strove in vain to conceal his emotion. In one of his addresses to the members of the church, on adverting to the pain of separation, he was so much affected that he sat down, covered his face with his hands, and wept; they sharing in his distress, gave unequivocal signs of the deepest feeling. Mr. Eustace Carey, who was present, continued the devotional part of the service, until Mr. Hall was sufficiently recovered to proceed. At the close of the solemnity the weeping became again universal, and they parted "sorrowing most of all that they should see his face no more."

Very shortly afterwards the church received from Mr. Hall the following letter of resignation:

TO THE CHURCH OF CHRIST MEETING IN HARVEY-LANE,

LEICESTER.

"MY DEAR BRETHREN AND SISTERS,

"3d April, 1826.

"I TAKE this opportunity of solemnly and affectionately resigning the pastoral charge which I have long sustained among you, and of expressing, at the same time, the deep sense I shall ever retain of the marks of affection and esteem, with which, both collectively and individually, you have honoured me.

"Though the providence of God has, as I conceive, called me to labour in another part of his vineyard, my solicitude for your spiritual welfare will ever remain unimpaired, nor will any thing give me more joy than to hear of your growth in grace, peace, and prosperity. My prayer will never cease to ascend to the God of all comfort, that he will establish your hearts in love, unite you more and more in the fellowship of saints, and make you fruitful in every good work.

"Let me earnestly intreat you to guard most anxiously against whatever may tend to weaken your union, diminish your affection, or embitter your spirits against each other. 'Let brotherly love continue' 'Seek peace and pursue it :' and, may the God of peace, who brought again from the dead the Lord Jesus Christ, that Great Shepherd of the sheep, stablish, strengthen, settle, and make you perfect.'

"I hope that, in the choice of a successor, you will earnestly and anxiously seek divine direction; prefer the useful to the splendid; the solid to the glittering and shewy; and be supplied with a pastor who will, in doctrine, exhibit uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity, and sound speech which cannot be condemned,' and be in manner and behaviour a pattern to believers.

"Permit me, on this occasion, to return you my sincere acknowledgements for the uniform kindness with which you have treated me, the respectful attention you have paid to my ministry, and the candour with which you have borne my infirmities.

"With my most earnest prayers for your spiritual and eternal welfare, I remain,

My dear Brethren and Sisters,

"Your obliged and affectionate friend and brother,

"ROBERT HALL."

Mr. Hall was in his sixty-second year when he removed to Bristol, the scene of his first continuous labours, and now to become the scene of his closing ministry. Some of the friends of his early life still survived to welcome his return among them; and many others, who had profited by his pulpit exertions on his periodical visits to Bristol, congratulated themselves that he to whom, under God, they owed so much, had become their pastor. All things indeed, except his infirm state of health, seemed to conspire in promoting his own happiness as well as the prosperity of the Church with which he had again connected himself.

The church and congregation soon received numerous accessions. In writing to a friend, early in 1829, he says, "I "continue to be very happy with my people, from whom I "daily receive every demonstration of affection and respect. "Our attendance is as good as I could wish; and we have "added to the Baptist church, during the last year, twentyseven, and six are standing candidates for baptism. For "these tokens of the divine presence I desire to be thankful.”

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His heavenly Father, during the concluding years of his life, made a rich provision for his social enjoyments, both in his family, and among his friends. Besides the comfort of frequent association with many of his own flock, his pleasures were greatly heightened by intercourse with Mr. Foster, and the tutors of the Baptist Academy, as well as with several clergymen and other ministers, and laymen, residing in Bristol and its vicinity. It is true, that wherever he went, or in whatever he engaged, he carried with him the complaint from which he had suffered so much and so long. It had become, as his esteemed friend Mr. Addington termed it, "an internal apparatus of torture ;" yet, such was the peculiar structure of his mind, doubtless fortified and prepared for patient endurance

VOL. VI.

by an energy imparted from above, that though his appointment by day and by night was incessant pain, yet high enjoyment was, notwithstanding, the law of his existence.

Between his final removal to Bristol, and his death, he visited his friends at Cambridge twice, namely, in 1827 and 1829. These visits were undertaken with the sense of responsibility of one who had formerly been their pastor: and he made it a rule so to arrange his time while there, as to see, converse with, and exhort, every member of the church, and a great proportion of the congregation. He paid also one visit to his recently quitted flock at Leicester; and two to his friends in London. On these occasions the anxiety to hear him preach was as great as it had ever been; while his sermons were characterized in a high degree by the qualities that had long distinguished them,—with the addition of a stronger manifestation of religious and benevolent affections, a still more touching persuasiveness of manner, continued with an increasing intensity of feeling, with deeper and deeper solemnity of appeal; the entire effect being greatly augmented by the sudden introduction, just as the last sentence seemed dropping from his lips, of some new topic of application or of caution, most urgently pressed; as though he could not cease to invite, to warn, to expostulate, until the "Great Master of Assemblies" vouchsafed to him the assurance that he had not been pleading his cause in vain.*

