a not inconsiderable influence upon Mr. Tennent's religious choice. Of his learning there seems to have been no more question than of his piety and integrity, of both of which abundant testimony remains. The Hon. Elias Boudinot, who was intimately acquainted with him, says that he was so skilled in the Latin language that he could converse in it with as much facility as in his vernacular tongue, and that he was proficient in other ancient languages. The only contemporary picture of the Log College that comes down to us is from the pen of the evangelist Whitefield, who visited Mr. Tennent at Neshaminy in 1739 and preached to a congregation of three thousand persons in the meeting-house yard. In his own quaint lan- . guage he thus speaks of the Tennents and the school: "His wife to me seemed like Elizabeth, and he like Zachary; both, as far as I can learn, walk in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. The place wherein the young men study now is in contempt called the College. It is a log house, about twenty feet long, and near as many broad; and to me it seemed to resemble the school of the old prophets, for their habitations were mean; and that they sought not great things for themselves is plain from those passages of Scripture, wherein we are told that each of them took a beam to build them a house; and that at the feast of the sons of the prophets, one of them put on the pot, whilst the others went to fetch some herbs out of the field. All that we can say of most of our universities is, they are glorious without. From this despised place, seven or eight worthy ministers of Jesus have lately been sent forth." In addition to the Tennents, of whom Mr. Whitefield speaks as "four gracious sons," each one of whom deserves particular mention, there were educated in the Log College such eminent divines as the Blairs, Samuel Finley, Charles Beatty, William Robinson, John Rowland, and many more. Gilbert Tennent, the eldest of the sons, was entirely instructed by his father, and so well that he passed a creditable examination before the Presbytery of Philadelphia, after which it is probable that he spent some months in assisting his father in his pedagogical duties in the College before he accepted a call to the church at New Brunswick. It is evident that he was a man of great natural gifts and of strong character. Mr. Whitefield calls him a son of thunder, and says of his preaching, "Never before heard I such a searching sermon. He went to the bottom indeed, and did not daub with untempered mortar." From his own letters and from contemporaneous accounts we gather that the Rev. Gilbert possessed in large measure the zealous and uncompromising spirit of the early Reformers. Counting it his mission to bring not peace, but a sword, he stirred up dissensions in the Church, for which he was severely condemned by some of his brother ministers. The general consensus of opinion seems to be that, if overbearing and intolerant, he was filled with a burning zeal for what he believed to be the truth, and if willing to sacrifice others to its propagation he counted not his own life a too great offering to the same good cause. Mr. Tennent's younger son, William, who studied in the Log College, and later with his brother Gilbert at New Brunswick, while under the latter's roof was the subject of a most remarkable experience, of which no less an authority than Dr. Archibald Alexander, of Princeton, gives us a graphic description. Although well known in the past century, Mr. Tennent's experiences during a prolonged trance or cataleptic seizure may be new to many readers of to-day. While applying himself closely to his studies, preparatory to his examination by the Presbytery, young Mr. Tennent's health became so delicate that his life was despaired of. He was attended by a physician who was attached to him by the warmest feelings of friendship. One morning, while conversing with his brother in Latin on the state of his soul, which troubled him greatly, he fainted and died away. After the usual time he was laid out on a board, according to the common practice of the country, and the neighborhood was invited to attend his funeral on the next day. In the evening his physician and friend returned from a ride in the country, and was afflicted beyond measure at the news of his death. He could not be persuaded that it was really so, and on being told that one of the persons who assisted in laying out the body had thought he had observed a little tremor of the flesh under the arm, he endeavored to ascertain the fact, and affirmed that he felt an unusual warmth under the arm and at the heart. He had the body restored to a warm bed, and insisted that those who had been invited to attend the funeral should be requested not to attend. To these proceedings Gilbert Tennent seriously objected, the eyes being sunk, the lips discolored, and the whole body cold and stiff. Love and friendship, however, persevered, and all possible means were used to discover symptoms of returning life. Three days passed without success, and the neighboring friends once more assembled to attend the funeral of William Tennent. His friend and physician, who had never quitted him, night or day, still begged