sponsibility. In May, 1828, he was elected Assistant Secretary of the American Education Society. The duties of this office were to edit the Quarterly Journal of the Society, to conduct the more important correspondence, and to visit the beneficiaries in literary institutions. He accepted the appointment, declining a proposal to become an Assistant Secretary of the American Board of Commissioners, and another to prepare himself for a Professorship in Amherst College. Returning to Andover, he again became a member of the Theological Seminary, and at the same time, performed the duties of his office as Secretary. In 1830, he took up his residence in Boston, having seriously injured his health by too great a variety of labour. He remained five years in his Secretaryship, and resigned the principal part of his duties in May, 1833. During this period, he devoted himself assiduously to the editorial | charge of the American Quarterly Register, which he retained until 1844. He brought this work to a remarkable fulness of knowledge, excellence of taste, and skill in historical investigation. It was his wish to make it a great storehouse of facts for the present and future generations. It in fact gave a new impulse to statistical inquiries, and embodies indispensable materials for American ecclesiastical history. "In some particulars," says Professor Park, "the Quarterly Register gives an exact representaion of Mr. Edwards' mind and heart. It discloses his active benevolence, his statistical knowledge, his vast miscellaneous reading, his retentive memory, his fondness of generalizations, his delicate, almost evanescent, wit. In the severely historical style of the Register, we cannot expect to find very broad indications of the humorous vein which ran through his fireside conversation, yet there are signs of it in some of his most quiet and prosaic paragraphs. While in the Education Rooms, or the Merchants' Reading Room, or the Athenæum of Boston, he would peruse the more important newspapers, magazines, and quarterly periodicals of the world, and then, during his walk homeward through the streets of the city, would classify the information which

he had thus acquired. To those who met him walking solitary on the pavement, he seemed to be lost in thought; for he was arranging the materials for a paragraph in the Register. Page after page of his reviews he prepared on Boston Common, or on a stagecoach, or steamboat. He had a rare faculty, as well as fondness, for gathering together the results of his previous investigations, while he was walking or journeying from place to place."

In 1833, he established the American Quarterly Observer, a periodical intended to foster the interest of the clergy in good learning by opening an avenue through which they might communicate their thoughts to the world. He published three volumes of the Observer, when he united it with the Biblical Repository, which had been conducted four years by Professor Robinson. He remained sole editor of these combined periodicals from January 1835 to January 1838. Six years after he withdrew from it he became the principal editor of Bibliotheca Sacra and Theological Reviews, of which work he had the chief care, with the exception of two years from 1844 to 1852. For twenty-three years he was employed in conducting important works in our periodical literature,. and with the aid of several associates, he has left thirty-one octavo volumes as the fruits of his diligence and zeal.

66

He combined facility of execution with great painstaking and carefulness. He often compressed into a few brief sentences, the results of an extended and prolonged research. In order to prepare himself for writing two or three paragraphs on theology, he has been known to read an entire and elaborate treatise on that science. His industry surprised men; for while he had two periodicals under his editorial care, he was often engaged in delivering lectures before the Athenæum or some Lyceum in Boston or its suburbs, and in superintending the American reprints of English works. Besides attending to the proof sheets of his own Quarterlies, he would sometimes correct more than a hundred pages, every week, of the proof-sheets of other volumes, and would often compose for them prefatory or explanatory notes. That he was immaculate in his

supervision of the press, he would be the last to pretend. The volumes

315

bound to tell the truth, cut where it may.

Throughout his public life, Mr. Edwards took a deep interest in the cause of the African race. His first

ser."

