\ 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 University of California. 
 
 GIKT 03^ 
 
 Mrs. SARAH P. WALS WORTH. 
 
 Received October, i8g4. 
 iAccessionsNo.O$^l I Q . Class No. . ^ 
 
 cyh. y. 
 
V; : -^..l^^^rT?;; -r^Wm^^^?^^'^^^ 
 

Tramps, yi 
 
 itchers and 
 
 I rumpetJ 
 
 LECTURES 
 
 ON THE 
 
 VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY ANECDOTES, BIOGRAPHICAL, 
 
 HISTORICAL, AND ELUCIDATORY, OF EVERY ORDER OF PULPIT 
 
 ELOQUENCE, FROM THE GREAT PREACHERS OF ALL AGES. 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWIN PAXTON HOOD, 
 
 IDNISTER OF QUEEN-SQUA-KE CUArEL, BRIGHTON. AUTHOR OF " WORDSWORTH I 
 AN JESTUETIC BIOaRAPHY," " DA31K SAYINGS ON A IIARr," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 M. W, DoDD, No. 506 Broadway, 
 1869. 
 

 In Press for tjnmediate Publication, 
 
 UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME, 
 
 Lamps^ Pitchers and Trumpets, 
 
 Treating of the Pulpit of our own age and times 
 and discussing the Sermons and Characteristics of 
 
 Robertson, Pusey, Manning, Newman, 
 Spurgeon, the Abbe Lacordiare, 
 
 and many others. 
 
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON, 
 
 My Dear Fmend, 
 
 It is very natural that I should inscribe this volume 
 to you, as it is composed of Lectures mostly delivered to 
 the Students of your Pastor's College ; and you, who heard 
 most of them, expressed yourself most kindly about them. 
 I will not deny myself this pleasure, although I have de- 
 voted a paper,* not delivered as a Lecture, to yourself in 
 the volume. I will only say these Lectures do not aim to 
 be a Course of Lectures on Homiletics, I may possibly at- 
 tempt this more ambitious task some day. Please to take 
 this volume as an affectionate and reverent acknowledg- 
 ment of that extraordinary work you have been called 
 upon to perform. With earnest desires for your long- 
 continued life and usefulness, 
 
 I am, my Dear Friend, 
 
 Heartily yours, 
 
 EDWIN PAXTON HOOD. 
 
 * Will be found in Lamps, Pitchers, and Trumpets, Second Series. 
 
Krjpv^ov rhv Xoyov, 
 
 ** Jfijeach iho ^0^4/^ — Tim. iv. 2. 
 
 It were to be wished the flaws were fewer 
 
 In the earthen vessels holding treasure. 
 
 Which lies as safe as in a golden ewer. 
 
 But the main thing is — Does it hold good measure ? 
 
 Heaven soon sets right all other matter. 
 
 Robert Browning. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 Page 
 LAMPS, PITCHEKS, AND TRUMPETS - - 7 
 
 LECTURE IL 
 
 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER - - - 40 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 LAMPS, PITCHERS, AND TRUMPETS IN THE JEWISH CHURCH - 75 
 
 pulpit |btonoig[rap]^s.— I. the apostolic age: paul - 91 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 lamps, pitchers, and trumpets in the early church - 103 
 Pulpit ;|Eonoig[ra|)j[)j5. — il the early church — chrysostom- 113 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 medieval and post-medieval preachers - - 138 
 
 ^ulpft ifEoTtojjrapj^jB. — iii. st. Bernard: the medieval 
 
 preacher - - - . - 163 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE GREAT PREACHERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHT- 
 EENTH CENTURIES - - - . 196 
 
 ^^ulpit iHlonofirap^jEf. — iv. puritan adams - - 220 
 
VI 
 
 Contents. 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 WIT, HUMOR, AND COARSENESS IN THE PULPIT - - 249 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 THE USE AND ABUSE OF IMAGINATION AND ILLUSTRATION - 295 
 
 pulpit l^lonoijrap^js;.— V. Christmas evans - - 339 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 
 ON THE FORMATION OF STYLE FOR PULPIT COMPOSITION, ETC. 375 
 
>. 
 
 o:^- 
 
 Lamps, Pitchers, and Trumpets. 
 
 HAVE taken a text from the wonderful stoiy of 
 that great ancient judge and warrior, Gideon. 
 Do you not remember, when Gideon divided 
 his three hundred men into three companies, 
 he put a trumpet in every man's right hand and a pitcher 
 in the other, and a lamp within the pitcher ? 
 
 And he said unto them, Look on me, and do likewise : and, 
 behold, when I come to the outside of the camp, it shall be that, 
 as I do, so shall ye do. Whe7i I blow with a trumpet, blow yc 
 with your trumpets and exclaim. The Sword of the Lord and of 
 Gideon. So Gideon, and the hundred men that were with him, 
 came unto the outside of the camp in the beginning of the mid- 
 dle watch ; and they had but newly set the watch : and they 
 blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers that were in their 
 hands. And the three companies blew the trumpets, and brake 
 the pitchers, and held the lamps in their left hands, and the 
 trumpets in their right hands to blow withal : and they cried. 
 The sword of the Lord and of Gideon. And they stood every 
 man in his place round about the camp : and all the host ran, 
 and cried, and fled. And the three hundred blew the trumpets, 
 and the Lokd set every man's sword against his fellow, even 
 throughout all the host. 
 
 The history seems to me to be a parable of the " foolish- 
 ness of preaching ;" an illustration of the genius and the 
 success of the pulpit — ^its method and its power. There- 
 
 (7) 
 
8 Lamps^ Pitchers^ and Trmrvpets. 
 
 fore, said the Apostle, " We have this treasure in earthen 
 vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, 
 and not of us." I have given to this lecture this title, be- 
 cause words are lamps, are pitchers, and are trumpets. 
 Preaching to the intellect — to the intelHgence — is as a 
 lamp — it sheds light over truths, over processes of argu- 
 ment, over means of conviction ; preaching to the con- 
 science is as a trumpet — it calls up the soul from slumber, 
 it makes it restless and unquiet ; preaching to the ex- 
 perience is as a pitcher — it bears refreshment, it cools 
 and it calms the fever of the spirit, and it consoles and 
 comforts the heart. Ordinarily, the preacher should com- 
 bine all these quahties ; but there are those whose faculties 
 express themselves in one or the other of them ; and there- 
 fore the image justifies a generalisation of the life of the 
 preacher beneath its distinctive sign. 
 
 Words, with a soul behind or within them, are the most 
 blessed and dehghtful means of intercourse. The age in 
 which we live beholds a most singular and perverse return 
 to symbols and symbohsm ; but these can never be to the 
 mind what speech is, for there can be no reason without 
 speech ; even as also it is true there can be no speech with- 
 out reason ; * and symbols themselves are only vague and 
 pale conceptions of reasons within the mind, which must 
 be put into articulate words to become thoughts, and even 
 subjective truths. Language itself partakes of the infinite 
 nature of the human mind, for " it transcends in depth the 
 most conscious productions of it It is with language, as 
 with all organised beings, we imagine they spring into 
 being blindly, and yet we cannot deny the intentional wis- 
 dom in the formation of every one of them." f 
 
 Now, this being the case, he whose profession it is to use 
 language for holy and sacramental purposes, should surely 
 
 * Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, pp. 69-73. 
 t Schilling, quoted by Muller. 
 
The Artist Faculty in Preaching. g 
 
 attempt to use it with all due consideration of these, its 
 awful depths and powers ; and while we find, m our age, 
 so large an apostasy of mind — we might suppose to be cul- 
 tured, informed, and even educated — to the pictorial resem- 
 blances of the childhood of men, and societies, and na,tions, 
 we should attempt to hail spirits back, and to obtain do- 
 minion over them, by an earnest dealing with the rights, 
 and obligations, and privileges, and hopes involved in hu- 
 man speech. We shall see more distinctly, in the course 
 of the following remarks, that the master of speech in the 
 pulpit may be an artist ; nay, that very much of his suc- 
 cess, under God's influence, wiU depend upon his being 
 one. All preparation, all pulpit method, in fact, supposes 
 this. A preacher may be a born preacher, and have a pos- 
 session of all the faculties necessary for his work, and he 
 still will need the care, the knowledge, the study, and the 
 reverence of the artist to give to him the human vehicle 
 through which he may speak. Some will object to this 
 statement. Is Tennyson less a poet because he is a subtle 
 artist also ? Is the Christian less a Christian, the preacher 
 less a preacher, because, before he dehvers his words to the 
 thousand people who may hear him, he sits down to ar- 
 range his arguments — in some instances, even his words — 
 to furnish his mind with illustrations, to reject some which 
 present themselves as unfit to the subject, or unsuitable to 
 time or place ? And all this belongs to the exercise of the 
 artist faculty ; the prudence and wisdom which genius, in- 
 formed by hohness, exercises upon its own works ; and, 
 surely, if the highest powers need this exercise, it savors 
 only of the conceit usually associated with uiferior powers, 
 to disdain it. 
 
 But my object in this lecture is rather to be anecdotal ; 
 to present some illustrations of the variety of pulpit ear- 
 nestness and excellence, some which may furnish examples 
 of heroism which can scarcely be regarded as models of 
 1* 
 
lO 
 
 Lamfps^ Pitchers^ and Trumpets. 
 
 method ; and some giving motive from si)irituality of char- 
 acter, where we would scarcely permit much homage or 
 approbation to the intellect. 
 
 Amazing is the power of sound ; it searches the soul 
 more than vision ; it vibrates and reverberates — sound 
 more immediately and more deeply penetrates. Nothing 
 presented to the eye tingles along the blood like things pre- 
 sented to the ear. Sound thrills in a wood at night, in 
 loneliness, and darkness ; the fall of leaves, the stir of 
 creatures in the grass, and a thousand nameless sounds, 
 stu' the feeling of mystic awe. Sight is finite ; the imagina- 
 tion plays more freely among sounds — the forms are un- 
 shaped — the powers are more abiding. Memory — atten- 
 tion — seems to take a deeper hold upon the things pre- 
 sented in sound than in sight. And hence, the preacher is 
 a trumpet ; the birth of the Society of Friends was in this 
 wise : George Fox was one of the most stirring trumpets 
 of the Church ; in the power he possessed by his holy 
 earnestness to rouse men he shows in an eminent manner 
 what " the voice of one crying in the wilderness " may be. 
 And "Whitefield was such a trumpet. Men heard and 
 trembled. A mysterious fearfulness shook the souls of 
 listeners ; it must have been as when the prophet stood 
 on the mount, and the Lord passed by in the wind, and 
 the earthquake, and the fii-e, and broke in pieces the rocks ; 
 they were the announcements of danger, and wreck, and 
 death. Such men, deep as their own peace was, had Httlo 
 to do with the still small voice ; to set on fire the forests 
 and to shake the mountains seemed their task ; Httle had 
 they to do with the clear, calm hght of the lamp, or the 
 refreshment of the pitcher. This was not altogether so 
 new as it may seem, I shall have many instances to cite 
 from the friars of the Middle Ages and preachers of other 
 times illustrating this ; and is it useless ? Has it been use- 
 less — this power of sound — to storm, and startle, and take 
 
The Surprise Power in Preacliing, \\ 
 
 captive the soul ? Useless, indeed, unless results are noted, 
 and the soul awakened is met afterwards, and brought 
 into the order and the health of the Christian life ; and, 
 perhaps, the Church of Eome and the Methodist Chuixhes 
 have alone known how to use and make useful seasons of 
 great religious excitement. 
 
