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have extended its size, and impaired its symmetry and usefulness. The duties which the author constantly places before his reader, and we think with the happiest elucidation and persuasiveness, are, selfdenial, humility, weanedness from the world, prayer, love, watchfulness, resignation, and whatever else is involved in complete conformity to Christ. The great principles on which he openly founds and urges these duties are, man's original innocence, and present depravity; the impotence, hatefulness and misery of the soul in its fallen state; the necessity of regeneration by the Holy Ghost; and the supreme obligation of believers to him who hath bought them with his blood. So long as pure religion retains a place on earth, must such a book be admired and studied.

Several ancient Latin lives of Kempis have been perused in order to enrich the Memoir. They are extremely unsatisfactory, but have furnished a few additional facts of interest, which have been incorporated.

This edition is now presented to the Christian public, in the hope that a work so universally esteemed, may in its amended form, obtain such a circulation as shall give it great and lasting utility.

Boston, April, 1829.

H. M.

MEMOIR.

THOMAS À KEMPIS was born A. D. 1380, at Kempis, or Kempen, a small walled town in the dutchy of Cleves, and diocese of Cologne. His family name was Hamerlein, but in those days the name of the parent was not always conferred on the child. Persons of distinction often changed their own names.

At the age of nineteen he entered a monastery, and continued there more than seventy years, eminent for piety and eloquence. He was of middle stature, dark complexion, and lively keen eye. He lived chiefly in the monastery of Mount * St. Agnes; where his likeness, together with a prospect of the monastery, was engraven on a plate of copper, that lies over his body The said monastery is now called Bergh-Clooster; or, as we might say in English, Hill-Cloyster : many strangers in their travels visit it.

KEMPIS was certainly one of the best and greatest of men since the primitive times. His book of the IMITATION OF CHRIST, has seen near forty editions in the original Latin, and above sixty translations have been made from it into modern languages. He died August 8th, 1471, in the ninety-second year of his age. He was surprisingly exempt from the usual infirmities of old age, and retained his eye-sight perfect to the last.

* Believed to be on one of the Scilly Islands of that name.

In the engraving on copper above mentioned, and lying over his grave, is represented a person respectfully presenting to him a label, on which is written a verse to this effect:—'O! where is PEACE? for Thou its Paths hast trod.' To which KEMPIS returns another label, inscribed as follows:-'In POVERTY, RETIREMENT, and with GOD.'

He was a regular canon of the order of St. Augustine, and subprior of Mount St. Agnes' Monastery. His industry was as conspicuous as were his deeds of charity, and exactness in observing the discipline of his order. He not only transcribed books of devotion and science, which constituted a large part of the labour of monks before the invention of printing, but wrote several volumes, highly esteemed by papists. His works, extant, consist of Thirty Sermons to Novitiates-Nine Sermons to Brethren of the Order-Eight Epistles-The Imitation of Christ -Twenty-six Theological Treatises, and Lives of twelve Eminent Saints.-The best edition of his works is said to be that of Cologne, in 3 vols. folio, 1680. He composed his Treatise of the IMITATION of CHRIST, in the sixty-first year of his age, as appears from a note of his own writing in the library of his convent.

No other particulars of interest sufficiently authentic can now be procured.

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

WE have sometimes heard the strenuous argumentation of the author of the following Treatise in behalf of holiness excepted against, on the ground that it did not recognise sufficiently the doctrine of justification by faith. There is, in many instances, an over-sensitive alarm on this topic, which makes the writer fearful of recommending virtue, and the private disciple as fearful of embarking on the career of it-a sort of jealousy lest the honors and importance of Christ's righteousness should be invaded, by any importance being given to the personal righteousness of the believer: as if the one could not be maintained as the alone valid plea on which the sinner could lay claim to an inheritance in heaven, and at the same time the other be urged as his indispensable preparation for its exercises and its joys.

It is the partiality with which the mind fastens upon one article of truth, and will scarcely admit the others to so much as a hearing-it is the intentness of its almost exclusive regards on some separate portion of the divine testimony, and its shrinking avoidance of all the distinct and additional portions —it is, in particular, its fondness for the orthodoxy of what relates to a sinner's acceptance, carried to such a degree of favoritism, as to withdraw its "attention altogether from what relates to a sinner's sanctification,-it is this which, on the pretence of magnifying a most essential doctrine, has, in fact, diffused a mist over the whole field of revelation; and which, like a mist in nature, not only shrouds the general landscape from all observation, but also

bedims, while it adds to the apparent size of the few objects that continue visible. It is the same light which reveals the whole, that will render these last more brightly discernible than before; and whether they be the prominences of spiritual truth, or of visible materialism, they are sure to be seen most distinctly in that element of purity and clearness, through the medium of which the spectator is able to recognise even the smaller features and the fainter lineaments that lie on the ground of contemplation.

It is true, that the same darkening process which buries what is remote in utter concealment, will, at least, sully and somewhat distort the nearer perspective that is before us. But how much more certain is it, that if such be the grossness of the atmosphere as to make impalpable the trees, and the houses, and the hillocks, of our immediate vicinity-then will the distant spires, and mountains, and villages, lie buried in still deeper and more hopeless obscurity. And so it is, with revealed truth, the light of which is spread over a wide and capacious arena, reaching afar from the character of man upon earth to the counsels of God in heaven. When Christ told Nicodemus what change must take place upon the earthly subject, ere it could be prepared for the glories and felicities of the upper sanctuary, he was resisted in this announcement by the incredulity of his auditor. Upon this he came forth with the remonstrance: "If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?" And then he proceeds to tell of heavenly things,-of the transactions that had taken place in the celestial judicatory above, and which behooved to take place ere the sinner could obtain a rightful entrance into the territory of the blessed and the unfallen; of the love that God bare to the world; of the mission thereto on which he delegated his only and well-beloved Son; of the design of this