Mr. Hall's increasing infirmities did not extinguish his literary ardour, or abate his love of reading. Except during the first years of his residence at Cambridge, reading, and the thinking it called forth, were his incessant occupation to the very close of life; and both the pursuit, and its application to the benefit of others, yielded him the highest delight. In his early life, as I have already mentioned, it was common with him to carry on five or six different courses of study, simultaneously. But for the last ten or twelve years, he mostly confined himself to one book at a time, and read it to the end. His reading continued to be very extensive and varied, (for it was his decided opinion that every species of knowledge might be

It was seldom that the friends who attempted to take down Mr. Hall's sermons did not unconsciously relinquish writing as he approached the close. The reader, however, who never had the privilege of hearing him preach, will be able to form some conception of his impressive terminations, from the last ten pages of the sermon in the present volume, on "the Glory of God in concealing."

rendered subservient to religion,) but his predilection, next to the Scriptures, was for works of clear, strong, and conclusive reasoning, though conveyed in language far from elevated, and sometimes perhaps obscure. Thus he, for full sixty years, read Jonathan Edwards's writings with undiminished pleasure. And of Chillingworth's "Religion of Protestants," he has often been known to say, "It is just like reading a novel :" which indeed, was his usual expression of commendation, with regard to such works of a dry or abstract nature, as discovered subtilty, depth, or vigour of thought. In this class he placed the works of Jeremy Bentham, for whom he entertained the highest estimation, as an original, profound, and accurate thinker; observing often, that in the particular province of his speculations, the science of legislation, he had advanced to the limits of reason; and that if he were compelled to legislate for the world upon uninspired principles," he should take Bentham, and go from "state to state with as firm a step as though he walked upon "a pavement of adamant."

If, at any time, he could not settle a point of interest without studying a language of which he was ignorant, that constituted no impediment. Shortly before he quitted Leicester, a friend found him one morning, very early, lying on the carpet, with an Italian dictionary and a volume of Dante, before him. Being about to quit the room, he said, "No, Sir, don't go. I will tell you what I have been about "for some weeks. A short time since I was greatly de"lighted with a parallel between the Paradise Lost, and the "Divine Comedy of Dante, which I read in the Edinburgh "Review. But in matters of taste, as well as others, I always "like to judge for myself; and so I have been studying Italian. "I have caught the idiom, and am reading Dante with great "relish; though I cannot yet say, with Milton,

""Now my task is smoothly done,

I can fly or I can run.'"

It may seem somewhat out of place, yet I shall be forgiven if I here insert an extract of a letter just received from Mr. Ryley, one of Mr. Hall's most intelligent Leicester friends, in reference to his course of reading there.

He always recommended those who were likely to be offended with the strangeness of Bentham's style, to study his principles through the medium of his elegant French commentator, M. Dumont.

"It was what some men might think desultory; but it was essentially a constant habit of grappling with the strong. Belles Lettres he did not altogether neglect, though he held the average of such literature in small estimation. Poetry he seldom read, nor did he seem to me to have even studied it con amore. He thought Gray's Elegy the finest thing ever written. Milton was his favourite. There was something peculiar in his habits respecting poetry. He spoke slightly of poets, with few exceptions, and those few. by no means what might have been expected from his own highly imaginative cast of mind. Yet, when he did get hold of an exquisite poem, he would read it with intense attention, apparently with the deepest interest, and then abuse it. With the exception of Milton, who is, in fact, an antique, he preferred the ancient to the modern poets. Of the poetry of our own day, he spoke with a contempt, which an accurate or extensive acquaintance with it, would have compelled him to relinquish. He had not, I think, made history a distinct and consecutive study, though he had read many of the original historians. He seemed to feel this of late years, and gave much of

his time to the subject." His enjoyment of the writings of the illustrious men of Greece and Rome, remained unimpaired to the last. Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, suggested to him many noble arguments in favour of an internal spring of morality, which he employed with his wonted skill in support of the religion of pure motive and devotedness of spirit. Virgil's Georgics he characterised as the most finished of human compositions; and he continued to prefer Virgil to Homer. He greatly admired the copiousness, grace, and harmony, of Cicero's diction; but considered Demosthenes by far the most powerful orator the world had known; and after speaking with fervid applause of the oration TEρ ZTεpavov, added, that he thought it impossible for a man of soul and feeling to read a single page without catching fire. Only a few months before his last illness, in classifying the different natures, and respective effects, of the eloquence of reason, of passion, and of imagination, he selected his principal illustrations from Demosthenes, and endeavoured to shew that where the two former kinds of eloquence existed in due proportion, the third was of very minor consequence. The individual to whom he made these remarks was struck, as he proceeded, with the developement which they supplied of the causes of the deep impression made by his own pulpit addresses; and imputed his more sparing use of imagery in later