and mind and strength, performing the duties whereunto he deemed himself called. His influence among his brethren grew wider and deeper as his mind gathered its stores of knowledge and experience; and with increasing years, public respect ripened into veneration. That he should be regarded as well-nigh infallible by the youth under his care is but natural; that the community in which he lived should hold him in great respect was also natural. But far outside of these narrow bounds his name had weight; and in the highest councils of his Church he was eminent as an adviser in doubtful junctures, and as a safe guide in difficult enterprises.

In the main business of his after life he prospered. The seminary, which began in 1812 with nine students, numbered fifty in attendance in ten years, and at the time of his death had nearly three times that number. Under his administration large and commodious buildings were erected, a fine library was collected, ample funds were raised and permanently invested, and all the appliances necessary to the accomplishment of a great educational work were gathered.

At rather a later period of his life than is common in the literary world, Dr. Alexander came before the public as an author. His first volume, entitled "A Brief Outline of the Evidences of the Christian Religion," was published in the year 1825, when he had already attained the age of fifty-three years; and was followed by a volume on the "Canon of the Old and New Testaments," (1825,) a hymn book, (1831,) "The History of the Log College," (1845,) "The History of African Colonization," (1846,) “The History of the Israelitish Nation," (1852,) "Outlines of Moral Science," (1852,) a volume of Sermons, and another on Religious Experience, together with a large number of sermons, addresses, and review articles on miscellaneous subjects.

In these labors of the pen, added to those which pertained to his regular official duties, with occasional sermons preached for his ministerial brethren in the neighboring towns and cities, the last forty years of his life glided away with the occurrence of few events such as arrest the attention of general readers. The biographer, therefore, bestows but half as much space upon this period as upon the earlier part of the life which he traces.

Dr. Alexander attained what may be called, in the full sense

of the words, a good old age. He retained his powers of mind and of body well to the very last. At the age of seventy-five he was more fleshy, more cheerful, and "enjoyed the sense of health more than in his years of prime." "His love of children, of family chat, of visits from friends, of psalmody, and of the daily journals was undiminished," and "even in natural things his last days were his best days." His letters show that he was continually meditating on his departure, and yet entering into no mental or moral shadow of death. As evinced in his public ministrations, as well as his family worship, his piety became more deep and fervent, and yet remained as cheerful and buoyHe still labored on industriously with voice and pen, lecturing before the students in the seminary, preaching for his ministerial brethren, and all the while intent on doing good, being fully persuaded that for an old man to "retire," as it is called, is to court imbecility.

ant as ever.

But the inevitable, inexorable event came at last. In the seminary chapel, on the 7th of September, 1851, he preached the last sermon of a ministry of sixty years, and on the following Sabbath, at a sacramental service in the First Presbyterian Church of Princeton, delivered his last public address. The same day in which he attended this latter service he became indisposed; nature yielded to a painless and yet rapid process of decay; and, like a piece of machinery from which the motive power has been detached, "the weary wheels of life slackened in their revolutions, and on the 22d of the next month "stood still." His last moments were serene, and at times full of holy joy. It is said that he remarked to a friend who called to see him during his illness, that "all his theology had narrowed down to this: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."

In closing our review of this admirable volume of biography, it does not enter into our plan to set forth any extended critical estimate of the native powers of mind, the literary acquisitions of Dr. Alexander, or the general character and extent of his influence in his own denomination and in the community. Evidence, derived from many sources, testifies to his ability as a preacher, especially during the period immediately preceding his removal from Virginia. As a writer, he was simple, clear, interesting, and instructive, without aiming at elaborate literary

finish. For the office of an instructor of youth, in which he spent more than a half century of his life, his clearness of thought, fullness of information, simplicity of language, and habits of unwearied application, give him peculiar fitness. Ilis keen observation, retentive memory, and solid judgment made him a wise counselor and an invaluable friend. As a thinker, his habits of teaching were calculated to make him clear, full, and accurate, rather than creative and original. Cautious and conservative in a high degree, he sometimes in his public ministrations failed, we think, to act up to the measure of his responsibility. In the temperance discussion, for instance, his name was seldom mentioned, except as a city of refuge for those who, instead of engaging zealously in the unwelcome labor of reformation, contented themselves with finding fault with the measures which were adopted, and the men, who were honest, if not wise, in the good work; and to his influence we attribute much of the apparent coldness and indifference which many of the leading men of his denomination have evinced on the subject. How far his extreme sedentary habits, during the latter part of his life, by keeping him away from the sight of the evils of intemperance, may account for this, we essay not to determine. As a theologian, he was rigid and uncompromising, and, as his theory of regeneration indicates, a thorough Calvinist, holding that none are "redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only."

