry to the close of his days. His life was occupied, too, in active labors. In camps and at court, in his parish and in prison, at home and abroad, his efforts were unremitting and often successful.
Some idea of his sufferings may be formed from the summary of his diseases given by his late biographer.
His constitution was naturally sound, but he was always very thin and weak, and early affected with nervous debility. At fourteen years of age he was seized with the small-pox, and soon after, by improper exposure to the cold, he was affected with a violent catarrh and cough. This continued for about two years, and was followed by spitting of blood and other phthisical symptoms. He became, from that time, the sport of medical treatment and experiment. One physician prescribed one mode of cure, and another a different one; till, from first to last, he had the advice of no less than ihirty-six professors of the healing art. By their
Ul
orders he took drugs without number, till, from experiencing how little they could do for him, he forsook them entirely, except some particular symptom urged him to seek present relief. He was diseased literally from head to foot; his stomach flatulent and acidulous; violent rheumatic head-aches; prodigious bleeding at the nose; his legs swelled and dropsical, &c. His physicians called it hypochondria, he himself considered it prcmiaiura senectus, premature old age; so that at twenty he had the symptoms, in addition to disease, of fourscore! To be more particular would be disagreeable; and to detail the innumerable remedies to which he was directed, or which he employed himself, would add little to the stock of medical knowledge. He was certainly one of the most diseased and afflicted men that ever reached the full ordinary limits of human life. How, in such circumstances, he was capable of the exertions he almost incessantly made, appears not a little mysterious. His behavior under them is- a poignant reproof to many, who either sink entirely under common afflictions, or give way to indolence and trifling. For the acerbity of his temper we are now prepared with an ample apology. That lie should have been occasionally fretful, and impatient of contradiction, is not surprising, considering the state of the earthen vessel in which his noble and active spirit was deposited. No man was more sensible of his obliquities of disposition than himself; and no man, perhaps, ever did more to maintain the ascendancy of Christian principle over the strength and waywardness of passion.”
The conviction that his time would be short, urged him to prosecute his labors with unwearied assiduity. Love to immortal souls, too, exerted its powerful in-LIFE OF BAXTER.
fluence. This “love to the souls of men,” says Dr. Bates, “was the peculiar character of his spirit. In this he imitated and honored our Savior, who prayed, died, and lives for the salvation of souls. All his natural and supernatural endowments were subservient xo that blessed end. It was his meat and drink, the life and joy of his life to do good to souls.”
Disinterestedness formed no unimportant feature of his character, and was strikingly marked in his refusal of ecclesiastical preferment; his self-denying engagements respecting his stipend at Kidderminster; his gratuitous labors; abundant alms-giving; and the wide distribution of his works among the poor and destitute. So long as he had a bare maintenance he was content. He rejoiced in being able to benefit others by his property or his labors.
Fidelity to his Divine Master, and to his cause, was conspicuous in all his engagements. He tendered his advice, or administered his reproofs with equal faithfulness, whether in court or camp; to the king or to the protector; before parliament or his parishioners; in his conversation or his correspondence. He could not suffer sin upon his neighbor; and whatever he conceived would be for the benefit of those concerned, thai he faithfully, and without compromise, administered. In his preaching he “shunned not to declare the whole counsel of God.”
Dr. Bates remarks: He that was so solicitous for the salvation of others, was not negligent of his own. In him the virtues of the contemplative and active life were eminently united. His time was ?pent in communion with God, and in charity to men. He lived above the world, and in solitude and silence conversed with God. The frequent and serious meditation ol eternal things was the powerful means to make his heart holy and heavenly, and from thence his conversation. His life was a practical sermon, a drawing example. There was an air of humility and sanctity in his mortified countenance; and his deportment was becoming a stranger upon earth and a citizen of heaven.”
The following passage from his interesting impor« tant work, entitled “The Divine Life,” may be considered as a portrait of his own spiritual character.
“To walk with God,” he says,” is a phrase so high, that I should have feared the guilt of arrogance in using it, if I had not found it in the Holy Scriptures. It is a phrase that imports so high and holy a frame I of soul, and expresses such high and holy actions, that I the naming of it strikes my heart with reverence, as if I had heard the voice to Moses, ‘Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest 1 is holy ground.’ Melhinks he that shall say to me, ‘.. Come, see a man that walks with God, doth call me ‘! to see one that is next unto an angel or glorified soul.
It is a far more reverend object in mine eye than ttn! thousand lords or princes, coirsidered only in their 1 earthly glory. It is a wiser action for people to run and crowd together to see a man that walks with God,, than to see the pompous train of princes, their enteri| tainments, or their triumph. O. happy man that walks I with God, though neglected and contemned by all about him! What blessed sights does he daily see! j What ravishing tidings, what pleasant melody does lie j daily hear! What delectable food does he daily taste!. He sees, by faith, the God, the glory which the blessed j spirits see at hand by nearest intuition! He sees that in a glass, and darkly, which they behold with open face! He sees the glorious majesty of his Creator, the
144 LIFE OF BAXTER. j
eternal King, the Cause of causes, the Composer, Upholder, Preserver, and Governor of all worlds! He beholds the wonderful nieihods of his providence; and what he cannot fully see he admires, and waits for the time ^yhen that also shall be open to his view! He sees, by: faith, the world of spirits, the hosts that attend the throite of God; ilieir perfect righteousness, the.r full devotedness to God; their ardent love, their flaming zeal, their ready and cheerful obedience, their dignity and shining glory, in which the lowest of them exceed that wljich the disciples saw on Moses and Elias, when they appeared on the holy mount and talked v.ilh Christ! He hears by faith the heavenly concert, the high and harmonious songs of praise, the joyful triumphs of crowned saints, the sweet commemorations of the things that vpere done and suffered on earth, with the praises of Him that redeemed them by .his blood, and made them kings and priests unto God. Herein he has sometimes a sweet foretaste of the everlasting pleasures which, though it be but little, as Jonathan’s honey on the end of his rod, or as the clusters brought from Canaan into the wilderness; yet is n)ore excellent than all the delights of sinners.”
His character may be summed up in the words of T»Ir. Orme: “Among his contemporaries there were men of equal talents, of more amiable dispositions, and v{ greater learning. But there was no man in whom there appears to have been so little of earth, and so much of heaven; so small a portion of the alloy of hujnanity, and so large a portion of all that is celestial. He felt scarcely any of the attractions of this world, but felt and manifested the most powerful afiinity for the world to come.”