mean, as stupidity looks for-when I am in a calm and heavenly frame.' I do hate to rage and foam in the sacred desk, much as it is liked by the multitude." Wherever he preached, the thinkers who heard him generally appreciated and were well pleased with his discourses.

His preaching did not often take the combative turn, though he was what may in strict truth be termed, a doctrinal preacher. His presentation and defence of Christian doctrine, however, were not much in the controversial style. He loved to philosophize calmly and clearly on divine truth, and to enforce its great practical lessons on the minds of his auditors. Yet he was by no means deficient in controversial skill and power, when these seemed in duty demanded of him. We find in this history of his life, one occasion on which he was called upon to defend the truth of the gospel against attacks of the vilest character made by the notorious "revivalist," Knapp, in the city of New Haven, in 1841. No epithets were too significantly mean for this preacher to use when speaking of the Universalist ministry. His perversions of their faith, also, and his stories about their conduct, were of what men usually consider the insufferable kind. Mr. Sanford heard this preacher one evening, and called him to an account, demanding such facts as might go to sustain the harsh statements he had made. But the accuser was silent, because false. He would not grant the accused a privilege of utterance when and where he demanded it. On the following day, handbills were issued and circulated through the city that Mr. Sanford would preach in one of the public halls of the place that evening. He did so, speaking more than an hour and a half to a crowded and deeply attentive assembly; and his refutation of the slander of the adversary, and his masterly defence of the doctrine and people assailed, was an honor to him, as it was a blessing to the cause of gospel truth.

One of the most instructive and affecting representations we have in the life of this good man, is that in which we trace the disciplinary workings of affliction with him. His domestic bereavement in early manhood was one of the most severe that could come to any mortal. We shall never forget its impression upon our own mind when we were first made acquainted with it by the stricken one

himself. It was at the close of a quiet summer day, as we greeted him, a welcome visiter at our own door, and when, in answer to the friendly and earnest inquiry, "How are the family at home?" the startling and solemn answer was returned, "They are in the grave." Though he stirred others to deepest emotions and tears in this brief recital, his own conversation, following, in reference to it, was calm and instructive, and rather like one seeking to allay the griefs of others, than really the most afflicted of them all. His subsequent thought, and writing, and conversation, all that we can learn of these, respecting his bereavement, were of the same truly philosophical and Christian kind. No sufferer could feel more keenly his wounds. But few, it seems to us, could have borne them with a truer composure, or with a stronger, nobler trust in the healing and restoring Power. We find, as we pursue his brief history, that in all his allusions to affliction, his views respecting the gracious ends of it were more confirmed. He writes in his diary, in 1841,

"I will not look on the future with despair. My reason, philosophy, and religion, bid me view life as a school, whose elements of discipline, though severe, are necessary for the correction, developement, and improvement of mankind. The giant oak has been made by winds and storms no less than by serenity and sunshine."

And again, in 1842, one year after,

"The time has been, when I looked upon affliction with fear and trembling; but I believe that I can now say, that that time is passed. I have learned who it is that uses the rod, and what it is used for. It is in the hand of a Father, and he never employs it but for the correction and benefit of his children. My chief concern now is, that I bear its inflictions with patience, fortitude, and resignation; and that it realize in me its Divine pur~ pose, in chastening and purifying my feelings; in elevating my views and hopes of immortality, and thus prepare me for the fulfilment of the object of my being. But, that this may be accomplished, I have something to do. It will not be enough that I am passive. I must act. I must consider and second the means of Providence in this work, and make it my chief business to bring my whole nature into accordance with the laws, requirements, and will of my Maker."

In his discourse on Affliction, in this volume, his own personal experience is appropriately alluded to, and his statement of the benefits of affliction very happily made. He believed that the morally sublime in man could be most significantly realized by himself through the rough ways of trial and discipline, even as "the Captain of our salvation" was made "perfect through suffering." The world has been blest with a noble army of such souls. We are thankful that the faithful minister of whom we now write was one of this glorious number. Every addition to them is a new cause of gratitude to God, and of gratulation to mankind.

Following the memoir of Mr. Sanford, in this volume, are six sermons, selected from his manuscripts. The subjects are, Affliction; Man Created in the Image of God; Sin a Moral Insanity; The Example of Christ; Human Destiny; Joy of the Gospel; and so far as we are acquainted with the ability of the man, we should think them a fair representation of his sermonizing. They are good and able discourses; plain, strong, and though not abounding in finely rounded periods and brilliant oratoric flashes, yet agreeable and instructive, always. They are such sermons as we should be willing to put into the hands of any one desiring to know of our doctrine, whether it be of God or of men; and which we can most heartily commend to all believers or unbelievers of Christianity. They are full of the Christian spirit; they bear the impress of sincerity; they are alive and earnest. They "vindicate the ways of God to man," and aptly enforce the great human duties demanded of the Christian disciple.

In conclusion of this notice, we are impelled to express our admiration of the manner in which this little book is written. The "Memorial" is from the hand and heart of a bosom friend; yet there is no unmanly adulation in it; but a truthfulness, simplicity, genial Christian warmth and dignity, which will commend it to every intelligent Christian reader, and which will also serve to strengthen in no small degree the reputation, as a writer, which the author has already so well and surely earned. From our heart, we thank him for this excellent tribute to departed, yet ever living, worth. We know it is his prayer, as it is

neither Christ nor his apostles forbade slave-holding, by name; and St. Paul and St. Peter counselled Christian masters in a way that seems to allow the practice in their circumstances, and advised converted slaves not to rebel against their condition, but to be submissive to it. St. Paul even persuaded the fugitive slave Onesimus to return to his Christian master Philemon. All this shows, (says the Professor,) that slave-holding is not, even under the gospel, a sin in itself, as we have defined this phrase; and that we may return fugitive slaves without violating Christian principles. 4. Nevertheless, the civil relations in which the Christians of the apostolic age stood to the institution of slavery, were wholly different from those in which our countrymen stand to it, since we are the makers of the government and laws, while they were the helpless subjects, if not the victims, of the government, and had no power to abolish, or to modify, or to restrain the evil. This is the reason, the Professor thinks, why the New Testament did not expressly forbid the then existing slavery. And 5. slavery is opposed to the radical principles of the gospel; especially American slavery (the worst of all,) is, in some respects, "treason against the Majesty of heaven and earth.”

Such is his statement of the Biblical grounds, and of their immediate bearing on slavery as it exists in our country. The general conclusion to which he evidently aims to bring us, is, that although slavery, as practised at the South, is a great wrong against God and humanity, and one that ought to be removed as soon as practicable, yet, it not being a sin in itself, we must not denounce its patrons ex ipso facto as criminals, nor on that account withhold our Christian fellowship from them; that we may, consistently with the gospel, make compromises with it, and that we are bound to do so by the Constitution of the United States; and finally that all the moral evil, which will probably result from such compromises, is a matter for which we of the North have no responsibility. We need not stop here to examine whether, in these points, he is consistent with his own premises and inferences. We will only specify his views of the duty which the citizens of the North owe, in the present crisis of our national affairs.

1. We must deliver up all fugitive slaves, when claimed; though he strongly protests against the provisions of Messrs. Butler's and Mason's Bill, and gravely pleads, on the authority of some newspaper, that Mr. Webster did not really pledge himself to support it. The Professor would have fugitives taken back to the place whence they fled, and there tried by juries of slave-holders! as if this would be of any avail, or as if it would indeed be generally practicable for the helpless captive. 2. He would have no "Wilmot-proviso" enacted with respect to any Territory,