網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

three hundred poor orphan boys; but they are never to hear the voice of a preacher; never to see the face of a minister within its marble walls. If it should stand a thousand years, as it may, and hundreds of orphans should die in the sick room, no whisper of consolation is ever to be breathed into the ear of an expiring youth; no prayer ever to be offered by a minister of our holy religion! Will God smile upon such a scheme

as this? Who can believe it?

It was said indeed, in answer to Mr. Webster, by the able counsel, Mr. Binney and Mr. Sergeant on the other side, that the place of regularly authorized ministers may be supplied by "lay teachers," and that the trustees of the college, will no doubt provide for the moral and religious instruction of the scholars, with a conscientious regard to their high trust. God grant that they may. Rarely has a more responsible trust been devolved upon a city corporation; and let us believe that they will do what they can, to avert the evils, which Mr. Webster so vividly predicts and deplores. If Mr. Girard's plan is carried out and his college becomes permanently established, it will prove a blessing or a curse to the community; and this will depend greatly on the policy of its legal governors and guardians. They have it in their power, under the will, to provide for the moral and Christian instruction of the boys, through the agency of pious laymen; and let them know that the eyes of thousands, who anxiously await the result of the experiment, are upon them.

If in organizing their faculty they select able and good men to fill the several departments, who will conscientiously lay down the great principles of Christianity as the bases of all their instructions-if the poor orphans under their guardianship are faithfully instructed in the all important truths of natural and revealed religion-if they are taught Vol. III.

14

to read the Bible and keep the Sabbath; to "do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God," the fears which now disquiet so many of the most enlightened and benevolent minds will be allayed, and the wise and good of all Christian denominations will rejoice, though their ministers are forbidden to have any part or lot in the instruction.

But if the mayor, aldermen and citizens of Philadelphia should ever become recreant to their high trust; if men of loose and skeptical princi ples should be chosen to fill the of fices of government and instruction, or if, according to Mr. Girard's plan, the students should be virtually hindered from adopting any religious tenets till they go out, in the headstrong maturity of their passions, to meet the temptations of a wicked world; why then, we say, if such should ever be the moral delinquencies of the governors and teachers of Girard College, let its doors forever be closed-let no poor orphan child ever enter the great moral sepulcher. If the college through neglect or design, is to be the handmaid and nursery of infi delity, in any of its seductive forms, let it "become like Babylon, an utter desolation." "Let it never be inhabited nor dwelt in, from generation to generation." Rather than it should stand to curse the city, and to curse the country, by nurturing up and sending out its malign agen. cies to sow the land with worse than dragon's teeth, let every human being flee from it, "let wild beasts of the desert live there," let its halls be "full of doleful creatures," "let owls dwell there and satyrs dance there, let the wild beasts of the isl and cry in the desolate houses, and dragons in the pleasant palaces." Do we speak too strongly? Who will say it, when the far reaching results of Christian education on the one hand, and the neglect of it on the other, come to be disclosed at the last day?

ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON.*

THE name of Leighton is pronounced with reverence and love by men of various sects and opinions, wherever the English language is spoken. His works unite sound scriptural views, a spirit of heavenly contemplation, the breathings of divine love, and richness of imagery in a perfection which scarcely any other writer has attained. Refined minds, particularly those of a contemplative sort, will turn to them, if they take any pleasure in religious things, as to a well from which the purest and brightest feelings gush forth. The frame of mind which they favor and tend to produce, is one of peace and love. Although built upon a deep theology, they are any thing but controversial. In some respects they have a universal character, so that from reading them one could hardly pronounce upon the age when Leighton lived, or the sect to which he belonged. External events, it is obvious, had less than their usual influence upon his mind and heart.

Amid this general reverence felt for Leighton, there are two parties, who, while they can not fail to esteem him highly, yet must feel inclined to fall below the general voice : : we mean the Presbyterians of Scotland, and the high church Episcopalians. The former associate with his memory a desertion, without sufficient cause, of his own and his father's religion, and charge him in part with the evils which attended the establishment of episcopacy in Scotland under Charles II. The latter can neither like his doctrinal system, nor the low ground he took when he went over to their church; and some of them in his

The Whole Works of Archbishop Leighton, in one vol. New York, C. Riker. 1844.

own time accused him, we believe, of doing injury to their cause by his extreme moderation. When in the kirk he was episcopally inclined, when in the Episcopal church he was but a Presbyterian after all: of course, therefore, those who are farthest off from half-and-half opinions in church government do not set him up for an example.

This change, which we have just spoken of, was the one event of Leighton's outer life; his history and character may be said to be wrapped up in it. We read in it his mind, his relation to the practical world, the moving principles of his nature as a man. It can not, therefore, be amiss, if, in making some observations on his life, as we propose to do, we pursue an order of arrangement very much resembling the course which his life pursued; if we let it flow silently on in its smooth channel, until we reach the era of his change, and then examine, as with a geologist's eye, the ledges over which it took much of its future course.

