There are instances, it must be acknowledged, in which men of exceedingly limited powers and superficial attainments are carried by the influence of circumstances, particularly of wealth or family, into stations of high responsibility, and for a season they become the objects of no small consideration; though every one but themselves perceives that it is the station, and not the man, to which the world are rendering their homage. They may acquire a name in the use of "a little brief authority," but it can never be an enduring name. Do what you will to embalm it, you cannot; for it has not within it a single element to render it imperishable. On the other hand, take a really great man-one who is great in his intellect-great in his sense of obligation and his love of right -great in his achievements for the benefit of his fellow-creatures, and when he dies, you can scarcely call it death; for he lives and works still in a thousand influences of his own originating; and it is not in the power of detraction ultimately to obscure the glory into which his memory will be thrown. The probability, indeed, is, that however envy and malice may aim at him their envenomed shafts while he is living, they will keep still after he is gone; for it is the ordinance of Heaven that goodness and greatness, when they come to be contemplated in connection with the grave, become enshrined in the gratitude and veneration of the world.

In introducing to our readers the great work, whose title we have placed at the head of this article, we propose to sketch a brief outline of the life and character of its author; and, in doing so, we shall, if we mistake not, bring out a most striking instance of great original powers, molded and guided by singularly auspicious circumstances.

Timothy Dwight was the son of Timothy and Mary Dwight, and was born at Northampton, Massachusetts, May 14, 1752. His mother, who was the daughter of the illustrious President Edwards, and who inherited, in no small degree, her father's matchless vigor and strength of intellect, had the chief superintendence of his education during several of his earliest years. From the very beginning he discovered an uncommon precocity of intellect, which, however, did not in his case, as it too often does, prove the harbinger of bare mediocrity in mature life. His improvement in the various branches to which his attention was directed was almost unexampled; and yet it promised nothing which his subsequent years did not fully realize.

His immediate preparation for college was under the direction of the Rev. Enoch Huntington, of Middletown, in whose family he resided. In September, 1765, just after he had completed his

thirteenth year, he became a member of Yale College; and the two years which immediately succeeded, owing to various circumstances, constituted the most critical period of his life. He found little occasion for intense application in order to sustain himself in his class, as he had anticipated in his preparatory course most of the studies of the first two years. The discipline of the college had become sadly relaxed; and gambling was not only practiced to a great extent, but was generally practiced with impunity; and an acquaintance with it had come to be regarded as a desirable accomplishment. The fine manners, and open and generous dispositions of young Dwight rendered him uncommonly attractive; while his immature age put his principles and character in peculiar jeopardy. Under these circumstances, though he seems never to have contracted any decidedly vicious habits, yet he so far yielded to temptation as to lose, temporarily, his relish for severe study, and to mingle freely in scenes which were adverse alike to his intellectual and moral improvement. His tutor, the late chief Justice Mitchell, of Connecticut, perceiving his perilous circumstances, and fearing the development of wayward tendencies, expostulated with him in regard to his course with an affectionate and almost parental solicitude; and, happily, the effort had its effect in separating him from the untoward influences to which he had begun to yield, and of bringing him again to an active sense of duty, and to a diligent improvement of his time.

From the commencement of his junior year, he was a model of earnest application and of exemplary deportment; and, in 1769, he graduated at the head of his class. The two succeeding years he was occupied as teacher of a grammar school in New-Haven, during which time he was also a most diligent student, and greatly enlarged his acquisitions in various departments of knowledge. In September, 1771, when he was but a little more than nineteen, he was chosen to the office of tutor in Yale College, the duties of which he discharged with great dignity and success for a period of six years. Some time during this period he was inoculated for the small pox; and though he had the disease lightly, yet in consequence of prematurely returning to his studies, after the disease had abated, he so far impaired his power of vision as to occasion him the most serious embarrassment as long as he lived.

In 1774 Mr. Dwight connected himself with the church in Yale College. Of the history of his previous religious experience, no record, it is believed, has been preserved; but as the genuineness of a supposed conversion is to be tested rather by the fruits that follow it, than by the circumstances or exercises that precede or

attend it, and as those fruits, in the present case, were of the most decisive and unquestionable character, we can afford to be in ignorance of the earliest stages of his religious history. At the time of his making a public profession of religion, he appears to have contemplated the law as his ultimate profession; but he subsequently changed his purpose, and was licensed to preach in the summer of 1777, shortly after the college had become disbanded, in consequence of the commotions occasioned by the revolution

ary war.

