e first of all mounted the pulpit, and then began
to wield what was even then the mightier engine of the press. He was no
novice when he entered the ministry. Would that we had more who, like
Young, do not go up by a mechanical ladder, and the mere force of custom,
to the pulpit, but who come down upon it from long and vain wanderings
elsewhere, and with a conviction, as the result of mature experience,
that God there still desires to dwell, and that it constitutes even yet a
pinnacle of prospect, and power, and promise! Thus came Herbert, and
Chalmers, and Foster, to their real work as ministers of the gospel. It
is not a boy, but a Boanerges-ministry that introduces the Word with most
effect to a gainsaying world. Young was full forty-seven--mature in
years, in acquirements, in experience, and in reputation--when he began
to publish the "News that it is well." Like the eminent men we have just
mentioned, and like others whom we might mention, his motives in entering
the Church have been calumniated. He has been compared to a lady
disappointed in love, taking the veil; and, rather inconsistently with
this figure, to a sated sensualist becoming an anchorite. How can both be
true? If Young was disappointed, how could he be sated? and if sated, how
could he be chagrined by the want of satisfaction? The fact is, that such
men as Young, Chalmers, Herbert, and Foster, are altogether superior to
common standards of judgment, and must be tried by their peers. All had
their own share of the disgusts and dissatisfactions connected with life,
and all felt them keenly. But all had a deeper reason still--a reason, we
grant, probably stirred by circumstances into action, for renouncing the
empty arena of this world's honours and wealth, and devoting themselves
to a higher and nobler purpose. They all saw into the hollowness of
society, into the misery of the human heart; and felt that the gospel
alone could fill that aching void, and satisfy those dreary cravings.
Hence, Herbert quitted the pleasures of a court; Chalmers dropped his
air-pump and his telescope; Foster resigned his philosophic speculations;
and Young shook off the blandishments of peers, and forgot the claps of
multitudes, to proclaim the glad tidings to perishing sinners; and verily
all, in different measures, had their reward.

In April 1728 he was appointed chaplain to George II. His tragedy, "The
Brothers," which had been in rehearsal, was prudently withdrawn. It is