himself qualified to work upon his own resources.” “He that learns of young men,” says Rabbi Jose Bar Jehudah, “is like a man that eats unripe grapes, or that drinks wine out of the wine-press; but he that learneth of the ancient, is like a man that eateth ripe grapes, and drinketh wine that is old.”[1] [Footnote 1: LIGHTFOOT.] It was not in pursuance of any judicious advice like this, that Mr. Bacon followed the course here pointed out, but from his own good sense and natural humility. His only ambition was to be useful; if a desire may be called ambitious which originated in the sincere sense of duty. To think of distinguishing himself in any other way, would for him, he well knew, have been worse than an idle dream. The time expended in composing a sermon as a perfunctory official business, would have been worse than wasted for himself, and the time employed in delivering it, no better than wasted upon his congregation. He was especially careful never to weary them, and therefore never to preach any thing which was not likely to engage their attention, and make at least some present impression. His own sermons effected this, because they were always composed with some immediate view, or under the influence of some deep and strong feeling: and in his adopted ones, the different manner of the different authors produced an awakening effect. Good sense is as often to be found among the illiterate, as among those who have enjoyed the opportunities of education. Many of his hearers who knew but one meaning of the word stile, and had never heard it used in any other, perceived a difference in the manner of Bishops Hall, and Sanderson and Jeremy Taylor, of Barrow, and South and Scott, without troubling themselves about the cause, or being in the slightest degree aware of it. Mr. Bacon neither undervalued his parishioners, nor overvalued the good which could be wrought among them by direct instruction of this kind. While he used perspicuous language, he knew that they who listened to it would be able to follow the argument; and as he drew always from the wells of English undefiled, he was safe on that point. But that all even of the adults would listen, and that all even of those who did, would do any thing more than hear, he was too well acquainted with human nature to expect. A woman in humble life was asked one day on the way back from church, whether she had understood the sermon; a stranger had preached, and his discourse resembled one of Mr. Bacon's neither in length nor depth. “Wud I hae the persumption?” was her simple and contented answer. The quality of the discourse signified nothing to her; she had done her duty, as well as she could, in hearing it; and she went to her house justified rather than some of those who had attended to it critically; or who had turned to the text in their Bibles, when it was given out.