pathy, nor gave to it, as far as was possible, more cheerful effort. And, as the gallery became more and more a place of pleasurable and profitable resort, and proved in every way successful, as it became the means of exciting and developing in the minds of many, a new sensibility to beauty, a new taste for art, as it opened, before not a few of the young, a new realm of pleasure quite unknown before, no one rejoiced more cordially and more intelligently than he.

Such an example of clear-headed judgment, of refined and cultivated taste, of patient and thorough industry, employed for the good of the public, with a generous and unrewarded disinterestedness; such unselfishness which yet never became self-forgetfulness, but was combined continually with dignity and with an honorable self-respect, is most worthy of the imitation of all who seek to bear "the grand old name of gentleman." Opportunities for usefulness, like those which Mr. Skinner had, are everywhere abundant. We see from his example how easily, and to what good end, such opportunities may be improved. May we not well take courage and receive instruction from the record of a life like his? To one who, like the poet yearning for the "golden year," asks longingly,

"Ah! when shall all men's good

Be each man's rule?"

it surely should be eloquent with prophecy of better things. In every life so pure, so noble, and so generous, should there not be to us the promise of

"The larger heart, the kindlier hand,"

that shall, one day, no longer be the rare exception but the blessed rule?

ARTICLE IX.-DR. TYLER AND HIS THEOLOGY.*

Lectures on Theology. By Rev. BENNET TYLER, D. D. With a Memoir by Rev. NAHUM GALE, D. D. Boston: J. E. Tilton & Co.

THE Christian life of every regenerate man is a new edition. of the Christian doctrine. The conversion of three thousand at Jerusalem, in a single day, evinced the moral power of the Gospel, by an argument, certainly not less conclusive than that of the theopneustic logic in the Epistle to the Romans. The epistolary statement is Christianity in posse, the new births are the same in esse, standing related to each other as proposition and proof, principle and practice. The vital and practical in Christian theology resolves itself, in this view, into a Christian Biology, the science of that new life of faith and love, commenced in regeneration, and matured in sanctification. Hence, the truthful delineation of a good man's life, his spiritual conflicts, his defeats and victories, has a two-fold value. It augments the ever-accumulating, demonstrative proof of the gospel doctrine, by showing it to be the power of God unto salvation to them that believe. It also serves as a practical commentary upon the didactic Scriptures.

Thus Church History, in the department of Christian Biology, makes important contributions to Biblical interpretation. There are many passages of the divine Word, which baffle the finest merely philological acumen, whose deep, rich meaning, rises to the very surface, in the light of this biological illustra

* It having been thought advisable that some sketch of the late Dr. Tyler should be inserted in the New Englander, from the pen of one who sympathizes with his views, Professor Lawrence, of the East Windsor Theological Seminary, has prepared, by request, this Article. It will be seen that he has found it necessary, in referring to the points of controversy between Dr. Tyler and Dr. Taylor, to state to some extent the theological opinions of the latter. We deem it important to say that the Editors of the New Englander, in publishing this statement, without comment, are not to be understood as vouching for its correctness, for which the Author alone is responsible.-Ed. New Englander.

tion, when the historic spirit, in the student, is combined with hermeneutic skill. The key to the inner sanctuary and significance of Biblical theology, is given into his hands who has traced in Christian biography, with quick sensibility and sound judgment, the life-history of the successive generations of good men, in its ebbs and flows, its strivings after holiness, and its struggles against sin.

Hence we welcome as a new treasure to our hermeneutic and historical storehouse, the faithfully-written biography of every true man of God. In the variant forms of philosophy and of faith observed in such men, in the shadings of error and of evil, and in the idiosyncrasies and excrescences which we perceive falling away in the divine process, and which are replaced by the verities and vitalities of the Christian life,—its harmonies, and beauties, and charities,-in this we have the many-sided view of our doctrine, and its divine adaptation to the emergencies of man's condition.

Dr. Gale was fortunate in the subject committed to his literary and filial guardianship. The biographer of Dr. Tyler had no dark places to illumine by the light of an apologetic rhetoric, and no perilous chasms to bridge by the links of a factitious logic. The work is well-done,-certainly not overdone.

