words, should any of our readers be employed in making planes, or in selling or using them, and should they at the same time be sighing after better opportunity to read great authors, we know not any road more royal than their present calling. Most likely, even now it allows them an hour or two for mental improvement or intellectual relaxation; and, if they are diligent in their business, there is no more legitimate way of employing their savings than in purchasing instalments of leisure for their favorite pursuits. By great exertions, Mr Williams accomplished a medical curriculum. He studied at University College, London, and at the London Hospital; and having been initiated in the practical details of his profession by a cousin in Oxfordshire, he was able to pass his examination in May 1841, when twentysix years of age. For some time he acted as assistant to various medical gentlemen at Norwich and elsewhere; and, eventually, his brother-in-law and sister, Mr and Mrs Hill, being resident in Burslem, Staffordshire, sent him an invitation to come and settle beside them. That invitation he accepted; and, by the success with which his first cases were treated, he soon attracted notice, and became a popular practitioner, with extensive employment. For, with an irreproachable character, passionately addicted to the noble science which was now his calling, carrying a prepossession in his pleasant countenance and gentle manners, prompt, punctual, and affectionately interested in his patients, and, in a profession humane and generous beyond all others, distinguished by his liberality and disinterestedness, it is not wonderful that he soon became a favorite, and saw opening before him a field of abundant occupation. During all this interval, however, there was no religion in his virtue. Warm-hearted and manly, he was not devout; and, amidst all his solicitude for the bodily health of his neighbours, the salvation of their souls or of his own had never cost him a thought. With an ardent and enthusiastic temperament, he had no love for his heavenly Friend, and no sympathy with that philanthropy which seeks the eternal welfare of its objects. One Lord's Day, a friend returning from public worship called on him, and found him in his surgery reading a newspaper. His friend asked him if this were a right employment of God's day. There was something of rebuke in the reply : "Were my mind, like yours, satisfied that Christianity is true, I would embrace it with all my soul, and I would live accordingly." His visitor felt that he was sincere, and could only regret that, to a nature so energetic, and, in many respects, so ingenuous, the gospel was nothing more than a cunning fable or a cabalistic formula. CHAPTER II. The Beginning of Better Days. HAVE mercy, Lord, on me, Wash off my foul offence, Psalm li. 1, 2, 3.-Brady and Tate. When the Lord Jesus first revealed himself to me, he did not reason with me about truth and error; but he attacked me like a warrior, and felled me to the ground by the power of his arm.— -Vander Kemp. THE most eventful date in a human history is the commencement of its heavenward career; and, provided it is really to the Better Country that the pilgrim is travelling, it is immaterial whether hope or fear had the greatest influence on his outset. "Wherever it begins, every conversion ends in Christ. Some, like Matthew Henry and Henry Martyn, may have made the transition, they scarce know how but all agree to approve of God's way of saving sinners by Jesus Christ alone; all desire to advance the glory of God their Saviour; all regard Christ's yoke as easy, and his burden as light; all combine to mourn for sin with deep and godly sorrow; all arrive, sooner or later, at a good hope through grace concerning their own personal salvation; all profoundly revere the statutes and ordinances of their Lord; all desire to spread the savour of his name; all long and pray for the day |