BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. THE author of good books is a real cosmopolitan. He is known and read of all men. His name is mentioned frequently and familiarly in many homes. The act of publication is self-disclosure. It introduces strangers into the very thoughts and imaginations of an author's mind. The more intimate our acquaintance with his productions, and the deeper our sense of indebtedness to his intellectual life, the stronger is our desire to obtain information concerning his personal history. The name of ISAAC TAYLOR is known extensively and gratefully to the thinking men of this country. He is the chief living representative of that class of LAY THEOLOGIANS, which his own pen has eulogized, and which needs just now to be largely reinforced. The names of Pascal, Locke, Grotius, Leibnitz, Milton, Boyle, and Sir Thomas Brown, are sufficient proof that Theology and its cognate Science of the Mind do not belong exclusively to the ecclesiastical cloister. They are necessarily involved in all broad and thorough culture. They are inseparably allied to all questions of morals, sociology and political reforms. They relate to those rudimental truths which underlie all individual and national development. How desirable that more writers, of the unprofessional class, with leisure and varied accomplishments, should dedicate their pens to the service of Religion. WILBERFORCE probably achieved more in the service of evangelical religion, for the higher classes of society, than if he had been an anointed prelate. Whether they agree with his theological speculations or not, all will admit the power which was exerted by COLERIDGE in stimulating and suggesting thought, and recovering a generation out of materialism. JAMES DOUGLAS, of Cavers, has recently deceased. Reserved even to shyness, his pen has rendered signal service to Christian truth and philanthropy. His book on the "Advancement of Society in Knowledge and Religion," furnished a stimulus to many who are now |
