to be fashioned anew by the Spirit of the Holy One. To make our pages humbly subservient to the will of that Spirit is our highest aim for them; and, to that end, we propose to keep them independently open for reverential and earnest discussions, recognizing the exclusive claims of no sect, and standing under obligations for no patronage."

The professorship occupied by Mr. Huntington has been recently established through an endowment from a wealthy and benevolent lady of Salem. He was elected to the place by the almost unanimous vote of a large Board of Overseers, composed of both Orthodox and Unitarian Congregationalists. And it is worthy of remark, as evidencing the universal esteem in which he is held, that the number of his invitations to preach on special religious occasions, such as ordinations and dedications, as well as to speak at literary anniversaries, is far greater than that of any other clergyman in Massachusetts of his ministerial age.

At the Commencement of 1855, Mr. Huntington received the Doctorate of Divinity from his Alma Mater. It is an interesting fact that Amherst College should simultaneously furnish a leading Professor to Harvard University, and Harvard a President* to Amherst. It is fitting that one who goes to dwell amidst, and in turn to mould the culture of Boston and Cambridge, should have breathed the invigorating air of Western Massachusetts, and have often looked up from the books and sports of youth to the " mountains which are round about her." It is well that the teacher of religious truth, who seeks to unite once more the parted bands of the New England Church, should know the views and prepossessions of both by experience and by intercourse. It is well that he be endowed with personal force, united to personal attractiveness; with literary culture, both profound and generous; and with a fitness for influencing ingenuous and ardent minds, which is singularly effective. The Future reveals a beautiful vision of Christian Union, possibly born within, and nurtured by the very Institution which inaugurated the separation. Many hearts look towards it with prayer and faith.

Bev. W. A. Stearns, D. D.

LEONARD BACON,

THE NEW ENGLAND PREACHER.

"I have fought a good fight; I have kept the faith."

REV. LEONARD BACON, D. D., was born in Detroit, Michigan, on the 19th of February, 1802. His father was, for several years, a missionary to the Indians, sent by the missionary society of Connecticut; and was afterwards a missionary to the new settlements. He died in the year 1817, leaving three sons and four daughters. The first ten years of Dr. Bacon's life were passed for the most part in the towns of Hudson and Tallmadge, Ohio. At the age of ten, he was sent to Hartford, to an excellent school, where he was fitted for college, at the same time living in the family of an uncle. In the fall of 1817 he entered the Sophomore class of Yale College, when he was in his sixteenth year. His class was an excellent one, number ing in its ranks many who have since become distinguished, among whom we would mention the names of President Woolsey, of Yale College; Professor Twining, the distinguished civil engineer; Professor Stoddard; Hon. J. H. Brockway, of Connecticut; Hon. Garnett Duncan, of Kentucky; and Walter Edwards, Esq., of New York. Bacon was the youngest member of the class, with one exception. He had entered the Sophomore year in advance of his age and preparation, from the necessity to complete his preparatory studies as soon as possible. But, in spite of his youth and disadvantages, he was an excellent scholar, and ranked high, though not among the highest. Yet he did not devote his time exclusively to text-books. He mingled in debate considerably, took an active

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interest in the literary societies, and was universally considered one of the best writers in his class.

Thus we see that Leonard Bacon was the orphan son of a poor missionary, who, at death, left him for a legacy his good name, and the sympathies of a Christian community. He had few of this world's goods. Indeed he had none at all. Yet he was receiving the best literary and classical education that could be obtained in America. He had the advantages of libraries, of lectures, of philosophical apparatus, of social mental stimulus. If he had been the son of Baron Rothschild, he would hardly have had greater advantages. Indeed they would have been diminished; for the excitement of necessity, the vigor of self-reliance, the independence of self-making, the security from the multiplied temptations of wealth, would have been taken away. He united the facilities of affluence with the propulsion of poverty. The way was clear before him, the energy strong within him. He could not but go ahead. When we know of such cases, and they are very many in this land, the heart swells with gratitude and admiration towards those noble benefactors of our race, who have manifested their judgment, as well as their generosity, by the endowment of our literary institutions. It is a refreshing circumstance in this world of inequalities, of hoarded wealth and pinching poverty, of wasteful abundance and desperate economy, that there is one arena where the rich man's first-born and the poor man's orphan may start from the same point, press on over the same course, and, with equal chance, struggle for the same prize. It is a proverb that republics are ungrateful. However true this may be, it should not be applied to those republics which come into being with the formation of every congregational church. There is gratitude among them, though its quantity may be in some instances minute. There is gratitude existing in a church of Christ, whatever name that church may bear. The orphan of the missionary, who had spent his days in the service of the Church, was not left to struggle up unaided and destitute. He received of the abundance with which Heaven has blessed American Christians; and though the gift was small-so small that no one ever imagined that it would beget extravagance-yet it was some

