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at the very time they were wanted, and the very best of their kind."

Thus with child-like simplicity he followed his heavenly Father's guidance, and submitted to God's inward and outward discipline; and though he did not yet fully understand what a high and rare privilege he enjoyed, the power of the divineword took such possession of his heart, that he had confidence in God, like that of a little child in its parent; took great delight in prayer, longed for the better life to come, loved the Scriptures, enjoyed the church hymns, and the simplest books of devotion; had a tender conscience, dreaded doing wrong, and showed complacency in every thing that was excellent.

Nor could these beautiful blossoms of his early piety long be entirely concealed from observation. Young Bengel possessed a large share of the love of his school companions and of every older person of his acquaintance. It was seen that there was something in him above his years, although the cause was not inquired after: indeed it was well for him in respect of his future development, that "his piety was not made very much of, so that he went on growing in grace, like "the grass, that tarrieth not for man."* "I went on in simplicity," he said, "under the idea that no one observed me, and was glad that I could proceed thus quietly." Did he then feel within him no stirrings of our common corruption?" I was no stranger," he says, "to sudden and injurious suggestions and sallies of thoughtless, foolish levity, natural to youth, but the danger of my being led away by outward temptations was not frequent, as, in addition to our public lectures, I had always something to attend to in private, and thus was entirely preserved from idleness." At one time he had to instruct the junior scholars; at another he was busied in some recreative study or employment that was set him; at another he had some new book put in his way to read. But he most preferred spending his leisure hours in perusing that book which he had so early learnt to love more than every other-the Bible. Disrelishing all bustle and noisy distraction, he often retired for "serious and salutary meditation; for he ever deliberately preferred soberness to trifling, and loved above every thing that which had a pious tendency, finding his delight in devout, solid, and seemly words and actions, and feeling an aversion to whatever was loose, idle, and

* Micah v. 7.-That is, as the growth of the grass eludes the observation of man, though it is continually advancing under the blessing of heaven.

ungodly." Whenever he discovered any thing wrong in himself, though it was generally what no one would have noticed in him, his inward monitor instantly reproved him, and thus preserved him from stumbling upon outward temptations.

Fortified by such interior discipline of the Spirit, and kept in devout communion with his heavenly Father by the continual exercise of prayer, though he followed up the study of the heathen classics with great diligence, and almost with enthusiasm, he was not contaminated by what is found in them so pernicious to many. His lively apprehension of their beauties may be seen in his following remark upon Cicero's Orations:Cicero, from his earliest days, had studied mankind. This enabled him to depict so admirably their characteristic habits and passions. There is in all his orations, and especially in his philippics, such a flow of eloquence, that when one sits down to them it seems impossible to leave off. I have been afraid of reading too much of them at once, they have so carried me away."

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"My

But that he was not entirely free from spiritual temptation, while studying classical literature and the elements of philosophy at the High School of Stuttgart, may be inferred from a remark which he makes upon this period of his life. will was compliant; but many a doubt assailed my understanding. To communicate such difficulties to any one, in order to have them removed, was what I was too timid to do; hence I often laboured under secret anxiety, and disquieted myself with it to no purpose, by which I contracted the appearance of habitual reserve, and lost some of that ability for ease and freedom of manner which would have preserved me from seeming, as I must have done occasionally, somewhat singular. However, it often had a different effect in the eyes of others, though perfect strangers to me; for their first sight of me gave them a hope and confidence that I could feel for their mental trials, which they would readily disclose to me. And notwithstanding those constitutional ailments of mine, indeed at the very time when I was suffering under them, the gracious goodness of God afforded me such affecting discoveries and experiences of inward peace, that I felt encouraged, particularly on my first attendance at the Lord's supper, to persevere in child-like prayer; and that holy ordinance was a means of inciting me to it, and to a hearty desire of departing to be with Christ."

