to come."1

He left behind him numerous manuscripts, but (as his friend Gifford had done) he desired that they all should be destroyed. He lived a life of great usefulness and benevolence, was a most munificent patron of learning, a liberal encourager of religious and benevolent undertakings, and, by his will, he left about thirty thousand pounds to various universities and hospitals. He died on 1st of September, at his deanery, Westminster, universally lamented and beloved.

SUFFERINGS OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS.

St. Paul has affirmed, concerning the godliness of which he was an inspired teacher, that it "is profitable to all things, having the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come." His immediate intention was to refute an erroneous notion, whether ascribed to certain heretics of the early ages, or more prospectively to the Romish Church, that the profession of the faith of Christ was incompatible with the usual connections and supports of common life. But his declaration extends beyond the controversy itself, and asserts, in universal terms, the happy condition of believers under the gospel. The "bodily exercises," the unbidden austerities and mortifications, against which he argues, have little influence in pro moting the welfare of man-but true Christianity comprehends all good. It unites the blessings of this world and the next. In the present life it allows to us whatever can be desired with innocence, or used with thanksgiving to God; and in the life to come, it offers that transcendent happiness which is promised, in a more eminent manner, through Jesus Christ.

It is impossible not to be struck with admiration, when we consider this assertion, and compare it with the outward circumstances of the Christian church in the age in which the apostle wrote. The Saviour had prepared the minds of his disciples for the trials which awaited them in the execution of their sacred commission-" Behold I send you forth as lambs among wolves;" and those who conspire to hinder the propagation of your doctrine "will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues. Ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles; and ye shall be hated of all men for my sake."

These denunciations were dreadfully verified. Disastrous, indeed, was the condition of the gospel, not only while it was confined within the borders of Judea and Samaria, but after it was announced to the world at large. The propagators of the faith had to make the melancholy confession, that distresses of every kind were prepared for them by the ready malice of their enemies. They were

I can speak of this book with the affection of an early love, for I read it, in my senior year at college, with profit, I trust, as well as great pleasure.

openly punished, and privately defamed. They suffered both "hunger and thirst, were naked and buffeted, and had no certain dwelling-place." For himself, in particular, St. Paul states his more abundant labors, his frequent imprisonments, his various and unceasing perils by sea and land, from his own countrymen and from the heathen, and the "bonds and afflictions which awaited him in every city." Yet amid circumstances so unusually discouraging arose the steady assertion of the apostle; and the gospel, thus persecuted and apparently forlorn, was still declared to have the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come!

Let us extend this view beyond the limits of the apostolic age, and follow the gospel in its afflictions and its joys, its persecutions and its determined triumphs. The continued sufferings of the propagators of the faith are abundantly proved in the descriptions which other writers have given us of the hostile conduct of the Gentiles and Jews. In the early defences of Christianity, nothing is more frequent than the complaint that the mere confession of the faith was deemed sufficient ground of condemnation by the heathen tribunals.

Justin Martyr, in his first apology, relates the cases of those who were summarily punished on this account, and the conversations which were held concerning them in the Roman courts of justice. Ptolemæus, a convert, had been seized and thrown into prison, upon information that he was a Christian. When he was brought before Urbicius, the præfect of the city, the only question asked of him was, whether he professed the faith of Christ? This being acknowledged, he was instantly ordered to be led away to death. Among those who stood by, was Lucius, another convert, who, in the boldness of innocence, asked the præfect on what grounds he condemned a man proved guilty of no crime. "Art thou also a Christian?" demanded Urbicius. This was not denied; and the same punishment was adjudged to both.

While these advocates of the faith justly demand that their lives and characters be made the subjects of inquiry, before sentence is passed upon them, they boldly declare that they refuse not to die, if wickedness be proved against them; and they complain, with peculiar force of argument to a Roman ear, that they have not the usual lot of subjects, for whose prosperity the empire professed a common and undiscriminating care. "If we are guilty of any wickedness, (says Athenagoras in his address to the Emperors M. Aurelius and Commodus,) we do not refuse to be punished; nay, we call for the worst of punishment. But if our only guilt be the name of Christians, it is your duty to protect us from the injuries which we suffer."