The first impression, on opening the volume, is that made by the engraving, which is in the best style of the art. No thoughtful mind can contemplate that picture,—its harmony of contrasts, intellect and sentiment, gentleness and force, divine principle and chastened human passion, without being attracted to examine further. The broad, high forehead, as an arched propylaeum to the acropolis of thought, betokening, even to the casual observer, the mysterious machinery that worked behind it,-the large, but finely turned Grecian nose, and the mild blue eyes, through which beam upon you love and wisdom-these are a whole table of contents. The slightly compressed lips, and gracefully moulded mouth, individualize the expression, and speak of a nobleness of soul, and a dignity strictly his own. The round, full chin, and the firm Lutherian neck, with the proportional shoulders, indicate, in the lower

features, a sufficiency of realism, and what is emotional, to balance the intellectual and ideal that shine in the upper. The slight furrows ploughed by thought and care, the silvery locks, and the meditative, almost pensive air, awaken, in a stranger, the half-suspicion that the under-tone of his life was on the minor-key. But, beyond the general fact that all earnest life has its minor strains, this is only the ripening of the mental and moral character into the mellowness of maturity, the hue of that inner, ever-waxing conflict with evil, which ended in a victory pre-assured to him in the warmth and steadfastness of his love-working faith.

Bennet Tyler was born July 10th, 1783, in Middlebury, Connecticut, then a part of Woodbury. He was the youngest son of James and Anne Hungerford Tyler, whose chief excellence consisted in their being intelligent and practical adherents of the Christian faith. Among the records of his early childhood, made by Dr. Tyler, is the solicitous care of his parents for his religious instruction. He says, "My parents carefully watched over my morals, and laid me under useful restraints, and my mother,"-a name that makes a strong man weak in the tender reminiscences it excites,-" my mother used to instruct me, even while quite young, in the things which relate to my eternal welfare. I early committed to memory the Assembly's Catechism, and recited it every Sabbath evening."

This excellent custom of our Puritan fathers, he held in high esteem in his mature years, and lamented the comparative disuse into which it had fallen. For, as it was not followed by any effective substitute in the form of family Bible-instruction, he regarded its partial relinquishment as a sign of relaxed parental solicitude, and of lower and less vital principles of Christian nurture. In the ideal of the Puritan family, the Sabbath evening catechetical exercise was an important element. It did not displace the Bible, only superadded the Catechism to give to the Bible doctrine a sovereign power at this centre of influence. Of the pure social ethics, for which the families of New England were so long distinguished, and of our fathers' generous, though sometimes rough philanthropy, and their high, stern purpose of Christian endeavor, this Sabbath evening

hour of parental religious training, was, in no mean measure, the moral genesis. It was not, as it has been caricatured, an isolated desert, set off from the verdure of child-life-an hour stolen from the genial and joyous of the social circle, and stiffened into slow-moving moments, by the repetition of dead, fossilized doctrine. The mild light of a mother's eye illumined the scene, and her loving omnipresence clasped young hearts, moulding them into new forms of truth and beauty, and diffusing itself as an unconscious influence, through all the fibres and cells and tissues of the whole family organism. And the father's sterner character came in, to fix these forms into a marble firmness, in the pliant group. By such faithful, moral culture, the Puritan family rose a moral unit,-a household church, a type of heaven, whose salutary influence went forth into society as a moral disinfectant of the social atmosphere, from as many centres as there were family circles.

Mr. Tyler's opportunities for education, till he was fifteen, were confined to the district school, and his whole stock of learning consisted, at that period, in the mastery of Webster's Spelling Book, in being able to read respectably well, and to cipher nearly through Daboll's Arithmetic. This constituted him among his youthful peers, master of the arts. But his sphere, according to the divine purpose, was not long to be thus limited. An injury, which disqualified him temporarily for physical labor, withdrew him from the trade which he had chosen, and led to a course of mental culture and a life of mental toil. Bennet Tyler could not be a hatter, for God had decreed for him a more important mission,-to make him "a minister and a witness of those things in the which he would appear unto him.".

He pursued his preparatory studies with Rev. Ira Hart, the parish minister, and entered Yale College in the autumn of 1800. While studying with Mr. Hart, a fellow student, of infidel sentiments, unsettled his views respecting some of the principal points of Christianity. For two or three years he was in that place where two seas meet, so difficult of navigation, and in which so many make shipwreck. He could not rest in the assumption that the Bible is false and