As a minister of the Presbyterian Church, he was strongly attached to her doctrine and order, and abundant in labors to increase her strength and success. This loyalty and zeal we deem Christian virtues worthy of universal emulation. At the same time so prone are men to err that even our highest and most unselfish affections need watching. It is natural to infer, from the laws of mind, that fifty years spent in explaining and enforcing the same peculiar doctrinal propositions must deepen the impression of their truth and importance, and create in the teacher a tendency, of which he may not be fully conscious, to grade the intellect, piety, and learning of other men higher or lower, in proportion to the readiness with which they receive, and the tenacity with which they hold, those peculiar tenets. There is danger that the teacher who has argued both sides of

the same controversy so many times before his admiring pupils, and never once failed to make his own side achieve a triumphant victory, shall come at last to speak of his opponents with a subdued air of conscious superiority, and the humility of the Christian be somewhat alloyed with human vanity and pride. There are traces of this feeling in almost all the religious publications of the Alexander family, sometimes cropping out in an objectionable way, not very well calculated to "keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." It is very probable that the assumption of superiority by the adherents of one organization is offensive to others, because it is a direct attack upon their Church pride. Of all labors of love, there are few to which men apply themselves more willingly than to the cultivation of the grace of humility in other people. Making charitable allowance for human weakness, we nevertheless deem it not out of place to make the remark, in regard to the general subject, that it may be doubted whether it is right to cultivate this ideal sense of superiority as an element of denominational strength. The policy of teaching youth always to elevate their heads slightly when they speak of those who differ from them in opinion, may have the effect to make them hold the more strongly to their own circle, and work the harder for it; still the motive and the result, the cause and the effect, are of the flesh rather than of the Spirit.

In regard to the literary execution of the volume before us, the tribute of a gifted son to the memory of a gifted father, we can but say, in emphatic terms, that we deem it one of the very best modern contributions to the biographical department of our literature, and worthy to be studied as a model by all who contemplate writing memoirs either of themselves or of others.

ART. V.-THE PROPHETS AND THEIR PROPHECIES.

Die Propheten und ihre Weissagungen. Von A. THOLUCK. Gotha: Friedrich A. Perthes.

THE unbidden thoughts of a serious, thinking man are of priceless value. The late Dr. J. W. Alexander, in his Thoughts on Preaching, speaks glowingly of them, and says of himself that those sermons which "came to him" were his best. He advises every young man to note down these random flashes, lest when he wishes to recall them he may find them to have fled from his memory. It is of such scintillations that the little volume before us seems to have been made. Its author has spent his life in the study and elucidation of the word of God; and now, as he draws near the close of his career, he appears to look over his scrap-book, and culling out the best of his thoughts on that much neglected but equally abused subject of prophecy, he strings them loosely together and sends them out to the world. Faithful among the many faithless, he has never once laid down the sword of scriptural defense; and when the regeneration day of Germany comes it will be found that his efforts for a revival of pure and evangelical Christianity have not only been heroic but well aimed and most successful. If our Methodism has made rapid strides in the birth-land of the Reformation, to Tholuck and a few like him be the honor of having made straight the path.

Divination.

Every heathen nation in ancient or modern times has had some faith in a lower or higher form of prophecy. The augures and haruspices of the Romans were a class of diviners who founded their predictions on a purely natural basis. But the μάντεις and προφῆται of the Greeks belonged to a superior class, since they claimed to have derived their knowledge of the future from Deity himself. The Church fathers maintained that everything among the heathen which had the appearance of a supernatural prediction was either outright forgery or the direct work of the devil, even should it be a testimony in favor of Christian truth. This wholesale rejection of heathen divina