Justin Martyr indulges the same complaint in his second apology. "Other men acknowledge what gods they will, and vou hinder th

not." Then, alluding to the Egyptian worship, always deemed the opprobrium of Paganism, and reprobating the senseless, trifling, and disgusting objects of it, he points out the differences of opinion concerning the worshippers themselves. "Yet, even to these sects, bigoted to their several deities, and hostile to each other on their account, you, Romans, show an equal clemency, and allow their discordant practices. To Christians alone you object that they worship not the same gods with yourselves; and you devote us to death, because we do not adore dead men, and propitiate them by sacrifices, and garlands placed upon their altars."

The apology of Tertullian is a mixture of indignation, strong reasoning, and irony. He is generally serious, though sometimes sportive; and while he repels the calumnies of the enemies of the faith, he can indulge a vein of pleasantry.

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He declares his belief with much force and dignity. Mangled by your cruelty, and covered with our own blood, we still proclaim aloud-We worship God through Christ. Persist in your own opinion, and deem him a mere man. Yet through him God makes himself known; in him he will be worshipped. But rather ought ye to inquire, whether the divinity of Christ be not the true divinity, the knowledge of which leads the worshipper to all goodness, and therefore compels him to reject the lying pretensions of your idols." Again, he sportively compares the idols themselves with the mangled bodies of the Christians: "You place us upon a cross or the stump of some tree; and on a frame of the like shape you fashion your gods of clay. You lacerate our sides with hooks of iron; with similar labor do you employ axes, and saws, and augers on your gods of wood. You throw us into the fire; and in the fire you cast your gods of metal. Or perhaps you send us to the mines; but from thence come your best divinities. We are, therefore, under the like circumstances with them; and if divinity is produced by hewing and mangling, our tortures are our consecration, and we are fit objects of your worship."

THOMAS ARNOLD, 1795-1842.

DR. THOMAS ARNOLD was born at Cowes, Isle of Wight, on the 13th of June, 1795. He received his preparatory education at Winchester School, and went thence, in 1811, to Corpus Christi College, Oxford. In 1814, his name was placed in the first class in classical literature, and in the next year he was elected fellow of Oriel College, and he gained the chancellor's prize for the two university essays, Latin and English, for the years 1815 and 1817. In December, 1818, he was

for the next nine years, taking seven or eight young men as private pupils in preparation for the universities. In 1827, he was elected head master of the school at Rugby. On the death of Dr. Nares, in 1841, he was offered the Regius professorship of modern history at Oxford, which he accepted, without resigning his place at Rugby, and the very next year, 1842, on the 12th of June, he died, on the day that completed his forty-seventh year.

It is impossible to do justice to the intellectual, moral, and religious character of this eminently great and good man in the limits necessarily assigned to these biographical notices. No English scholar of the present century has exerted a wider or more happy influence on the literary and religious world. In whatever light we view him, either as a scholar, an historian, a schoolmaster, a theologian, or as a man, he commands our highest respect and warmest admiration.

As a scholar, Dr. Arnold was distinguished for his deep and varied learning, and for his classical attainments, which were extensive and accurate. He was particularly fond of Grecian literature, and his edition of "Thucydides" gave proof of his accurate Greek scholarship, and his discriminating taste as a critic. But what was better than all, he was a Christian scholar, and aimed to make himself and his pupils look upon knowledge not as an end, but as a means to higher and more enlarged usefulness.

As an historian, he shows in his own most instructive "Lectures on Modern History," in his "History of Rome," and of "The Later Roman Commonwealth," what history ought to be, and how it should be studied. His "History of Rome" is undoubtedly the best history in the language; and to its composition the author brought the very highest qualifications of learning and of religious principle. "He saw God in history, and felt that righteousness exalts a nation, and that sin is not merely a reproach to a people, but that it introduces rottenness and decay into its very heart."