Robert Leighton, born in 1611, was the son of Alexander Leighton, some time professor of moral phi losophy in Edinburgh, who afterwards lived in London, and suffered so signally for his zeal against episcopacy, as to be of historical notoriety. The son was sent to Edinburgh for his education, and had reached the age of thirty before he entered the ministry in the kirk. In this long preliminary stage of his life his circumstances differed from those of most of the young men whose life had the same destination: he became acquainted with men and things in England to some extent, on account of having two sisters marthe continent, where he saw some ried in that country: he traveled on of the Catholic institutions of piety

under favorable points of view; and he had leisure to amass much more learning than was customary in the church to which he belonged. The reading of the Scotch divines at that time seems to have consisted very much in polemical divinity. That of Leighton was spread over a wider field. His quotations from a large number of Greek and Roman authors and from the Fathers, show a great familiarity with ancient learning and the use of a full commonplace book. They are not as copious in his theological lectures, where they chiefly occur, as Jeremy Taylor's, but they are more pertinent to the subject, and come in without pedantry. Burnet says that he had the greatest command of the purest Latin that he ever knew, and was master of the Greek and Hebrew, and of the whole compass of theological learning, especially of that relating to the Scriptures. On the whole, we have the impression that his finished education, joined to his natural refinement of mind, polished him too highly for the sphere in which he was to move, where, at that time, refinement was in no great demand, and shrewd sense prevailed over acquisitions far more than it does at present. This learning, however, marked him out for the post which he afterwards filled, of principal of the University of Edinburgh, and thus enabled him to be useful when he felt obliged to leave his parish.

The parish where Leighton was settled for eleven years, from 1641 to 1652, was that of Newbattle, in Mid Lothian, about six miles from Edinburgh. Here, through the stormiest period of British history, he passed his time, as much aloof from politics as possible, living peaceably with all men. Peace was indeed the groundwork of his character. Accounted a saint from his youth up, he had known little of those up heavings of the soul which begin in some minds when they turn to God. Averse from controversy by nature,

he loved not to preach polemical divinity, much less polemical politics, into which every body else entered.

Of Leighton as a preacher, we have two contemporary opinions, which do not well agree with one another. "His preaching," Burnet says, "had a sublimity both of thought and expression in it. The grace and gravity of his pronunciation was such, that few heard him without a very sensible emotion: I am sure I never did. His style was rather too fine; but there was a majesty and beauty in it that left so deep an impression that I can not yet forget the sermons I heard him preach thirty years ago. He had a very low voice, and could not be heard by a great crowd." Baillie, in his letters, speaking of a young minister in 1654, says, "he has the new guise of preaching which Mr. Hugh Binning and Mr. Robert Leighton began, contemning the ordinary way of expounding and dividing a text, of raising doctrines and uses; but runs out on a discourse on some common head, in a high romancing and unscriptural style, tickling the ear for the present, and moving the affections in some, but leaving little or naught to the memory and understanding." If we misapprehend them not, the first of these writers blames Leighton for a too refined way of preaching above the reach of ordinary persons; while the other directs his harsh censures against Leighton's strain of thought, as not formal and doctrinal enough, and as tending to the introduction of certain favorite topics, like the excellence of heavenly things, and the evil of conformity to the world. Perhaps also his dry mind may not have relished Leighton's frequent and apt illustrations. If the thirty three sermons yet extant are a sample, the injustice of Baillie is great in the expression," a romancing, unscriptural style."

Omitting at present to speak of Leighton's life in the University of

Edinburgh, we come to the most important action of his life-to his desertion of the cause of the Presbyterians, and to the speedy consequences of this step, the high honors and preferments which literally met him on his path as he was passing over from the one camp to the other. An act like this always calls for a narrow scrutiny. It is not strange that the Scotch Presbyterians should be stern judges of Leighton's conduct. And we are free to say, that if we had not what we feel to be a true portraiture of a saint of God in his works, if we viewed him merely amid the god. less crew that for twenty eight years tried to force episcopacy upon the Scotch, and in this endeavor goaded the Cameronians into frenzy and even into dark fanaticism, and then punished with the prison and with death that fanaticism created by themselves we say if we viewed him thus merely, we should want more than usual evidence to be willing to give him the title of a holy, nay, even of an honest man. But we rejoice that we need not look only at the strange circumstances, the "uncouth neighborhood" where we find him. We rejoice to think that a good Cameronian, if he had seen into the heart of Leighton, would have recognized a follower of Christ full of love and kindness, to whom persecution was a most unwelcome work, and who would rather suffer than be the instrument of making others suffer. We rejoice too in the belief which this conviction concerning Leighton's character allows us to entertain; that in this world of limited views, of prejudices, of erring judgments, good is so mixed up with evil, that the best men are often on the worst side. But a general belief in the integrity of Leighton is not enough. It is necessary to account for his conduct, and in so doing, as we have already said, we shall enter somewhat at large into his opinions,

the traits of his character, and the state of the times.

