Bible. It is the special prerogative of the churches always, to see to it that such a ministry be provided. To the warm sympathy and generous support of the churches of New England therefore the theological seminary at Hartford makes its appeal. We regard that enterprise, in its present form, as one of the first magnitude; and we have not the smallest wish for its success any farther than it shall answer the particular expectations. of the friends who are contributing so liberally to its foundations. The removal of Dr. Beecher to Cincinnati in 1832 was, on the whole, a failure. All who lived at the time will remember how big the enterprise looked, and how high were the expectations excited. It was no fault of his that those expectations were not realized. The pulpit was the tower of Lyman Beecher's strength. God made him for a preacher, not for a theological professor. Moreover he was fifty seven years old, and there is always much hazard in a man's changing his profession after he has reached fifty. The probability is that he will fail; and the greater his success in the profession to which his past life has been devoted, the greater will appear his failure; since neither the community nor himself will be satisfied unless he comes fully up in his new career to all he has achieved in that from which he has turned aside; and the man of Lyman Beecher's reputation as a preacher who could do that, or make the world believe that he had done it, must be a marvel indeed. It may be doubted, moreover, whether the work marked out for him by the projectors of that enterprise, was a work within the limits of human possibility in a single generation. A college or seminary can not be built as you build a house. like a tree, and the growth requires a long time. man can not make a great seminary, any more than a great oak tree can grow in one year or in ten.

It grows, Hence one

To have taken "the most prominent, popular and. powerful preacher in our nation" and transferred him at once from his daily contact and conflict with the seething masses of living souls in the intellectual focus of the nation to a professor's chair in a seminary having actually no existence, save in funds and buildings and most extravagant expectations; and to have required him to found "a great central theological institution of the first character"; " soon to become the great Andover or Princeton of the

West, and to give character to hundreds and thousands of ministers which may issue from it"; is proof that the leading men of the day were magnificent dreamers; for we are told that "there was but one deep and all-absorbing feeling among them respecting our great undertaking." II., 241. The Doctor entered into it with all the fervor of his unbounded enthusiasm, and said afterward: "It was the greatest thought that ever entered my soul; it filled it and displaced everything else." II., 246.

His mind was not finally made up, however, without a long and painful conflict by which his health was impaired. Such men as Evarts, Wisner, Greene and Cornelius, used all their influence to retain him in Boston. Dr. Taylor was most anxious to secure both him and the funds subscribed to the new seminary for New Haven. Two years passed away from the time of the first application before his decision was reached. In the mean time the little cloud arose which continued to increase, and subsequently burst upon him in that theological storm of his trial for heresy in 1836. It was beginning to be said, both East and West, that he was not sound in the faith, according to the Presbyterian standards. This probably had no little influence in his decision, as Lyman Beecher was not the man to be terrified by any Presbyterian thunder, when the thunder of God, as we have seen, stimulated him like wine. Besides, he fully believed that that which assailed him was a false philosophy, "the devil" working through "the instrumentality of pious and orthodox ministers of Christ," (II., 299,) to pervert and obstruct the truth, prevent revivals, and dishonor God; and that he was called by the Divine Providence to overthrow this gigantic obstacle, that the glorious Gospel might flow, as the mighty waves of the sea, over the great West. Of the trial and its result he shall himself speak:

"He" [Wilson]" did not know what he undertook. I knew, to a hair's breadth, every point between Old School and New School, and knew all their difficulties, and how to puzzle them with them. In Presbytery he had only inferior men on his side. He knew they were fools.. . . There was not another man equal to Wilson on his side, nor any where near it. On our side the trial was as strong as possible, and everybody exulted with great exultation.

So they laughed at him, even some Old Schoolish folks, and called him a dead man. Presbytery acquitted me, and he appealed to Synod." II., 352-253.

Did he not rightly judge that he had some peculiar adaptation for the legal profession?

That the Lane Seminary of to-day is a quite different thing from all that was pictured in the vaticinations of that early period, is no proof whatever that all reasonable success has not been achieved, or that it may not in time leave both Andover and Princeton in the back ground. We could name more than one man of those trained under Lyman Beecher who is worth to the churches and the country to-day more than all that has been expended on that seminary since its foundation.

