persons profess to find it much easier to enter into the mind of the very poor than of the class above them, less dependent on their favour and support. But mere recipients have hardly arrived at the dignity of an order. They are not a class, but rather the debris of a class, or the matter out of which a class is to rise. They are understood in the degree in which they do not presume to possess an independent judgment, or habits of reflection which might perchance run counter to their betters. When people profess to understand the poor, they ought to consider how far the understanding goes. Do they realise the condition they think they sympathise with, or perceive what is latent and ready to spring into life at a moment's warning under any change of circumstances? We repeat, it is in proportion to the real distance in habits and aspirations that the ignorance dwelt upon prevails. The gentleman is further removed from the man whose family are reduced to herd together in one bedroom, and who is thankful for a shilling - however humbly acquiescent and sincerely willing to assimilate every thought to the opinion of the great man who is kind to him and is master over him — than from the self-sufficient cocky small. shopkeeper, who can house his family decently, and has notions of rising in the world. They have more thoughts, hopes, and impulses in common. They can reckon more nearly on each other's course of action under changed circumstances. One reason for this is, that as classes rise in importance they have their organs, and acquire the art of self-portraiture. While people are described by their betters a vast deal must remain behind, and what is made prominent nullified by the omission; but no person can take pen in hand and describe himself without our learning a a great deal about him. It may not be what he intends us to learn, but it is knowledge nevertheless. It is not easy to get at the self-portraiture of the very poor or the very ignorant and rude class, or the class perhaps neither one nor the other, whose ambition has not yet taken the direction of making an outside reputation for itself. Now it is because it throws light on these unrepresented classes that our present subject possesses an interest to us wholly out of proportion with - we ought perhaps to say entirely independent of poetical or literary merit. A body of hymns of a widespread popularity, yet to be found in no collection with which our reader is familiar, and procurable in no shop he is likely to 66 frequent, may have their point of interest independent of our approval of matter or style. When these are illustrated by autobiographical notices of one of their chief promulgators, himself of the unrepresented class, hymns and man sufficiently vigorous and characteristic, we need not apologize for calling the attention to them of such as find their curiosity stimulated by all popular demonstrations: who cannot pass a "Gospel theatre" without speculating on the feelings at work in all that tumult, or hear Fiddling Jem" hailed by an expectant crowd as he approaches the closed doors in grim respectability, without a curiosity to know how he will acquit himself; who, if they encounter in any of our large towns a marching band of obstreporous religionists, try in vain to catch the words of the noisy strain, or if they observe a street preacher holding the attention of a "lot of roughs," would fain know where he got his training and aptitude for the work; who have a hankering to know more, and a feeling less cold than mere contempt, even towards the notices on the walls which invite them to go and hear the "celebrated boy-preacher who will address an audience from such a place, or Miss So-and-so, who will preach three times on the following Sunday; or Jack Birch the converted nigger-singer, and Jem Jones the converted dog-fighter (we quote verbatim), who will hold special services in such a room, with the additional attraction and sphere for speech-making of the "sweeps' tea-meeting" in the course of the week. One apology is necessary before plunging into our subject. Of all virtues reverence needs the most careful fostering, and the people who delight in these hymns and the gatherings where they are sung, as a rule were born and have lived under no such fostering influence. So much as a matter of fact does reverence go along with training, education, and cultivation of the taste, that it may be treated in part as an intellectual quality. The child whose earliest acquaintance with the name of God is through the medium of oaths and blasphemies, who is familiar with scenes of brutal violence, whose innocence was tainted by precocious knowledge of evil, can hardly under any change of feeling, under conversion itself, be reverent according to our standard; and, indeed, without this contact with gross evil, the mere life among crowds, the hindrances in the way of all privacy, the want of solitude, are fatal to that awe which is the sentiment earliest infused into the religiously trained child of What's the news, what's the news? That's the news, that's the news! That's the news, that's the news!" -Richard Weaver's Hymn-Book. the educated classes. Again, the prema- | And then, if any one should say, Or another, in equal favour, which indicates Come, ye that fear the Lord, unto me; For Christ, the other day, saved my soul. 