 There is great danger, in the work of preaching, of 
 yielding to the demand for sensation and astonishment ; 
 and one good man, whose field of labor has very natur- 
 ally led him to adopt this method, has T\Titten a book, in 
 which what he calls " the surprise power," seems to be the 
 most important of all his ways and means of pulpit suc- 
 cess.* It cannot be doubted that Mr. Taylor has been 
 successful, and his work, The Model Preacher,'\ does con- 
 tain hints which may be read, and even followed with 
 advantage : but there are preachers who never enter the 
 pulpit without the determination to produce a sensation ; 
 they must arrest attention, and they are careless how, so 
 long as the attention is arrested ; still the work of the 
 preacher involves more than the mere forcible arrest of 
 the mind of the hearer ; it must be held, and legitimately 
 held ; and it must be not only aroused, it must be en- 
 lightened, and it must be informed. There are trumpets 
 — they startle and surprise, indeed ; but even the trumpet 
 has another purpose ; it marshals into order, it becomes 
 motive, beneath its inspiring strains men fall into ranks 
 and march, and it becomes not merely a blast — a breath — 
 its tones fati into the harmonies and melodies of other in- 
 struments, or we cannot long endure its shrill screams. 
 And if men could but believe that we are awakened as 
 surely by the gleam of a hght upon oui* eyes, as by a 
 
 * Seven Years Street Preacliing in California. By Rev. William 
 Taylor. 
 
 f The Model Preacher ; a Series of Letters on the Best Mode of 
 Preaching the Gospel. Ibid. 
 
12 Lamps^ Pitchers^ and Trumpets. 
 
 storm of noises in our ears — if the bright, mild radiance 
 of the lamp could but do its work, I would rather this 
 than the loud uproar ; but most prefer to receive even 
 theu' light as heat, though we know that these are but dif- 
 ferent modes of the same natural fact ; and vibration and 
 radiation are one — radiation is silent vibration. There is 
 a different speed of vibration ; in the lower form of heat — 
 the rush of the red flame — the radiation is palpable ; but, 
 as the heat vanishes, the red brightens — ^passes to orange 
 — higher still to green, to blue, to violet, to the azure sky, 
 to the deep green of the sea. It is in the quiet radiation 
 we pass to the more beautiful and essential life of things. 
 It is well remarked, that it is because the sky is blue that 
 our earth is not a barren, homeless wilderness, where 
 heat consumes the day and cold congeals the night. This 
 gives to us the atmosphere, absorbing and modifying the 
 solar rays ; therefore, plants grow and bloom, and men in 
 happiness breathe. All that radiation is silent vibration ; 
 and, if I were you, I would aim rather to radiate than to 
 vibrate — rather to enhghten and to refresh, than to as- 
 tonish. Aim not to be — what you see may be literally 
 true — a noisy, a glaring color, but a chaste, beautiful, and 
 effective one. I know, as I have said, that often the most 
 sonorous and stirring preacher sheds forth a beautiful il- 
 lustrative gleam. It was so with that extraordinary York- 
 shire orator, Wnj.L\M Dawson. It has been well said, his 
 eloquence, on any other thought than his own, would 
 have seemed fantastic ; but he often made his illustra- 
 tions resplendently beautiful. Thus, one says of him, who 
 heard him preach from the text, " Thou hast crowned me 
 with loving-kindness and tender mercies," "his imagina- 
 tion took fire at the metaphor, and presented before him 
 a regal coronet, studded with numerous gems, having a 
 centre-stone of surpassing magnitude, brilliancy, and value ; 
 consentaneously this became the crown of * loving-kind- 
 
William Dawson and Richard Watson, 1 3 
 
 ness and tender mercies ;' the countless brilliants repre- 
 sented the blessings of Providence and grace ; and the 
 centre-stone the priceless blessings of salvation. To ex- 
 press this as he wished was more difficult than to conceive 
 it, and several feeble sentences were uttered before the 
 crown was shown to the people ; but when, at length, it 
 was exhibited in all its radiant glory, with its centre gem 
 of pm-est lustre, the deep crimson hue of which was caught 
 up and reflected in a thousand lights by the precious 
 stones which clustered around it, the saints shouted aloud 
 for joy."* But Dawson was a trumpet ; the effects he 
 produced when he spoke were amazing ; men could not 
 contain themselves ; feehngs were wrought upon and ex- 
 cited. He was a plain farmer, and had received only the 
 most ordinary education ; but there was a bold, strong, 
 adventurous imagination in all he said, which, while it 
 enabled his mind to. walk steadily in the most difficult 
 paths, and saved him usually from coarseness, vulgarity, 
 and profanity, bore his audiences along with him upward, 
 and compelled them intensely to realize his conceptions 
 and his descriptions. 
 
 On the contrary, the great Kichard Watson, a minister 
 of the same denomination, and incomparably the greatest 
 man that denomination has produced, was a lamp. Kobert 
 Hall said of him : " He soars into regions of thought, 
 where no genius but his own can penetrate." TaU, calm, 
 graceful, timid, yet erect, his eloquence contradicted, it 
 has been said truly, the maxim attributed to Demosthenes. 
 He had no action, and all his utterances seemed simply 
 an emanation of soul ; and vast thought, severe taste, and 
 solemn dignity characterized aU his sermons. 
 
 Or, reverting to other times, I think of Lancelot 
 Andrewes, the good old bishop, as a pitcher. His strange 
 Latin conundrums and quiddities, ever and anon occurring, 
 * West, Sketches of Weslcyan Preachers. 
 
1 4 Lamps J Pitchers^ and Trumpets. 
 
 like tlie mystic lozenge-shaped qnincimcial garden of Cyrus, 
 cannot prevent my love and admiration (on this I may 
 remark again) ; and his sermons have a sententious pith 
 — a fulness of Gospel meaning in them, which I am well 
 content to travel through the conceits peculiar to his age 
 to find and to feed upon. He did not like the Pmdtans. 
 It is our happiness that we can receive and love men who 
 thought they were far apart when hving ; we make them 
 tabernacle very lovingly in the same house, on the same 
 shelf of the hbrary, in the same heart, and memory, and 
 ex]3erience. Andre wes did not exercise himseK so much 
 in thought as in adoration. A devout naiTOwness charac- 
 terizes all he writes ; perhaps, we think sometimes, there 
 is an artificiality in the setting, but the gem is beautiful ; 
 sometimes, lustrous and brilhant. The school to which 
 he belonged, and belongs, is uitense rather than ardent ; 
 the np.rrow-minded view will seldom be an ardent one. I 
 should not call Herbert ardent, nor Keble ; but the de- 
 votion is pure — perhaps the purity of incense and thuribles 
 rather than the smell of Lebanon ; theirs are comfortable 
 words ; " Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem," wS-s the 
 commission given to this order of mind. There is an 
 order of ministration which does httle or nothing to at- 
 tract or to persuade. You must be within the church to 
 be able to translate even a meaning from the voice or the 
 word ; but if you are within, full of comfort, full of refresh- 
 ment are the lich sentences. The works of Andi'ewes are 
 a perfect " aurea senteniia'' of this kind. Let me select for 
 you a few. Thus he speaks of Jonah in the whale, hken- 
 ing it to the saiut's security in the state, and hour, and 
 article of death : 
 
 There he was, but, look ! no hurt there. As safe, nay, more 
 safe there, than in the best ship of Tharsis : no flaw of weather, 
 no foul sea could trouble him there. As safe, and as safely 
 carried to land ; the ship could have done no more. So that 
 
Lancelot Andrew es. i^ 
 
 upon the matter he did but change his vehiculum (carriage), 
 shifted but from one vessel to another ; went on his way still. 
 On he went, as well — nay, better— than the ship would have 
 carried him ; went into the sliiiD, the ship carried him wrong, 
 out of his way clean to Tharsisward ; went into the whale, and 
 the whale carried him right, landed him on the next shore to 
 Nineveh whither in truth he was bound, and where his errand 
 lay. And all the while at ease, as in a cell or study, for there 
 he indited a psalm. So as, in effect, where he seemed to be in 
 most danger he was in the greatest safety. Thus can God 
 work ; and the evening and the morning were Jonah's second 
 day. 
 
 So his sermon on the kings of the East — the wise men 
 coming to Chi'ist. " Here," he said, " are three stars : 
 the star in the firmanent, the star of faith in their hearts, 
 and Christ himself, the bright and morning star." He 
 continues in the same sermon : 
 
 The Queen of the South, who was a figure of these kings of 
 the East, she came as great a journey as these ; but when she 
 came she found a king indeed — King Solomon, in all his 
 royalty ; saw a glorious king and a glorious court about him ; 
 saw him and heard him ; tried him with many hard questions ; 
 received satisfaction of them all. This was worth her coming. 
 Weigh what she found, and what these here ; as poor and 
 unlikely a birth as could be ever to prove a king, or any great 
 matter. No sight to comfort them, nor a word for which they 
 were any whit the wiser ; nothing worth their travel. Weigh 
 these together, and great odds will be found between her faith 
 and theirs. Theirs the greater far. 
 
 Surely this is very sweet and dehghtful speech. There 
 is a simple pathos in his words — £? simplicity Vv^hich makes 
 them most effective. Thus : 
 
 Good hope we now have, that He being now flesh, all flesh 
 
 may come to Him to present Him with their requests. Time 
 
 was, when they fled from Him, but aH factum carnumjam veniet 
 
 omnis caro. For since He dwelt amongst us, all may resort 
 
1 6 Lamps^ Pitchers^ and TrumiieU. 
 
 unto Him, yea, even sinners ; and of tliem it is said, Hie recijpit 
 peccatores et comedit cum eis^ — He receiveth tliem even to His 
 table. 
 
