how they make of religion a matter of "fears, tears, and
scruples." "True religion," he remarks, "doth principally consist in
obedience, love, and joy."

At this early period of his ministry, however, he had all of Whitefield's
intensity and fervor, added to reasoning powers greatly transcending
those of the revivalist of the next century. Young in years, he was even
then old in bodily infirmity and mental experience. Believing himself
the victim of a mortal disease, he lived and preached in the constant
prospect of death. His memento mori was in his bed-chamber, and sat by
him at his frugal meal. The glory of the world was stained to his
vision. He was blind to the beauty of all its "pleasant pictures." No
monk of Mount Athos or silent Chartreuse, no anchorite of Indian
superstition, ever more completely mortified the flesh, or turned his
back more decidedly upon the "good things" of this life. A solemn and
funeral atmosphere surrounded him. He walked in the shadows of the
cypress, and literally "dwelt among the tombs." Tortured by incessant
pain, he wrestled against its attendant languor and debility, as a sinful
wasting of inestimable time; goaded himself to constant toil and
devotional exercise, and, to use his own words, "stirred up his sluggish
soul to speak to sinners with compassion, as a dying man to dying men."

Such entire consecration could not long be without its effect, even upon
the "vicious rabble," as Baxter calls them. His extraordinary
earnestness, self-forgetting concern for the spiritual welfare of others,
his rigid life of denial and sacrifice, if they failed of bringing men to
his feet as penitents, could not but awaken a feeling of reverence and
awe. In Kidderminster, as in most other parishes of the kingdom, there
were at this period pious, sober, prayerful people, diligent readers of
the Scriptures, who were derided by their neighbors as Puritans,
precisians, and hypocrites. These were naturally drawn towards the new
preacher, and he as naturally recognized them as "honest seekers of the
word and way of God." Intercourse with such men, and the perusal of the
writings of certain eminent Non-conformists, had the effect to abate, in
some degree, his strong attachment to the Episcopal formula and polity.
He began to doubt the rightfulness of making the sign of the cross in
baptism, and to hesitate about administering the sacrament to profane
swearers and tipplers.

But while Baxter