143 PASTORAL THEOLOGY; OR, THE THEORY OF THE EVANGELICAL MINISTRY. BY A. VINET. TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY THOMAS H. SKINNER, D.D., PROFESSOR OF PASTORAL THEOLOGY IN THE UNION THEOLOGICAL WITH NOTES, AND AN ADDITIONAL CHAPTER, BY THE TRANSLator. “Εγώ εἰμι ὁ ποιμήν ο καλός.” SECOND EDITION. NEW YORK: IVISON & PHINNEY, 178 FULTON STREET; BV4010 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty three, by HARPER & BROTHERS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York. еса PREFACE BY THE TRANSLATOR. We began to read this work for our own advantage; but soon received an impression of its excellence, which led us to wish that it might have the free circulation which a faithful translation and an American edition would secure to it. A further acquaintance with it deepened this impression, until at length this translation became almost a natural result. The work of translation is generally thought to be irksome; but, in the present case, the communion which it has occasioned with the beautiful, earnest, and holy spirit of the author, has changed labor into the highest pleasure. The minute attention which must be given to every sentence and word in translating has this advantage, that it obliges us to perceive every delicate shade of thought and feeling which the author expresses; and as there have been very few as pure, as discriminating, as imaginative, as spiritual minds as that of M. Vinet, it could not but be that in a treatise on a subject which he had so thoroughly studied, and which was so congenial to his character and temperament, there should be found a rich, varied, and full exhibition of sentiment and feeling: Adding to this the intrinsic excellence of the subject itself, PASTORAL THEOLOGY, whose sphere is that which was filled by the Chief Shepherd and Bishop of souls, it afforded a fund of enjoyment and profit, to which it was truly an unusual privilege to have such familiar and intimate access. M. Vinet, among the gifted men of his times, was in the first rank. The editor of his "Études sur Blaise Pascal," we think, with no more than justice, classes him, in the most important respects, with that great man. "The general direction of his labors, the nature of his mind and temperament, gave him ready access to this noble and astonishing genius. A penetrating analysis of the human soul, a strong attachment of heart to truth and an imperious demand for evidence, a natural melancholy, an inclination to serious irony, a strict and sometimes transcendent dialectic, passion in reason, a comprehensive and powerful imagination—these traits are common to the author of Discours sur quelques Sujets Religieux and the author of the Pensées. We may say, making due allowance for circumstances, that Pascal and Vinet resembled each other. Pascal, moreover, inspired the Protestant apologist of the nineteenth century, and served as his model. If natural affinity, sympathy, and interest are of any aid to the understanding, M. Vinet as suredly ought to comprehend Pascal. It was this, perhaps, which led an eminent critic, M. Sainte-Beuve, to say: 'If we should collect into one small volume the articles of M. Vinet on Pascal, we should have, I think, the most exact results to which we can arrive on this great controversy.'"* It was The work before us is worthy of its author. not prepared for the press by M. Vinet, but the subject had received his closest attention, protracted through a series of years; and though it is substantially composed of notes, which served as a basis of instruction in the Academy of Lausanne, yet these notes were carefully prepared by the author, and, of course, embodied his best and strongest thoughts. M. Vinet's own manuscripts were sometimes complemented from the notebooks of his pupils; but these insertions, which, in the French publication, are included in brackets, and which, in a volume of four hundred pages, amount to about thirty, have the full force and vigor of the author's mind, and are quite equal in excellence to the other parts of his work. The slight imperfections of form, arising from the causes indicated by the French editors, do not impair the value of this book: After removing the brackets, as we have done in this translation, they will probably not be observed. ex The work is distinguished by the following great cellences by comprehensiveness and fullness of plan, * Etudes sur Blaise Pascal, par A. VINET, p. vii. |