Here he continued to labor until 1753, when he was chosen by the synod of New-York, at the instance of the trustees of NewJersey College, as a suitable person to accompany the Rev. Gilbert Tennent to England and Ireland, for the purpose of soliciting funds for said college. In this mission he was highly successful; and to his services, mainly, the college was indebted for its subsequent flourishing condition. In England he was greatly esteemed and beloved: his popular talents called forth great applause. While there, he formed an acquaintance with several distinguished gentlemen, with some of whom he continued to correspond till his death.

After his return to this country, he entered again upon the work of traveling his circuit in Virginia, preaching with success to his congregations until 1759, when he was elected president of the New-Jersey College. He succeeded the celebrated Jonathan Edwards, who entered upon the duties of the presidency of the college in 1758, and continued to discharge them but a brief period. In about two weeks after, he departed this life in hope of a "glorious immortality." President Davies entered upon his new calling with great zeal. Such had been the circumstances connected with his ministerial labors, that he had had but little opportunity for improvement in academical learning. He now applied himself with renewed energy to the studies necessary for a thorough qualification for so important and elevated a vocation. His success was great in his literary labors; and by his judicious management the college became very prosperous, and attained a high state of literary merit. But his intense application to study, together with his other labors, which were quite onerous, was more than his enfeebled constitution could endure. A change of exercise proved also undoubtedly disadvantageous to his health. He had been accustomed to much exercise in his long rides in Virginia, and now to confine himself to the duties of the college, merely walking from his own house to Nassau Hall, the distance of about ten rods, necessarily deprived him of his usual exercise-that exercise which the state of his health at that time demanded. He became exceedingly prostrated, and in Feb., 1761, he died of the inflammatory fever, in the thirty-seventh year of his age, having occupied the presidential chair of New-Jersey College about seventeen months.

He

Gilbert Tennent was brother of the celebrated William Tennent. labored in New-Brunswick, New-Jersey, and is said to have been a useful and popular preacher.

His death called forth much sorrow and lamentation in this country and in England. Several sermons were preached on the occasion. Dr. Finley, the successor of Mr. Davies in the presidency, preached from Rom. xiv, 7, 8: "For none of us liveth unto himself," &c. The doctor remarks in his introduction, as a reason for selecting this passage, "When I reflect on the truly Christian, generous, yet strict catholicism that distinguishes this whole chapter, and how deeply it was imprinted on Mr. Davies' own spirit and influenced his course of life, I am ready to conclude, that, perhaps, no text could be more aptly chosen on the occasion." Dr. Gibbons, a distinguished divine, with whom Mr. Davies became acquainted on his visit to England, preached also an able sermon on the occasion from Eph. i, 11: "Who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will." The doctor gives a succinct view of the character of his honored friend, in which he represents him as one of the best men he ever knew; but some of his remarks in illustrating the doctrine of the text are strongly Calvinistic. The Rev. David Bostwick, M. A., has given a "just portraiture of President Davies," in which an analysis of his character is strikingly portrayed. Several others preached on the occasion, but it is not necessary that their productions should be noticed in this paper.

President Davies seemed to have been peculiarly fitted for the exigences of the times in which he lived. It was an age characterized by profligacy and vice; corruption of manners and a deeprooted opposition to spiritual things had become exceedingly prevalent. A large proportion of the people had become averse to experimental piety, and many who adhered to the "form," were destitute of the "power, of godliness." To meet the opposition, prejudice, and ignorance of such a period, required the first order of endowments. Such were pre-eminently possessed by our author. Like the Wesleys, he was evidently "fitted to his day." Mr. Bostwick describes him as being "adorned with such an assemblage of amiable and useful qualities, and each shining with such distinguished lustre, that it is hard to say in which he most excelled; and equally hard to mention one valuable or useful accomplishment in which he did not excel. A large and capacious understanding; a solid, unbiased, and well-regulated judgment; a quick apprehension; a genius truly penetrating; a fruitful invention; an elegant taste were all happily united in him, and constituted a real great

For the truth of this remark, see the Memoirs of the Tennents, who were his cotemporaries.

ness of mind which never failed to strike every observer with an agreeable surprise."

ness.

The reader has already been informed that his early advantages for an education were limited. By this circumstance, however, he was by no means discouraged. He thirsted after knowledge, not merely as an accomplishment, but as a means of extensive usefulHis strength of genius and indefatigable application placed him in honorable standing among the first scholars of his age; and by the friends of education he was placed at the head of one of the first literary institutions of the country. Let those young preachers in the itinerant field, who are struggling under many embarrassments in acquiring a thorough education, remember that Davies did not become a scholar at once, but by patient perseverance in close application to study;-so of Franklin, who became a philosopher; so of Newton, the astronomer;-so of Locke, the logician;-so of Clarke, the linguist. Education is usually purchased at the price which Jacob paid for his wives-years of faithful and incessant toil.

But as a Christian minister, our author particularly excelled. He loved the work, being satisfied that he had been called to it by the "Holy Ghost," and to it he unreservedly consecrated all the powers of body and mind. Feeling that the "love of Christ constrained" him, he went forth an itinerant minister, as did the apostles,

"To seek the wandering souls of men."

