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they have seen that the effect of his writings in some instances has been to unsettle the religious faith of his readers. For young men they are perhaps not the most safe reading. They are calculated to excite the mind powerfully, and unless it be well grounded in the first principles of philosophy and religion, and able to discriminate between truth and the semblances of truth, and to bring fresh accessions of knowledge into harmony with established truths, the shock of a new way of thinking may easily drift it away from its old beliefs. But for a mind strong in itself, these views taken from a new stand-point, like a wind blowing from a new quarter of the heavens, will be fresh and invigorating.

A man who is laboring so earnestly in favor of humanity deserves a generous confidence from the religious public. As he is better known he will be more highly appreciated. Good men everywhere will honor him for his sincerity, his courage, his sympathy with man, and the high moral designs of his writings. This change of feeling is already taking place in Great Britain. Many years ago, it is said, that Chalmers and Carlyle met and parted with mutual disgust. But just before his death Chalmers was in London, and called at Carlyle's house; and after a long and friendly conversation, the two noble Scotchmen parted with mutual admiration. They understood each other better.

We believe nothing is farther from the mind of our author than to unsettle the faith of any man in the Christian religion. Indeed Teufelsdröckh refers to it with gratitude, as "an altogether invaluable service," that the kind mother who took care of him in childhood, "taught him her own simple version of the Christian faith."

Carlyle sometimes speaks bitterly of priests and churches, which show little of the spirit of Christianity. But he speaks in indignation at hypocrisy, and "more in sorrow than in anger." Perhaps his indignant spirit here leads him beyond strict justice. It is possible to carry so far our detestation of cant, as to sneer at sincere religion, and to clamor so loudly for freedom of thought, as to set the world afloat on an ocean of doubt and infidelity. Eminent writers, especially those whose voice is heard throughout two hemispheres, should beware of any tendency to exaggeration or ridicule, lest they wound the cause of truth and vir tue, even when most zealous for both.

"The evil that men do lives after them."

ART. IV.-PROFESSOR FISKE.

Memoirs of Rev. Nathan W. Fiske, Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy in Amherst College; with selections from his sermons and other writings. By HEMAN HUMPHREY, D.D. Amherst: J. S. and C. Adams. 1850.

It is a beautiful instance of God's goodness in our mental constitution, that our sorrows are gradually mellowed by time, and a soothing tenderness in the remembrance of departed friends sncceeds the agony of bereavement. Thus our very afflictions, under the softening touch of memory, minister a subdued and sacred satisfaction, and our sorrows are transmuted into the most hallowed and cherished of our joys; and so, in the lapse of years, the blackened ruin of our hopes is grown over and hidden by the ivy of tender and pleasant recollections. And this action of

memory veiling the sadness of the past in beauty, like that of hope adorning the future, seems to indicate the superiority of the soul to its present condition. The light which dawning hope flings forward to crimson the yet untraversed landscape, and, when our joys have sunk to the setting, the radiance which memory pours back on the past, flooding its most dismal scenes with beauty, are but the diverse outgushings of the light which the soul, as a spirit of the skies, has within itself, and by which it instinctively strives to illumine the dull realities of earth to some semblance of its own brightness.

When, therefore, the society and counsel of our friends cease in death, we will bless the beneficent author of our being, that the memory of the loved grows with every passing year more mellow in its beauties and more pleasant to the thought.

Of this nature are the feelings with which we have read the Memoirs and Writings of Prof. Fiske, a volume which brings before us in new freshness the memory of a departed friend, and permits us again to drink in the spirit of his piety and the fruits of his wisdom. As such it will be welcomed by hundreds who revered him as an instructor and loved him as a friend. We have long felt it was due to him as a man of superior powers, of true scholarship, and devoted piety, and due to the world, that the treasures accumulated by his active mind should not be buried. In common with many who have shared these feelings, we welcome the book as one, the publication of which had been extensively and earnestly demanded. And it is with peculiar satisfaction that we sit down to commend it to our readers, and to present our simple and affectionate tribute to the memory of its subject. Would it were worthy of him.

"But never anything can be amiss,

When simpleness and duty tender it.”

The work comprises a brief memoir, thirteen sermons, an address delivered at East Windsor on "the value of mental philosophy to the minister of the gospel," and a lecture on "the unity of history and providence." The compiler evidently had in view the commendable object of compressing the memoir to the utmost. But such is the interest of what is given us of the Professor's journals, that we can not but wish the compiler had used his scissors less sparingly.

NATHAN W. FISKE was born in Weston, Mass., April 17th, 1798. In his tenth year of his own accord he commenced the Latin grammar, and had nearly finished it before the circumstance was known to his father. At the age of fifteen, he entered Dartmouth College. During his first year he performed his tasks, indeed, and was guilty of little deserving a more reproachful name than the follies of youth; but having no definite aim in his studies, and being of a social disposition, lively, and much caressed, he approached the confines of dissipation. He attributed it to his maternal instructions that he escaped the vortex. But in his second year he became a more earnest student. In the spring term of this year, the college was blessed with one of those revivals of religion so important to the churches, the history of every one of which is to be traced in all the subsequent influence of men who are the cardines rerum in the state and the church. Of this revival Fiske was a subject. Though he had been early taught the Westminster Catechism, he had rejected all its distinctive peculiarities except the doctrine of the Trinity. At first he ridiculed and opposed the work; but was subsequently awakened and made the subject of renewing grace. His conversion was marked by traits which were ever after prominent in his religious experience; a deep conviction of his sinfulness, of the extent and purity of the law, of the holiness and sovereignty of God, and of his entire dependence on him for salvation. He records his feelings at what he supposed the moment of his conversion as follows:

