the younger portion of the congregation, on whose countenances were enstamped the images of their long-loved parents, and whose personal acquaintance it was a pleasure to make. He believed the church and society had called him, well understanding his character, the doctrines he professed and his manner of presenting them; and were consequently prepared to bear both with him and with them. Indeed, he had too much confidence in the stability of his old charge to anticipate any sudden revulsion of feeling towards him. It was not only a return to familiar scenes, but the revival of the purest and strongest friendships friendships formed around the altar of God, and confirmed by many grateful associations experienced through a long series of years; binding them reciprocally together with some of the sweetest amenities of the human heart. Familiar faces, which had often been suffused with smiles and tears in sympathy with his own, met his view in the house of God and by the way; and glad voices that had greeted him thirty years before, and welcomed him to affectionate homes for more than twenty years of pastoral life-voices, not rarely heard in prayer and exhortation, were daily falling on his ear, awakening either sad or pleasing reminiscences, both refining his sensibilities and drawing more closely the ties of parochial affection. He was once more occupying his old parsonage, sitting in its long-loved study, pacing its familiar rooms and surrounding grounds. The same broad street was stretching before it, bordered with nearly the same dwellings which had greeted his eyes thirty-five years before, when a student at law in the office of Esquire Porter; and here stood the same lofty elms, only grown a little taller and their graceful tops a little more extended, like rows of sentinels guarding them. Around lay the same fertile meadows, in whose retired paths he had often walked for meditation; and beyond flowed the same grand Connecticut, lingering in its long sweeping curvature half round the village, as if loth to quit a scene so beautiful, on its

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way to the stormy ocean. As the day declined, his love of nature was gratified with the same sweet sunsets on which he had loved to gaze and exult in their beauty, both in his youthful and manly prime; and yonder rose the proud range of Holyoke, from whose summit he had been wont to survey one of the loveliest landscapes with which the Creator has adorned this beautiful world. On the one hand was the flourishing agricultural village of Hatfield, holding the dust of the revered Lyman whom he had treasured among his most consecrated memories; on the other, the ancient and more populous town of Northampton, rich in recollections of the great Edwards, of the saintly Brainerd, and of precious revivals; and four miles distant, in another direction, arose Amherst with its collegiate edifices and able corps of Professors with whom he was wont to associate. He was indeed surrounded with towns and villages familiar to his eye and to his walks, containing many friends and admirers who rejoiced in his return to dwell among them. In whatever direction he looked, old and well-known objects rose before him dear as household things, only slightly wrinkled with the despoiling touches of time, and gently tinged with shades of sadness; rendering them in his view even more beautiful as changes foreshadowing the great change, the glorified state, now nearer than when he believed.

This home feeling delivered him from that disturbance of the sensibilities and consequent perturbation of thought, occasioned by a sense of the precariousness of one's residence, that nervous excitability specially incidental to anxiety to please fastidious hearers; and gave him that quietness of mind so favorable to concentration of intellectual power, so indispensable to the successful study of any themes, particularly of those profounder investigations touching the infinite and eternal, a quietness which can but seldom be enjoyed by a floating ministry, kept in a constant state of uncertainty and attendant solicitude.

He had not, it is arouse his mental His congregation

The

He resumed his studies with ardor. true, the same external stimulants to energies as in his previous pastorates. was not more than a third of his former charge in Hadley, and must have looked small beside those he had served during his absence. But Dr. Woodbridge was the last man to need such external incitements to literary work. There was within him an intellectual fire that would burn; an inherent vigor that would act. Give him books and opportu nity, and he would study. Besides, there was in him a moral force, an overmastering sense of obligation and intense love to his Saviour, which steadily bore him on. souls committed to his care, though fewer in number than formerly, were nevertheless of priceless value, — of a value filling the conception of a finite mind, unless you can increase in such a mind the conception of infinite values by multiplication. Five hundred souls are of infinite value: two hundred souls are of infinite value. So is a single soul. Perhaps the worth of a single soul is all, even more, than the mind can grasp. Certainly, when fully conceived, it will arouse all the powers of the man and of the Christian, to save it. If the mind of Dr. Woodbridge had needed external excitement to call out its highest energies, the one hundred and fifty or two hundred souls- - infinite values, as he had been accustomed to view them committed to his care, would have aroused him to exemplary diligence. His daughter writes:

"Although a man of such strong impulses, he was remarkably regu lar and methodical in his habits; the same thinking, studious, prayerful man, from year to year, and from youth to old age; though as the outward man faded and at length perished, it was plain to be seen that the inner received ever-increasing strength until it attained its rest and its glory."