This simple account of his spiritual experience is not difficult to understand. His will, he tells us, was decidedly in favour of what is good; his affections found their enjoyment and repose in the gospel of Christ, as teaching us how to attain the chief good of man, and as promoting it in the most efficacious manner; but his natural reason would put in its claim, whether right or wrong, to demonstration and certainty upon truths which had already taken possession of his heart, and would prosecute that claim the more strenuously on account of his naturally superior mental powers, especially as they advanced in cultivation by classical study, and by increased spirituality and practical piety. A remark of his own is here much to the purpose:-" It would be worth while to discuss the proposition, that conversion easily leads to heterodoxy. It might be shown, first, that in divine truth very much depends upon the least things; and then, that through the weakness of our natural understanding we are far from being in a condition to apprehend divine truth as yet to its full extent, and consequently are bound to have great patience one with another. A raw, unconverted man, living after the course and fashion of this world, and therefore indifferent to the truth altogether, meets with no difficulty in subscribing to any form of doctrine. He takes a thing for granted, just as he finds it, and cares not for the trouble of proof. But a really converted man feels truth to be a precious thing; is disposed to inquire after it; preserves it when found; and handles it, as he would an invaluable jewel, with great care and circumspection. Finding it impossible to go on in a careless, trifling spirit, he is obliged to prove all things,' whatever trouble it may give him. Now as truth upon every point is not attainable without many a hard struggle, his progress is often, in the mean time, very slow, during which he may easily be mistaken for a person of heterodox opinions. But how lamentable is it when such ingenuous inquirers are thought worthy only of harsh treatment; when their brethren bear down upon them at once with puzzling propositions and perplexing interrogatories, and can think of no other method of dealing with them but the method of coercion; whereas, we ought rather to allow them the free liberty of disclosing to us every private scruple, that by their acquiring a confidence in us they may by and by suffer us to make an attempt to remove their difficulties."

Bengel's own spiritual difficulties at this period may be

conjectured from two or three notices of the kind among his papers. Speaking of the seven psalms, which are called penitential, and which young persons at school were specially taught to commit to memory, he notices that they "were so called long before the time of Luther, and contain very many experiences not generally familiar even to the most advanced Christians. Such passages," he adds, "occasioned me much perplexity in my younger days; for, wishing to measure myself by the measure I found in those psalms, I endeavoured to realize the same strong experiences, and could not. Many persons, perhaps, have perplexed themselves in the same disheartening manner." On another occasion he speaks of the blasphemous and bad thoughts with which holy persons are sometimes harassed, and says, "O, how many such darts have heretofore gone through my soul! They have occasioned me such distress and dejection in my younger days, as quite to alter my manner of behaviour to others; and I hardly knew how to prevent it."

We find him regretting at a later period, that during his two first years at Tübingen he had lost much time in doubts and difficulties about the purity of the text of the Greek Testament. He commonly at that time used the edition which, with an excellent preface by Professor Franke, is, in all other respects, copied from the Oxford one, which contains a mass of various readings, without showing which of them are preferable. Being at that time occupied in studying dogmatic theology, and having to look for proofs in his Greek Testament, he was perplexed with this medley of uncertainties; especially as in the divinity lectures of those days, at more universities than one, very undue attention was given to textual criticism. Our timid young student thought he stood alone in these perplexities, for he had not confidence enough to ask for their solution; and having long busied himself in them to no purpose, he found it necesary to lay aside this edition and to study the simple text. But such a season of discouragement had its advantages, for it "stirred him up to diligent prayer; and his being tempted to doubt as to the purity of textual readings was overruled into an early habit of accurately investigating every nice peculiarity of the word of God, which led him to ponder over some of its most important passages, prevented him from leaning to his own understanding, or to mere human authority, and left him but little leisure for extravagant fancifulness;" in a word,

it wrought to the very best effect upon his future critical labours.

We may regard, as another advantage of this season of mental trial, his having learnt, that "the most important of all controversies are those we experience within us; of which there is no end, till the whole mind has undergone a change, and the whole man has struggled into renovation. When this is done, a host of casuistical scruples disappear at once, and we soon get rid of the remainder." * Indeed it was in more than one respect that his spiritual life became advanced by his residence at Tübingen University, especially at its theological seminary, which he entered just at the time "when the Lord had stirred up among the elder students a more than common zeal for true piety; a zeal that was followed by the most happy and lasting effect upon many." A number of well-disposed young men, having been stimulated by the example of students at other universities, (as Halle, Leipsic, &c.) had agreed to regard themselves as a society of christian brethren under obligation to diffuse among one another, and among their connexions, a practical knowledge of the written word of God, a vitally sound and actively well-doing spirit of Christianity. They wished not to waste in fashionable levities the fairest season of their life, but to encourage one another to devote the strength of its prime to the service of Him whose servants in a particular manner they were destined to be. At those years when worldly and fleshly lusts so easily fascinate the inexperienced into the snares of death, and actually impede so many in the way to happiness, temporal and eternal, they designed to strengthen one another for quitting themselves like men of God; and as early days were best suited for the formation of friendships, they wished to form such as, being consecrated by his holy fear, should insure every real blessing of that nature to the end of life.

A young man like Bengel, whom God had so early drawn to himself, and who, to use his own words of humble and grateful acknowledgment, "had experienced grace in his childhood a hundredfold more than sufficient to have destroyed the very life of sin within him," could not but regard it as a singular favour of Providence, and a great kindness of such christian friends, to be admitted into this social circle, and no longer obliged to go on as it were by himself. Doubtless he

* Bengel's words.

C

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