great characteristic. He looks as men like him should look, and speaks as such men should speak. His best praise is to come-his heart is in his cause!

Mr. Hyatt is, let me regrettingly say it, one of the hurriers out of the pulpit.

WILLIAM JAY.

Ir is not among the least of those advantages possessed by the various orders of dissenters over the established church, that, by occasional interchange of ministerial services, they are enabled continually to attract and gratify their followers. The religious world, as well as the profane, has its fashions. It has its ministers of the day; and it has its race of sermon hunt-. ers, who, as in the apostolic times, run, with ' itching ears,' after every evangelical favourite. This disposition is judiciously to be consulted. New preachers, and popular, do not spring up incessantly; and it therefore seems wise to keep alive the principle of curiosity, by bringing before the christian public those ministers who have already obtained general approbation, and established strong claims to distinction.

William Jay, of humble birth, was born at the village of Tisbury, in Gloucestershire. Here he was noticed by the late Rev. Mr. C. Winter, during his ministerial labours among the villages. adjoining to Marlborough; where he was then established over one of the protestant meetings, and where he had just formed a seminary for the tuition of a very select number of youths. Early in 1785, the subject of this paper experienced the felicity of being received into, and domesticated with, the family of his revered tutor. 'Several months before,' however, writes Mr. W. to his pupil Mr. Jay, upon you, my dear friend, more immediately than upon any other in the congregation, and my heart knit unaccountably to you. I was impressed with an idea that I should one day have you under my roof.' It was customary with Mr. Winter to introduce his students soon into the vineyard of the ministry. Satisfied of the tendency of the heart towards piety, discovered in early religious impressions, he immediately advanced the formation of the mind, and

my eye was

stimulated it to enter earnestly on the course which was afterwards to be pursued. • There are few things,' observes Mr. Jay, approving this practice, that I can remember with so much melting pleasure, as my going with him -walking by the side of his little horse, and now and then riding on a fine summer's evening, into a neighbouring village, and returning again the same night, or very early in the morning. He engaged his students to preach very early, after they were with him. He heard their discourses and prayers with the greatest tenderness, and beamed with pleasure at every presage of improvement.'

I have not succeeded in exactly ascertaining the time when Mr. Jay first ascended the pulpit. Your way to Tisbury,' writes Mr. Winter to him, seems open. On the first of October, if life and health are spared, you are appointed to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ in the village where you first drew your breath,' &c. If, as may be, this letter alluded to his commencing sermon, the clerical exertions of Mr. Jay

Q

are to be dated from the close of the year 1787. His labours seem to have been immediately appreciated. O blessed villages,' exclaims his teacher, ' which were favoured with your respective ministerial labours! O highly favoured Marlborough, whose streets were then occasionally thronged with them who went to and from the house of God, and had their hearts filled with joy and gladness!'

Surrey Chapel was, nevertheless, to be the scene of Mr. Jay's more extended celebrity. I am old enough to remember, without being so old as to forget, the Summer of 1788; and can therefore enter heartily into the spirit of the following paragraph. If,' writes Mr. Winter to

Mr. Jay, then in town, in the July of that year,

you really have performed your appointment for Mr. Hill, I would advise you to attend to no further invitations, but leave London immediately. Come into the country, to pray and reflect; and wherever you go, set the picture of your mortality before you, and consider that he who has raised you can sink you,' &c. • What