Mr. Edwards wished to raise his more eruidite journals above merely sectarian influences, and concentrate the choicest talent of different parties in one literary brotherhood. Some of his reviews were published amid the din of ecclesiastical warfare, but it was not permitted to disturb the serene spirit of Christian science which beams from their pages. He shrank from the truculent disposition which often contaminates the periodical press, and which in his view was fostered by the habit of anonymous authorship. In his wish to preserve his journals from a morose and fault-finding spirit, he sometimes erred, as we think, on the other side. His critical lenity was exercised at the expense of literary justice. Thus he refused to publish an article exposing the blunders of a divine whose faith he disapproved, for the purpose of checking the tendency of opposing the doctrines of misbelievers by an assault on their character. On another occasion he was urged to expose plagiarisms which had been detected in a theological opponent, but he declined the appeal through sensitiveness to the evils of personal strife. But this was certainly an excessive indulgence of an amiable temper. The exposure of literary humbug is one of the first duties of the critic, and he who hesitates to draw blood, when necessary, gratifies an effeminate disposition at the expense of the public. A reviewer need not be an executioner, but as invested with judicial functions he is

slave. His first address from the pulpit was on the evils of slavery. He thought at one time of devoting his entire life to the benefit of the oppressed African. The subject took hold of him with such power, that it was almost impossible to banish it from his remembrance, and images of suffering haunted him like spectres. While he was "pursuing his theological studies, he heard that a coloured youth had come to Andover to enjoy the privileges of the Seminary. Some of his fellow-students had an instinctive reluctance to be in company with the stranger, but Mr. Edwards, sensitive as he was to the ridicule of men, shrinking from all appearances of eccentricity, scrupulous in his regard to all the rules of neatness and refinement and seemliness, invited the sable youth to reside in the same room with him. For several weeks this man, so dignified, so delicate in his sensibilities, studied at the same table with the poor African. This was the man! He was preparing himself to be a minister of reconciliation. He was the servant of all for Jesus' sake. Like his great Exempler, he chose to suffer for and with the publican, rather than sit in the halls of kings. For twenty-six years he was an unwavering friend of the Colonization Society, in its reverses as well as in its triumphs. * * It is an interesting coincidence, that a daughter of the chief founder of the American Colonization Society performed some of the last rites for Mr. Edwards at his death, and immediately afterward, and that some of his last physical wants were supplied by the African race for whom he had toiled and prayed."

* *

*

As a preacher, Mr. Edwards was destitute of the popular gifts, which are usually more successful in captivating a promiscuous audience, than soundness of thought or accuracy of reasoning. His voice was not commanding, nor were his gestures graceful, nor his attitude easy. Still in a small house, or before a learned audi

ence, his manner, if wanting in some of the graces, was peculiarly winning, "Few men in the Andover Chapel have ever equaled him, in holding their auditory spellbound. He spoke with a cautious accent and a guarded emphasis, which betokened the selectness of his thoughts. He recited passages from the Bible with such a glowing countenance and marked inflection, as gave a living commentary on the text. There was frequently a plaintiveness in his tones, that harmonized well with the sentiment breathed forth in them. Some of his attitudes in the pulpit would furnish a sculptor with a good model of self-distrust and self-abasement. In his lowly way, he expressed a reverence and an awe of God, which must have come from a heart broken under a sense of guilt. When he raised his frame from its inclined position over his manuscript, and when for a moment he stood erect and gazed so honestly and earnestly at his hearers, he drew them to him as to a friend in whom they might confide, and whose sympathies were ever with his Redeemer and with all good men. Then there was a classic purity in his style, which fascinated the hearers who were trained to discern it. Then there were the terse, sententious, apothegmatical utterances, which startled and delighted the men who were able to understand them. He did not care so much about the logical form of his discourses, as about their inmost heart. They were free from commonplaces; and had a luxuriance of thought and feeling, which reminded one of trees with their branches bending and breaking under their fruit. They were not so remarkable for an obvious unity, as for a pathos that swelled through them, or a vein of sentiment original, delicate, graceful, intangible, enchanting. They would have retained more semblance of logical order, had there not been so great an effort to avoid all trite and dry sayings. For the sake of avoiding the tedious repetition of connective clauses, Mr. Edwards failed sometimes to exhibit the principle which bound his various thoughts together. He had, in no small degree, the artlessness of George Herbert, whom he loved so tenderly. His simple-hearted sugestions reminded one of the meek Wal

ton,' to whom he had a rare likeness."