We say then in the first place, that this change was not brought about in Leighton by theological sympathies. It will not be doubted that although then, as since, a respectable number of divines in the English church were Calvinists in sentiment, a larger number, and those the most eminent in station and in learning, accorded with the views of the Arminians. When Bishop Morley, himself a Calvinist it is said by Burnet, although no friend to the non-conformists, was asked what the Arminians held, his witty reply was, that "they held all the best bishoprics and deaneries in England." The party under whose sway the Lambeth articles ceased to be part of the creed of the Irish Episcopal church, can not surely be suspected of having any strong bias in favor of the doctrines of election and reprobation. Nor were the fragments of the same ecclesiastical party in Scotland disinclined to the opinions of their English brethren. loud reproaches of Arminianism which were cast against them by the covenanters, prove thus much at least, that the views of Calvin found warmer advocates in the kirk than out of it.

The

Leighton's own theological opinions seem not to have departed from the type of Calvinism which was then prevalent in Scotland. We have indeed no positive assurance, that he retained these opinions in an unaltered form to the close of his life. But it is certain that he worked upon his commentary on Peter, which is an important document in determining his theology, after he left the kirk; and here his Calvinism is as manifest as in any other of his writings. Nor is there the

* The expressions in Leighton's com ment on 1 Pet. iv, 6, "whole families hand," and "though the pestilence doth swept away by the late stroke of God's not now affright you," and on chap. iii,

least probability that he subsequently modified his opinions, and yet left his earlier works as representatives of a system which he had abandoned.

A few extracts illustrative of Leighton's way of judging in respect to certain distinctive points, will not be out of place. On the second verse of the 1st of Peter, ("elect according to the foreknowledge of God the father,") he says:

"This foreknowledge is no other than that eternal love of God, or decree of election, by which some are appointed unto life, and being foreknown or elected to that end, they are predestinate to the way to it. It is most vain to imagine a foresight of faith in men, and that God in the view of that faith as the condition of election itself, has chosen them.-God predestinated not because he foresaw men would be conformed to Christ, but that they might be so.-This foreknowledge then is his eternal and unchangeable

love; and that thus he chooseth some and rejecteth others is for that great end, to manifest and magnify his mercy and justice; but why he appointed this man for the one and that for the other, made Peter a vessel of this mercy and Judas of wrath, this is even so because it seemed good to him. This if it be harsh yet is apostolic doctrine."

And soon afterwards he says:

"The connexion of these we are now

for our profit to take notice of; that effectual calling is inseparably tied to this eternal foreknowledge or election on the

one side, and to salvation on the otherhence much joy ariseth to the believer; this tie is indissoluble; as the agents are, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit; so are election and vocation and sanctification and justification and glory-If election, effectual calling and salvation be inseparably linked together, then by any one of them a man may lay hold upon all the rest, and may know that his hold is sure. He that loves may be sure that he was loved first; and he that chooses God for his delight and portion may conclude confidently, that God hath chosen him to be one of those that shall enjoy him and be happy in him forever."

"This the Apostle adds for the further satisfaction of believers in this point: how it is that so many reject Christ and stumble at him; telling them plainly that the secret purpose of God is accomplished in this; God having determined to glorify his justice on impenitent sinners, as he shows his rich mercy on them that believe. Here it were easier to lead you into a deep than to lead you forth again. I will rather stand on the shore and silently admire it than enter into it. This is certain that the thoughts of God are not less just in themselves than deep and unsoundable by us. His justice appears clear, in that man's destruction is always the fruit of his own sin. But to give causes of God's decrees without himself, is neither agreeable with the primitive being of the nature of God nor with the doctrines of the Scriptures."

22, "this infectious disease may keep possession of the winter," are referred by Mr. Pearson to a pestilence in 1665. In On the passage in chap. ii, 8, his comment on chap. iv, 17, Leighton "being disobedient, whereunto also says, "let the vile enemy that hath shed they were appointed," he holds this our blood and insulted over us, rejoice in in language: their present impunity and on men's procuring of it and pleading over it." This passage Dr. Doddridge refers to the escape of many who had deserved the severest punishments for their part in the grand Irish rebellion, but were screened by the favor of some great men in the reign of King Charles II. But when we read this and what Leighton goes on to say, "though it may be that the judg ment begun at us is not yet ended, and that we may yet further and that justly find them our scourge," we can not help feeling that by us, he means the people and kirk of Scotland, and if so, these words must be understood of Cromwell and "the sectaries," and of the times just after the defeat of the engagers in 1648. If the Irish rebellion had been meant, the words could not have been written after the bloody campaigns of Cromwell in Ireland, in 1649-1650. Baillie in his one hundred and eightieth letter, under date of August 23, 1648, mentions a pestilence in Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh. But it is certain that Leighton added to or altered his commentary after the new church establishment was introdured, for on chap. v, 2-4, he says, as well a poor stipend and glebe [will ruin us] if the affection be upon them, as a great deanery or bishopric."

66

On the nature of man he says in the ninth sermon, entitled, "the sinner a rebel against God,"-" where are now those who so vilify grace and deify nature; or shall I rather say, nullify grace and deify nature ? Here is the best eulogy the Apostle

« 上一頁繼續 »