the least comfort that I had in the
converse of my late dear wife, that our first act in the morning and last
in bed at night was a psalm of praise."

It has been fashionable to speak of Baxter as a champion of civil and
religious freedom. He has little claim to such a reputation. He was the
stanch advocate of monarchy, and of the right and duty of the State to
enforce conformity to what he regarded as the essentials of religious
belief and practice. No one regards the prelates who went to the Tower,
under James II., on the ground of conscientious scruples against reading
the King's declaration of toleration to Dissenters, as martyrs in the
cause of universal religious freedom. Nor can Baxter, although he wrote
much against the coercion and silencing of godly ministers, and suffered
imprisonment himself for the sake of a good conscience, be looked upon in
the light of an intelligent and consistent confessor of liberty. He did
not deny the abstract right of ecclesiastical coercion, but complained of
its exercise upon himself and his friends as unwarranted and unjust.

One of the warmest admirers and ablest commentators of Baxter designates
the leading and peculiar trait of his character as unearthliness. In our
view, this was its radical defect. He had too little of humanity, he
felt too little of the attraction of this world, and lived too
exclusively in the spiritual and the unearthly, for a full and healthful
development of his nature as a man, or of the graces, charities, and
loves of the Christian. He undervalued the common blessings and joys of
life, and closed his eyes and ears against the beauty and harmony of
outward nature. Humanity, in itself considered, seemed of small moment
to him; "passing away" was written alike on its wrongs and its rights,
its pleasures and its pains; death would soon level all distinctions; and
the sorrows or the joys, the poverty or the riches, the slavery or the
liberty, of the brief day of its probation seemed of too little
consequence to engage his attention and sympathies. Hence, while he was
always ready to minister to temporal suffering wherever it came to his
notice, he made no efforts to remove its political or social causes.
In this respect he differed widely from some of his illustrious
contemporaries. Penn, while preaching up and down the land, and writing
theological folios and pamphlets, could yet urge the political rights of
Englishmen, mount the hustings for