When he became a minister of the Gospel, Christ, as the only way, was his constant theme. Some of his hearers thought that he kept too exclusively to the subject; but, to hold him up as the friend of sinners, ought, he said, to be the great aim and end of preaching; and often were the dying words of the martyred Lambert on his lips, "None but Christ-none but Christ."

In June, 1777, the year following his ordination, he was deprived by death of his excellent mother; but even her loss was a means of his spiritual advancement.

59

MRS. HENRY RICHMOND,

MOTHER OF THE REV. LEGH RICHMOND.

FROM a series of letters to his children, by the Rev. Legh Richmond, in Grimshawe's interesting Life of Legh Richmond :—

"My mother was born at Liverpool, in the year 1736. Her father, John Atherton, Esq., was descended from a younger branch of the Atherton's, of Atherton, in the county of Lancaster, who settled at Preston; and her mother was the daughter of Sylvester Richmond, Esq., of Acton Grange, Cheshire.

"Her mind, at a very early period, exhibited a strong inclination to the study of the best authors. She was well versed in the historians, essayists, and poets of her own country, and read the French language with fluency. Her memory, even at the advanced age of eighty-three, was well stored with the judiciously selected reading of her younger years. She possessed a naturally strong judgment, and examined, with accuracy, the sentiments and the style of every book which she read. At a period when female education was, with but few exceptions, very feebly directed to the cultivation of general and useful literature; when the romance

and the cookery-book were too frequently esteemed to be the chief requisites of a lady's library-Miss Atherton was a student in almost every branch of such learning as, even in this more cultivated age, would be deemed advantageous and interesting to the female mind. In this she was encouraged by both her parents, who well understood the proper cultivation of the understanding, through the medium of useful literature.

"But with these attainments there was no display, no pedantry, no conceit. If even there was a disposition marked by true feminine modesty and humility, it was her own. She thoroughly fulfilled the apostolic injunction, "in honour preferring one another." Others, indeed, knew her value; but she ever undervalued herself. Although domestic and retired in her habits, yet she mingled with, and adorned a most respectable circle of relatives and friends, among whom she was justly esteemed as an improving and amiable companion.

"From her childhood she entertained a deep reverence for the Holy Scriptures, and had a strong tincture of piety in her disposition. She read many valuable authors on religious subjects, and, though not at all times equally favoured with opportunities of Christian intercourse, which daily experience proves to be so requisite for decision of character, yet her heart was ever directed with firmness and affection towards serious subjects, which produced a conscientious integrity of mind distinguishable in her whole deportment. In the latter period of her life, to which I shall soon direct your chief attention, she has confessed to me that defective views of some primary points of Christian doctrine pervaded her former religious

sentiments. She most sincerely relied on the atonement of Christ, but at that period had imperfect views of the fulness and sufficiency of his work. She had acquired very humbling views of herself as a sinner yet these were not unmixed with error and indistinctness, with regard to the plan of Divine acceptance.

"The commonly received divinity of that day, and the usual discourses of the pulpit, were lamentably defective in many grand essentials of Christian faith. The spiritual truths of the gospel and the fundamental principles of the Reformation, were generally veiled under a system of ethics, which, however pure and correct, as a part of the great scheme of revelation; yet, when substituted for the whole, loses its own intrinsic value, while it robs the Redeemer of his honour, and the sinner of his hope.

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"In the year 1771, Miss Atherton was married to her cousin, Dr. Henry Richmond, the only son of the Rev. Legh Richmond. Not long after the death of his father, which took place in 1769, Dr. Richmond settled as a physician in the town of Liverpool. At this period Miss Atherton resided with her mother, then a widow, in St. Paul's Square, in the same town. A congeniality of principles and dispositions, founded upon many valuable qualifications of mind, which they each possessed, and an esteem strengthened by the kindred intimacy of the families from their very infancy, led to that union, which took place in 1771.

"Her conduct, as a daughter, had been useful, affectionate, dutiful, and domestic-such daughters,

and such alone are calculated to exhibit those still brighter characteristics which attach to the subsequent relations of the wife and mother. In vain shall we look for characters of this description among the daughters of folly and fashion. Their hearts are estranged from the very principle of the domestic disposition. Accustomed to the repeated indulgence of luxurious inclinations, their volatile desires are ever upon the wing in search of something new and gay, which may satisfy a craving and disordered appetite for novelty.

66 My dear mother had been educated in sentiments truly domestic-her chosen associates were of a similar character-her parents encouraged them for conscience as well as for comfort's sake. Her time and attention had been, from her youth upward, chiefly directed to the devotional study of religious truths-the culture of useful literaturethe temperate pursuit of the elegant arts-the society of estimable friends-and the well-regulated plans of her parents' family. In the midst of all, she lived in constant habits of prayer, and this consolidated the valuable qualities of her mind, and gave them a holy tendency.'

In the year following her marriage her son Legh was born.

"I well remember," he says, "in the early dawn of my expanding reason, with what care she laboured to instil into my mind a sense of the being of God, and of the reverence which is due to him; of the character of a Saviour, and his infinite merits; of the duty of prayer, and the manner in which it ought to be offered up at the throne of grace. Her way of enforcing these sub