He early imbibed a spirit of lofty patriotism; and from the commencement of the struggle for independence, he had the deepest conviction that we were in the right, and that our counsels and arms would ultimately prosper. Accordingly, he resolved on leaving college, and entering the army as a chaplain; which he did within a few months after he received license to. preach. In this capacity he served with great fidelity, popularity, and usefulness, for somewhat more than a year; when he was induced to leave the army by reason of circumstances that seemed to make a strong demand upon his filial and fraternal regard. Accordingly, he returned to his mother's family at Northampton; and notwithstanding he had in the mean time a family of his own, he remained there nearly five years, showing himself, in every respect, a model of a son and a brother. During this period, the amount of labor which he performed, especially when considered in connection with the great imperfection of his sight, would seem almost incredible. He conducted a school for the instruction of both sexes, which was very extensively patronized, and which was probably unequaled in its advantages by any school in New-England, of a similar kind, at that day. In addition to this, he spent more or less time every day in laboring upon a farm; and, during a considerable part of the time, supplied one of the neighboring pulpits every sabbath. He was also employed, to some extent, in civil affairs; and during the two years that immediately preceded the close of the war, he rendered important services as a member of the legislature of Massachusetts.

In 1783, after having declined several eligible invitations to settle in the ministry in Massachusetts, he accepted a call from the Congregational church in Greenfield, Fairfield county, Connecticut, and was accordingly ordained as pastor of that church in the month of November. Finding his salary altogether inadequate to the support of his family, his expenses being increased not a little by the large amount of company which his distinguished character and talents drew to his house from all parts of the

country, he resolved to make up the deficiency by establishing a school; and he did this the rather as it was an employment to which his taste inclined him, and for which his talents eminently qualified him, and in which he could labor to good purpose for the public benefit. Accordingly, he opened a school, which soon acquired great reputation, and which was resorted to by many youth from remote parts of the country. In conducting this school, he by no means neglected his work as a minister; but besides rendering due attention to pastoral duties, he preached regularly twice on the sabbath, always to the edification, often to the admiration, of his hearers.

When the presidential chair in Yale College was vacated by the death of Dr. Stiles, the eyes of the literary and religious world. were very generally turned toward Dr. Dwight (for he had previously received the degree of doctor of divinity from Princeton College) as the person best fitted to succeed to that responsible station. He was accordingly appointed to it with great unanimity, and was inaugurated as president in September, 1795.

In this office Dr. Dwight continued till the close of life; not merely, however, discharging its appropriate duties, but connecting with it an amount of labor belonging to other departments, which we marvel that any one man could have performed. Besides instructing the senior class, as his predecessors had done, he was really professor of belles lettres, and oratory, and theology; and in this latter department he was accustomed to instruct a class of resident graduates who were preparing for the ministry. He was also, to all intents and purposes, the pastor of a church and the minister of a congregation; in which capacity he was accustomed to preach in the college chapel twice every sabbath. It was in the discharge of this duty that he prepared and preached the invaluable course of sermons which has given occasion to the present article.

Dr. Dwight's intellect was a rare combination of the more brilliant with the more solid qualities. We do not suppose that he possessed the reasoning faculty in so much vigor and strength as his illustrious grandfather, the immortal Edwards; but still his mind was unusually discriminating, and could penetrate the depths of an obscure subject with far more ease and certainty than most minds, of which this faculty is the predominating characteristic. But, along with this, he possessed an imagination the most brilliant and excursive; a taste, which, though perhaps less exquisite than that of Robert Hall, was still, in a high degree, exact and delicate; and it was from the union of these faculties that many

of his descriptions seemed like reflections of the beauty and glory of the third heavens. His judgment, also, was uncommonly clear and sound; and his memory was like a vast storehouse, in which everything was arranged in perfect order, and from which anything could be drawn, as occasion required, without the semblance of effort.

Dr. Dwight's social character was what might be expected from this rare assemblage of intellectual qualities. He edified and delighted every circle into which he was thrown. His vast acquisitions, relating to almost every subject within the range of human observation, made him at home equally among all classes; and if the statesman, and the professional man, and the scholar, always listened with profound attention to what he had to say in their respective departments, the husbandman and the mechanic were no less sure of hearing something from him which they, in their several callings, might turn to good account. If he had not talked so well, perhaps it might be said that he talked too much; but there was in his remarks so much brilliant, and entertaining, and useful thought, that, let the company into which he was thrown be what it might, he was almost always, by common consent, put forward to take the lead in the conversation.

His religious character exhibited the various Christian graces and virtues in most attractive combination. Perhaps we could not describe it better in a single word than by saying that it was eminently consistent. It had its foundation in a well-digested, deeply evangelical view of the Christian system-that view of it which recognizes man as a guilty and polluted sinner, and the atoning sacrifice of Christ, and the influence of the Holy Spirit, as the only ground of his hope of salvation. In the faith of this system, he was serious, without being austere; fervent, without being enthusiastic; humble, without being sanctimonious; zealous, without being ostentatious or obtrusive. Religion with him was an all-pervading principle and feeling-it was not like a garment to be put on and laid aside as convenience might seem to dictate, but it was the fixed and uniform habit of his life. It regulated and sanctified not only the relations which he sustained to his Creator, but those which he sustained to his fellow-creatures also; rendering him strictly just, and honest, and charitable, as well as devout. We are far from saying that there were, especially to the all-seeing Eye, no defects in his Christian character; but we do say, and without the fear of contradiction from those who knew him well, that there are few examples of higher attainments in religion than he exhibited.