In the autumn of 1837, Mr. Edwards was appointed Professor of Hebrew in the Andover Seminary, and on the resignation of Mr. Stuart in 1848, he was elected to the Chair of Biblical Literature. He thus devoted the last fifteen years of his life to the office of a Biblical teacher. He was well prepared for the duties which it involved. His earliest studies were Biblical. Before he was eleven years old he had read the Bible through seven times, and all of Scott's Notes twice. Commencing the study of the Hebrew language at the age of twenty-two, he pursued it regularly as long as he lived. He had studied the Old Saxon tongue as an aid to the full appreciation of the English Bible. In order to gain a more thorough knowledge of the Hebrew idioms, he carefully studied the Arabic and other congugate languages. He was familiar with the German tongue, which as Professor Park observes "is the key to the Biblical literature of the world, the instrumental tongue without which no one at the present day will be an adept in sacred learning."" All his studies were with reference to his own comprehensive aim of becoming a masterly expounder of the sacred page. When he made the tour of Europe for his health, he did not forget his own idea. He revelled amid the treasures of the Bodleian Library, and the Royal Library at Paris; he sat as a learner at the feet of Montgomery, Wordsworth, Chalmers, Mezzofanti, Neander, the Geological Society of London, and the Oriental Society of Germany, and he bore away from all these scenes new helps for his own comprehensive science. He had translated a Biography of Melancthon, for the sake, in part, of qualifying himself to look upon the towers of Wittemberg; and he could scarcely keep his seat in the rail-car, when he approached the city consecrated by the gentle Philip. He measured with his umbrella the cell of Luther at Erfurt, wrote his own name with ink from Luther's inkstand, read some of the notes which the monk had penned in the old Bible, gazed intently on the spot where the intrepid man had preached, and thus by the minutest observation he strove to imbue his mind with the hearty faith

of the Reformer, so that he might become the more profound and genial as a teacher. This was a ruling passion with him. He gleaned illustrations of divine truth, like Alpine flowers, along the borders of the Mer de Glace, and by the banks of "the troubled Arve," and at the foot of the Jungfrau. He drew pencil sketches of the battlefield of Waterloo, of Niebuhr's monument at Bonn, and of the cemetery where he surmised for a moment, that perhaps he had found the burialplace of John Calvin."

But the best fruits of these devoted studies were not given to the world, by reason of the unexpected progress of disease of which the seeds had been lurking in his constitution for many years. He was just ready to finish for the press his exposition of Habakkuk, Job, the Psalms, and the First Epistle to the Corinthians. He had prepared the substance of an Introduction to the Old and New Testament, to which he had given the labors of fifteen years. The time had come to bring them before the public eye, when he was informed that the pulmonary complaint under which he had long suffered was supposed to be incurable. Unwilling to yield his hold on life, without an effort to complete his cherished scheme, he sought relief in a Southern clime. In the autumn of 1851, he repaired to Athens, in Georgia, but the grasp of death was soon upon "He was him. accompanied in his Southern retreat by his family. Yet he learned, what so many have learned before, that in a

man's extreme weakness there is no place equal to his own home. He would probably have suffered less in his study chamber at Andover, than he actually endured amid the exposures of a Southern dwelling. A winter of almost unparalleled severity deprived him of his needed recreations. He became too feeble for study. He was compelled to shut his books. This was a new rebuff to his enterprising mind. He seemed like a man deprived of his children. He looked like one who was soon to die of a broken heart. His loftiest ideals, the most comprehensive scheme of his life, waved before him in his last hours. His frame was attenuated; it was almost a shadow; but his mind continued, as it had been

317

* *

want, to engross itself with great themes. Socrates would have referred to him as a sign and pledge of the soul's immortal life and youth. * His poetic sensibilites remained healthful until he died. On one of his last days he called for the reading of Bryant's Hymn to the Evening Wind. On several of his last Sabbaths he exclaimed, "How I should love to hear Thine earthly Sabbaths' sung to the great congregration!' On the very Lord's-day preceding his death, he asked that the doors of his room might be thrown wide open, so that he might see the fields glistening in the sunlight, and might inhale the fresh breeze of spring. He was enchanted with the vernal scene, with the boughs putting forth their tender leaves. His soul was alive with happy thoughts, all the happier because it was the Sabbath morning. He recited the words:

"As when to them who sail

Beyond the cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, off at sea northeast winds blow
Sabean odors from the spicy shore
Of Arabie the blest-

"

"Take out Milton," he added, "and read that figure." It was read. "It is one of the grandest in the language," he remarked, "and another like it is in those lines:

'Sweet fields, beyond the swelling flood,
Stand dressed in living green.'

