desist. Mansel's motto should be: "A God [in the least] understood would be no God at all." True, as St. Augustine says, "To think that God is, as we can conceive him to be, is blasphemy;" but how do we know it to be blasphemy? Would it be blasphemy if we conceived him to be a void negation of the finite and the limited, and could conceive him to be nothing else? If we had no conception of him at all, we could never institute the mental relation of him as conceived and as he is. The logicians are again saying to us, (we are far from being in Pascal's despairing mood), "Heads I win, tails you loose!"

We do not like to pronounce the word, but there are also other ways in which the negative philosophy may be reduced to atheism. We hasten to add that we do not accuse its advocates of atheism. If any man were to declare himself an atheist it would give us a pang of sorrow, but we should not answer a word. In Mansel and those of his school we recognize sincere co-workers. Their negation will clear the field of much that is not truth; but that the zero of the unconditioned. will ever obstruct the progress of "the beautiful and first-born of Deity," we have no fear. Positiveism, in its pernicious and presumptuous invasion of the soul's realm, is receiving its death-blows from the Hamiltonian doctrine of the relative; for which let us be thankful. But when the new philosophy, flushed with victory, would sacrifice, in the imaginary defense of a venerable church establishment, not only Plato and Marcus Aurelius, but also deny to the soul all power to know God, all power to love and commune with God, all capacity to receive from the pitying Redeemer anything but a regulative behest of obedience to an UNKNOWN, then we are glad to see it wearing the iron of its own logic in its heart. But there is no need of dealing harshly with the logician. Old Ludovicus Vives tells the story (Carlyle repeats it somewhere) of a peasant who killed his ass for having drunk up the moon in a pail of water, ut luna redeat. The moon was still shining in the heavens. It would not be wise to kill a zealous disciple of the negative philosophy, ut Deus redeat.

ARTICLE IX.-SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF PROFESSOR WILLIAM A. LARNED.

IT has pleased God, within a few weeks, by a sudden call, to summon from earthly duties and enjoyments one of the Professors in Yale College, who, from the time when this Quarterly was first started in 1843, was one of a committee to superintend its interests; who has often contributed to its pages, and was for a short time its editor. We propose, in a few pages of the present number of the NEW ENGLANDER, to pay a brief and deserved tribute to the memory of PROFESSOR WILLIAM AUGUSTUS LARNED, our associate and valued friend.

He was born June 23, 1806, in Thompson, Connecticut, where his ancestors had lived for four generations before him, having emigrated from Massachusetts about the year 1715. The first of the family in this country came over in the Colony led by John Winthrop, in 1630, and settled in Charlestown, where his name heads the list of those who were received into the church. Subsequently, in 1642, he settled in Woburn, and from him, through his son Isaac, one of the first settlers of the town of Chelmsford, Mass., and his grandsons, Isaac and Benoni, respectively of Framingham and Sherburne, in the same commonwealth, all of the name of Learned or Larned in this country have descended. The head of the Connecticut branch, Deacon William Larned, a son of the second Isaac, was one of the original proprietors and first inhabitants of Thompson, then a parish of Killingly, where he settled about 1708. His grandson, General Samuel Larned, a very active and useful citizen, after serving through the war of the Revolu tion, as an officer of one of the Connecticut regiments, repeatedly represented his town in the State Legislature, and, as a member of the Convention of 1788, bore a part in the adoption of the new Federal Constitution. His son George, the father of Professor Larned, a graduate of Brown University of the

year 1792, and by profession a lawyer, resided in his native town, where he died in 1858.

William Augustus Larned entered Yale College at the beginning of the Sophomore year in 1823, and was graduated with honor in 1826. The next two years were spent in teaching at Salisbury, North Carolina. In 1828 he accepted an appointment to the office of tutor in Yale College, which he resigned in 1831. Near the end of his connection with the College as tutor, and during the great revival of 1831, his attention was first called, in an effectual way, to his spiritual interests. When he came to College he was, although trained religiously at home by his stepmother, a thoughtless boy, and as his mind grew, he began to think that many of the pretences to religion were delusions, until by and by he fell into doubts concerning Christianity itself. Yet, as he has mentioned to his friends, the preaching of Dr. Fitch in the College Chapel did him great good: such powerful defenses and logical exhibitions of the gospel, as were made by that eminent preacher, were too strong to be resisted by a mind as logical and honest as Larned's. But no thorough alteration in his life and character occurred until that great revival, which pervaded most parts of the Northern States, and bore abundant and hopeful fruits in the College. Here, while his fellow-tutors, Pettingell, a young man of the rarest promise, and Bushnell, now an illustrious name, were turning their eyes towards the kingdom of heaven, Larned also gave to this great subject of personal religion his earnest and serious attention. The result was that, without that intense feeling which some manifest, he gave himself up to the service of God, and in a solemn covenant engaged to be a follower of Christ.

