. . He them to dismiss him unto the place whereto he was now chosen, refusing to do it, he declined the motion. Wherefore, on April 10, 1682, Mr. John Rogers was elected unto that place. was one of so sweet a temper, that the title of deliciæ humani generis might have on that score been given him; and his real piety set off with the accomplishments of a gentleman, as a gem set in gold. In his Presidentship, there fell out one thing particularly, for which the Colledge has cause to remember him. It was his custom to be some. what long in his daily prayers (which our Presidents use to make) with the scholars in the Colledge-hall. But one day, without being able to give reason for it, he was not so long, it may be by half, as he used to be. Heaven knew the reason! The scholars, returning to their chambers, found one of them on fire, and the fire had proceeded so far, that if the devotions had held three minutes longer, the Colledge had been irrecoverably laid in ashes, which now was happily preserved. But him also a præmature death, on July 2, 1684, the day after the Commencement, snatcht away from a society that hoped for a much longer enjoyment of him, and counted themselves under as black an eclipse as the Sun did happen to be, at the hour of his expiration." The Imposing as this book was in its day, and important as it still is, it finds almost no readers now but students of history. third and latest edition was published in 1852. Theology took yet another turn,-from controversy, through fanaticism and superstition, back to abstract disquisition. In Jonathan 1703-1758. this last-named phase we see it most strikingly exhibited by the career and works of Jonathan Edwards, who was for twenty-three years pastor of the church at Northampton, Massachusetts, subsequently missionary to the Indians, and finally for a short time president of the college of New Jersey (Princeton). Edwards was a man of remarkable intellect, a born reasoner, and, living when and where he did, he naturally turned the powers of his brilliant mind to theology. He took the literal statements of the Bible, and with unshrinking logic pushed them to the most terrible conclusions. He could depict -for with all his logic he had a poetic imagination-the glories of heaven and the happiness of the saints, but he became most notorious for those sermons which were devoted to portraying the miseries of the damned. The religious excitement of 1740-1745, known as "the Great Awakening," during which the English preacher Whitefield preached to assemblies of thirty thousand people on Boston Common, took its origin in Edwards's church. Edwards is best remembered, however, not for his sermons, but for his monumental work on the Freedom of the Will, published in 1754. In this he tried to prove that man is not a free agent and yet is responsible and punishable for all his misdeeds, and he argued so well that few have tried to confute him. Nevertheless, common sense to-day generally refuses to be troubled by such speculations, and the once famous treatise is more often alluded to than read. Jonathan Edwards stands simply as the one great metaphysician, or builder of a systematic philosophy, that America has produced. Emerson, in the next century, is a philosopher of a very different type. John There is one other writer who must be named in this connection, though his life touches the Revolutionary period and his work is not properly theology. This is John Woolman, of whom Charles Lamb said, 1720-1772. "Get the writings of John Woolman by heart, and love the early Quakers." He was a New Jersey tailor and itinerant Friend who in his life-time published several tracts in opposition to the "Keeping of Negroes" and who died in 1772, leaving behind a Journal which was published in 1774. There have been many editions of the Journal since, one of the last having been edited by Whittier, and it would not be quite fair to say that Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography is the only American book of the eighteenth century that lives to-day. Woolman's book lives, although obscurely; indeed it has in it a simplicity and religious sincerity that will remind one of Bunyan, together with a sweetness and tenderness even beyond Bunyan and sufficient to account for its hold upon life. One does not readily forget, for example, such a confession of youthful thoughtlessness and remorse as this: "Once going to a neighbor's house, I saw on the way a robin sitting on her nest, and as I came near she went off, but having young ones, flew about, and with many cries expressed her concern for them. I stood and threw stones at her, till one striking her she fell down dead. At first I was pleased with the exploit, but after a few minutes was seized with horror, as having, in a sportive way, killed an innocent creature while she was careful of her young. I beheld her lying dead, and thought those young ones, for which she was so careful, must now perish for want of their dam to nourish them; and after some painful considerations on the subject, I climbed up the tree, took all the young birds, and killed them, supposing that better than to leave them to pine away and die miserably. And I believed in this case that Scripture proverb was fulfilled, 'The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.' I then went on my errand, but for some hours could think of nothing else but the cruelties I had committed, and was much troubled." It is pleasant to relieve the impression left by the stern theologians of New England with this humble Christian diary of a New Jersey Quaker. CHAPTER II. TRANSITION.-BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 1706-1790 The figure of one great American looms large through the eighteenth century. Born but three years after the birth of Jonathan Edwards, and dying but nine years before the death of Washington, Benjamin Franklin spans with his career the entire transition from American colonial dependence to independence, union, and nationality. The story of this poor tallow-chandler's son and printer's apprentice, migrating from Boston to Philadelphia, and growing and expanding with the fortunes of his country until he came to be a lion of the social centres of Europe and ambassador to the courts of kings, reads like a romance. But stripped of its glamour it is seen to be a plain tale of sterling worth and tireless industry. A Many-sided We shall not repeat it here: it is best read in his own words in the famous Autobiography. Nor does it come properly within the scope of a history of literature to Character. enumerate the services which this many-sided man rendered to America and the world during his long career,services which range from the invention of stoves to the demonstration that lightning and electricity are the same, and from the development of newspaper advertising to the drawing up of the first plan for the union of the American colonies. For Franklin was journalist, scientist, philosopher, statesman, diplomatist, and philanthropist in one. As for the writings |