 Like refreshing springs are such words, and men want 
 to hear them. I could mingle many figures, all to de- 
 scribe the same thing, when I speak of Andrewes and his 
 order of preaching. It is true that sometimes the strange 
 allegories, in which he and Herbert were wont to speak, 
 are like a quaint spiritual confection ; but we soon feel a 
 sensation of refreshment, as of home-baked bread, or of 
 pure water-spiiQgs. These pages hold comfortable and 
 solacing words ; good bread and home-baked, though in a 
 strangely-shaped mould — ^good water, though in a pitcher 
 of strange device. 
 
 And if this is not always " the one thing needful," yet 
 is it not the needful thing for the minister " thoroughly 
 furnished"? How well has Robert Browning expressed 
 this : 
 
 Is God mocked ? Shall I dare 
 To change His tasks ? 
 
 Dispatched to a river head 
 For a simple draught of the element 
 Neglect the thing for which He sent, 
 And return with another thing instead ? 
 Saying, *' Because the water found. 
 Welling up from under ground, 
 Is mingled with the taints of earth. 
 While Thou I know dost laugh at dearth, 
 And could'st at a word convulse 
 The world with a 4eap of its river-pulse ; — 
 Therefore, I turn from the oozings muddy, 
 And bring thee a chalice I found instead : 
 See the brave veins in its breccia ruddy I 
 One would suppose that the water bled. 
 What matters the water ? A hope I have nursed. 
 That the waterless cup will quench my thirst." 
 
Robert Browning : The Vase, etc. ly 
 
 Better have knelt at the poorest stream 
 
 That trickles in pain from the straitest rift. 
 
 For the less or more is all God's gift, 
 
 Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite seam, 
 
 And here, is there water or not to drink ? 
 
 I then in ignorance and weakness, 
 
 Taking God's help, have attained to think 
 
 My heart does best to receive in meekness 
 
 This mode of worship as most to his mind, 
 
 Where earthly aids being left behind, 
 
 His All in All appears serene. 
 
 With the thinnest human veil between, 
 
 Letting the mystic lamps — the seven. 
 
 The many motions of His Spirit 
 
 Pass as they list from earth to heaven. 
 
 For the preacher's merit or demerit — 
 
 It were to be wish'd the flaws were fewer 
 
 In the earthen vessel holding treasure. 
 
 Which lies as safe in a golden ewer, 
 
 But the main thing is, does it hold good measure ? 
 
 Heaven soon sets right all other matters." * 
 
 But I intended in this lecture rather to draw attention 
 to some of those more striking characters and incidents, 
 which illustrate, w^hat I hope I may be forgiven for calling, 
 the Romance of the Pulpit ; for it has its romance, it has 
 
 * Ghnslmas Em and Easter Day, pp. 76-77. And it may not he 
 out of place to remark, that these verses, thoroughly in earnest, 
 would be read with profit, it is to he hoped, by all able to read 
 them. " The words are quick and powerful," sometimes they are 
 " sharper than a two edged sword ; " with nervousness and force 
 they sometimes cleave right through some of the modern difiiculties 
 in connection with modern believing and preaching. Modes of 
 thought, and forms of worship, are touched by a pen which is won- 
 drously hard-nibbed ; a very strong and devout mind expresses 
 apparently its own convictions, in such a tone as to give new intel- 
 lectual and emotional views to the convictions or no convictions of 
 others. 
 
1 8 Lamps, Pitchers^ and Trumpets, 
 
 its noble and wonderful men, who, in all ages, have been 
 willing to use its power and its privileges for highest and 
 holiest purposes — shining as lamps, sounding as trumpets, 
 refreshing as streams of water. The books, over which 
 the records of their achievements are spread, are many ; 
 but they have started forth prepared for witness and mar- 
 tyrdom, in every stirring age of the Ohurch. 
 
 The time of the Reformation in Europe was an age 
 when these trumpets pealed forth. "What a story is that 
 of Alexandee de la Croix ! ^ He had been a friar, but he 
 abandoned Paris, his convent, his cowl, and his monkish 
 title. He reached Geneva under the name of Alexander ; 
 welcomed and instructed by Farel, his transformation be- 
 came complete ; Christ had become to him the Sun of 
 Righteousness, and bold m confessing Him, the Genevan 
 magistracy, under the influence of the priests, condemned 
 him to death as a heretic ; but the sentence was commuted 
 for fear of the king of France, and he was simply turned 
 out of the city. On the high road, beyond the gates, he 
 stopped and preached to the people who followed him. 
 He inspired respect as deeply as he commanded homage 
 by his eloquence. Nobody could stop him, so strongly did 
 his zeal for truth inspire him to win people to the Lord. 
 He did not deceive himself, he knew what awaited him— 
 persecution, bonds, imprisonment, death ; — no matter, he 
 would preach to his countrymen ; setting out, therefore, 
 from Berne he crossed the frontier of Switzerland, and 
 entered France. Few reformers strike us as being so ab- 
 sorbed by what may be called the passion of the Cross. 
 " Oh, my Saviour," he exclaimed, " Thou hast given Thy 
 life for me, I desire to give mine for Thee." Wandering 
 
 * 1 have condensed the account of this remarkable hero of the 
 pulpit from The History of the Beformation in Europe in the Time 
 of Calvin, Vol. II. The four volumes, all as yet published, arc full 
 of these stories of the martyrs and heroes of the pulpit. 
 
The Preaching^ etc,^ of Be la Croix. 1 9 
 
 along the banks of the Bienne, the Aier, the Seille, and 
 the Saone, he entered the cottages of poor peasants, scat- 
 tering the seeds of the Gospel, and proclaiming the forgive- 
 ness of the Gospel. At Lyons, numbers heard him preach ; 
 he went from house to house ; persecution raged fiercely 
 in Lyons ; the priests sought for him but could not find 
 him ; friends hid him away ; they sought for him in one 
 part of the city, he was preaching in an upper chamber in 
 another ; they looked for him in some suburb in the north, 
 he was preaching in the south. Impelled by a magnanim- 
 ity, which would be fanaticism if it were not holy devo- 
 tion and consecration, the mysterious evangehst entered 
 the prison to console two who had been laid there ; had 
 he been discovered, the gates would have finally closed 
 upon him ; but he left the dungeon, and no man laid 
 hands on him. It was said he possessed Satanic powers, 
 and passed invisibly through the police. At last, he was 
 seized ; he had moved long about — a mysterious presence 
 —gifted with those mighty powers, eloquence and holiness. 
 After a wondrously effective unfolding of the Gospel at 
 Lyons, principally through the imprudence of some fol- 
 lowers it would seem, he was taken ; he was brought into 
 Paris loaded with chains, but the surrounding guards and 
 archers in the course of the journey had learned to treat 
 him with respect. The captain of the archers was a 
 worthy man, and as he rode beside Alexander, he ques- 
 tioned him as to the cause of his arrest. It is an amazing 
 circumstance — the captain was converted while they were 
 journeying to Paris ! As they journeyed on from village, 
 in that age of slow journeys, resting for the night in inns, 
 he used all his skill of speech ; in many places the priest 
 of the village was sent for to dispute with him, it was un- 
 availing. " Wonderful things ! " says the old chronicler, 
 " he was more useful at the ions and on the road, than 
 . ever he had been before." Entering Paris, he must have 
 
 7"Bt5 C!TVfJM 
 
20 La7np,% Pitchers^ and Trumpets. 
 
 known wliat awaited him — w^orse than death \ the monks 
 of his order, the cruel Dominicans, outraged by his heresy 
 from the most orthodox of orders, were only too anxious 
 that the last resources of the torture should be tried upon 
 him. As he refused to name accomphces, and would give 
 the names of none who, like himself, had separated from 
 the Church of Eome, he was tortured by the wedges of the 
 boot ; his left leg was crushed. The judge was amazed at 
 his patience : " It is enough," he said, " he has been tor- 
 tured too much." The executioners lifted up the martyr 
 and carried him to his dungeon, a cripple ; they brought 
 him forth again shortly after, condenmed to be burned 
 alive. It seemed as though a flash of joy lit up his fea- 
 tures. "Truly," said the spectators," he is more joyful 
 than he was before ! " The priests gathered round him 
 to perform the sacerdotal degradation. " If you utter a 
 word," said they, " you wiU have your tongue cut out." 
 He uttered not a word, only as the absurdities and myste- 
 ries went on, some severe smiles escaped him ; then they 
 dressed him in the rd)e de foly a coarse garment worn by 
 the poorer peasantry. " Oh God ! " he exclaimed, " is 
 there any greater honor than to receive the Hvery which 
 Thy Son received in the house of Herod ? " and then he 
 mounted a cart, used to carry mud or dust, and with the 
 Dominican monks proceeded to the place of execution. 
 As the cart moved slowly along, he threw out his words 
 upon the crowd by the side of the cart. " Thinking no- 
 thing of his own death," says a writer, " he scattered the 
 seeds of the Gospel" " Either recant or hold your tongue," 
 said the priest. Alexander turned round and said with 
 firmness, " I will not renounce Jesus Christ ; depart from 
 me, ye deceivers of the people." He obtained permission, 
 at the place of execution, to address some words to the 
 people ; but the words amounted to fervid and glowing 
 confessions of love to the Redeemer, and when he had 
 
A Bold French JPreaeher, 2 1 
 
 done, he said to the executioner, " Proceed." The officers 
 of justice then bound him to the stake, and set it on fire, 
 and amidst the crackhng of the wood, and the ascending 
 flames, arose his voice, "Oh my Eedeemer ! oh my Re- 
 deemer ! " At last his voice was silent. Even the exe- 
 cutioners turned to each other and said, " What a strange 
 criminal this is ; " and the monks turned to each other and 
 said, " If that man be not saved, who will be ? " and the 
 spectators beat u^on their breasts, and said, "A great 
 wrong has been done to that man." Such a death as this 
 is a triumph, and it tolls the knell of the executioners, 
 while it prepares the crown for the victim. 
 
 There was a preacher who when called, in those evil days, 
 to preach before that great persecutor, Francis I., in the 
 Church of St. Eustache in Paris, and before an immense 
 crowd of ecclesiastics and courtiers, had the courage to 
 exclaim, as he warmed with his subject: "The end of all 
 visible things is to lead us to invisible things. The bread 
 which refreshes our body tells us that Jesus Christ is the 
 hght of our soul. Seated at the right hand of God, Jesus 
 hves by His Holy Spirit in the hearts of His disciples. 
 