'I'm glad I am converted, I'm glad I am converted, I'm glad I am converted before my dying day, Before my dying day, before my dying day; I'm glad I am converted before my dying day. drunken colliers, do give him a swing and impetus that what he calls "systematic and grammatical preachers" miss in their retrospect. More especially do denunciations come easy, and the terrors of the judgment to a man over whose lips oaths once flowed like water in the running brook. Our readers can hardly form a just idea of this brand before it was snatched from the burning but from his own words taken down from his addresses: "Many of you are saying, 'I wish I was as happy as you.' Well, I wish you were; and I'll tell you what makes me happy, and what will make you happy too. If you had seen me ten years ago, you would have seen a man with blood And you may be converted, and you may be shot eyes and bloated face; a drunkard and converted, &c. I feel His blood convert me, convert me, &c. blasphemer - - a man with brutish passions and bloody hands a man too bad for earth, and I feel His blood almost too bad for hell, but not too bad for the arms of Christ. If anything was needed from us, what had I to bring? nothing but dice, I've glory, glory in my soul, I've glory, glory and boxing-gloves, and game-cocks, and fightin my soul," &c. Yet Richard Weaver, whose taste in hymns upon this showing is so questionable, is in himself a person very far above contempt, and in prose has now and then a knack in expressing himself that a good many of us might envy. The title in which he glories, and by which he is known in his religious world, is the "Converted Collier;" and what he was, as well as what he is, is This perpetually recurring theme, and one which evidently costs him no effort. For what we have said of reverence applies in a great measure also to repentance with this class. Shame, properly speaking, there is none, in the lavish confessions of these stalwart sinners; and for the reason that the preacher gains rather than loses in the estimation of his hearers by the magnitude of his errors. Wonder is the especial delight of the vulgar, and grace attracts them most by what they regard as its crowning miracles. A lady asked one of her maids why she would walk four miles to hear a rousing preacher, when the parish clergyman was so good; the reply was, " They say he was an awfu' bad man once." There is, we cannot doubt, a secret sense of power in Richard Weaver, in that he capped the companions of his sinful days as much in oaths, fighting, and general blackguardism as he now rises above them as a man sought after and wondered at by pious crowds. And, moreover, he cannot but feel that his training in the coal-pit, and the furious relish with which he threw himself into such pleasures and enjoyments as come in the way of ing-dogs." "Richard had a blaspheming father," and endurance of this good woman are a "praying mother," and the trials, courage of this strange history. amongst the edifying and pathetic pictures used to brutality, the sufferers from it in Where society is each case are clearly not as crushed by circumstances as where there is disgrace attached. His "leaflets " are full of the his mother, "the old woman in Shropshire," trials of poor ill-used women, amongst whom stands conspicuous. "I was at a meeting some time ago, and I heard a young man tell his experience. He said, I was brought up by a praying mother, but I took no notice of that praying mother; when she has been reading the Bible I have seen my father stand over her with a weapon in his hand, and threaten to split her head in two. At the age of about fifteen I began to get into company with other bad boys of my own age, and I neglected the advice of my praying mother. Her drinking and dancing, and at seventeen I went At sixteen years of age I took to home one night after I had been fighting, and my mother saw me with two black eyes. poor heart seemed almost broken, and she began to pray for the Lord to bless me; I felt like a wild beast, and I said I would murder her if she did not give over praying. "After I had gone to bed, she came to my room; she knelt at the bedside, and I jumped swore I would murder her if she prayed any out of bed, and, seizing her by her grey hairs, more for me. She exclaimed, "Lord, though Thou slay me, yet will I trust in Thee. It is hard work, my child raising up his hand against his mother; but, Lord, though Thou slay me, yet will I trust in thee." My mother's prayers | and dancing, ball-hopping, and race-running p. 16. 66 It is clear that nothing in his own class could surprise Mr. Weaver, that there is no mob, no assemblage of waifs and strays into whose component parts experience would not give him a very fair insight, and that in the first accost of a dozen idle lads at a street corner, he would have that advantage over the curate which acquaintance with his audience gives. From his showing, the youth of his own calling have a jolly life of it. Such a world as they know and care for is all their own; and if conscience does not hinder, nothing else hinders a career of wild dissipation and expense. "I have sung," he says, as much as £14 out of my pocket at one spree." He describes a pair of twin-brothers so pugnacious that if they could find nobody else to fight with, they fought with one another, one of whom had paid £50 in fines for drunkenness. He counts up the dogs, cocks, pigeons, &c. &c., kept by his unconverted companions; and tells of a young friend, a good dancer, who was withheld from chapel, to which he invited him, by an engagement to dance for £5 a side, to be spent afterwards in one spree. We are left with an impression of wild exulting pleasure in mere health and strength, which the discipline of education certainly keeps under. The physical advantages of wealth and training are found in the autumn of our age. In life, as in gardens, they fill the autumn with flowers. In spring the cottage garden often flaunts in gayer colours than the lady's parterre. It follows, after the manner of all reformers, that every pleasure which this desperate young sinner once recklessly engaged in, is summarily denounced, and with very little classification. The adulterer and the pigeon-fancier are warned in one sentence; "Not many people