THE

METHODIST QUARTERLY REVIEW,

JULY, 1847.

EDITED BY GEORGE PECK, D. D.

ART. I.-Theology; explained and defended in a Series of SerBy TIMOTHY DWIGHT, S. T. D., LL. D., late President of Yale College. With a Memoir of the Life of the Author. In four volumes. New-York: Harper & Brothers.

IN estimating the character of a great man we naturally take into view not merely the original elements out of which the character has been formed, but the various influences by which those elements have been molded. It not unfrequently happens that great powers, owing to unpropitious circumstances, are scarcely developed at all; and a mind which, under adequate training, might have shone as a star of the first magnitude, never gives forth anything beyond a feeble and sickly light. On the other hand, it is no uncommon case to find an individual whose faculties originally scarcely come up to a respectable mediocrity, who, "under the influence of favoring circumstances, reaches a commanding intellectual stature, and ultimately leaves behind him a bright and honored name. But the noblest specimens of human character are those in which eminent talents and propitious circumstances meet, always supposing that the moral qualities are, in some good degree, in harmony with the intellectual. It must be borne in mind, however, that it is not always that the circumstances which appear most favorable to intellectual development, are really so; for not unfrequently the mind is awakened to the most vigorous effort by the greatest obstacles, and it finds itself possessed of energies which, perhaps, might have remained dormant through life if those obstacles had not existed. It is the moral state of the soul that chiefly decides whether the particular circumstances in which our lot is cast are to operate favorably or unfavorably, in respect to the growth and useful direction of the intellectual faculties.

VOL. VII.-21

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 aus-. picious 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