 * Quce sursum sunt quoeritej' says St. Paul; ' vM Christus est 
 in dexter a Dei sedens.' Yes, ^ Seek those things which are 
 above,' Do not confine yourselves during mass to what is 
 upon the altar; rise, yourselves, by faith, there to find the 
 Son of God. After he has consecrated the elements, does 
 not the priest cry out to the people, 'jSursuin, — corda ! ' — 
 
 * Lift up your hearts ! ' These words signify : Here is the 
 bread, and here is the wine, but Jesus is in Heaven. For 
 this reason. Sire," he continued, turning to the king, " if 
 you wish to have Jesus Christ, do not look for Him in the 
 visible elements, soar to Heaven on the wings of faith. ' It 
 is beheving in Jesus Christ that we eat His flesh," said St. 
 Augustine. If it were true that Christ must be touched by 
 the hands, and devoured by the teeth, we should not say 
 
22 Lamps J Pitcliers, and Trumpets. 
 
 'sui^sum* — upwards, but ^ deorsuiv! — downwards! Sire, it 
 is to Heaven I invite you. Hear the voice of the Lord. 
 'Sursum, — corda/ Sire, ' Siirsum, — corda!'" And the so- 
 norous voice of the priest filled the whole church with those 
 thi'illing words, produced with a tone of the sincerest con- 
 viction. This was brave preaching, when a wave of the 
 royal hand might, for such words, hale the preacher away 
 to the prison and the. stake. They preached, these noble 
 men — whom some, in our days, affect to despise — in the 
 Courts, and at the very stake itseK. I^Aubigne tells the 
 story of Master Caturce, a lecturer on theolog}^ and licen- 
 tiate of theology, and a grimly humorous story it is : 
 
 He was declared a heretic, condemned to be burnt alive, and 
 taken to the square of St. Etienne. 
 
 Here an immense crowd had assembled, especially of students 
 of the university, who were anxious to witness the degradation 
 of so esteemed a professor. The " mystery" lasted three hours 
 of triumph for the Word of God. Neyer had Caturce spoken 
 with greater freedom. In answer to everything that was said, 
 he brought some passage of Scripture " very pertinent to re- 
 prove the stupidity of his judges before the scholars." His 
 academical robes were taken off, the costume of a merry-andrew 
 was put on him, and then another scene began. 
 
 A Dominican monk, wearing a white robe and scapulary, 
 with a black robe and pointed cap, made his way through the 
 crowd, and ascended a little wooden pulpit which had been set 
 up in the middle of the square. This by no means learned in- 
 dividual assumed an important air, for he had been commis- 
 sioned to deliver what was called " the sermon of catholic faith." 
 In a voice that was heard all over the square, he read his text : 
 The Spirit spealceth expressly, that in the latter times some shall 
 depart from the faith^ (/i'i^in{/ heed to seducing spirits and doctrines 
 of devils. The monks were delighted with a text which ap- 
 peared so suitable ; but Caturce, who almost knew his Testa- 
 . ment by heart, perceiving that, according to their custom of 
 distorting Scripture, he had only taken a fragment {lopin) of 
 
The Preacliing of Master Caturce, 23 
 
 the passage, cried out in a loud voice : " Read on." The Dom- 
 inican, who felt alarmed, stoj^ped short, upon which Caturce 
 himself completed the passage : Forbidding to marry ^ and com- 
 manding to abstain from ineats^ ichich Ood had created to be re- 
 ceived icith thanksgiving of them which believe. The monks were 
 confounded ; the students and other friends of the licentiate 
 smiled. " JVe know them," continued the energetic professor, 
 " those deceivers of the people, who instead of the doctrine 
 of faith, feed them with trash. In God's service there is 
 no question of fish, or of flesh, of black, or of grey, of Wednes- 
 day, or of Friday It is nothing but foolish 
 
 superstition which requires celibacy and abstaining from meats. 
 Such are not the commandments of God." The Dominican in 
 his pulpit listened with astonishment ; the x)risoner was preach- 
 ing in the midst of the officers of justice, and the students heard 
 him " with great favor." The poor Dominican, ashamed of his 
 folly, left his sermon unpreached. 
 
 After this, the martyr was led back to the court, where sen- 
 tence of death was pronounced upon him. Caturce surveyed 
 his judges with indignation, and, as he left the tribunal, ex- 
 claimed in Latin : " Thou seat of iniquity ! Thou court of in- 
 justice ! " He was now led to the scaflbld, and at the stake 
 continued exhorting the people to know Jesus Christ. "It is 
 impossible to calculate the great fruit wrought by his death," 
 says the chronicle, " especially among the students then at the 
 university of Toulouse," that is to say, in the year 1532. 
 
 Would that we had some Yasari, or Lanzi, or Sterling, 
 to tell the tale of the pulpit, as those dehglitful writers have 
 told the tale of the art of painting, and its triumphs and 
 glories. Surely, it is worthy! — surely, the story of the 
 lamp, pitcher, and trumpet is equal in interest and in value 
 to that of the crayon, the palette, or the pencil ! How can 
 the story of painting be expected to compare with the story 
 of preaching ? — the story of the way in which souls in the 
 new creation were quickened and kept alive ? Looking 
 among the marvels of the microscope, bending the eye 
 
24 Lamjps^ Pitcliers^ and Irumpets, 
 
 througli the lens, the reader has, perhaps, watched the 
 crystallisation of some acid. A marvellous sight! — gor- 
 geous spears, and prismatic piUars of crystal shooting over 
 the disc ! A moment since it was aU opaque, and now it is 
 all acope, aflame with hghtnings; a field with arms flashing 
 in the sun; a theatre resplendent with diamonds: but the 
 birth of souls — the awakening of souls; new' affections 
 shooting forth ; new developments — consciousness, holiness, 
 and power; the minister has believed that he beheld all 
 this. The artist beheves in beauty, in the ideal ; the 
 preacher in holiness, in life. Therefore, what stories of 
 martyrdoms! — ^what enthuslSasm! sometimes, it may be, 
 what fanaticism! But artists have been fanatics too — 
 Blake, Haydon, Kibera ; but they neither interfere with our 
 admiration of the art nor the appreciation of the men. 
 
 In chapters in the Romance of the Pulpit, must be men- 
 tioned Dr. Abel Stevens's History of Methodism,'^ and Dr. 
 Sprague's Annals of the American Methodist Fuipit,'\ Here 
 is a succession of tales of extraordinary power and wonder ; 
 here are the stories of heroes, stories of marvellous adven- 
 ture, and triumph, and spiritual conquest. It is a pleasant 
 conviction with us, that no human chapter is more full of 
 wonder and delight than the history of the pulpit in all 
 ages. It has always been wonderful where it has been real, 
 from that day when Peter's sermons pierced the hearts of 
 his hearers, down through the times of the dark and the 
 
 * The History of the Beligious Movement of the Eighteenth Gen- 
 turyy called Methodism. By Abel Stevens, LL.D., New York. A 
 most entertaining repertory of pulpit anecdote of the period to 
 which it refers; an eloquent story, told by a sympathetic and 
 hearty Methodist, only too little disposed to see the presence of the 
 divine life in others than that Church whose history he recites. 
 
 f Annals of the American Methodist Pulpit. By William B. 
 Sprague, New York. This bulky work is overflowingly full of the 
 delightful garrulousness of many men. 
 
Chapters in the Romance of the Pulpit 25 
 
 Middle Ages, in every country, where it has tried and tested 
 its power — in France, in Geneva, in Scotland, England, and 
 America. Dr. Stevens tells one part of the story, and tells 
 it well — recites the rise and progress of Methodism, with 
 its mighty array of marvellous men. Heroism and adven- 
 ture meet us ever^^where, as in those days when stalwart 
 old woodland shepherds carried the first x^reachers on their 
 backs through the snowdiifts, which choked the old Enghsh 
 roads in the winter ; or the days when a preacher was seen 
 with a spade strapped on his saddle behind, taking his de- 
 parture from Macclesfield for the bleak portion of his cn- 
 cuit — the spade being deemed needful to cut a way through 
 the snow. " I am but a brown-bread preacher," said one 
 of them, " I have nothing of politeness in my language or 
 address ; but I seek to help all I can to Heaven in the best 
 way I can. I have been in dangers by snowdrifts and land 
 floods, by falls from my horse, by persecution, sickness, 
 cold, pain, weakness, and weariness ; trials of heart, and 
 understanding, and judgment, and various reasonings with 
 friends and foes, men and devils, and most with myseK." 
 He goes on to say how "through all he has been kept," and 
 moderately ventures to beheve he has not been useless, 
 while assiu'edly he has been happy. Such were the men 
 whose stories the goodly volumes of Sprague and Stevens 
 tell. It reminds us of Gideon dividing his three hundred 
 men into three companies, putting a trumpet into every 
 man's hand, a pitcher into the other hand, and a lamp in 
 the pitcher. Truly, a strange and wonderful sight to see 
 an army of thousands flying, cutting each other in pieces, 
 while the Israehtes only stood by with the sounding trum- 
 pet, and the gleaming lamp ! The story of the great Meth- 
 odist movement is very much like this miraculous, liistoric, 
 and dramatic scene. But, on all hands we hear that the 
 pulpit is worthless now ; there are not wanting proposals 
 to aboHsh it. We receive lectures in homiletics from those 
 2 
 
26 Lamps, Pitchers, and Trumpets. 
 
 remarkable preachers, The Saturday BevieiVj The Times, 
 and The Daily Telegraph. "Whj" says one in a letter, we 
 believe, to The Times, or to one of the High Church organs, 
 " Why this preaching ? why does this man talk to us ? who 
 is he, tliat he should talk ? why not be content to worship 
 only, when we go to church ? Besides, ministers are sim- 
 ply nuisances ;" and it must be said, so far, in apology for 
 this, that if the pulpit cannot prove itself, it had better go 
 down. But most of the sharp, shrill querulousnesses 
 against the pulpit have come from Church organs ; and 
 certainly, of nearly the twenty thousand clergymen in the 
 English Church, few enough give full proof of their minis- 
 try. Do not most of these fastidious critics demand, as the 
 great essentials for pulpit eminence, that the ear should be 
 tickled, and the soul put to sleep ? How truly amusing to 
 think of such unconverted pagans and PhiHstines as Satur- 
 day Reviewers and Daily Telegraphs jeremiadizing over the 
 decay of power in the pulpit. "We have sometimes thought 
 of proposing the other thing : — " Instead of, or, as well as, 
 putting down the pulpit, why not put an end to sculpture, 
 or to painting? Cutting out bits of things in marble, 
 smearing colors over canvas! Why not put down all 
 poetry ? Are not poets proverbially nuisances, with their 
 skreeds of bathos ? Let us put down all art ; why not ? 
 for, compared with the pulpit, what pictures or sculptures 
 excite so much, what music, or poetry awakens more emo- 
 tion?" 
 
 What is this sublime impelling instinct for souls — ^for the 
 salvation of souls — which these preachers have known ? — 
 this divine and hallowed fanaticism of love for souls and for 
 God? — the realization of those fervid words written by 
 that saintly woman, the Countess of Huntingdon : 
 
 My whole heart has not one single grain this moment of thirst 
 after approbation. I feel alone with God. He fills the whole 
 
John Nelson. 
 
