Edue P10579

HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1835, by WILLIam Cogswell, Secretary of the American Education Society, in behalf of said Society, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.

Farmer's List of New England Graduates, 93, 181, Notices of New Publications,

Erratum.-In the No. for August, page 54, instead of the last paragraph on the page, read the
following. "On the 28th of August, 1828, nineteen individuals were recognized as a branch of the
Federal Street Baptist Church, Boston. On the 1st of March, 1831, fifty-two brethren and sisters
were publicly recognized as the South Baptist Church of the City of Boston.' The neat and
beautiful edifice now occupied as their place of worship, is 72 feet long by 57 wide, and was dedi-
cated to the service of God, on the 22d of July, 1830. The Rev. R. H. Neale was pastor of this
church from October, 1830, to March 19th, 1834. On the 25th of May, 1834, Rev. T. R. Cressy
was recognized as pastor of this church. The number of its members in September last, was
133."

THE

QUARTERLY REGISTER.

VOL. VII.

AUGUST, 1834.

No. 1.

INFLUENCE OF EMINENT PIETY ON THE HUMAN MIND.

AN opinion is entertained to a certain extent, that superior mental cultivation is inconsistent with distinguished attainments in holiness. It is supposed that deep and thorough scholarship is incompatible with pure and elevated religious affections. Before proceeding, therefore, to a direct consideration of the subject, it may be proper to look at some of the reasons why this idea has been entertained.

One cause of the prevalence of this opinion, is the want of enlargement of mind on the part of some pious students. An individual does not see the bearing of a particular study upon his piety, or upon his future profession, and consequently renounces it in disgust, or attends to it with an utter indifference. He thus loses sight of the fact that his mind is an instrument, in a great degree unfitted for work, and that it is of little importance whether he has knowledge of his future profession or not, so long as his mind is rude and shapeless. His great object is not instruction, it is education; it is not acquisition, it is dicipline. But if he allows his mind to fasten on the secularity of his study, or on its want of correspondence with his future profession, he will not, as a general thing, advance either in piety or in science.

Another cause of the prevalence of the idea, to which I have alluded, arises from the injudicious remarks which some eminently pious men have made, in their diaries, respecting the worthlessness of human learning. Owing, perhaps, to a defect in early education, to a temptation into which they have been betrayed, or to want of Christian candor, they have uttered sentiments adverse to the general current of their thoughts-sentiments which have been eagerly seized upon and made the excuse or the occasion, in some instances, of a nearly total neglect of mental discipline and improvement. Such sentiments should be counteracted and neutralized by opinions on the other side equally decisive and far more numerous.

Again, the prevalence of this idea may be ascribed in part to the perversion of a few texts of Scripture. From passages like that wherein it is asserted that God has chosen the weak things of this world to confound the wise, it has been most absurdly inferred that human knowledge is of little value. But all the passages and facts of Scripture, which relate to this subject, are to be taken in connection. Why did God choose Moses for the leader of his people through the desert, a man learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians? Why select Solomon, the wisest of the children of men, to build his temple? Why was the man educated at the feet of Ga

maliel, inspired to write almost one half of the New Testament, and to publish the name of his Saviour in almost every land of the Roman dominions? Why must the priest's lips keep knowledge, and why were schools of the prophets so early founded, and continued for so many ages? The truth is, that one simple principle of the New Testament would determine the whole question. We are commanded to present to God our bodies and souls as a living sacrifice-not our souls without cultivation, but with all possible cultivation and enlargement. We are as really commanded to discipline and perfect our understanding, and to present the fruits of it to the Lord, as we are that which relates to any other part of ourselves.

Another cause of the erroneous idea, which I am endeavoring to combat, is found in the prominence which has been given to literary ambition as a motive for effort. Our plans of study have been based for ages on the principle of competition. It has, in a considerable degree, swallowed up all other incitements to literary effort. Religious students have either yielded to the impulses of this powerful motive, and been subjected to all its disastrous effects, or they have quietly relinquished the literary object before them, and have been contented with mediocrity of attainment and usefulness. The inquiry does not seem to have been made whether there were or were not motives for effort equally strong, and less objectionable in their character. One marked effect of the prevalence of the motive of ambition, has been a belief in the minds of many pious and estimable persons, that there was an inseparable connection between the exercise of bad passions and the attainment of eminent knowledge.

I am now prepared to present some considerations in favor of the proposition, that piety is eminently beneficial in its effects on the mind.

Eminent piety will tend to give an increased importance to the human mind in general. The mental constitution, is the work of the Creator, and displays exquisite skill in its formation and its adaptedness to the uses for which it was designed. The man of pious feeling will love to trace the proofs of divine wisdom, which are visible in his mind, as well as elsewhere. He will see, in a clearer light than other men, the high destiny of the human soul. He will learn to think of it with more seriousness, and will attach to it an importance commensurate, in some degree, with its powers, and the end of its creation. One reason why the worldly-minded professor of religion regards with such apathy his own condition, and the ruined state of multitudes around him, is his utterly inadequate ideas of the value of the human mind. He does not separate the material from the immortal, the transitory from the permanent. He looks on the world of rational agents very much as he does on any of the animal tribes, as created to breathe, to eat, to sleep, to play and to perish. It is not so where Christianity exerts its full influence. There a solicitude is awakened and sustained by a sense of what the mind is, and of what it is able to accomplish. One fundamental reason why men are held in civil bondage, in any part of the earth, is the want of a vivid apprehension that those men have minds rational and immortal. Impart to a community a strong and abiding impression of the presence of God, of the reality of eternity, of the importance of a state of probation, and every intellectual shackle will be sundered. The mind is not seen in its real dignity, except in the light of another world. Looking at it as immortal, the importance of its cultivation, and of its perfect discipline, is immensely increased.

The influence of eminent piety is seen in leading the scholar to an intimate acquaintance with his own mind. The habit of self-inspection is important in regard to the intellectual progress as well as to the spiritual.