In the exercise of the ministerial functions, "his fervent zeal and undissembled piety, popular talents and engaging address, soon acquired for him a distinguished character, and general admiration. Scarce was he known as a minister but he was sent, on the earnest application of the people, to some of the distant settlements of Virginia, where many of the inhabitants, in respect of religion, were but a small remove from the darkness and ignorance of uncultivated heathenism; and where the religion of Jesus, which he endeavored to propagate, had to encounter all the blindness, prejudice, and enmity, that are natural to the heart of the most depraved sinner. Yet, under all apparent disadvantages, his labors were attended with such remarkable success, that all opposition quitted the unequal combat, and gave way to the powerful energy of the divine Spirit, which was graciously pleased by his ministry to add many new subjects to the spiritual kingdom of our glorious Immanuel."

*Rev. Mr. Bostwick.

"The work of the ministry," says the author just quotea, "was Mr. Davies' great delight, and for which he was admirably furnished with every valuable qualification of nature and grace. Divinity was a favorite study, in which he made great proficiency for one of his years, and yet he generally preferred the most necessary and practical branches of it to the dark mazes of endless controversy and intricate disputes; aiming chiefly at the conversion of sinners, and to change the hearts of men by an affecting representation of the plain, but most important and interesting truths of the gospel. His talent for composition, especially for the pulpit, was equaled by few, and perhaps exceeded by none. His taste was judicious, elegant, and polite, and yet his discourses were plain and pungent; peculiarly adapted to pierce the conscience and affect the heart. His diction was surpassingly beautiful and comprehensive, tending to make the most stupid hearer sensibly feel, as well as clearly understand. Sublimity and elegance, plainness and perspicuity, and all the force and energy of language, were seen, to some extent, in all his writings. His manner of delivery, as to pronunciation, gesture, and modulation of voice, seemed to be a perfect model of the most moving and striking oratory.

"Whenever he ascended the sacred desk, he seemed to have not only the attention, but all the various passions of his auditory entirely at command. And as his personal appearance was august and venerable, yet benevolent and mild, so he could speak with the most commanding authority, or melting tenderness, according to the variation of his subject. With what majesty and grandeur, with what energy and striking solemnity, with what powerful and almost irresistible eloquence, would he illustrate the truths and inculcate the duties of Christianity! Mount Sinai seemed to thunder from his lips, when he denounced the curses of the law, and sounded the dreadful alarm to guilty sinners. The solemn scenes of the last judgment seemed to rise in view, when he arraigned, tried, and convicted, self-deceivers and hypocrites. And how did the balm of Gilead distill from his lips, when he exhibited a bleeding Saviour to sinful man, as a remedy for the wounded heart and guilty conscience! In a word, whatever subject he undertook, persuasive eloquence dwelt upon his tongue; and his audience was all attention. He spoke as on the borders of eternity, and as viewing the glories and terrors of an unseen world, and conveyed the most grand and affecting ideas of these important realities; realities which he then firmly believed, and which he now sees in the clearest light of intuitive demonstration."

The above may be viewed in the light of high-wrought pane

gyric; but to what extent it may be thus regarded, we will not here decide. The representation was drawn by a personal friend, and how far the influence of friendship led to exaggeration, cannot be fully decided; charity, however, would prompt to a belief that the writer labored to give a faithful "portraiture" of his friend, as a Christian minister. And we are more inclined to this belief, from the fact that the representation agrees with those given by Drs. Finley, Gibbons, and others.

But to the volumes before us. These contain a large number of sermons on "important subjects," which were published after the author's death. Such was their rapid sale, that they soon passed through nine editions. They passed through several editions in England, and were sought after there with great eagerness by the religious reading community. Indeed, it is believed that no sermons of modern times have passed through more editions than have these, except those of Mr. Wesley. And though, perhaps, occasionally wanting in elegance of diction, and excessive in verbiage, yet they will be sought for and read when many others of more recent date shall have been consigned to oblivion. Dr. Gibbons, in the sixth London edition, speaks of them as follows:

"A calm and elaborate inquiry into the connection of those passages which he chooses for his subjects, and a close investigation, when it appeared necessary, into the meaning of the text by consulting the original language, and fair and learned criticism;-a careful attention to the portions of sacred truth upon which he proposes to treat, so that his discourse as naturally rises from his theme as the branch grows from the root, or the stream issues from the fountain. In every page, and almost every line of our author's sermons, his readers may discover the subject he at first professed to handle; and he is ever illustrating, proving, or enforcing some truth evidently contained in it; observing a due regard to the divine word, by comparing and confirming Scripture by Scripture, by taking the sacred text in its easy and natural sense, and by pertinent citations of passages, both in the proof and amplification; an observance of method and order, so as to proceed, like a wise builder, in laying a foundation and regularly erecting the superstructure, and yet diversifying his method by making it sometimes open and express, and at other times indirect and implicit; a free, manly diction, without anything of a nice and affected accuracy, or a loud-sounding torrent of almost unintelligible words on the one side, or a loose negligence, or mean and low-creeping phrases, unworthy of the pulpit, on the other; a rich vein of evangelical doctrine with a proper notice of practical duties, or awful denunciation of divine wrath against the impenitent and incorrigible; an impartial regard to the cases of all his hearers, like a good steward distributing to all their portion in due season; animated and pathetic application, in which our author collects and concentrates what he has proved in his discourses; and urges it with