blance to the Doctor. This amiable clergyman died rather suddenly at Nice, in 1854, in the fifty eighth year of his age. He had gone abroad with his family, for the sake of their health and his own; and, leaving them at Nice, had come again to England to discharge some pressing duties. This done, he returned to his family, and on the way, turning aside to visit the tomb of a beloved son who had died two years before at Toulon, and been interred at Hieres, he was himself seized with sudden death from a malady of the heart, and was buried with his son, among the myrtles and palm-trees in the cemetry at Hieres.*

*A son of the prebendary, the Rev. Adam Clarke, has recently entered holy orders. We should not omit to mention, also, the Doctor's much esteemed nephew, Mr. John Edward Clarke, the son of his brother Tracy; a man of great erudition, as may be seen from the able dissertation inserted by his uncle in his commentary on the thirteenth chapter of the Revelation.

CHAPTER VII.

THE SAINT, IN LIFE AND DEATH.

THERE needs no concluding éloge on the religious character of Dr. Adam Clarke, as his whole biography is one. Let the readers look back and form their own estimate. His personal and public life was one sustained manifestation of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost; and the record of it traced on these pages, is designed not to exalt idolatrously a fellow-creature, but to offer an humble tribute to the praise and glory of that sovereign grace which made itself apparent in his whole history. "The saints," as Luther said, "are not to be praised for themselves, but for their Saviour; they shine like dew-drops on the hair of the heavenly Bridegroom."* The sanctified glorify the Sanctifier. Such was the principle which governed Dr. Clarke's inward and outward life, that Christ in all things might be magnified.

In

The varied experiences of his inner and spiritual life are not sufficiently known to warrant an attempt, on our part, to give a professed account of them. The biographies of many good men are enriched with extracts from registries made by themselves of the dealings of Divine grace with their souls. But Dr. Clarke left no such documents. deed, he appears to have been averse from things of that kind. He began to keep a diary, but left it off as early as 1785. When sometimes asked whether he would not publish his journal, or leave it to be published, he used to say: "I do not intend any such thing; the experience of all religious people is nearly alike; in the main entirely so. When

*Tischreden.

you have read the journal of one pious man of common sense, you have read a thousand. After the first, it is only a change of names, times, and places; all the rest is alike." The Rev. Joseph Clarke, knowing his father's mind, committed those early journals to the flames.*

Dr. Clarke's religious experience was the work of God's Holy Spirit in the soul; begun, continued, and perfected. It was begun in true regeneration. That adorable Being who alone " can bring a clean thing out of an unclean renewed his heart in righteousness; and to the grace thus given in his youthful prime Adam Clarke was faithful. Day by day he watched unto prayer, and walked humbly with God. Working out his salvation with fear and trembling, while God wrought within him to will and to do of his own good pleasure, he became established in grace, and endured to the end.

He sought and found-what every man is obligated to seek, and every Christian believer privileged to find-the clear knowledge of pardon, and of adoption to be a child of God; and the witness of his acceptance in the Beloved was never removed from his soul. In his autobiography he gives an unequivocal statement to that effect. It appears

*In recording Dr. Clarke's sentiments on this point here raised, we are not to be understood as adopting them in full. An eminent living divine, the learned Dr. Fred. Augustus Tholuck, of Halle, inclines to a very different opinion. "O that we were richer, in our German language," he writes, "in biographical works which are adapted to illustrate and promote a truly elevated and practical Christianity, by laying open the sanctuary of the inner life! It may be said that more awakenings have proceeded from the written lives of those eminent for piety, than from books of devotion and printed sermons. We are able, at least, in the circle of our own knowledge, to address a great number of Christiansand among them names of the first rank in the religious world-who are indebted essentially to works of biography for the confirmation and stability of their spiritual life. The writer can assert this in regard to himself. He can make such an acknowledgment respecting a book to which he knows that not a few in Europe, America, and Asia, will bear a similar testimony. The biography of the missionary Martyn opened in my own life a new era of religious progress." (Preface to vol. i, of a series of Biographies, in German, for Sabbath reading.)

also in a letter written to Mr. Wesley, when Mr. Clarke was in the Norwich Circuit in 1784, that, while at Trowbridge, he had received powerful convictions of a need of the entire sanctification of his heart; that he had become acquainted with a good man, a local preacher," who,” says he, "was a partaker of this precious privilege; and from him I received some encouragement and direction to set out in quest of it, endeavoring, with all my strength, to believe in the ability and willingness of my God to accomplish the great work. Soon after this, while earnestly wrestling with the Lord in prayer, and endeavoring, self-desperately, to believe, I found a change wrought in my soul, which I endeavored through grace to maintain amid grievous temptations. My indulgent Saviour continued to support me, and enabled be with all my power to preach the glad tidings to others." These sanctifying graces were evidently strengthened during the latter part of his residence in the Norman Isles, on the bed of sickness in Dublin, and in the days of labor at Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, and London, diffusing their effectual influence on all his life.

On the witness of the Holy Spirit to our adoption I heard him preach a sermon only a few months before he ceased to be among us; in which, after reminding us that there can be no true happiness for man but in the enjoyment of the favor of God, he went on to prove that such felicity must be impossible without a testimony from God to the conscience that he adopts the pardoned sinner to be his child; and that this, evidence is not to be inferred merely from texts of Scripture, however rightly applied, but ascertained from an interior oracle of the Holy Ghost, creating peace in believing and inspiring the dispositions by which we say in life and word, "Abba, Father!" "This," said he, “is what I wish you not to rest without. Do not face death without it; do not! How awful to go to appear be fore the living God, if you have not the testimony in your own souls that you are born of him! John Bunyan well describes a poor, wretched, self-deceived pilgrim, who had

trusted to a vague and general belief, without actual conversion, coming to the gate of the celestial city, but refused an entrance, because he had no certificate to be taken in.' 'He fumbled,' says he 'in his bosom for it, but he found none. Then I saw the shining ones commanded to bind him head and heels, and throw him into the hole at the side of the hill.' Beware, lest thou art as he."

This calm assurance was maintained in Dr. Clarke by the habit and life of faith. "What have I to boast or trust in ?" writes he "I exult in nothing but the eternal, impartial, and indescribable kindness of the ever blessed God; and I trust in nothing but in the infinite merit of the sacrifice of Christ, a ruined world's Saviour, and the Almighty's fellow. Then what have I to dread? Nothing. What have I to expect? All possible good; as much as Christ has purchased, as much as heaven can dispense. The Lord is my Shepherd, and I shall not want.""

He was often exceedingly blessed in his own soul, in the pulpit, while made a blessing to hundreds. Thus on one occasion, as already mentioned, he exclaimed, "I would not have missed coming to this place to-day for five hundred pounds. I got my own soul blessed, and God has blessed the people."

This good teacher was himself teachable. We have remarked with what docility he would sit at the feet of the humblest Christian who could teach him a lesson in the things of God. "I meet regularly once a week. I find it a great privilege to forget that I am a preacher, and come with simple heart to receive instruction from my leader.”

And in making his own election sure he felt the necessity of constant self-government. Self-denial was his habitual rule; and sometimes, in things perfectly allowable, he was induced to forego a lawful gratification for the good of others. In one city where he was stationed, he found the use of wine carried to too great an extent in some of the circles he visited, and made a resolution to abstain, for the sake of giving a practical testimony against it; taking but two glasses of wine during the whole year, though in a