powers and therefore we never find him slavishly treading in the footsteps of predecessors. Yet, though free and independent, he is not audacious and dogmatical. His manner of handling the pro found mystery of predestination reads an excellent lesson to those precipitate sciolists, who make an unqualified affirmation of that mystery, in the high Calvinistic sense, to be the test of orthodoxy, and, one might almost add, the passport to salvation;— who contrive to interweave it with every sermon and treatise; and who, instead of building on it sublime ideas of the majesty and goodness of God, and deducing from it powerful motives to humility and holiness, so treat it, as to weaken the force of moral and religious obligation on the mind, and to disparage the awful sanctity of the supreme and impartial governor of mankind. It is one of our author's excellencies, that he assigns to the several parts of the system of Redemption their relative rank and importance. In unfolding the dignity of Christ, the glory of his person, and the satisfactory virtue of his death, no one can exceed him in scriptural orthodoxy and devotional feeling. Yet with him the atonement is not of such engrossing magnitude, as to overshadow the chief ends, for which a piacular sacrifice was appointed; but its incalculable value, in respect to mankind, is shown to arise from its being the foundation, on which the spiritual temple of God is to be rebuilt. To open a way for the return of the Holy Spirit to the world, is the grand scope and aim of the mediatorial covenant as prominently exhibited by Leigh ton; and its ultimate glory is shown to result from the renovation of sinners to righteousness, of which the death of Jesus Christ is in its meritorious consequence effective, by appeasing the judicial resentment of heaven, and cancelling the offender's obligation to punishment. The points, indeed, on which his soul was constantly fixed, whence accrues such a heavenly grandeur to all his discourses, were the noble vocation of a christian, and the height to which a regenerate soul ought to rise above sublunary objects; the nearness of death; the mysterious vastness of the Godhead; the stupendous concerns of eternity; and the blessedness resulting from close communion with the Father of spirits, and from conformity to the pattern, which Jesus Christ bequeathed to his followers, of consummate purity and virtue. When Leighton addresses himself to these matters, he does indeed utter his voice from high places; and impresses us with the idea of a man, who from an eminence beyond the region of fogs and clouds and meteors, has surveyed whatever is above and beneath, things in heaven and things upon the earth, with a vast advantage for rating justly the value of the one and of the other. He seems to have lately come down from conversing with God upon the mount, anointed and preeminently qualified to represent the high priest of the christian temple; to draw aside the outward veil, and to disclose the glorious spirit of religion in its innermost sanctuary. It is impossible to dip into his writings, without observing with how brilliant a fancy he was endowed. They sparkle with beautiful images, which either are drawn from the magazines of scripture; or are such as would naturally present themselves to an inventive and elegant mind, furnished, as Leighton's was, with the literary products of every clime and age, and with the accumulated stores of civil and ecclesiastical erudition; and intent upon making whatever it has collected subservient to the illustration of divine truth. By his holy skill sacred learning is made to purify profane, and profane learning to elucidate and embellish sacred. The gold and silver of Egypt are moulded into vessels for the tabernacle of Jehovah; while the living waters of the sanctuary are taught to meander through fields of classic lore, imparting to their produce celestial fragrancy and virtue. Among the just commendations of this great and good man's writings, we must not omit their extraordinary decency, resulting no doubt from singular purity of mind, and the more worthy of note from its being foreign to the school in which he had been educated. No coarse indelicate metaphor, the offspring of a gross imagination, ever sullies his pages; and if it fall in his way to handle subjects which bring into view the grosser passions and appetites of our nature, he spreads over their unseemliness such a veil of chastity, that nothing appears, to draw a frown from the austerest gravity, or to put the most susceptible modesty to the blush. Archbishop Leighton will hardly rank in the foremost line of philologists and theological critics. Yet, in general, he is a safe guide in the exposition of párticular texts; and if sometimes he mistake the precise sense of the passage he discusses, still his improvement of it is so orthodox and pious, that one might be tempted to think, that it is better to err with Leighton than to go right with the rest of mankind. He had carefully perused the original text of both the old and the new testament; and, by a sober application of etymological analysis, he frequently throws light on obscure sentences of the sacred volume. From the Fathers also, of whom he was a diligent student, as the pen-marked copies of their works in his library testify, he drew many beautiful sentiments, which are interspersed in his own lucubrations; the whole of which have a strong savour of primitive spirituality. But that which adds so peculiar a zest to his compositions, is the quality usually denominated Unction His mouth spake out of the abundance of his heart. Instead of a dry didactic statement, which, how faultless soever in doctrine and form, will seldom beget sympathy, we have in him the libation upon the sacrifice, the holy affections of his soul poured out on the solid products of his understanding, and imparting to them a delicious odour and irresistible penetrancy. In every page of his books there is an impassioned earnestness, a soul-subduing pathos, which make it impossible to doubt, that the impressions he strives to communicate are deeply engraven on his spirit. Indeed he does not seem so much to appeal to his readers, as unconsciously to let them into the chamber of his own soul, on --- which they may see the gospel traced in its native lineaments; and may recognise the loveliness of divine truth in the most perfect union, of which it is capable, with the heart and understanding of a frail and fallible mortal. Some allusion has been dropt in this memoir to his excellence in the pulpit. Burnet in eulogizing his preaching pronounces it " rather too fine;" and it did undoubtedly soar above the flight of ordinary minds, or it might rather be said of minds not elevated by habits of divine contemplation. It was surprisingly free from the quaint and sectarian jargon of the day, as will be seen by comparing his printed discourses with those precious morsels, which are embalmed in a work, that came out shortly after the Revolution, and is entitled "Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed." In the sermons of Leighton there is nothing puerile, low, or ludicrous; no fantastic conceits and impertinent pleasantries; no wild interpretations of scripture and bombastic rhapsodies; no desultory and pedantic excursions. He scorned to set off his matter, or scrupled to profane it, with a tawdry dress and garish colours. His phraseology, at once sedate and noble, well becomes the ambassador of heaven; and denotes a profound veneration for the oracles of God, a pious dread of distorting their sense, and giving a human figure and colour to any portion of revelation, and an ardent desire to convert thoughtless sinners, and to edify serious believers. Such were his matter and diction, with which his manner in the pulpit comported. Superior to popu |