"Then did I feel my unworthiness of the least of God's favors, my desert of eternal woe. Then I was shown that my whole heart was corrupt; that from this impure fountain had flowed all the streams of life, and every action of course condemned me. Then, for the first time, I saw the necessity of the Savior's great work of redemption, and felt that I must be interested personally in that, or be forever lost; that I was absolutely and entirely dependent on God for ability to accept its terms, and yet that my inability was inexcusable, as it originated or rather consisted entirely in the unholiness of my heart. The eternal election of saints appeared true, and was even a ground of comfort, for it seemed, if God had not determined to make me a vessel of mercy, my wicked heart never could be renewed. And what anguish! Then was I humbled. I threw myself into the arms of Jesus and plead for mercy; nor

did I plead in vain. A beam of light darted into my mind-a world of happiness was in it. I could exclaim,

'I yield my powers to thy command,
To thee I dedicate my days.""

He has left us an extended record of his exercises at this time, which is the more interesting because, as his biographer remarks, "it is but seldom we can get so minute an account from the pen of a distinguished scholar and preacher" of his own conversion.

Fiske graduated with honor in 1817, and spent the year following in teaching an academy at Newcastle, Maine. He was then elected Tutor in Dartmouth College, and remained in this office two years. Immediately afterwards he entered Andover Theological Seminary, where he completed the course of study in 1823. The same autumn he was ordained as an evangelist and went to Savannah, Ga., where he spent six months as a missionary to seamen and others not connected with any organized congregation. Here he labored with great fidelity but with little success. He preached ninety-two or ninety-three times, and made over three hundred visits; but he did not secure the attention or increase the number of his congregation. It was what might have been expected from the want of congruity between the preacher and his work. President Edwards was but an indifferent missionary to the Indians.

In the ensuing spring he was appointed professor of mathematics and natural philosophy in Middlebury College. A few days after he received an invitation to supply the pulpit in Concord, N. H., and on the same day a proposal from the Prudential Committee of the A. B. C. F. M. to become a missionary to China or Palestine. Declining the other proposals, he preached two or three Sabbaths in Concord, where he was desired to continue his labors; but being elected the same summer to the professorship of ancient languages at Amherst, he accepted the appointment. After a few years he exchanged this professorship for that of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy, an office which he held till his death. In 1828, he was united in marriage with Miss Deborah W. Vinal, of Boston, a lady of unusual worth. She preceded him to the tomb by a few years. His grief for her seemed always to retain its first freshness, and assisted materially in impairing his health and hastening on his death. From the time of her death in 1844, his health gradually failed, till, in Nov. 1846, in compliance with the advice of physicians, he sailed, in company with Rev. Eli Smith, for Syria. But the hopes of his recovery were destined to disappointment. He died at Jerusalem, May 27, 1847, in the peace and hope of the Gospel. His last intelligible words, uttered slowly and with difficulty, were, "I joy -in the Lord-of my salvation."

The extracts from his journal kept during these travels are exceedingly interesting, sparkling with enthusiasm, and often presenting pictures of great beauty. He was a keen observer; and his notes, had he lived to complete them, would have made one of our most interesting books of travels.

Prof. Fiske published but little; scarcely anything except his Translation of Eschenburg's Manual of Classical Literature. This was often regretted, and justly; for his pen would have commanded readers. His unwillingness to publish was probably owing to his high ideal of the qualifications for authorship, and his extraordinary modesty. He was not a man to be puffed up by trifles; he was the farthest possible from the disposition satirized in Le Sage's schoolmaster of Olmedo, "to whose profound erudition the world is indebted for the discovery that the Athenian children cried when they were whipped"-a self-conceit for small attainments unhappily not confined to Olmedo. Superior as were his powers and attainments, he was the farthest from thinking himself great. We must regret that he did not publish more; yet we must admire his lofty ideal of excellence and his modest estimate of himself-excellences, alas, too rare.

We were surprised at first that these selections from his writings are almost all sermons. But after reading them, we felt no disposition to regret that they had been selected. Whatever of value remains unpublished—and it may be presumed that there is muchthese sermons ought not to have been left out. We rejoice in their publication, were it only for conferring honor on printed sermons and contributing to rescue them from prevailing prejudice. Prepared for a literary audience by a man who never was a pastor, these discourses have less than usual of a popular character. They discuss principles. They are eminently suggestive. Some of them, like that on "the analysis of conscience," are fine specimens of philosophical analysis. Some, like that on "the wonderfulness of man's mental constitution," and that on "the fearfulness of man's mental constitution," lead the reader over a track almost untrodden by sermonizers, and yet presenting grounds for most powerful appeals. No thinking mind can fail to be enriched by the attentive reading of these discourses. They belong in many respects to the class of Bishop Butler's sermons; yet with the Bishop's strong reasoning and clear analysis of principles, they have much more of the direct and powerful application of the truth to the conscience, and are more imbued with the very essence of the doctrines of the cross.

These sermons are characterized by originality. Every one bears the stamp of the writer's own mind. In every one are suggested new and interesting thoughts or combinations of thought. We rise from reading one of them with the satisfying feeling that it has really advanced us and enlarged our mental

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