 27 
 
 void. I see all mortals under my feet. I have not one wish, one 
 will, one desire, but in Him ; He hath set my feet in a large 
 room. All but God's children seem but so many machines ap- 
 pointed for uses I have nothing to do with. I have w^ondered 
 and stood amazed that God should make a conquest of all within 
 me by love. I am brought to less than nothing — broken in 
 pieces like a potter's vessel. I long to leap into the flames to 
 get rid of my sinful flesh, and that every atom of these ashes 
 might be separate, and that neither time, place, nor person 
 should stay God's Spirit.* 
 
 And this sublime affection led her to forget, and almost 
 renounce her rank, and leave her fortune of JS100,000 upon 
 the altar of God her Saviour. The same divine passion im- 
 pelled that very different character, but equally eminently 
 holy person, John Nelson, through his adventurous and 
 holy career ; when in country cages, and through howding 
 crowTls, and guarded through streets by armed troops, and 
 multitudes huzzaing round him as if he had been one who 
 had laid waste the nation, he says : " The Lord made my 
 brow like brass, so that I could look upon them all as 
 grass-hoppers, and pass through the city as if there had 
 been none in it but God and me." Insulted, and scoffed, 
 and persecuted — a giant in strength — a gentleman in na- 
 ture and character ; but a child of God, he says : " I was 
 able to tie the head and the heels of the wicked, ignorant 
 man, who could thus torment me, together. I found an 
 old man's bone in me ; but the Lord lifted up a standard 
 when anger was commg in like a flood, lest I should have 
 wrung his neck to the g found, and set my foot upon him." 
 Such stories, the history of the pulpit has to tell, are sure- 
 ly not uninteresting to any who love to mark the conquests 
 of holy powder and holy speech. 
 
 * Letter to Mr. John Wesley. See that remarkable story, The 
 Life and Times of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon. Two volumes ; 
 a work to whose rich store of anecdote Dr. Stevens has been largely 
 indebted. 
 
28 Lamps ^ Pitchers J aiid Trumpets, 
 
 The Methodist pulpit of the United States is not one 
 whit less interesting, rather more so, I think, than our own. 
 Had not Dr.- Sprague brought together such an interesting 
 variety of biography and anecdote in his Annds of the 
 American llethodid Pulpit, we should have hoped that the 
 subject would have brought from Dr. Stevens a fourth vol- 
 ume ; and still there is room ; and from his pen it could 
 only be most pleasant reading. 
 
 For very wonderful is the story of the lamp and pitcher 
 in many of the dark places of that gxeat continent — the 
 varied region of the United States — the hves of bishops, 
 not addressed as " My Lord," wearing no episcopal title or 
 dignity, having no splendid palace, no magnificent cathe- 
 dral, no snug diocese, no princely income. Scholars, men 
 of genius, like Asbury, separating themselves from all the 
 comforts and conveniences of life, for sixty dollars a year, 
 with a traveUing equipage, not of a chariot and four, but 
 of saddle-bags and one ; ^ plunging into the wilderness to 
 seek for lost sheep, preaching in barns, on stumps of trees, 
 in log huts, in ilhmitable woods, in the houseless forest, by 
 blazed trees in deep prairies ; floundering through swamps, 
 swimming vast rivers, drenched by pitiless rains, scorched 
 by suns, bitten by frosts and driving snows. From some 
 of these places they wrote for a preacher : "Be sure and 
 • send us a good swimmer ;" there was considerable wonder 
 as to what this could mean, till it turned out that the dis- 
 trict was full of bridgeless streams, and the last minister 
 had been drowned because he could not swim. Sometimes 
 the travelling preacher or bishop found himself among hos- 
 tile Indians, in the solitude of the forest ; he knew their 
 track and trail ; at night he heard their yell, and unexpect- 
 edly foimd himself in the neighborhood of their camp- 
 
 * See an interesting article, " Metkodist Clerical Biography," 
 North American Review, No. 194, 1 862. 
 
PreacJiera in the American Backwoods. 
 
 29 
 
 fii'G, and tlie crack of the Indian rifle. Tlie intrepid and 
 heroic preacher urged his way over mountains, and through 
 valleys, stirrmg the community, wherever he came, with 
 hymn and sermon ; reaching the villages and little settle- 
 ments dotting the country, amidst extensive wildernesses, 
 for the most part the undisturbed abode of the woK and 
 the panther. Neither the cold, or storms of winter, nor 
 the abuse he received from wicked men, could weaken his 
 energy, or impede his progress. If the horse was not in 
 the way, then often the saddle-bags had to be carried over 
 the shoulder, and he travelled on foot. Sometimes, there 
 were no saddle-bags. " George," said Bishop Asbuiy to 
 George Eoberts ; " George, where are your clothes T 
 " Bishop, they are on my back. On receiving my appoint- 
 ment at your hand. Sir, I am not compelled to return to 
 my circuit for my clothes, but I am ready, at a moment's 
 w^aming, to go whithersoever you direct." His son, Dr. 
 Eoberts, says : " I have in my possession the needle and 
 thread case, which were his constant companions. If his 
 clothes, from any unexpected cause, needed attention, he 
 was in the habit of turning aside into some retired spot for 
 the purpose of taking them off and mending them." In the 
 lives of Eomish saints — St. Francis, or St. Dominic — these 
 would be thought most picturesque and wonderful rehcs. 
 Sometimes, the i^reacher, in the depth of the prairie, came 
 upon a band of white heathen. Thus Eichard Nolley, one 
 of these good and great men, discovered the track of an 
 emigrant family, and followed it. "What," said the man 
 who was leading it into the v/ilderness, "a Methodist 
 preacher ! I quit Virginia to be out of the way of them, 
 but in my settlement in Georgia, I thought I should be be- 
 yond i}ieir reach. There they were, and they got my wife 
 and daughter into their church. Then I come here to 
 Chocktaw corner, find a good piece of land, feel sure that 
 I shall have some peace from the preachers, and here is 
 
^o Lamp8^ Pitchers^ and Trumpets. 
 
 one before I've unloaded my wagon!" "My friend/' 
 said Nolley, "if you go to heaven, youll find Methodist 
 preachers there ; and if you go to hell, I'm afraid you'll 
 find some there ; and you see how it is in this world. I'd 
 advise you to come to terms with God, and then you'U be 
 at peace with us." Sometimes they died in the wilderness, 
 and " no man knew the place of their sepulchre." Months, 
 and sometunes years, elapsed before it was known they 
 had gone to their reward. These men have been called 
 the graduates of Brush College, Fellows of Swamp Uni- 
 versity. " How is it you have " no Doctors of Divinity ?" 
 said one to fine old Jacob Krubee, a preacher of this order. 
 " Our divinity is not sick, " and does not need doctoring," 
 said the old man. A witty, satuical old creature this 
 Kruber — able, learned, sarcastic, and eloquent. He hved 
 during the days of the Eevolution in Ameiica, and being 
 called on to pray on some great public occasion, he de- 
 livered himself of the following petition : " O Lord, have 
 mercy on the sovereigns of Europe ; convert their souls ; 
 give them short lives and happy deaths ; take them to 
 heaven, and let us have no more of them." Sometimes 
 the biter got bitten. When he Hved at Lewiston he came 
 frequently into contact with a Catholic priest, not much be- 
 hind him in the use of edged tools. He met the priest one 
 day, not as usual, on horseback, but trudging on foot: said 
 Kniber, "Where's your horse? why don't you ride?" 
 " Oh," said the other, rather testily, " the beast's dead 1" 
 " Dead 1 well, I suppose he is in purgatory ?" " Nay, the 
 wretched creature turned Methodist just before he died, 
 and went straight to heU." Old Kruber was greatly averse 
 to read sermons — for even in those days there were read- 
 ers of sermons in the pulpit. Once a youthful Congrega- 
 tional minister read before him ; Jacob also had to follow 
 the young man in preaching, and it was expected he would 
 give the young brother a thrust for the use of his notes. 
 
Preacliers in the American Backwoods, 3 1 
 
 He finished, however, without eaying a word that looked 
 towards the manuscrix^t ; but, in his concluding prayer, he 
 uttered these strange petitions : " Lord, bless the man who 
 has read to us to-day ; let liis heart be as soft as his head, 
 and then he will do us some good." " How do you make 
 your preachers ?" was once said to one of these fine old 
 preachers of the woods. "Why, we old ones tell the 
 young ones aU we know, and they try to teU the people 
 all they can, and they keep on trying till they can — that's 
 our college." One was asked, "Do you belong to the 
 standing order ? " " No," he said, " I belong to the 
 kneeling order."* They were sharp men. One day, 
 while Dr. Bostwick was riding along on the well-known 
 Methodist horse, a man rode up, insolently laid his hand 
 on the Doctor's bridle, and said : " I would as soon ride 
 the devil as ride this horse." " Oh !" said Bostwick, "how 
 ' it would look to see a chikl riding his own father !" The 
 man put spurs to his own steed, and, without a word, gal- 
 loped away. There was BiUy Hibbard, shrev/d, powerful 
 in his dealings with the souls of men, but a mighty Armi- 
 nian. "Brother Hibbard," said a Calvinistic minister to 
 him one day, " you hurt my feelings in preaching yester- 
 day." " Why, brother, how did I do that ?" He referred 
 him to some doctrinal remark in his discourse. " Oh 1" 
 said Hibbard, " I'm sorry you took that, I meant that for 
 the devil, and you stepped in and took it yourself ; don't 
 get between me and the devil, brother, and you won't get 
 your feelings hurt." Like our own famous Dawson, he 
 would scarcely be known by the more elegant and eu- 
 phonious name of William : when Bishop Asbury was 
 presiding at the roll-call of the Conference, he objected 
 answeiing to that name, insisting that his name was BUly. 
 " Why, Brother Hibbard," said Asbury, " Billy is a httle 
 
 * The Lije of Jacob Kriiber. By W. P. Strickland. Seventh 
 Thousand. New York, 1866. 
 