for an hour's reprieve, and while bending over him noticed that the tongue was much swollen and threatened to crack. While endeavoring to soften it with some emollient ointment put upon a feather, Gilbert Tennent entered the room, and, mistaking what the doctor was doing for an attempt to feed his brother, manifested some resentment, and exclaimed, "It is shameful to be feeding a lifeless corpse !" At this moment, to the astonishment of all present, the corpse asserted itself by giving a deep groan, after which it sunk again into apparent death. This sign of vitality of course put an end to all thoughts of a funeral, and in a short time other indications of life appeared. Mr. Tennent continued in feeble health for some months, and one day it transpired that he had lost all recollection of his previous life and studies. The once brilliant scholar was taught to read like a little child, and his brother began to instruct him in the rudiments of the Latin language. One day, as he was reciting a lesson in Cornelius Nepos, he suddenly started, clapped his hand to his head, as if something had hurt him, and made a pause. When his brother asked him what was the matter, he replied that he felt a sudden shock in his head, and that then it seemed as if he had read that book before. By degrees his memory of past events was restored, and he found himself able to read and speak the Latin as fluently as before his illness. This event made a great stir at the time of its occurrence, and, although William Tennent was not then residing in his father's house, the story of his strange experience is inseparably connected with the history and traditions of Hartsville, as is an anecdote related by Dr. Franklin in his autobiography of one of its ministers, the Rev. Charles Beatty. Dr. Beatty was acting as chaplain to the army of five hundred men led by Franklin to defend the frontier against the French and Indians after the burning of the Moravian mission at Gnadenhütten, Penn. "Dr. Beatty complained to me," says Franklin, "that the men did not generally attend his prayers and exhortations. When they were enlisted, they were promised, besides hay and provisions, a gill of rum a day, which was punctually served out to them, half in the morning, and the other half in the evening; and I observed they were as punctual in attending to receive it; upon which I said to Mr. Beatty, 'It is perhaps below the dignity of your profession to act as steward of the rum, but if you were to deal it out, and only just after prayers, you would have them all about you."" The shrewd suggestion was adopted by Dr. Beatty, and the philosophic Franklin adds, "Never were prayers more generally and more punctually attended; so that I thought this method preferable to the punishment inflicted by some military laws for non-attendance on divine service." We may well say with the Northern bard, in reflecting on this anecdote, Old times are changed, old manners gone, when a Presbyterian minister felt it to be not against his conscience to measure out rum to his flock; but, as each one received but half a gill at a time, may not the reverend gentleman have considered that, in a certain sense, he was assisting a temperance movement? The town of Hartsville, once Neshaminy, and now bearing the name of Colonel William Hart, who owned large tracts of land hereabouts, is also on the York Road; but the church over which Mr. Tennent presided is situated on the Bristol Road, a short distance north of the town. The present church was built in 1745; but, having been twice renovated, its modern appearance may disappoint the antiquarian visitor, who will, however, find ample compensation if he step across the road to the old cemetery, where the church of 1726 stood, where rest the ashes of the founder of the Log College, and within whose enclosure are buried many of the early settlers of Bucks County, as the names of Hart, Kerr or Carr, Jamison, Darrah, Prior, Ramsey, Mearns, and Long, engraved on the moss-grown tombstones, testify. Although his remains do not rest in the old graveyard, but in Bardstown, Kentucky, along these road-sides and by the banks of the Neshaminy John Fitch, the inventor, walked and talked and thought out his great problems. He tells us in his autobiography, which is dedicated to his friend and patron the Rev. Nathaniel Irwin, that one Sunday, after listening to one of his sermons in the old church, and while watching Mr. Sinton and his wife drive along rapidly in their "chaise," he conceived the idea of vehicles being propelled by steam, from which he finally evolved the theory that a steam-engine might be invented for moving carriages and boats. As if to connect the Hartsville of the past not only with the world of science and invention of to-day, but also with the nation's political life in the last decade, it transpires that in the Neshaminy VOL. XLIV.