lent in support of their own doctrines nor against those of others. They held their sentiments without passion, because they had formed them deliberately, and stood ready to give them up for any other which came with stronger evidence or had a better effect upon the heart. But with most men, it seems to be a luxury to divide, and grow warm in religious divisions ; a state of rest is no more to be found in the religious world than in the ocean which heaves in the calmest day. The ignorant, who never form any opinion for themselves, grasp with a sort of fury those which they have received from others, defying all mankind to convince them that they are wrong. In all other differences, those who are familiar with the subject, and know what can be said on both sides, are always least excited; there is most real earnestness where there is least stormy passion; the fires of party linger in its ignorant members, long after they have gone down in every enlightened and manly breast. But the men of whom we speak, gave others the same privilege which they assumed for themselves; they were not the material from which the rank and file of party is made. Still, they were nobly zealous in the cause of truth; they would not give up one inch of ground which they thought deserved maintaining, and it need not be said, that they defended their position with earnestness as well as power.

Though but little more than a century has passed since the death of Newton, and he might be supposed likely to inspire curiosity more than any one who has lived since that day, very little is known concerning his personal habits, and this work adds but little to what the world knew before. It is necessarily a history of science during the period when Newton ministered at its altars. In this view it has its value, though it will have but little attraction for the great proportion of readers. The author is not to blame for giving this character to his biography; for, beside that the poverty of materials compelled him to resort to general descriptions of Newton's character and private life, he is, evidently, no judge of Newton as a theologian; and, regarding him simply as a philosopher, he has treated his religious attainments as forming no important part of his character and not adding much to his fame. But to us, this is the most interesting light in which Newton can be presented; to see him, who is reverenced by nations and ages, bowing in unfeigned humility be

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fore his God, to see him returning from his walk through the signs of heaven in a circle which all other minds despair to reach, and laying his trophies upon the altar, to see him withdrawing his calm, observing eye from the heavens, the brightest page in the book of nature, to look with deeper interest upon the written inspiration of the Scriptures, this gives the beauty of holiness to his majestic powers and virtues, and, in our opinion, excels and crowns them all.

Little is added by this biographer to what was formerly known concerning the childhood and youth of Newton. He gave early evidence of an active mind by his desire to excel in mechanical invention; it appears, also, that he had a poetical turn, and at a late period of life he was heard to express some pleasure at his success in the manufacture of verses; he gave some attention to painting, and his room was hung with pictures drawn, colored, and framed by his own hands. Various attempts of this kind show that his mind was gaining strength by action, long before it acquired its decided taste and direction. Prematurity of talent he had none. Biographers are, in general, anxious to trace something prophetic in the childhood of great men; but the life can no more be foretold from its beginning, than the river can be known by looking upon its fountains; its rapidity and depth are afterwards determined by the region through which it flows, and the streams that join its tide. It is no more desirable to have the mind developed before its time, than to have the body reach its full growth in childhood; in both cases, premature growth is the forerunner of premature de

cay.

If we may trust the accounts of biographers, the history of Newton's discoveries bears some resemblance to those of Columbus, who, while engaged in his fanciful project of looking for India in the west, became the discoverer of a new world, as unexpectedly to himself as to others. It is said that Newton engaged in the study of mathematics with a view to inquiring into the truth of judicial astrology. Of course he soon convinced himself of the folly of such a pursuit ; but the impulse had been given; he had learned the secret of his own strength; and having found a practicable object, he brought the whole force of his mind into one direction. The result was, that he opened a path of light into the mysteries of nature, and looked through the depths of heaven with the

searching brightness of an angel's eye. This concentration of his powers upon a single object supplied the want of discipline to his mind; till he went to the university, he had few means of improvement, and manifested but little of that selfeducating principle by which great minds often supply the defect of early instruction. But when he was thus thrown among enlightened men, men whom it was honorable to rival, and glorious to excel, he learned what he was, what the world had a right to expect from him, and what he was bound to do. There is reason to believe that a strong religious principle sustained him in the various trials and disappointments which he was compelled to endure. He knew the worth of the talents which God had given him, and felt that his reasonable return was to employ them in the service of him who gave them. When we consider what an influence one great man has upon the world, it is startling to think what the consequence might have been had Newton begun and ended his course without paying the reverence which he did to religion; there can be no doubt that infidelity would have felt secure under the shelter of his name, and that thousands, who could not follow him in his march of science, would have been proud to imitate his indifference to Christianity. By imagining the evil he might have done as an irreligious man, we may estimate the good he has done, and is still doing, by his example as a Christian. Men of science there have been, who would have been glad to trample on Christianity and all its laws; but Newton reproved them with his own living voice, and still frowns them into silence by his commanding example. When Dr. Halley ventured once to say something disrespectful to religion in his presence, Newton silenced him, saying, 'I have studied these things; you have not.' How many unworthy reflections upon our faith might still be prevented, if the voice of conscience would but whisper to the infidel, 'Newton studied these things; you have not!' The reproof is severe; it implies that the objector is throwing contempt on a subject which he has never examined, and therefore cannot understand; and that it is an unworthy thing to indulge and utter prejudices upon any intellectual subject which one has taken no pains to know. It is doubtless owing in part to the spirit and example of Newton, that science in our day is decidedly religious in its character and tendency; so that few philoso

