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Powerful Influence of Example.

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community, gifted somewhat above his fellows, and capable of fusing and remoulding the minds about him. They are ruling spirits in their day and generation; and, whether elevated to attract the admiration of a whole people, or confined to a village popularity, seem evidently "born to command," and exercise, it may be, unconsciously, a formative energy. They lead, by general consent, by an acknowledged native right. Their power is in their temperament, in their will, in their earnestness, mainly. They are impersonations of moral energy. If this character be combined with a proportioned and beautiful intellectual and moral development, we then see humanity in its utmost perfection. The spectacle of such a man silently elevates and rectifies his age, his town, or his village. In a class of students, academical or professional, it raises the standard of ambition, sheds lustre on the pursuits of learning, and insensibly diffuses a liberal and generous love of letters through the whole circle. No teacher can have failed to see how sensibly the example of one true scholar is felt, and how magnanimously it is admired, among his equals and competitors.

In active life the same delightful power is illustrated. A noble heart never beats alone. A renovating spirit never breathes in vain. With living excellence we have inextinguishable sympathies. It consecrates the place of its abode, and leaves memorials of itself sculptured on the imperishable material of which souls are made. A good man with a great and resolute heart cannot live unfelt, nor die to be forgotten. And an earnest bad man is the most flagrant scourge of Heaven. The intellect perverted by him, the hearts he sours, or sears, the hopes he blasts, the happiness he poisons, who thinks of it all without wondering with David, at "the prosperity of the wicked.”

For good, or for evil, we are affected more than we are aware by the models of personal energy, with which, in the course of life, it is the lot of us all, more or less to come in contact. Not one escapes, altogether, the contagion of example, more potent than all precepts, more plastic than our arts of education. A master mind, oracular even when not original, in which ordinary thoughts kindle and burn, and by which familiar subjects are electrified, is responsible, to society and to God, for a fearful power.

The only other influence of the same kind, which it occurred to us to notice, is the all important one of government. On this we do not intend to dwell. It is too ample for our space, and too impor tant to be hastily despatched. Government educates the people

by supplying the most important trains of thought, which occupy the waking hours, or fill up the dreams, of the majority of mankind. Office, wealth, personal consideration are all dispensed, or secured, by the civil constitution and administration, under which we live. Other institutions and agencies are controlled by the public policy. If enterprise and ambition are attracted to virtuous and noble objects, if pure purposes and just principles are recommended and engendered by the civil power, if government be, indeed, “a terror to evil doers and a praise to them who do well," it is, in itself the highest and most efficient national education. If, on the other hand, wrong principles are encouraged, and bad passions appealed to, if the objects of ordinary ambition are held out as rewards to the most sagacious, the most wily, the most unscrupulous, it matters little what morals are taught in the books, or what discipline is enforced in the schools; a corrupt government is a fountain of poison.

The practical influences from the foregoing observations are: 1. That our true policy is not to multiply institutions of learning, but to enlarge the foundations and increase the advantages of those we have-to neglect nothing in or about them, which may serve to add dignity to science, or to refine and elevate the taste and the moral feelings. The seat of a college should be, if possible, a rural city; and the more of the monuments of learning and art, and living excellence, we can accumulate in it the better. Money is not wasted upon its architecture or its grounds. Not a new niche is filled with a work of genius, nor a new alcove with books, but to a useful and important end. Not a man raised in its bosom to adorn its aunals should be parted with for love or money. Not a fragrant recollection in its history should be allowed to wither and dry up, nor a purifying and ennobling association with its name, or its halls, be suffered to grow dim. Whatever of the true, or beautiful, or great, or good in mind or the products of mind, in nature or art, industry or wealth can procure is part of its means of education. Baldness, sterility, deformity, physical or moral have no genial, wholesome influence upon the sensitive heart of youth.

2. It should be an object never lost sight of to secure in seminaries of learning, and indeed everywhere, examples of the most perfect mental development. Systems which tend to equalize the benefits of education by reducing the standard of practical attainment-lessening, in this way, the difference between the highest and the lowest, have the effect, ultimately, to depress all ;

1845.]

Responsibility of the Good to their Country.

11

for they remove one of the best incitements to excellence, the actual exemplification of it in a living instance before us, and of us. If a inan of preeminent character and attainment should do nothing else but exist, in the eyes of his associates and neighbors, he would live for a most enviable usefulness. And a system which raises up one such man, in a class of students, or a community, really improves and elevates the whole.

