ESSAYS, MORAL AND RELIGIOUS. BY E. THOMSON, D. D., LL. D. EDITED BY REV. D. W. CLARK, D. D. Cincinnati: PUBLISHED BY L. SWORMSTEDT & A. POE, FOR THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, AT THE WESTERN BOOK CONCERN, R. P. THOMPSON, PRINTER. 1856. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, BY SWORMSTEDT & POE, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. JAN 16 1941 сс T38 Preface. OME time since a valued friend of the author Rev. Dr. Roe, a superannuated preacher of the Cincinnati conference-solicited permission to collect some essays and other papers that had appeared over my signature in different periodicals, or in other forms, within the last eighteen or twenty years, and publish them in a volume. An appeal to one's friendship it is difficult to resist; and, reluctant as I was that my articles should appear in book form, I yielded, on condition that I should revise and arrange them before they were sent to the press. Accordingly the Doctor issued a volume of "Essays, Educational and Religious," which, fortunately, met with an encouraging sale. Soon after he applied for the series of Letters which I had written for the Western Christian Advocate during my recent visit to Europe, with a view to their publication in a book; and these also were granted, in the hope that he might find them as sala 3 ble as the former volume, to the profits of both which he was heartily welcome. Just as they were prepared for the press, the Doctor, with my full consent-by no means necessary— sold his interest in both books to Messrs. Swormstedt & Poe, Cincinnati. Thereupon these enterprising Publishers expressed a wish that I should add other volumes to them, and generously offered me compensation for whatever additional matter I might furnish. The consideration, however, which chiefly moved me to comply with this request, was the desire to improve the arrangement which had previously been adopted. Upon consultation, it was agreed that the second part of the volume published by Dr. Roe, entitled "Religious Essays," should be omitted, and its place supplied by articles pertaining to education, so as to make the first volume homogeneous; that the Letters from Europe should be published in a separate volume; that a third volume should consist of Biographical and Incidental Sketches; and that a fourth should be made up in part of the matter comprising the second portion of the volume which appeared under Dr. Roe's direction, and in part of other essays of a kindred nature. The last is the volume that we here introduce. The additional matter, the writer frankly acknowledges, was not prepared for the occasion, but taken rather at random from files of discourses, such as he is accustomed to write every week for the benefit of the youth under his care. Perhaps it would have been better to have selected essays all bearing upon some one topic-such as the Evidences of Revelation, or Theoretical or Practical Ethics-but to this there were objections. We have already a great many systematic works on such subjects, and, moreover, such unity would not accord with the variety of the previously-printed pages with which the new matter was to be combined. Some of these productions bear upon their face the evidence that they were called forth by particular public events; it is hoped they will be none the less interesting on that account. Should the reader think they were written with a hurried pen, he would not be wrong; should he complain of this, he would have the sympathies of the author. They should, indeed, have been carefully rewritten before they met the public eye; but such are the writer's engagements, that the only question with him was whether they should go to press in their present form or not at all. He preferred the latter alternative till he was overpersuaded by his friends, and by the circumstances in which they had placed him. As the essays are more in the style of verbal address than they would be if rewritten, they will, |