DAVID TAPPAN, D. D.

THE subject of this sketch was the son of the Reverend Benjamin Tappan, minister, of Manchester, and was born on the twenty-first of April, 1753. Under the guidance of his father he acquired the rudiments of knowledge, and having passed a short period at the Dummer academy, he was, at the youthful age of fourteen, admitted to Harvard college. There, "rising above juvenile follies and vices," he applied himself diligently to his studies; "was considerate and soberminded," and graduated in 1771. Within three years after, he commenced the work of the ministry, and at once took a place among the foremost in the esteem of the public. In his earliest performances his hearers were surprised at the extent of his learning, and the animation and fervor of his devotions. At the age of twenty-one he was ordained pastor of a church at Newbury, and continued in that position until 1792, when he was inducted into the Hollis professorship of divinity in Harvard college. He performed the duties of this office to universal acceptance, until his death, which occurred August 27, 1803.

Doctor Tappan's mind was active and vigorous; fertile in invention, and his command of language not often surpassed. As a preacher he was decidedly

evangelical. The peculiar contents of the gospel were the principal subjects of his discourses. He was not only doctrinal, but very practical in his religious lessons. Every gospel doctrine, he insisted, had its corresponding precept and duty. In piety, knowledge and Christian good he was exemplary; but his development of his principles was too candid and catholic, too characteristically Christian, to satisfy the lovers of ecclesiastical controversy. By these he was thought, in some instances, wanting in resolution and decision; as not sufficiently showing his esteem, for what they called "the distinguishing doctrines of the gospel ;” as reluctant to suggest an opinion, which did not meet the approbation of others; and as too careful to accommodate himself to the opinions and prejudices which he disapproved and believed pernicious. But he was superior to all these considerations; he was ever anxious for the well-being of his fellow-creatures. His nature disposed him to sympathy, tenderness and charity. "He exemplified on every occasion," says this most appreciative biographer, "the temper, which he so impressively inculcated in doctrine, spirit and deportment, to be a constant recommendation and defence of Christianity, by exhibiting it in its native sweetness, sobriety and dignity."*

*See Quincy's History of Harvard University.

THE TREATY OF PEACE.

FRIENDS AND FELLOW-COUNTRY MEN, while I vent the fulness of my heart in the sincerest congratulations of you and myself, and our common country, on the arrival of the auspicious day, which gives confirmed sovereignty and independence to confederate America, and pours into her bosom the blessing of a safe, advantageous, honorable peace, the charms of which are vastly heightened and endeared to us by the horrid contrast of an eight years' cruel war. Permit me at the same time to remind you, that the professed design of this solemn assembly* should give a religious direction to our common joy, and consecrate it into the liveliest gratitude to that Supreme Power who at once styles himself a Man of War and the God of Peace. That the rapture of our hearts on so glorious an occasion may be thus guided into a holy channel, and elevated into a pious transport of God-exalting adoration and thanksgiving-let us turn our contemplations. to a noble pattern of this kind in the grateful, exulting Jews, on their liberation from Babylonish captivity, as we have it exhibited in Psalm cxxvi., three first

verses:

When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongues with singing: then said they among the heathen, the Lord hath done great things for them. The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad.

As the deliverance here celebrated by the church

*This sermon was delivered at the Third Parish in Newbury, Mass., on the 1st of May, 1783, occasioned by the ratification of the treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States of America.

of God was the most illustrious of any in the Old Testament annals, and a most remarkable type of our spiritual redemption by the Messiah; as many of its leading circumstances bear a striking similarity to those which have distinguished and dignified the salvation of united America; and as their sentiments upon it are such as remarkably suit and become every American heart and tongue on the present occasion— let us, therefore, run over the affecting picture which they themselves give of the matter, in the words now read, in which they relate, in the first place, the pleasing, overwhelming surprise that seized their minds on first receiving the glorious tidings. "When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream." As if they had said: "The deliverance was so great and glorious in itself; so astonishing in its circumstances; so sudden in its accomplishment; so unexpected and improbable in every human view; so far above our highest ideas and hopes; so opposite to our just deserts and apprehensions that we could scarce credit the testimony of our own senses, and were ready to imagine the news of liberty no better than the pleasing dream of a transported, deluded fancy, or the airy, baseless fabric of a midnight vision." So Peter, when a celestial messenger knocked off his prison chains, and brought him forth to liberty, was at first so surprised at the sudden, extraordinary deliverance, that he could not believe it to be a waking reality, but only a visionary picture painted on his imagination. And, doubtless, the first ideas and feelings of many an American heart, on the news of the equitable, liberal treaty of peace, ratified between Britain and these sovereign

states, were nearly coincident with this description; for the improbability of the haughty monarch and court of Britain ever submitting (at least at present) to such mortifying concessions-especially of their adopting so generous a system of policy, so contradictory to the narrow, deceitful, underhanded, cruel politics, which before they had uniformly pursued toward this country; the disappointment of our sanguine prospects of pacification in some former stages of this contest; the long continuance of our distresses; the visibly growing degeneracy and wickedness of America under the judgments of heaven, sent, and so long continued, for her correction and reformation— these, and many other discouraging ideas, combined their influence to render the glorious tidings of peace a very surprising, unexpected, overwhelming sound in the ears of many sober Americans-a sound too grand, good, joyful, to gain their ready, confident belief. "Their rapture seemed a pleasing dream, the grace appeared so great.'

"Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing." The surprise of such a deliverance produced an ecstasy of joy, so that we could scarce restrain our passions or our tongues within the bounds of decency or decorum. "Then said they among the heathen, The Lord hath done great things for them." Those heathen neighbors who had observed and insulted the distressed, abject state of these captive exiles, were now constrained to own the superintending, triumphant power, wisdom and goodness of Jehovah, in their surprising deliverances, in rescuing his feeble people Israel out of the hands of their mighty oppressors, when they were without