Of that revival he thus spoke the year afterward, in a tribute to the memory of his friend Pettingell, which was published in the Christian Spectator: "The certainty that the spirit of God was striving in the hearts of many around them filled the most insensible with awe. The order and stillness which prevailed, rendered the whole place sacred. It was such order as men observe who are engaged in sober realities. It was the silence of those who are deciding upon interests as enduring as

eternity. With what feelings did the frequent sound of the bell, inviting to the place of worship, fill the mind! With what thrilling interest was it heard that this and that friend or companion were rejoicing with a joy they had never known. before!"

The new views of life and new religious impressions produced at this time led him to inquire what work God had for him, and whether his Divine Master was not calling him to preach the gospel. He had chosen the bar for his profession; had, during his leisure hours in North Carolina and afterwards, made some considerable advances in the necessary reading; and seemed to himself, both then and since, to have an especial aptitude for that profession. But now, under a conviction of duty and in accordance with the advice of friends, especially of Dr. Taylor, he consecrated himself to the work of the ministry, and began the study of theology. The feelings which he entertained, in thus changing his career, may be learned from what he writes, in the article already referred to, of his friend Pettingell, who had in the same way altered his plan, and who, at the beginning of his theological studies, into which he entered with all his ardor, and with great intellectual power, had been cut down by an untimely death. "Although human laws," thus he writes, "may be sufficiently wide in their relations to demand the highest intellectual efforts, and sufficiently important in their effects on the interests of man to be worthy of talents consecrated to the service of God, yet the divine system of moral government, comprehending the mysteries of redemption, is infinitely more glorious; and may employ forever, with constantly increasing delight, the powers of the most exalted being in the universe." He then goes on to speak of the scientific basis of theology, and of its adaptation to the wants of mankind, in so clear and instructive a way, as to show that already-for he was a theological student when he wrote this he had explored the profession of his new choice, its science and its practice, with the eye of a Christian philosopher.

From the Seminary at Yale College he was called to the care of the church in Millbury, Mass., where he was ordained

in the spring of 1834.* During his short career as a pastor in this parish-from May, 1834, until October, 1835-he performed his work to the profit and acceptance of those who heard him. But his health, which was not good when he was settled, broke down under his labors, and he was led to leave the people who loved and honored him, and to listen to proposals from Dr. Beman of Troy, and Mr. Kirk, then of Albany, to unite with them in a theological institution, at the former place, which they had set up and were carrying on. Here he spent the next three years and a little more, chiefly in teaching the languages of the Old and New Testaments, and in preaching, as an assistant to Dr. Beman, on Sunday afternoons. But here again his health languished, and the Seminary itself, depressed by the commercial disasters of 1837, was crippled in its He therefore, early in 1839, sought a temporary retirement from his labors, and chose New Haven for his refuge, where, during some months, he gave himself up to studyparticularly to the study of Anglo-Saxon.

resources.

It was in the autumn of this year, 1839, when the chair of Rhetoric and English Literature was made vacant by the transfer of Prof. Goodrich to the Theological Department, that Mr. Larned was elected his successor by the Corporation of Yale College. The two men were in many respects very unlike one another. Prof. Goodrich was bold, fervent, ardent, possessed by nature of more than common rhetorical power, able to make the most of his cause, and to give it the most persuasive form. Prof. Larned was timid and hesitating, when the matter in hand was to carry out plans which he had himself devised, and for which he was responsible. Although endowed with a certain genial ardor, he did not have in his composition that wonderful energy, for which his predecessor was so remarkable. And although on a par with him in taste, and susceptibility to the beauties and proprieties of style, he had less power to recommend to others, and impress upon them the convictions which he entertained himself. The brilliant and earnest rhet

* The call was given early in the autumn of 1833, but Mr. Larned stipulated that he should not be settled until May, 1834.