She adds:

"On his return to Hadley he prosecuted his theological studies with unabated zeal and fidelity; continued to write new sermons, and rewrite and improve the old; studied the Bible still, in the original languages; was as much interested as ever in the cause of missions and every good

HIS LIFE OF PRAYER AND STUDY CONTINUED.

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object, and above all was earnest and unwearied in prayer. He often spent five or six hours a day in prayer for his people, passing from house to house, until every family in the whole parish had been particularly remembered in his intercession."

This is just what those who knew the inner life of the man would have expected. All his public efforts showed the same thoroughness and carefulness of thought and execution. Says one of his hearers: "His sermons were as rich in instruction, as full of warnings and earnest appeals, and for aught I know, as animated in the delivery, as at any period of his life."

Nor did he confine his labors to the pulpit. He entered with all his former zeal into the cause of education. He faithfully served on the superintending school committee; and visited the several public schools in town as he had been wont to do in times past. He also, at the request of the trustees of Hopkins Academy, resumed the presidency of their Board; a position which he held during his ministry, and performed with fidelity its various duties. While his parochial field was much limited compared with that which he cultivated during his first ministry in Hadley that embracing the whole town, this only a single street-he cultivated it with the same conscientiousness.

He also endeavored to promote peace between the three churches in the town, whose members had formerly been united in the same covenant bonds. He could not forget that all had once been his own flock for whom he had labored and prayed. His daughter says:

"One thing, however, is worthy of special mention. Except at the time of Mr. M.'s settlement, against whose ordination papa was constrained to vote, the two societies moved on without collision. Whatever unpleasant feeling may have existed, there was no public manifestation of it, so far as I know. Some people thought it would be desirable that the leaders of the two parties should meet and talk over the difficulties, and try to feel better toward each other. Papa did not encourage such a measure. He thought the way to feel better was to say nothing, that so the difficulties which had arisen might die a natural death.' He knew the character of the people, and I think the results proved that he was right."

But, faithful and peace-loving as he was, and abundant in labors for the instruction and best interests of his people, who sincerely respected him as a man of uncommon abilities, of rich attainments, and of humble devotion, he never seemed to regain his former hold upon the hearts of his entire flock, or to exert over them, as a whole, his former extraordinary influence. Says his daughter: "They who think that his ministry was less successful than formerly, should remember that his congregation was less than half its former size, and that the life of the church had been sapped by the discords that had agitated the town while he was absent." A change had come over the people. Besides, in the words of one of his recent parishioners, "They had been wont to listen to looser statements of doctrine, and heard less of what man is to believe concerning God, than what duty God requires of man. Doing seemed to have been thought of more importance than believing. Parish troubles, always consequent on a division, had also alienated the people from one another to a greater or less degree. Still, so far as his immediate charge was concerned, he was happy in his work, even if some of his people were a little restive under the strictness and pungency with which he again held up the fundamental doctrines of grace."

"The carnal mind," the fundamental element of man's moral nature, "is enmity against God." Its central point of opposition is God's sovereign control. The primary point of controversy between God and the sinner is, "Shall God's will, or mine, be done?" True, the sinner would not like to put the question in this bald manner. But, stripped of all palliations, this is the true significance of his conduct. Ilis heart is unreconciled to God; his will is opposed to God's will. The Saviour expresses it in the parable: "We will not have this man to reign over us." We admit that the impenitent man of upright moral principles may be willing to yield to God his supremacy as Lawgiver and Judge; but to give him the WHOLE THRONE on which to reign forever in