Space would fail us if we should attempt to notice one in twenty of the interesting and entertaining incidents interwoven in this piled up and crowded sketch book of all the Beechers; as that Charles had cut his foot, or was getting fat; or Henry had let the cow out of the barn. The two thick volumes remind us of the four wagon-loads of goods which Dr. Beecher took from East Hampton to Litchfield. There was every thing in these wagon-loads, and nothing was left out. The story of the cow is so funny, and withal, so characteristic, that we must insert it. It was at the beautiful family residence on Walnut Hills, Cincinnati. The Doctor had bought a cow, and with no small difficulty had got her into the barn, and the door fastened. The curly-headed boy Henry Ward, already developing into a champion, and thirsting for exploits, found the strange cow in the barn, challenged her right to be there, flung wide open the door and charged furiously with a stick. Not content with this summary ejection, he gave chase, pursued the frightened beast quite away from the premises, and then returned, panting and hot and eloquent, to proclaim to his astonished father the brave thing he had done. And what was it? He had robbed the children of their supper. He has been letting the cow out of the barn ever since.

Lyman Beecher was the best of all his sons, and all his daughters too. He never called Nettleton and Dr. Woods vinegar-faced evangelicals," nor embraced the popular leaders of Socinianism and infidelity, as "brothers." On the contrary,

९९

he hurled his hot thunderbolts into the very heart of their camp with a will, filling them with both consternation and wrath. Alas, that he should have built any part of the walls of Zion with such untempered mortar, that it should have crumbled away, even before he went to his rest. Alas, that he should have used weapons of warfare which his own children are turning against that for which Lyman Beecher would have laid down his life.

ARTICLE III.

THE POWER OF SELF-FORGETFULNESS.

BY THE REV. A. H. CURRIER, LYNN, MASS.

THERE are some matters of common experience of which the received explanations are not satisfactory. Of these is the disappointment felt in visiting some wonder of nature or art of which we have heard glowing accounts and formed exalted conceptions. The popular and generally received explanation is, that the imagination has previously formed such an exaggerated notion of the object, that when seen it appears common and of but little worth.

This may be true, and may explain in part, but does not account for, the fact that as we linger in the presence of the object, its power gradually dawns upon us by imperceptible advances, until our souls are filled with its glory as the horizon is filled with morning light.

This new discovery indicates that something else beside extravagant expectation causes our disappointment; something that makes the real excellence, which later impresses us, invisible to our eyes at the first. A much more satisfactory solution is found in a very able article in an early number of the American Theological Review, from the pen of Prof. Henry B. Smith. Professor Smith ascribes the disappointment of which we have spoken to the self-conscious state we are in at the time we first look upon the object. He thus states the case and gives its explanation:

"However truly the heart may be working, begin to watch it and it ceases to work. Begin to think of your own emotions and,

as a present fact, they are no more. They vanish under your scrutiny. This for the simple reason that your attention is withdrawn from the object that awakened them. We are apt to be most charmed by spectacles that come upon us unawares; not so much from the force of novelty, but because they absorb us."

The principle involved in this explanation is of wide application, throws light upon many curious facts in human experience, and suggests some interesting reflections upon the value of self-forgetfulness as a condition of mental power. Without this, excellence of performance of any kind seems impossible. Wherever the first disappointment is succeeded by an entire appreciation ready to declare that the half had not been told, the change in judgment and feeling arises from the fact that the mind ceases to look inward upon itself. The objects gradually beguile it from its self-contemplation, and fix it by an insensible fascination entirely upon themselves. Then, and not till then, is their full glory discovered. It has shined with an equal radiance all the while, but the averted mind could not be illumined by it.

We here find the secret of the almost magical power possessed by trivial relics and memorials. Two travellers were once wandering among the ruins of the Acropolis at Athens, seeking to form some conception of the ancient magnificence of the city, and to realize the exalted emotions with which they had expected to be agitated in the place. But the expected tide of feeling did not flood their souls; they wandered about unmoved amidst the splendid desolation. The historic memories of the place were recalled in vain. They evoked no pleasing illusions of departed grandeur. The old city still remained a lifeless abstraction, and the glowing visions of a re-summoned past, of which other visitors had told, a dream and a fable. But with a sort of listless persistency they continued their explorations, examining hidden nooks and odd recesses, till one who had climbed up with a bold hardihood to the roof of the ruined. Parthenon, came suddenly and by a sort of surprise upon a sculptured flower, hidden in a sheltered nook under the overhanging roof, as fresh and perfect as when it sprang up like a thing of life under the chisel of the artist two thousand years before. In this retreat, sheltered from the wearing winds and