thing. It saved its recipient from actual want. With close economy, increased by some earnings of his own, it enabled him to complete his preparatory studies. However some may object to "Education Societies," yet we think no one can mourn that the Church, through such an organization, aided the son of one of her own devoted laborers. It was not a gift with which they endowed him. No; it was a debt they owed him. And when such divines as Dr. Bacon are the fruits of this form of benevolence, who will not rejoice that a slight portion of the wealth of Christendom goes to the education of the children of the Church?

After his graduation at Yale, in the autumn of 1820, Mr. Bacon went to Andover, where he prosecuted his theological studies for four years. Within a few weeks after he left Andover, he commenced preaching, by invitation, at the First Congregational Church of New Haven, the building of which is known by the name of "Centre Church." Over this church he was ordained pastor, in March, 1825, when he was twenty-three years of age. His two immediate predecessors were Professor Stuart, of Andover, who was dismissed, at his own request, on the 9th of January, 1810, after having served as pastor a little less than four years; and Dr. Taylor, now Professor of the Theological Seminary at New Haven, who was dismissed in December, 1822, after a ministry of eleven and a half years, that he might accept the professorship. The first meeting for the establishment of this Church was held on the 14th of June, 1639, when "all the free planters" were gathered in "Mr. Newman's barn;" which building, thus immortalized in history, is supposed to have stood where the residence of Noah Webster now stands.

The Church was gathered and organized on the 22d of the following August. The present church edifice was erected in 1814'15. During the winter of 1842, it was enlarged and refitted, and reopened for divine service on the 2d of March, 1843, on which occasion Dr. Bacon preached a sermon, from which we make the following extract:

"The glory of this temple has been heretofore, that it has stood not for the private use and enjoyment of those who built it, or who, by succession from the original builders, have had, and ought to

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have the control of it; but rather as the house of God, to which, when the deep-toned bell gives out its signal, all alike, the rich and the poor, the high and the low, the citizen and the stranger, are invited to come and worship the Maker and Redeemer of all. Its glory has been that here, in times of religious awakening through the community, assembled thousands, crowding every aisle and corner, have listened in deepest silence to the preaching of the word; that here in such assemblies, as well as in our ordinary Sabbath congregations, the thoughtless have been awakened, the awakened. have been led to the Saviour of the lost, and angels invisible, before the invisible God, have rejoiced over the repentance of sinners. Its glory has been, that from this spot has gone forth over the community, to aid in the formation and control of public opinion, a high, stern, moral influence, which the workers of iniquity have feared and hated. Its glory has been, that here so many great movements for the extension of the kingdom of Christ have found a hearing, and have received an additional impulse; that here many a missionary going forth to his field of peril, has been set apart to his apostleship; and that here the missionary, brought back, like Paul, to the place from which he had been commended to the grace of God, has stood up like Paul to rehearse, in our rejoicing ears, what God has wrought by him among the Gentiles. That lofty pulpit, now displaced, in which so many a servant of Christ has been consecrated to this work, for this or for some foreign land, and in which so many an eloquent and earnest voice has spoken for God, for the soul, and for the cause of the world's redemption, might well be regretted, if it had not been itself sent forth upon a mission. On the opposite side of the globe, in a land which has been made a Christian land by the labors of missionaries, some of the earliest of whom were ordained in that pulpit, there is now nearly completed a Christian temple, of stone, far more spacious than this, reared by the contributions and by the hands of converted savages; and in that temple the Gospel is to be preached from our old pulpit, not indeed in our energetic English tongue, but in another language, soft and melodious as angel voices, a language in which tens of thousands have already found