can endure the truth at the beauties of nature, the green fields, and the In these passages, taken down as exactly that, us.' God commendeth His love toward us, in "Suppose I could be privileged to go to heaven | But to-night, and tell them I wanted to know what the love of Christ is, that I might come back and tell poor sinners in St. Martin's Hall about it. Suppose I asked Abel, Abel, thou hast been here thousands of years, canst thou tell Take again a power of realizing the narme what the love of Christ is? He would say, 'No, Richard Weaver, thou poor bloodwashed sinner, I cannot tell thee what this love rative of Scripture unborrowed from Stanis.' But God commendeth His love toward ley or Rénan, and guiltless of local colourus, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christing:died for us.' Then if I turn and say, 'Noah, thou "I imagine I see a little boy tripping up the wert saved in the ark, canst thou tell me what the love of Christ is?' 'No,' he would reply, street of a certain town, singing, Hosanna 'I cannot tell thee; but it is deeper than the to the Son of David!' A poor afflicted woshe asks, as he is waters that carried me upon their bosom.' And man stands on her doorstep and hears the child. yet, God commendeth His love toward us, in What is that you say? that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for passing by her house. Oh,' says he, haven't us.' I go to David, and say, 'Thou sweet you heard about Jesus of Nazareth? He's Psalmist of Israel, canst thou tell me the meas- cured blind Bartimeus that used to sit at the ure of the love of God?' 'No,' says David, wayside begging; and Fie has raised a young 'His loving-kindness is better than life, my man to life that was being carried to his grave; lips shall praise Him; but I cannot fathom the and healed ten lepers all at once; and the peolove of God.' And then I go to Solomon, 'Ople that have sick relations bring them and lay Solomon, who spakest of trees from the cedar them at His feet, and He cures them all. And of Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall, thou those who have no friends to bring them, if couldst show thy wisdom to the queen of Sheba, they can only just touch Him, are made per'Oh,' cried the poor woman, 'if canst thou tell me what the love of Christ is?' fectly whole.' 'No, I cannot tell thee; it is beyond all my that's true, He can cure my bloody issue that wisdom.' And then my guardian angel says, I've been tormented with these twelve years. See, here is Ezekiel; maybe he can tell thee.' When will He be here, my little man?' And I say, 'Well, Ezekiel, thou didst see vis- Why,' says the child, He'll be here directly. ions, and dreams, and the Spirit lifted thee up He's coming this way. There! don't you hear to behold the glory of God; tell me how I can the noise of the multitude? Look! here they Hosanna! hosanna! to the Son of make these sin-blighted people in St. Martin's come. 'Come David!' and away goes the little boy to tell his Hall understand the love of God?' 'Well, I'll go,' says along with me, I'll show thee something about mother that the prophet she has taught him to it,' and he brings me to a river-side; the water look for is come at last. just covers my ankles, but it rises higher and the poor thing, timidly. I'll get behind Him. higher. Stop, Ezekiel; the water is up to my Maybe he won't pity me; but that dear little knees.' 'Come along,' says the old prophet, lad said as many as touched Him were made 'don't be afraid.' 'Oh, but, Ezekiel, it's a whole: I'll go and try, however.' I imagine I river up to my loins.' On we go a few steps see the poor weak ercature, who has spent all farther. Hold, stop, Ezekiel; I've lost my her living on physicians that only made her footing; I'm altogether out of my depth.' worse, drawing her tattered shawl around her Yes, Richard Weaver, it's waters to swim in; and wriggling her way through the crowd. a river that cannot be passed over.' But here They push her aside, but she says, 'I' try comes the loving disciple. Now, John, thou again." She winds to the right, then to the But still she perseveres, alwho didst lean on the bosom of thy Lord, thou left, now nearer, and the next minute farther man whom Jesus loved, what hast thou to say off than ever. about the love of God?' 'I cannot tell thee though she seems to have so little chance of Well done, poor how great it is, but "herein is love, not that we getting through the throng, which is thickest loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His round the Man she wants. Son to be the propitiation for our sins." But woman! Try again; it's for your life, you no doubt, the great Apostle of the Gentiles, know. That bloody issue will be your death if who was caught up into the third heaven, and you don't get it cured, and a touch of His heard 'unspeakable words, which it is not pos- clothes will do it. I imagine I hear one rudely sible for a man to utter,' can tell us something ask the fainting creature, Where are you pushYou've got a bloody issue; you've no about the love of Christ. Now, Paul, what ing to? have you to say about this love?' 'I cannot business here.' 'Ah,' she answers, I see there tell the height, and length, and depth, and a man whose like I never saw before. Let me 'But I want to but touch his garment, and I shall be as well as And now another step or two, breadth of the love of Christ.' go and tell the sinners in St. Martin's Hall what any of you.' the redeemed in glory know about the love of and she can hear His gentle voice speaking God.' Tell them we cannot tell what it is.' kindly to Jairus, as He walks home with him to I will go and tell them-'Stop,' cries Paul, heal his little daughter lying at the point of tell them the love of Christ passeth knowledge. death. The woman stretches out her hand, but |