impotence of sinners, he would also teach, more fully than his predecessors, that all men had an amount of power commensurate with their obligations. If he taught God's universal agency, he would also teach man's activity. If the Holy Ghost is the author of regeneration, man is the actor of it. Indeed, in every department of theology, he aimed at comprehensive views, and was not afraid of seeming paradoxes. By his ingenious explanation of these paradoxes, he disciplined the minds of his hearers, held out one truth before them in the light of another, and made them inquisitive to know all the connections of apparently isolated truths. It has been said, that every great man will contradict himself. The import of this saying is, that while a narrow mind will adopt one view of truth, and exclude every other, a capacious mind will embrace all sides of a doctrine, and combine into one great whole, seemingly discordant parts. Hence, the community will vary in their judgments concerning a comprehensive divine. Some will refer him to this party, some to that, according as they discern this or that relation of his extensive system. Of no modern theologian, perhaps, have there been formed more conflicting estimates than of Dr. Emmons. Some have censured him for too great a love of novelty; others for too pertinacious an adherence to antiquated forms. Some have commended the simplicity of his views; others have disliked their complexity. Some have considered him as exalting philosophy above the Bible; others, as too fond of distorting scientific truth into an agreement with inspiration. One has been pleased with the rationalistic tendencies of his system; because this system dispenses with a supernatural interposition of God in the renewal of sinners, and in a revival of religion, and teaches that man is no more dependent for a new heart, than for a new thought, or for another breath. Another is pleased with the 'theocratical' tendencies of the same system; because it refers all effects to the Being, "of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things." Many have considered him deficient in the imaginative element of a philosopher, too empirical, plodding continuously over one low plain. Others have considered him too visionary; and one of our theological Reviews has classed him with German transcendentalists, and ranged side by side the names of Hegel and Emmons. Thus do men divide a great mind among different parties, giving to each a due proportion, and implying that the excellences of each may be gathered into one comprehensive spirit. In a letter written when he was ninety-three years old, he says: "I go with the Old School of New England divines half way, and then turn round and oppose them with all my might. I go with the New School half way, and then turn

round and oppose them with all my might. The Old School must say less of passivity, the New School more of dependence." He once remarked in conversation, "I never could see how some persons could so manage as to be claimed on so many different and opposite sides. Why, I was never claimed only on one side, and hardly on that." This remark is both true and untrue. As a whole, his system differs from every other; but in each of its branches it coalesces with some other, and has either the merit or the fault of blending into one whole, qualities which had previously been separate.

Another source of the interest felt in Dr. Emmons, was the elevation of his religious character. His views of divine truth were so comprehensive, he had been for so long a period so familiar with the more sublime, severe, and subduing doctrines, that he exhibited a rare example of philosophical Christianity; of deep, strong emotion flowing from stern and manly thought. He prayed in his family and conversed on practical godliness, like a forgiven penitent, who trembled before his Sovereign, and remembered, that as God was in heaven and he on earth, therefore should his words be few. He dreaded the semblance of religious ostentation; and no one more carefully or more conscientiously recoiled from it. Though he avoided secrecy in most things, he courted it for his good deeds. He was a living realization of the proverbs, "feeling is mute when deepest," "shallow streams are the noisiest." His countenance, his tones, his words were the sure signs of deep calling unto deep in the recesses of his spirit. There was often a sublimity in his subdued pathos, in the monosyllabic declarations of his faith and submissiveness. After having lived the life of a self scrutinizing and self suspecting christian for seventy years, having been far more conversant than the majority of our best men, with those awe inspiring themes, Sovereignty, Decrees, Reprobation, Justice, Eternal Penalty, Disinterested Submission, he was at length told that his end drew near, and he must soon stand in the presence of his Judge. "I am ready," was his reply; and to those who knew him, he could not have uttered more consoling, more satisfying words. They were the index of his decided, matured, considerate hope; a hope formed under the influence, not of the promises merely, but of the threatenings also; not solely of God's forbearance, but also of his inflexible rectitude. It was the hope of a man looking to the cross indeed, but also to the august and pure throne, of one who had exalted the gospel, and magnified the law. Had he been less rigid and unbending in his enforcement of the stern precepts which come 21*

VOL. I.

from Sinai, less cautious and reverent in his exposure of those religious feelings that are almost too sacred to be exposed, the three words, "I am ready," had not been so full of meaning; but now they were the history of the man, of his past fears, his present hopes. He measured his syllables, and shrunk back from the least parade of piety. And if, after the application of his rigid tests, he dared to express a hope, even a trembling hope, of receiving a welcome to paradise, we instinctively repose a steadier confidence in that hope, than if it had not passed through so protracted and fiery a trial.