It was as a schoolmaster, however, that Dr. Arnold was strikingly great. "Teaching was the business of his life, and in instruction his greatness was most conspicuous. His spirit was instinet with generous sympathy, which delights in contact with the freshness and ardor of youth." When he entered Rugby School, it was at a very low ebb, but it soon rose rapidly in public estimation, and the success of its pupils at the universities was marked and striking. He was not only an admirable scholar and skilful instructor, but he had that enthusiastic love for literature, and of every thing that tends to exalt and purify our nature, which seldom fails to inspire with the same ardor all minds that are susceptible of it. Yet his pupils were indebted to him for something far more valuable than learning, or the love of learning; for his constant, and, for the most part, successful endeavors to implant in their minds the noblest principles, the most just sentiments, not by precept only, but by that without which precepts are generally unavailing-example.

As a theologian, Dr. Arnold was truly catholic in his views. He had little regard for systems of theology; but he went to the fountain head, and, in his interpretation and application of the Scriptures, he so signalized himself that, in

1 Read an excellent article on Dr. Arnold in the 5th volume of the "New Englander;" also, "Edinburgh Review," lxxvi. 357, and “North British Review," ii. 403.

the judgment of his friends, this was the sphere for which he was most highly fitted to shine with eminent usefulness. In theological controversy, he showed great ability and exerted great influence. He was a reformer in church and state, and to REFORM he consecrated his most earnest zeal.

As a man, he was remarkable for the uniform sweetness, the patience, and the forbearing meekness of his disposition. It was his constant aim to bring his religious principles into the daily practice of life, not by the continued introduction of religious phraseology, but by a single-hearted study to realize the Christian character. He was an ardent lover of truth, and when he found it, he uttered it with the utmost fearlessness. "He was an innate Christian; the bad passions might almost be said to have been omitted in his constitution. But his truth and honesty were unflinchingly regardless of his own interest, or of temporary consequences." Such is an imperfect outline of the character of this great and good

man.1

"Our readers must pass a day with Arnold. They will see of how homely and plain a thread, to all appearance, it was composed. Only, to make it more impressive, the day we will choose shall be his last. It differs in itself in no respect from other days, except as it is more of a holiday, since it happens to be also the concluding day of the half year. On the morrow he was to shake his wings for Westmoreland. The morning is taken up with an examination in Ranke's History of the Popes.' Then come the distribution of prizes, the taking leave of the boys who are going, and all the mechanical details of finishing for the holidays; his usual walk and bath follow; dinner next, where he talked with great pleasure to several guests of his early geological studies under Buckland, and of a recent visit to Naseby with Thomas Carlyle. An interval in the evening leaves room for an earnest conversation with an old pupil on some differences in their views of the Tractarian theology; after which, the day rounds off with an annual supper to some of the sixth-form boys. Arnold retired to bed, apparently in perfect health. But before laying down his head upon the pillow, from which he was never more to raise it, he put his seal upon this busy and cheerful day by an entry in his diary, which (reading it as we now read it) seems of prophetic

"He will strike those who study him more closely, as a complete character-complete in its union of moral and intellectual gifts, and in the steady growth and development of both: for his greatness did not consist in the pre-eminence of any single quality, but in several remarkable powers, thoroughly leavened and pervaded by an ever-increasing moral nobleness. He was not one of those men who, beginning well, are stunted in mind and in heart at a certain age-often, perhaps, because their thoughts are at war with their feelings-because the latter are not fresh and pure enough to give vigor and manliness to the former. It was the very reverse of this with Arnold; the same holy objects on which his affections were unceasingly fixed-the same great subjects of moral and intellectual interest-the same simple and innocent pleasures are seen, as it were, sensibly growing in almost every successive letter, from the first days at Lalehain to the last at Rugby. Connected with, and, indeed, an instance of this completeness and consistency of character is the concentration of his thoughts and interests on a few great morol subjects, which, if it diminished his intellectual breadth, yet increased the intenseness of his moral and intellectual vision."-Quarterly Review, Ixxiv. 507.

The basis of Arnold's morale reminds us of all we know of that of another celebrated schoolmaster, (not very popular in his day, and no great favorite with high churchmen:) we mean John Milton. There is the same purity and directness about them both: the same predominance of the graver, not to say sterner, elements; the same confidence, vehemence, and elevation. They both so lived in their great Task-Master's eye,' as to verify Bacon's obser spirit, and raised their