RICHARD BAXTER.--Among the most devout, independent, and popular of the religious writers of the day, Richard Baxter occupies a high rank. He was born in 1615, and was ordained a clergyman in 1638. In the civil troubles he desired to remain neutral, and he opposed Cromwell when he was made Protector. In 1662 he left the Church, and was soon the subject of persecution: he was always the champion of toleration. In prison, poor, hunted about from place to place, he was a martyr in spirit. During his great earthly troubles he was solaced by a vision, which he embodied in his popular work, _The Saints' Everlasting Rest_; and he wrote with great fervor _A Call to the Unconverted_. He was a very voluminous writer; the brutal Judge Jeffries, before whom he appeared for trial, called him "an old knave, who had written books enough to load a cart." He wrote a paraphrase of the New Testament, and numerous discourses. Dr. Johnson advised Boswell, when speaking of Baxter's works: "Read any of them; they are all good." He continued preaching until the close of his life, and died peacefully in 1691. GEORGE FOX.--The founder of the Society of Friends was born in 1624, in an humble condition of life, and at an early age was apprenticed to a shoemaker and grazier. Uneducated and unknown, he considered himself as the subject of special religious providence, and at length as supernaturally called of God. Suddenly abandoning his servile occupation, he came out in 1647, at the age of twenty-three, as the founder of a new sect; an itinerant preacher, he rebuked the multitudes which he assembled by his fervent words. Much of his success was due to his earnestness and self-abnegation. He preached in all parts of England, and visited the American colonies. The name Quaker is said to have been applied to this sect in 1650, when Fox, arraigned before Judge Bennet, told him to "tremble at the word of the Lord." The establishment of this sect by such a man is one of the strongest illustrations of the eager religious inquiry of the age. The works of Fox are a very valuable _Journal of his Life and Travels_; _Letters and Testimonies_; _Gospel Truth Demonstrated_,--all of which form the best statement of the origin and tenets of his sect. Fox was a solemn, reverent, absorbed man; a great reader and fluent expounder of the Scriptures, but fanatical and superstitious; a believer in witchcraft, and in his power to detect witches. The sect which he founded, and which has played so respectable a part in later history, is far more important than the founder himself. He died in London in 1690.