At one season of the year, the hills of Judea may be distinctly noticed, clothed in green, beyond the river." He lingered until Tuesday, April 20th, 1852, when he died, in the fiftieth year of his age.

THE GUILT OF SCEPTICISM.

SCEPTICISM, in strict definition, is doubting. Its nature, tendency and criminality are different in different circumstances. We shall consider it in three different aspects or degrees.

1. One may be sceptical on a proposition because it is not presented to him with a sufficient degree of evidence to render it consistent for him, as a rational being to yield it credence. There are propositions in religion not perfectly clear or self-evident; and in

order that they may legitimately challenge our assent, they must be shown to be directly revealed from heaven, or else clear inferences from well-established premises. The propositions may be true; they may be such as we shall readily yield assent to when we see them proved; but if they are not self-evident, and are presented to us on the authority of misapplied proof texts, or of inconclusive reasoning, we cannot do less than doubt. The man who quietly yields up his understanding to a claimant who enforces his demand by a manifest outrage on hermeneutics and logic, outrages his own understanding. Of this sort are the meek spirits who form the rank and file of the followers of the Millers, and the other religious fanatics that infest society. The most shallow speciousness, coupled with somewhat of the marvellous, and of an appearance of piety, is sufficient to make them willing captives. Scepticism, in this case is not only not criminal, but is even praiseworthy. It is no more than doing justice to one's own understanding.

These principles, however, will not justify scepticism on those propositions in religion to which our moral nature requires us to yield assent on a mere statement of them. Some of the most important practical parts of religion are of this sort, such as the duty of exercising repentance and faith in Christ, the necessity of the new birth to fit the sinner for heaven, &c., much of the evidence of which lies in our moral nature. We are bound to give credence to any proposition, to the truth of which our rational nature yields assent, whether that assent be founded on an intuitive conviction of its truth, or the Divine testimony, or be the result of a process of reasoning. As to all other propositions, whether true or false we are bound to hold ourselves in doubt, and candidly examine the evidence.

2. Scepticism exists in many minds, not so much from a repugnance of heart to the propositions in regard to which they are sceptical, or from a misapprehension of intellect, as from a want of it. These persons are sceptics on all classes of subjects, simply because they have not capacity to see the con

clusiveness of the plainest arguments. There is, commonly, coupled with their scepticism, a conceit of superior discernment, and a notion that it betokens the wise man to hold one's self in doubt, where others, more credulous, yield a ready assent. The case of such persons is a hopeless one. The religious instructor may present arguments, but to supply the deficiency of brains is beyond his power.

The criminality of scepticism of this sort on religious subjects, springs from three elements which commonly enter into it.

(1.) The intellectual imbecility which hinders an appreciation of the force of argument, is in whole or in part due to a neglect to use, or an abuse of the modicum of intellect originally possessed. So far as this cause operates, it is an element of guilt.

(2.) The conceit of superior dicernment, connected with this kind of scepticism, which prevents a due attention to argument, has a moral cause, and is a ground of guilt.

(3.) Although this sort of scepticism is a vice of intellect, and applies generally to all classes of subjects, and hence is not founded solely on a repugnance of heart to the subjects in which it is exercised, still, when it is exercised towards religious subjects it is furthered by a repugnance of heart to those truths. This, so far as it operates, is an element of guilt.

3. The third aspect of scepticism we propose to consider is, that which springs directly from repugnance of heart to the truth in regard to which it is indulged. This kind of scepticism is frequently connected with great boldness of intellect, an entire want of reverence for religious subjects, and hence a freedom from that wholesome restraint which reverence imposes upon most minds when they contemplate religious subjects. They glory in the name of free-thinkers; that is, they think as freely on religious as they do on any other subjects. So far from arising from a want of intellect sufficient to apprehend the force of reasoning, it is frequently connected with great acuteness of logic. When it exists in a mind pre-eminently logical, it is radical and universal, sweeping away the foundations of human know