3. Good men may not excuse themselves from an active aud efficient agency in the government of their country. It is just leaving the principal instrument of power over themselves, and their posterity in wicked hands. It is essentially counteracting their own endeavors to improve society. It is permitting unprin cipled men to educate, in fact, to a great degree, their children. What avails it for us, under the plea of avoiding all meddling with secular, and especially civil matters, to labor in the schools, and in the church, regardless of a tremendous power incessantly at work, in high places, and carry its pestiferous influence everywhere, to corrupt and mislead society? How futile to rely on means, and yet not use those which a beneficent Providence has put into our hands, of determining, to some extent at least, the character of the government under which we live, and the public policy of the people of which we are a part! If government is a matter of indifference, it may be left to boys. If it is nothing but a scramble for petty titles and a little brief authority, those who love the dust and the noise of popular excitement, and public parade, should be allowed to have the conflicts and the victories all to themselves. But if most of the great objects, which men seek in life, if most of the enterprise, and industry, which fill up that life, if the spirit of the country, its morality, its integrity, its justice, its piety, its whole education, theoretical and practical, are intimately and must be forever connected with the exercise of civil power, no good man, no thoughtful Christian can shrink from his responsibilities as a citizen, can relinquish his birthright as a freeman.

ARTICLE II.

SCHOTT'S FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF RHETORIC AND

HOMILETICS.

By Edwards A. Park, Professor at Andover.

[HENRY AUGUSTUS SCHOTT was born at Leipsic on the fifth of December, 1780. His father, Augustus Frederic Schott, was a Professor in the University of Leipsic, and died in 1792. The son was early distinguished for his philological and varied learning. In 1805 he was appointed Extraordinary Professor of Philology; and in 1808, Extraordinary Professor of Theology at Leipsic. In 1809 he was made Doctor and Professor of Theology at Wittenberg. He was called in 1812 to a Professorship of Theology at Jena, where he was Director of the Preacher's Seminary, and Privy Church-Councillor. While the first Professor at Jena, he died on the 29th of December, 1835, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. In his doctrinal opinions he was a supranaturalist. He published in 1806 a new version of the Greek Testament, which in 1825 had passed through three editions. In 1825 he published, in connection with J. F. Winzer, a Latin translation of the Pentateuch. In 1834 appeared his Commentary on the Epistles of the New Testament. In 1811 he published his Epitome of Dogmatic Christian Theology, which in 1822 had passed through two editions; in 1830, his Historico-critical Introduction to the Books of the New Testament; and in 1826 his Letters on Religion and the Christian Faith. In 1807 he published his Brief Sketch of a Theory of Eloquence with special application to the Eloquence of the Pulpit, and in 1813 a second edition of the same. In 1815 appeared his celebrated treatise, entitled, The Theory of Eloquence with special application to Sacred Eloquence in its whole extent, in three volumes. According to the principles detailed in this work he composed numerous essays and sermons, some of which he gave to the press. Among them are, Clerical Discourses and Homilies, with particular reference, in part, to the events of the day, 1815; Christian Religious Discourses on Texts belonging to the Pericope and on others freely chosen, in two volumes, 1814; a New Collection of Clerical Discourses and Homilies, 1822; a New Selection of Homilies, 1830; many occasional

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Origin of Language.

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sermons, and many homiletical essays, in three volumes of the Journal for Preachers, which he edited, in connection with Rehkopf, during 1811-12, and in Tzschirner's Memorabilia for the Preacher's Study, etc. The following Article is an abstract of the First Part, pp. 1-462, of his larger Theorie der Beredsamkeit, a work which is universally regarded as the standard German Treatise in the department of Homiletics. It is particularly valuable not only for the copious learning which it exhibits, but also for the high moral sentiment and evangelical piety which it everywhere breathes. The title of the First Part is, the Philosophical and Religious Fundamental Principles of Rhetoric and Homiletics].

1. Origin of Language.

in man a deeply seated desire of progress, of improving his condition, of enlarging his sphere of action, of rising higher and higher on the scale of being. He conceives no limit which he does not wish to transcend. He has an instinctive longing to place himself in a state of harmony with his own nature, and with all objects around him. The demand is constantly made upon his soul, Be one, be ever more and more one with thyself and with the world about thee. His desire of unity with himself and with the universe, is analogous to the tendency of all material objects toward one central point. It is a desire which finds its highest gratification in the service of God and in communion with him. It leads man to desire that others may participate in his own states of thinking, feeling and willing. He feels impelled to transfer the thoughts, affections and volitions of his own soul to the souls of other men, and thus to put his fellow beings in harmony with himself. His nature suggests to him a process for attaining this end.

He is instinctively prompted to utter certain sounds which are expressive of his sensations. The faculty of employing particular tones of the voice as representative of particular sensuous feelings, is common to man and the brutes. In man, however, the faculty is more highly developed than in the lower animals. A tune, when considered apart from the words to which it is applied, is the most exalted effort of this power of expression. The imitative sounds are also a peculiar exercise of the same faculty. At first, the power is employed without any conception of the object of that sensation which is felt and expressed. But this mereVOL. II. No. 5.

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