-28 graveyard rest the remains of Simpsons, ancestors of General Grant, and of Scotts, not a few, from whom the wife of the present Chief Executive of the United States is descended. If President Harrison and his wife visit Hartsville during the September celebration, drawn thither by their interest in Presbyterianism and by memories of those who sleep in the old cemetery, their children's progenitors, they will find still other landmarks, than those connected with the church, clustering about this quaint little village. For on the York Road, over which all who visit the Log College must pass, Benjamin Franklin, while serving as Deputy-Postmaster for the Colonies, drove back and forth between New York and Philadelphia, superintending the postal service of the country, not unfrequently carrying the mail-bag himself in his old-fashioned chaise, if we may judge by his ordinary methods of conducting business. On the same road, a half-mile north of the town, is a house in excellent preservation, in which General Washington spent two weeks, with his army encamped on these hill-sides, before he marched through Philadelphia to meet the British on the field of Brandywine. It was here also that the young Marquis de Lafayette, filled with an ardent enthusiasm for liberty, laid at the feet of the Commander-in-Chief the sword that had already been accepted by Congress. Down this road the army passed, beside the flowing stream, through the little village, and on through the rolling country whose broad and fertile fields proclaimed Bucks County a fitter land for the trade of the farmer than for that of the soldier. And so, to commemorate the centenary of no battle-field, however glorious, will men and women congregate here in September days, but to celebrate with song and speech the victories of peace and righteousness. Anne H. Wharton. THE WORLD KNOWS BEST. Laugh, and the world laughs with you; HAT would you? The world cannot borrow Old earth has its own heart-sorrow; It needs your smiles, not your tears. O moaner, your moan would grow deeper― Should the world turn to weep with the weeper, Henry Collins. THE AN ANSWER TO DR. BONWILL. HE novel points made by Dr. Bonwill in his article against evolution in the August Lippincott's certainly call for some comment from the advocates of evolution, though the task is none too easy a one, from the lack of anything very tangible to combat. Possibly the book promised by the author may present facts and arguments worthy the best weapons of the reviewer, but a long list of claims unsupported by evidence has no sounder standing in the court of science than it would have in a court of law. Dr. Bonwill, it is true, makes certain assertions, some of them, indeed, quite remarkable assertions, and with these alone criticism can deal. Of these assertions, that on which he rests with all the emphasis of italics, and which forms the corner-stone of his series of claims, is "that the lower jaw of man is an equilateral triangle, and that all races have it, and that it has so existed from the advent of the first man." Even should we grant that all this was well-proved fact, we cannot perceive its relevancy, or how evolution must suffer in consequence. That it is fact in the case of all men may very safely be denied. Granting that an equilateral triangle may be drawn in the manner he proposes within regularly-shaped jaws, what are we to do with the case of retreating jaws, and what with prognathous jaws? As regards the jaw of the first man, it may safely be asked whence Dr. Bonwill got his precise information. Anthropologists would be very glad to see the jaw from which he made his measurements. That human jaws are by no means all of the same exact shape must be admitted, and the variations which they undoubtedly display are all that the Darwinists ask for. Darwin's claim is that from such slight variations great variations have gradually arisen, and that through a long accumulation of minute changes new species of animals have emerged from older species. The hypothesis of Dr. Bonwill is founded on the assumed perfection of the equilateral triangle, the hexagon, and the circle. In what respect perfect? In what conceivable sense is a hexagon more perfect than an octagon or a square, or an equilateral than a right-angled triangle? That any one geometrical figure is particularly "perfect," and can claim superiority in the order of nature on that account, may be "recognized" by Dr. Bonwill, but has certainly never been recognized by mathematicians. Our theorist goes on to claim that as we have no evidence that there is such a thing as a straight line in nature," therefore "nature must abhor a straight line," and must have provided at least three worlds in the beginning for fear a straight line of motion might, at least temporarily, and in disregard of the dictum of nature and Dr. Bonwill, have existed, or rather, as he expresses it, "in order to counterbalance each other and make the first law of motion a fact." How the law that a body in motion will move forever in a straight line unless deflected by the action of surrounding bodies is proved to be a fact by taking from it all opportunity of being demonstrated, is not stated by the writer; nor does he tell us what serious disaster to nature would have occurred if by any chance a body had moved in a straight line for a brief period, or if less than three spheres had for a time existed. If his argument that nature abhors a straight line be well founded, what is to become of our equilateral triangle, which is entirely compounded of straight |