22 Lamps J Pitchers, and Trumpets, 
 
 boy's name !" " Yes, Bishop," he said, " and I was a little 
 boy when my father gave it me." These men had few 
 books — the Bible, PilgrMs Progress, and a few such, in 
 their saddle-bags, formed their whole hbrar}^ ; yet some 
 became great scholars, and masterly divines. But the 
 open pages of the book of Nature were before them, and 
 in keen encounters with men they learned a thousand 
 things hidden from ordinary eyes ; and thus were trained a 
 healthful body, a weU-developed muscular system, large 
 strong lungs ; a vigorous constitution, a workshop and 
 dwelling-place for a wise and vigorous mind. How a 
 man could become a strong preacher and thinker while 
 ranging those mighty solitudes, sleeping in small apart- 
 ments, containing all the family and such domestic animals 
 as shared a backwoodman's fireside, seems wonderful. They 
 suffered many persecutions. They had not much to say of 
 moral beauty, necessary relations, a priori and d posteriori 
 vohtions, and intellectual processes, and active powers ; 
 but it is said, and v^e beheve it, they talked of sin so as to 
 make the flesh creep, and the hair stand on end ; and they 
 talked of the love of the Saviour and the freedom of His 
 grace, so as to make the heart rejoice, and tears come to 
 the eyes. Their intellectual heraldry was not in their ar- 
 mour, but in their muscle, they were not educated to a sup- 
 pression of their instincts, nor formalized to a slavery of 
 metaphysics. Certainly, they would not have deserved the 
 censure pronounced upon a florid metaphysical preacher — 
 of whom his people, during the week, saw nothing — that 
 "on six days of the week he was invisible, and on the 
 seventh he was incomprehensible ;" and they might have 
 reversed the remark of the bishop to the young man who 
 appHed to him for ordination : *' I do not forbid you to 
 preach, but both Natui'e and Grace do." Thus, without 
 dwelling at greater length on this subject — which I have 
 only touched for the purpose of mtroducing Dr. Steven's 
 
Foolisli Decoration of the Pitcher, 3 3 
 
 completed work to you, while expressing my regret that he 
 has not availed himseK of the w^ealth of anecdotal material 
 for the continuation of the story to the pulpit of his own 
 land — I only again renew my expression of the interest of 
 the work itself. Bramwell and Bradshaw, Story, and Sa- 
 ville. Coke, Mather, Newton, and Bunting, Hanby, and the 
 glorious hymnologist, the Welsh cobbler, Olivers ; such, 
 wdth a multitude of other names, are those which j)ass be- 
 fore us in those volumes. 
 
 To many, perhaps to some among my hearers, my re- 
 marks of admiration upon this soul-searchmg preaching 
 will seem simply contemptible. In none of the men to 
 whom I have referred was the pitcher of much importance 
 compared with the lamp. With us, almost all our atten- 
 tion goes to the pitcher ; there is great attention to the 
 shape of it ; it must be a vase — Etruscan — ^with a copious 
 amphtude of decoration. But let us change our figure. 
 If a man want water, if he be perishing for vv^ater, do we 
 say, " Ah ! we must wait until we can fetch our gold cup, 
 our richly-chased, antique, Benvenuto Celhni cup T " Never 
 mind that," says the man, "water — good measure of water 
 — ^in the common earthenware pitcher, will do. I perish 
 for water !" And many die for want of the " Water of 
 Life " in this land ; like Coleridge's Ancierd Mariner on the 
 salt sea : 
 
 Water, water everywhere. 
 
 And all the boards did shrink ; 
 Water, water everywhere, 
 
 And not a drop to drink. 
 
 For ever decorating the pitcher ! Some cannot even talk 
 good plain Enghsh — cannot even avail themselves of intel- 
 ligible decorations. Thus, one minister describes a tear 
 *' as that small particle of aqueous fluid, trickhng from the 
 visual organ over the lineaments of the countenance, be- 
 2* 
 
24 Lamps, Pitchers, and Trumpets. 
 
 tokening grief." I have heard of one talking in the pulpit 
 of " the deep, intuitive glance of the soul, penetrating be- 
 yond the surface of the superficial phenomenal, to the re- 
 laote recesses of absolute entity, or being ; thus adumbrat- 
 ing its immortahty in its precognitive perceptions ;" while 
 another — and he a highly eminent man ! head of a college 
 for ministers ! — when he read a well-known passage of 
 Scripture, shrunk from the plain vernacular, " ' He that be- 
 lieveth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his ' " — he 
 took refuge in the classics — " his ventriculum ' shall flow 
 rivers of hving water.' " Yes, preachers ought to know how 
 to use words, or else calamities will happen. Take the fol- 
 lowing as an illustration : "A clergyman, while composing 
 a sermon, made use of the words 'ostentatious man.' 
 Throwing down his pen, he wished to "satisfy himself 
 before he proceeded, as to whether a great portion of his 
 congregation might comprehend the meaning of these 
 w^ords, and he adopted the following method of proof. 
 Einging the bell, his footman appeared, and he was thus 
 addressed by his master, ' What do you conceive ' to be 
 implied by an ostentatious man T * An ostentatious man, 
 Sir,' said Thomas ; ' why. Sir, I should say a perfect gentle- 
 man.' 'Very good,' observed the vicar, 'send Ellis, the 
 coachman, here.' ' Ellis,' said the vicar, ' what do you im- 
 agine an ostentatious man to be ?' ' An ostentatious man, 
 Sir,' replied Ellis, 'Why, I should say, 'an ostentatious 
 man means what we calls, saving your presence, a very 
 jolly fellow.' It is hardly necessary to " add that the vicar 
 substituted a less ambiguous word." Worse still. "A 
 clerg^Tuan was sent for the other day. "The man was 
 rather deaf to whom he was called. ' What induced you 
 to send for me,' very pompously said the clergyman. 
 ' Eh !' ' What induced you,' he repeated, ' to send for me ?' 
 ' What does he say ?' said the man to his wife. He says, 
 * What the deuce did ye send for him for ?' " 
 
Jonathan Edioards. 
 
 35 
 
 Remarkably, in this department of plain speech the Ro- 
 man Cathohcs are before us. The work of the Methodist 
 revival is being done by the children of St. Philip Neri, the 
 Oratorians. These are the only people, almost, who preach 
 to the poor. What do Independents, or Baptists, or, for 
 that matter, the old Methodists either, know about preach- 
 ing to the poor, to the very poor ? Our chapels and churches 
 are, for the most part, it is to be feared, luxuries they can- 
 not afford ; and if we send ministers down to the alleys 
 and low courts, we do not send, as Rome sends, gentlemen 
 and men of genius, with a j)resence of dignity and a heart 
 of affection, we make the great mistake of sending those 
 who, while they possess frequently the coarseness which re- 
 pels, do not carry along with it the sweetness and the dig- 
 nity which would affect and command. 
 
 Man has within him a nature which thirsts for hving 
 water — sighs for hght — longs for a certain sound ; and the 
 whole stoiy of the lamp, the pitcher, and the trumpet, is 
 the story of the efforts made by painful, patient, and ear- 
 nest men to supply these infinite desires and wants. To 
 satisfy such infinite desires, some of the most glorious and 
 gifted of our race have separated themselves, and set them- 
 selves apart. Jonathan Edwards had many of the attributes 
 of all — ^Hght, refreshment, and awakening ; very much such 
 a character as the lovely and illustrious Bishop Berkeley, 
 he ran his metaphysics into impossible and unattainable 
 zeniths and heights. His freedom of the will is unanswer- 
 able, but it is dreadful ; hke Hegel, he dealt with the uni- 
 verse and mind as pure thought ; but a tender affectionate- 
 ness modulates every sentence in his History of Bedemption ; 
 and when he preached, his accents — permeated by deepest 
 feehng, justified to himself by profoundest speculation, 
 harmonized and fitted to his conception of God's purposes 
 and man's responsibilities — compelled men to listen, and 
 quiver, and tingle through every nerve of their moral being 
 
3 6 Lamps ^ Pitcliers^ and Trumpets. 
 
 while they hstened. Marvellously inconsistent seem some 
 of the moods and powers of the preacher with some of the 
 speculations of the thinker ; and wonderful, it sometimes 
 seems, that so sweet, seraphic, and tender a nature could 
 have been so scA'cre. Emotion welled up within him, but 
 it fell into the ii'on cistern and basin of hard imperious 
 logic. An American, in an extraordinary poem, has v/ell 
 described Edvfards, his life, his theology, and his x^reach- 
 
 ing: 
 
 In the church of the wilderness Edwards wrought, 
 
 Shaping his creed at the forge of thought, 
 
 And with Thor's own hammer welded and bent 
 
 The iron links of his argument ; 
 
 Which strove to grasp in its mighty si)an 
 
 The purpose of God and the fate of man ! 
 
 Yet faithful still in his daily round 
 
 To the weak, and the i)oor, and the sin-sick, found 
 
 The schoolman's lore and the casuist's art, 
 
 Drew warmth and life from his fervent heart. 
 
 Had he not seen in the solitudes 
 
 Of his deep and dark Northampton woods, 
 
 A vision of love about him fall ? — 
 
 Not the blinding splendour that fell on Saul, 
 
 But the tender glory that rests on them 
 
 Who walk in the New Jerusalem ; 
 
 Where never the sun nor the moon are known, 
 
 But the Lord and His love are the light alone ! — 
 
 And watching the sweet, still countenance 
 
 Of the wife of his bosom rapt in trance. 
 
 Had he not treasured each broken word 
 
 Of the mystical v»^onder seen and heard. 
 
 And loved the beautiful dreamer more. 
 
 That thus to the desert of earth she bore 
 
 Clusters of Esehol from Canaan's shore ?* 
 
 Perhaps, a little thought will explam the coherence of 
 
 ^' J. Greenleaf Whittier. Poems, Boston j Tick nor and Fields. 
 A remarkable poem, called " The Preacher." 
 
Whitefield. 27 
 
 tlds remarkable character. The logical impossibility pre- 
 pares the way for the Divine possibilities and assurances 
 of grace, when science only reveals her despair. The su- 
 pernatural missions of the Spnit, which can never be 
 straitened, become more infinitely blight, and soothing, 
 and tender to that part in man, which can never be satis- 
 fied by sequences and conclusions, unless they minister to 
 its infinite hopes. In some way, this same contradiction 
 has been felt and transcended by all the greatest souls — 
 by Luther, in several notable and noble passages, and 
 more popularly by Whitefield, cd-Ued to sound and gauge 
 the moral lai3se of his race, and the times in which he 
 hved, and to draw in sharp lines the contrast of human 
 frailty, and the perfect law of truth ; 
 
 To him, in the painful stress 
 Of zeal on fire from its own excess, 
 Heaven seemed so vast and earth so small, 
 That man was nothing, since God was all. 
 
 This would be all imperfect — is, perhaps, imperfect — ^if we 
 did not remember that the world can well afibrd a prophet, 
 his soul aU on fire and ablaze with zeal for the Lord 
 of Hosts — coming do^vn from his rapt communions and 
 divme ai^d illuminating perceptions. He may well be 
 hailed, when it is known that man is in a state of fearful 
 aberration from the rectitude and purity of the divine 
 law ; the immense lapse in the one instance may well per- 
 mit the fearful thunders of Ezekiel or Nahum to roll in 
 the other, and preachmg never becomes the voice of inspi- 
 ration to startle and alarm, until the infiniteness of divine 
 law, and the infinite consequences of its infractions are 
 perceived. 
 