ers.

phers feel as if they had learned the nature of any thing till they have discovered the benevolent purpose for which it was created, and taught all whom they can influence, to 'look through nature up to nature's God.' But Newton was not simply content with expressing his reverence for religion, nor was his a barren faith which dealt in professions and words alone. We learn from his biographers, that his religious principle gave a 'daily beauty to his life'; that he was simple and unassuming in his manners, benevolent in his feelings, judicious and most liberal in his charities, and attentive in all respects to the comfort and happiness of othHis modesty was remarkable, and, being entirely unlike what too often passes for religious self-abasement, deserves to be noticed as one of the best parts of his shining example. A short time before his death he said, 'I do not know how I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy, playing on the seashore and diverting myself with finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.' In return for his reverence to Christianity, it brought him the usual overpayment of joy; it smoothed his path through life, though it was beset with many troubles, from which one might have supposed that he would be free, troubles arising from the manner in which the results of his investigations were undervalued and opposed; and its effect upon his memory is, that his name inspires a veneration which was never paid to any other of all the great and good.

Newton, as we have said, regarded Christianity as the noblest work of God, and studied it with the most devoted exertion of those powers which had brought to light the mysteries of nature. Christian truth was in his eyes a thing too important to take upon trust, to receive from inheritance, or to borrow from another. First, he determined to understand what was the Scripture, rejecting all the additions and interpretations of men, and then to ascertain what it taught, not what it had taught others, but what it might teach him. In his investigations on all subjects, at every step, he placed his foot on a demonstration; he was perfectly sure of his ground, up to the spot where he stood. The most ancient and venerable theories, if they wanted evidence, were rejected like dreams, and neither fear, favor, nor affection could

induce him to admit any suggestion which did not bring sufficient proof with it; it being a point of duty with him to dismiss all prejudice as far as possible from his breast. Every one who is qualified to form an opinion on this subject, can see, that, by applying this philosophical investigation to the Scriptures, he came to them with facilities, beside what his natural ability gave him, immeasurably beyond most other men for knowing the truth, and nothing but the truth. And he came to conclusions eminently favorable to the cause of charity; he saw that the deliberate convictions of a conscientious man were truth, that such a man had what was truth to him, however widely his results differed from those of others. As might be expected, he advocated the great cause of toleration, which was then poorly understood by the world at large, and, as his biographer assures us, 'never scrupled to express his abhorrence of persecution, even in its mildest form.' We observe that certain Trinitarian writers are attempting, as an exercise of ingenuity we presume, to shake the established fact of Newton's Unitarianism; we could almost wish them success; we could almost wish that he stood before them as one of their number, that they might be tempted to follow his high example; it would be reviving to hear one mighty Trinitarian voice giving out lessons of charity and toleration;-to see a Trinitarian, giving up those spurious passages of Scripture to which his party fondly cling, without avowing his belief in the doctrine and making excuses for his manliness; to read the works of a Trinitarian, all whose writings are forced by his candor into a direction unfavorable to the prejudices and passions of his party, and who, while he believes in the Trinity, exhorts others to believe the truth.

But nothing has yet appeared to overthrow the common impression that Newton was a Unitarian. The utmost that can be proved, is, that he did not avow his unbelief in the prevailing faith; and the reason of his silence is so obvious, that it never has been misunderstood. When he wrote his' History of Two Corruptions of Scripture,' in which the two favorite texts of the heavenly witnesses' and 'God manifest in the flesh' were conclusively shown to be no part of Scripture, he was, as Dr. Brewster says, ' afraid of the intolerance to which he might be exposed! And for this reason he requested Locke, who was preparing for a voyage to Holland, to get it