Arnold's expedition to Quebec.

If, therefore, the spirit is native to the land which it weds, and which weds it in turn, to the land where God's hand shel- ters it from the strife of tongues, then Northampton must waive its otherwise fitting claims in favor of the Hills of Berkshire, among which this Elijah of his day was so long hidden.The descendants of President Edwards felt and indicated this sen- timent in holding their reunion at Stockbridge, rather than at Northampton.However we choose to settle the less or greater rights of the two communities, it is plain that Berkshire is not wrong in bringing a full measure of honor to one who loved and honored it.. President Edwards, taking so early a part in our local history, good in his greatness and great in his goodness, invites our patriotic and reverent regard.Let us restore him to our thought as a person, a preacher and a philosopher.We cannot understand the man without understanding the period and the society to which he belonged.Though our social and spiritual life flows directly, with but a brief interval, from that of our Puritanic ancestors, it has undergone great changes.The stream has left the rugged defiles, and the mountain canon.No longer clamoring among the rocks, or darkened by their shadow, it spreads itself lazily out in the wide, fertile, sunny valley.There is no such sternness in our creeds, nor stringency in our lives, as belonged to our fathers."We can now take any two points in the chart of religious faith, and find our way easily from one to the other by insensible gradations, meeting, in the transit, good citizens, most of whom are going to heaven, and none of whom are predestined, in our thoughts of them, to eternal damnation.Our clergy go to an agnostic, like John Fiske, to catch a word of encouragement concerning the being of God and a future life ; or to John Morley, or toJohnStuartMill, for suggestions in philanthropy and the progress of the race.Nor do they make this pilgrimage in vain.Yet our Berkshire Historical and Scientific Society.secrets so momentous, jet so often unintelligible; so gross, yet so supersensuous.While it is high time that the vigorous religious conception of life of which Edwards gave so marvelous and realistic a pre- sentation should pass away forever, yet the world has most of all been blest by men who have been able to trample it under foot, in this relentless way, when it has risen as an obstacle to the invisible things of the spirit.If the images any of us make in clay seem lifeless and absurd, break them with a hammer, but forget not that a divine beauty has often been fashioned of this same material.Phases of inspiration greatly alter, but inspiration remains the one divine thing forever.There was nothing harsh or unlovely in the character and address of President Edwards.He administered the terrible system he had espoused with the tenderness of unreserved sin- cerity.Possessed of a quiet and commanding presence, he spoke in a fearfully intelligible way of the facts as he conceived them.He gave his own version of the divine mind-one to which he had reconciled himself in fierce conflict-unwavering and unsparing presentation. His biographer, in the earlyAmerican edition of his works, says that his sermons were not usually long.Things are relative in this world.The assertion can only mean for us, with our short sips of insipid flavors, that compared with his brethren in the ministry, he did not improve the abundant gifts that were in him at unusual length.His published sermons, in the edition referred to, average twenty- nine compact pages, and would require, in delivery, not less than an hour and a half.The first of them, Justification by Faith, might well have occupied five hours.The Puritans were a tedious people to everybody but themselves, and thus rare power is signally disclosed in the courageous way in which they bore up under their own abundant fervor.In looking over the thirty-five printed discourses, one is impressed with the severe and sombre class of subjects chosen.The light that rests on them is rarely sunshine ; it is often as lurid as a confla- gration in the night-time.These are some of the titles in the first volume: The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sin- ners; The FuturePunishmentoftheWickedUnavoidableandHow might all the rest of the congregation lift up a lamentable and bitter cry over him!But alas!Instead of one, how many is it likely will remember this discourse, in hell?And it would be a wonder, if some that are now present, should not be in hell in a very short time, before this year is out.And it would be no wonder if some persons, that now sit here in some seats of this meeting-house in health, and quiet and secure, should be there before to-morrow morniDg."No violence of gesture, no resonance of voice, could add anything to words such as these, cold, clear, cruel, cutting their way like a knife

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