 Of "Whitefield, John Newton said : 
 
 I bless God that I have lived in his time ; many were the 
 winter mornings I have got up at four to attend his Tabernacle 
 
2 8 Lamps ^ Pitchers^ and Trumpets, 
 
 discourses at five ; and I have seen Moorfields as full of lanterns 
 at these times, as I suppose the Haymarket is full of flambeaux 
 on an opera night. As a preacher, if any man were to ask me 
 who was the second I ever had heard, I should be at some loss ; 
 but in regard to the first, Mr. Whitefield exceeded so far every 
 other man of my time, that I should be at none. He was the 
 original of popular preaching, and all our popular ministers 
 are only his copies. 
 
 And is it unnatural? Is it only in the material and 
 natural world that lightnings and thunders roll and rend ? 
 — only in the lower heavens that their fui'ies are seen to 
 play ? Highest minds have not judged so — the mind has 
 its tempests which, like tragical Titans, tear the heavens, 
 and seem to pluck down judgments — and "Whitefield rent 
 men's souls as he stood and cried, " Oh, my friends — the 
 wrath of God ! the wrath of God !" 
 
II. 
 
 The Vocation of the Preacher. 
 
 OU have not to be told that there is a town, of 
 all the towns in this world the most wonderful, 
 the most ancient, the most powerful, the most 
 glorious, and the most famous. Other towns have 
 churches and cathedrals, but there would have been no 
 churches and cathedrals but for this town ; other towns 
 have castles, and moats, and fortifications, but there would 
 have been no fortifications, no castles, nor bastions, but for 
 this town ; other towns have had their senate houses, and 
 parhaments, and halls, and judicial courts, and majesties, 
 and tlirones, but they are all the shadows falling from the 
 buildings of this town ; other towns have had their battle- 
 fields, and the war of strife has raged through their streets, 
 and the shock of war and the Hghtning of strife blazed 
 over then' fields — aU the passions of the battle-field had their 
 origin in this town ; other towns have palaces, but there is 
 no palace so beautiful or so brave as the palace of this 
 town — ^none with a furniture so rich, none with glory so 
 brave, or great, or subduing ; I need not say, it is the' town 
 of Mansoul. 
 
 Now, this town lies open to the Sea — the wonderful sea ; 
 
 (39) 
 
40 The Vocation of tlie Preacher. 
 
 the sea fioTvs down to it tkrough rivers and bays ; all its 
 wealth, like that of more modem towns, Hes in its neigh- 
 borhood' to the sea. Strange land lies all aronnd it, but 
 it opens to the great world to which it belongs by ^yq 
 ports — the Cinque Ports — the ports themselves beautifully 
 constructed, are yet as nothing to the wealth they convey. 
 All the merchandise of pictures, and of charming furni- 
 tures ; and all merchandise of music, and organs, and of 
 harps ; and all merchandise of spices and of precious 
 gums ; {^d all merchandise of clothing and of food, aU 
 come hither borne in by the wondrous waves that flov/ up 
 to the gates of these ports of the town of Mansoul. '' Five 
 gates," said John Bunyan, " Ear-gate, Eye-gate, Nose-gate, 
 Mouth-gate, Feel-gate ; but the greatest of these is Ear- 
 gate." 
 
 Preachers have to do with Ear-gate. But sometimes 
 the people in this town of Mansoul are all asleep. Over 
 the whole space there is as the slumber of an enchanted 
 palace ; the people within are wonderful people, but you 
 can do nothing with them till they are aU awake. One of 
 the first of all conditions is to awaken the people within 
 the tovm of Mansoul. There is a well-known story in the 
 histor)^ of our country, of one of our earhest kings. Richard 
 I., on his way from the Holy Land, was taken captive and 
 imprisoned in a dreary castle away from his nation. At 
 last, in the hands of his enemies, while wonder was dying 
 fast, and he was perishing from the memory of mankind, 
 he was discovered in a very strange manner. He had a 
 favorite minstrel — ^Blondel ; he knew that his master and 
 his king was confined in some cell in a castle among dreary 
 mountain forests ; and he travelled from one to the other, 
 waking at the dungeon bars some well-loved melodies from 
 his harp. At last, the strain from the harp without was 
 answered by the king from within, down in the dungeon. 
 The song and the harp of the minsti'el thus became the 
 
Waking the People in the Town of Ilansoid, 4 1 
 
 means of tlie emancipation of the prince. Thus the king 
 regained his throne, and escaped from the horrors of his 
 exile, by the stray and floating air which had carelessly 
 Wiled away his hours in the camp, or m the more light- 
 some gaieties of the palace. All Europe was interested in 
 the listening ear of the thi'illed king to the wild and fitful 
 melodies of the faithful bard. 
 
 Thus the spuit of man sits like a captive king m a 
 dmigeon, ujitil the voice of the divine music wakes echoes 
 hitherto unknown along his prison house, and stirs him 
 with new knowledge — ^new consciousness. We have heard 
 of the mighty power of music. Mighty, too, is the power 
 of a Divine word, when the heart knows it and owns it ; 
 "then the captive exile hasteneth to be loosed." The 
 senses are the bars of our prison. Behind and v/ithin 
 everybody there is a soul. God can make the words to 
 answer the Divine purpose. Preaching, and all its auxil- 
 iaries, are only useful to us as they do for the soul what 
 Blondel did for the King Bichard — waken within him 
 memory, or hope ; rousing him to thoughts of a world 
 beyond his prison bars — ^beyond his exile ; waken him to 
 effort ; to listen and to aspire ; and every minister should 
 be a Blondel, seeking for imprisoned kings, contented with 
 their chaias, sitting perhaps in despair, perhaps in content- 
 ment, ia their dungeons, till the magic chords stir then" 
 being. 
 
 And this is your work. One of the things I propose to 
 myself this evening and the following, is tcf seek to awaken 
 the sleeping people in the towTi of Mansoul. There is 
 Imagination, there is Memory, there is Thought, and there 
 is Attention. I suppose it can scarcely be said they are 
 asleep in you. No, your very presence here shov/s that ia 
 a measure, at any rate, they are awake. But you see how 
 possible it is for a portion of the man to be awake, and 
 only a portion. Some men are, after all, only abortive 
 
42 The Vocation of the Preacher, 
 
 beings, and some men are only sensational beings. You 
 know how readily the mind is impressed by natural ob- 
 jects ; but we cannot call this an educated, or awakened 
 mind. On the contrary, this mind in which sensibility is 
 awake and conscience and thought asleep, is most dan- 
 gerously unawakened. 
 
 I say therefore, first, it is everything to awaken mind ; 
 to stir the slumbering being within the town of Mansoul. 
 Many things may do it : a conversaiioii may do it — a icord 
 may do it — the shields of Mitiades would not allow The- 
 mis hocles to sleep ; that is the case with many a young 
 man's heart, when thoughts make the young man strive to 
 be noble, and to do noble things, and to aspire, and to 
 put forth effort to awaken the man^ the soul ; a book may 
 do it ; and this is the first intention of reading ; to bring 
 hght to the mind, as Hght comes in the morning to awaken 
 and to bless. 
 
 That was a great purpose the Apostle Paul set before 
 himself in writing and in speaking — " To commend him- 
 self to every man's conscience in the sight of God." 
 "Why," said a fi'iend of mine to a minister of the very 
 narrow Calvinist school, " Why wiU you not allow me to 
 sit down with your church at the Lord's Table. You know 
 me, you know my character and position in the town. 
 You are aware that all my views on the doctrines of grace 
 are substantially the same as your own." The narrow 
 brother admitted all this. " I know, I know," he said, " I 
 respect you and yoiu" opinions highly, but somehow you 
 have not commended yourself to my conscience ;" that 
 was a curious inversion of the Apostle's words, " Com- 
 mending ourselves to every man's conscience." That is, 
 not merely to be present in the consciousness, that is, the 
 knowledge of a man. You know that I am here — that is 
 consciousness — consciousness is knowledge ; but conscience 
 is the knowledge a man Jias of himself. This knowledge 
 
Preliminaries. 
 
 43 
 
 enters the soul, slieds light there ; wakes up the powers 
 within the soul ; says to Thought, " Awake ; " says to 
 Emotion, "Awake;" says to Duty, "Awake." This is 
 the value of a book — the value of a preacher. 
 
 I shall take up my Bible again, and Solomon shall 
 preach to us. Listen to what he says : " Through dem'e a 
 man, having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth 
 with all wisdom." Now, that is the great condition of the 
 intellectual life ; " — fii'st the " desire " — desu^e to save souls 
 — through desire, the yeammg for knowledge ; as the 
 same man says : " If thou searchest for knowledge and 
 seekest for her as for hid treasure, thou shalt find her." 
 Therefore it was said, " The entrance of Thy word giveth 
 light — it giveth light unto the simple." Intellectual ad- 
 vancement here is not separated from the vMl: through 
 desire, — it is a love and a passion ; it is also consecration ; 
 the man mii^t ^eparaie himself ; walk alone ; separate him- 
 self not merely from disreputable companions, from idle, 
 from thoughtless companions ; I have known young men 
 who have lost the golden hours because they gave them- 
 selves, in their early days, when work was over, to the 
 mere insipid chatterings of frivolity. But here is the first 
 condition, the desire, then separation, and " intermingling 
 with all knowledge." Seize upon truth, it is all before 
 you ; " ransack the ages ; spoil the climes." Your motive 
 must not he vanity. " A fool," says the wise man, " has 
 no dehght in understanding, but that his heart may dis- 
 cover itself,'' that is, reveal his own vanity. But it is not 
 so with the earnest student, the thoughtful man ; it is for 
 the pleasure of wisdom ; " seek her for she is thy life ; " 
 " exalt her and she shall promote thee." 
 
 But there must be the desire. Go to the grocer's, and 
 get the best tea, give the best price, mix it any way ; but 
 what matters it ? What makes a good cup of tea ? Bc/il- 
 ing water. Your water must hoU, The puddiag may be 
 
44 Tlie Vocation of the Preacher, 
 
 T^ell made and mixed, but what makes it? Why, hoUing 
 water. Now, this desh^e is the boihng water ; it is of no 
 use to have the largest hbrary and the best boohs without 
 the boiling water. As the Psahnist said, " My heart boils 
 over with good matter." Ps. xlv. 1. 
 
 And I have said to you already, in effect, that whatever 
 you do, "take care of the words." When you study words 
 remember you are studying things. We are constantly 
 enriching our language from the spoils of words ; and 
 while I do think we are not chary enough of the intro- 
 duction of new words, we do not guard enough the en- 
 trance of words ; stiU there are foolish prejudices ; for in- 
 stance, the words subjective and objective. WeU, they are 
 not so new as they seem ; but I do not think that we could 
 at all dispense with them. And, in our language, they 
 remind us that a period has come when we not only sepa- 
 rate the outer from the inner world, but the knowledge 
 which the soul has, from the soul itseK. The subjective is 
 the optic lens upon which the outer world is painted, while 
 the objective is the outer world which is painted on the 
 optic lens. 
 