In his views of self crucifixion before God, he reminded one of the Archbishop of Cambray. Fenelon was born indeed under sunnier skies than Emmons, and lived in a more polished society. But there was a striking resemblance between the tendencies of the two men to exalt Jehovah, and annihilate self; to look upon eternal happiness as a small good in the comparison with virtue, and eternal misery as a small evil in comparison with sin. When the opposers of Dr. Emmons have indulged in asperity of remark with regard to his willingness to be lost for the glory of God, they have borrowed the style, and perhaps too the spirit, in which Bossuet and his adherents aspersed the disinterested love of Fenelon; and the following remark of the Pope, in his attempt to compound the matter and avoid an immediate decision against Fenelon, will apply, with some modification, to Emmons, and those who have ridiculed him for his theory of disinterestedness: "The Bishop of Cambray loves his Maker too much, his opposers love their neighbor too little." This willingness to abandon every selfish good for the well being of the universe, was not, with Dr. Emmons, so much a theory as a principle, not a principle so much as a life. The impression which he made upon his pupils in this regard, may be described in the words of Dr. Channing, as he pays the following tribute to the memory of one of Dr. Emmons' friends. "The system of Dr. Hopkins," he says, "however fearful, was yet built on a generous foundation. Other Calvinists were willing that their neighbors should be predestinated to eternal misery for the glory of God. This noble minded man demanded a more generous and impartial virtue; and maintained that we should consent to our own perdition, should be willing ourselves to be condemned, if the greatest good of the universe, and the manifestation of the divine perfections should so require. True virtue, as he taught, was an entire surrender of personal interest to the benevolent purposes of God. Self love he spared in none of its movements. He called us to seek our own happiness, as well as that of others,

in a spirit of impartial benevolence; to do good to ourselves, not from self preference, not from the impulse of personal de-. sires, but in obedience to that sublime law which requires us to promote the welfare of each and all within our influence. I need not be ashamed to confess the deep impression which this system made on my youthful mind. I am grateful to this stern teacher for turning my thoughts and heart to the claims and majesty of impartial, universal benevolence."*

Though a submissive veneration was the most obvious feature in the religious developements of Dr. Emmons, he would sometimes converse on the heavenly state with the familiarity of one whose thoughts found their home in the skies, and with the artlessness of one who did not query with himself how his thoughts would appear if made known to the world. "I have no doubt," he once remarked, "that spirits will know each other in the coming life. I shall see brother Spring, and Mr. Sanford, and how many inquiries shall we have to make of each other! It will be pleasant to see and converse with Adam and Noah, and the patriarchs; but I think I shall be as anxious to be introduced to the apostle Paul, and Martin Luther, as to any one who has gone there before me." The writer of this sketch will never lose the impression made upon him by Dr. Emmons, when, at the age of ninety-four, he spoke of his decease, which he must speedily accomplish; and said with a child-like diffidence, with the simplicity of a great man, "I confess that I look forward with interest to the time when I shall see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. I have a great curiosity to look upon David and Isaiah; and I long to talk with Paul. Paul was a wonderful man. But especially will Jesus Christ and God fill my thoughts. I do not know, however, that I shall be saved. If another man should be the subject of all my exercises, I think I should have a hope of him. But it is a great thing to be allowed to enter heaven. Perhaps I shall be shut out. But if I am not saved, I shall be disappointed." The semi-tone with which this last word was uttered, the rigid pressure of his lips, and the long pause that followed it, bespoke at once the humility, faith, and submission which he had cherished in his bosom, as a jewel too precious for the promiscuous

*Discourse delivered at the Dedication of the Unitarian Congregational Church in Newport, R. I., July 27, 1836. By William Ellery Channing. p. 37.

↑ He here refers to his brother-in-law, Rev. Dr. Spring of Newburyport, and to his early friend, previously alluded to, Rev. David Sanford of Medway, Mass. "When Dr. Spring died," he once remarked, "I felt as if I had lost my right hand. We thought together, felt together, acted together." They were intimately associated in the measures which led to the establishment of Andover Theological Seminary, in the conduct of the Missionary Magazine, and in various benevolent societies.

gaze. I left him a few moments afterward, with the profoundest reverence for his piety, and I never saw him more. There was something in his silence,—in what he did not say, except with his significant eye,-that beggars description. He was so peculiar that "we ne'er shall see his like again;" so good, that we shall seldom find his equal.

Another source of the interest felt in Dr. Emmons was, the tenacity of his physical and mental system. In several distinct applications of the term, tenacity was a prominent characteristic of his body and his soul. It marked his predilections for men and things. He was a fast friend; a steadfast advocate of the truth. The power of long continued attention raised him above common men. It may be said of him as he said of another, "He could look half an hour at the point of a needle, without moving an eye lid." Long after others had let go their hold of an argument, or of a specific phraseology, he would hold on and hold out, and keep hold, and never let go. Possessing an athletic and well compacted frame, a bilious nervous temperament, he was formed for protracted labor, and an old age tenacious of health and energy. Only three days before his death, he made a remark which, for sprightliness and shrewdness, savored of the flower of his life. In his eightythird year, he relinquished his pastoral office, because he had magnanimously resolved to cease preaching, "while he had mind enough left to know that he had begun to fail." He supposed himself to have declined at this age, not in his ability to wield the pen of a ready writer, but in his freedom and power of extemporaneous remark. Still, after his retirement from office, he made one unwritten address, which was generally considered the happiest and most effective that ever came from him.

Some of his former parish, perceiving that their parochial guide had abandoned his authority, and feeling disposed to taste the sweets of freedom, made an attempt to introduce Universalist preachers into the old pulpit. The parish were called together to act upon a petition for opening their meetinghouse occasionally to other denominations; no particular sect being alluded to, but the Universalists being intended. Some of the Doctor's friends deemed it advisable to grant the petition, and hoped that a conciliating course would preclude a threatened schism. But he was inflexible. He said but little, and did nothing until the parish bell rung for the meeting. Then he called for his horse and chaise, calculated knowingly for the time spent in the preliminaries of business, and when he supposed them ready to introduce the main topic, he rode to the