is, that He to whom the work was consecrated had a favor for it, and has given it the greatest honor that a human book can have--making it extensively the means of explaining and endearing the book of God. Whilst this great undertaking was slowly advancing, the author was from time to time induced to give to the world a sermon or a practical treatise. Several of these maintain a considerable circulation down to the present day; but of them all the most permanent and precious is "The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul." The publication of this work was urged upon him by Dr. Isaac Watts, with whom it had long been a cherished project to prepare a manual which should contain within itself a complete course of practical piety, from the first dawn of earnest thought to the full development of Christian character, But when exhaustion and decay admonished Dr. Watts that his work was done, he transferred to his like-minded friend his favorite scheme; and, sorely begrudging the interruption of his Commentary, Doddridge compiled this volume. It is not faultless. A more predominant exhibition of the Gospel remedy would have been more apostolic; and it would have prevented an evil which some have experienced in reading it, who have entangled themselves in its technical details, and who, in their anxiety to keep the track of the Rise and Progress, have forgotten that after all the grand object is to reach the Cross. But, with every reasonable abatement, it is the best book of the eighteenth century; and, tried by the test of usefulness, we doubt if its equal has since appeared. Rendered into the leading languages of Europe, it has been read by few without impression, and in the case of vast numbers that impression has been enduring. What adds greatly to its importance, and to the reward of its glorified writer--many of those whom it has impressed were master minds, and destined in their turn to be the means of impressing others. As in the instance of Wilberforce, this little book was to be in their minds the germ of other influential books, or of sermons; and, like the lamp at which many torches and tapers are lighted, none can tell how far its rays have travelled in the persons and labors of those whose Christianity it first enkindled. But what was the secret of Dr. Doddridge's great success? He had not the rhetoric of Bates, the imagination of Bunyan, nor the massive theology of Owen; and yet his preaching and his publications were as useful as theirs. So far as we can find it out, let us briefly indicate where his great strength lay.