“Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings: he shall not stand before mean men.” “Prosperity,” as Bacon says, “is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity of the New”; the truth of which, observation continually confirms. Few of the Lord's people are largely endowed with the good things of this life, and many, whose spirituality is eminent, experience a large measure of failure, poverty and sorrow in varied forms. This, however, thank God, is not invariably the case, as appears in the long and honourable career of the subject of this article. He began life as the son of poor parents and received only a most rudimentary education. When this was supposed to be completed he was sent to…

On the 28th January, 1811, a weakly atom of humanity was ushered into this sin-covered world. He was the second born of his parents, and the only one out of several to struggle through the various stages of life, all the others dying in infancy. His mother often grieved over him, saying, "He will never make old bones." At the age of three years something happened to him that is not easy to describe. While lying in a little bed in a recess, he was the subject of a sort of visitation, such as is seen in pictures, where angels are hovering over a sleeping child, by which he was much frightened, and the manifestation of that fear alarmed his parents. Without attaching undue importance…