 But while I thiok these topics are not unimportant, I 
 must not yet dwell on them too long. I may now call 
 you to some other immediate hints on the vocation of the 
 preacher ; nor shaU I be careful or sorry that I strike dis- 
 tinctly again some of the chords I have just now touched. 
 It is clearly understood that your work is loith souls, and 
 for souls, not minds merely, that is, the region of thought ; 
 you are to go deeper ; you are to be fielders of that 
 " word which separates the soul and the spirit," that is, 
 between the voice of the conscience and the voice of the 
 mind. You are to be the holders of " that word which 
 discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart." If you 
 are to be men of power you wiU come into immediate con- 
 tact with the consciences of men ; for this reason, many 
 
The Test of Tears. 45 
 
 have said, and say, there is no art of preaching. How rid- 
 iculous to say this, for every trade, for every profession, 
 there is a distinct art ; and even the very meanest, the 
 shoemaker and the tailor, is ap]3renticed to learn his trade. 
 You are here to learn to preach. If I have ever had a 
 quarrel with the system of the coUege, it is that, for the 
 most part, it has prepared for the study, and not for the 
 pulpit ; it has made schoolmasters, not ministers ; hke 
 some, of whom a watty German, Eichtcr, speaks, who had 
 "learned the Paternoster in every tongue, "but never 
 prayed with it ; " so some mhiisters have attained almost 
 eveiy conceivable kind of knowledge, but never preached 
 with it. I do not speak to you as if I supposed your 
 powers were above the average, and, in any case, there- 
 fore, I shall say, Culture, Culture, Culture. Pray, read, 
 and marshal your ideas ; put them in order. It is 
 knowledge — it is more than knowledge, it is wisdom — 
 which enables the preacher to tell upon his hearers. It 
 has been weU said that hearers have often neither the 
 skill nor the wiU to take home to themselves general dis- 
 courses, therefore the preacher must make the apphcation 
 himself; as Nathan, "Thou art the man." Bridges re- 
 marks on Ecclesiastes xii. 2, " The goads and the nails, 
 i.e., the words of the wise, must not be laid by as if the 
 posts would knock them in, but must be fastened by the 
 masters of assembhes.". This must be your study — this is 
 your vocation, to reach the conscience. This is power in 
 preaching ; but it needs deep experience and prayer, and a 
 knowledge of the Scriptures for truth and for power with 
 souls. I have no doubt that a far more efficient test than 
 the loudest acclamatioil and applause, is the test of tears, 
 St. Augustine, in his Art of Preaching, teUs us that he 
 undertook to dissuade the people of one of those ancient 
 cities, Cesaroca, fi'om a barbarous annual practice of civil 
 conflict, in which neighbors, and even sons, and fathers. 
 
46 The VocMion of the Preacher. 
 
 and brothers divided themselves into two parties, to fight 
 at particular seasons of the year, each one kilhng whom 
 he could. He says : 
 
 I availed myself, as far as possible, of the grand in eloquence, 
 in order that I might tear away and banish from their customs 
 and their hearts this inveterate evil ; but I did not think I had 
 accomplished anything so long as I heard their acclamations 
 only — until I saw them in tears. Their acclamations showed me 
 that they were taught and delighted ; but their tears showed me 
 that they were persuaded ; and when I saw their tears, I felt 
 that the savage custom, which had been handed down from one 
 father's grandfather's ancestor to another, would be subdued, 
 and that, too, before I was authorized to feel so by the thing it- 
 self. Soon after, having closed my discourse, I turned to give 
 thanks to God — and, lo ! Christ being propitious, eight years 
 and more have elapsed since anything of the kind has been at- 
 tempted. Many other things have occurred in my experience, 
 from which I have learned that those who have been in any 
 measure affected by the grand in a wise display of eloquence, 
 show it by sighs rather than by clamor, sometimes by sobbing, 
 and finally by a change of life. 
 
 This guides us to the true vocation of the preacher. We 
 read of an ancient father who wept at the applause given 
 to his sermons ; he felt that his words had not gone deep 
 enough. " Would to God," said he, " they had gone away 
 silent and thoughtful." Well says Bridges,* "We must 
 preach to our people, as weU as hefcn^e them ;" and says 
 Eobert Hall, " The conscience of the audience should feel 
 the hand of the preacher searching it, and every individual 
 should know where to class himself." Ourspmt in preach- 
 ing should be, "I have a message unto tliee" If, as we 
 walk along, we hear a cry of fire, we feel an uneasy ten- 
 dency to look or run every way ; it is different if any one 
 
 * See the admirable and almost exhaustive work On tlic Christian 
 Ministry, By Rev. Charles Bridges, M.A. 
 
The Two Audiences. 
 
 47 
 
 touches us on the shoulder and says, " Your house is on 
 fire." So great is the difference between the preaching 
 which deals in generals, and that which, coming home to 
 close particulars, arrests the soul. 
 
 But you will not suppose that all this, which is the very 
 highest order of speech and eloquence, can be attained 
 without culture — without deep knowledge of the ways and 
 springs of the human soul ; or fancy that the power to do 
 this consists merely in action or vehemence ; mistaking, as 
 the editor of Vinet* says, ^' persinration for inspiration ;" or 
 that the work Is done by preaching to the nerves, instead 
 of to consciences and souls. You see the vocation of the 
 preacher is ^yoiuer, religious power. Suppose, then, we drop 
 the word eloquence, as an ambition to which you strive to 
 attain ; perhaps the probability is, that as* that word is under- 
 stood, you are not eloquent, and never will be eloquent. I 
 believe we think of eloquence too much ; what, then, should 
 you care if your own natures are divinely touched and 
 estabhshed ? — you can touchy you can teachf you can instruct 
 *' I often repeat to myself," says Keinhardt, " that, after all, 
 the Christian preacher is more an instructor than an ora- 
 tor." Of course. Is not this the apostolic designation, 
 " Apt to teach" ? A preacher may be a perfect, a finished, 
 and most successful orator, and yet miss every purpose and 
 end, and almost every art of the Christian ministry ; but 
 the instructor, the teacher, must be *' thoroughly furnished" 
 himself, and he will furnish the minds of some, even if he 
 fails to touch their souls. 
 
 All persons accustomed to lecturing or pubhc speaking, 
 will have noticed that, in the course of their wanderings, 
 they meet with two audiences. There is a plain, unedu- 
 
 * Few works will serve the really tliouglitful student of preach- 
 ing more than ITomiletics, or the Theory of Preaching. By Alexan- 
 der Vinet, excellently translated and admirably annotated and 
 edited by Rev. A. Faussett, M.A. 
 
48 Tlie Vocation of the P readier. 
 
 cated audience, unpolished, but unconventionaiized, to 
 whom, if you would speak, ^^ou must present your speech 
 in sharp, short, fiery sentences ; in words that flash in- 
 stantly, and in the flash convey and reveal. We have httle 
 of this order of eloquence now ; but where it is, and where 
 it meets its proper audience, it Mndles, till the whole people 
 are borne along on the blaze and the passion of it. The 
 feehngs of the people become ungovernable ; they are 
 clasped and borne along by iiTepressible emotion ; they 
 shout, they cheer. The building in whiah the oration rings, 
 shakes with the peal of rapture and of praise. True, after 
 it is all over, you meditate that the people who yielded them- 
 selves to the fervor of i\nB furore were a simple kind of folk, 
 much more accustomed to follow their feehngs than to in- 
 quire for the verdicts of cultured understandings ; but then, 
 the orator probably reflected to himself, that the strength 
 of his speech also was not in his culture, but in his soul ; 
 that he and his audience captivated each other by their 
 possession of the over-soul : they took fire not by theu' 
 studied art, but by their great sympathies ; and the voice 
 of the orator, as it rose aloft, was hke a wind amidst the 
 trees, or sweeping dov/n the dark hills — very fine, mdeed, 
 but dej)endent, too, upon the trees and the mountains : the 
 wind had a voice in itself, but the trees and mountains 
 awakened the echo. 
 
 There is another speaker, and there is another audience ; 
 an audience intensely, too intensely, capable of appreciating, 
 but incapable of applauding. The speaker who would suc- 
 ceed, must cut his sentences Hke cameos, and work all the 
 separate parts of his figures together, till they have the ex- 
 quisiteness of mosaics. He makes a shp of one word : it 
 is fatal to him in the estimation of his audience. His 
 audience listens with a fine, hesitating, critical ear, much 
 more pleased with the sense of propriety than the sense of 
 power. It never yields itscK until it is taken possession of. 
 
Whe?'e is the Preaclier''s Model f 49 
 
 and conventionalism is a fine antidote to the being taken 
 possession of. This audience appreciates clever reading 
 more than lofty passion, and clear hnes more than cloudy 
 and mystic glories. These two audiences, ahve now in our 
 age, and usually to be found in many past ages, sufficiently 
 represent the two stages of poetry, or of oratory ; poetry 
 in its primeval age — the age before the reign of Horace and 
 of art, when, in fact, there is no art of poetry ; for poetry, 
 of course, precedes the art, even as the social man precedes 
 law and society — and poetry in the artist age, when the 
 sensations are placed in the cabinet, and kept, and turned 
 over, and when mighty heavings of heart give place to 
 pretty little pictures, and the rapture and the passion are 
 succeeded by a fine eye for critical analysis ; and the power 
 to review a fine poem, and to demonstrate its deficiencies, 
 is even far more than to write it In the poetry of Pales- 
 tine, in Hebrew poetry, we are brought into the presence 
 of the first of these two ; and if such a plain illustration as 
 that we have used may serve, then let it serve to illustrate 
 the poetry of Judea and the poetry of Greece, after the age 
 of Homer, the poetry of passion and of truth, and the 
 poetry of culture and of form. The storm-lit and phos- 
 phorescent sea may image to us the one ; the clear, calm, 
 cold, glacial mountaia, visited all night by troops of stars, 
 may seem to us the type of the other. The first, a grand, 
 sonorous, and inadjectived world, where everything is nom- 
 inative and intense in action ; a speculative lens before 
 which all things turn into the qualities of bodies, may seem 
 to us a type of the last. 
 
 Where is the model of the vocation of the preacher — 
 where ? Why, where should it be, but in the Book whidi is 
 to be to the Christian preacher — text, doctrine, creed, life, 
 inspiration, consolation, history, biography — everything? 
 There are some things in the manners and customs of old 
 Palestine, with reference to its prophets, you will have to 
 3 
 
^o The Vocation of the Preacher. 
 
 leave behind ; but for your work, I say to you, enter the 
 schools of the ancient prophets. In the ancient prophet- 
 man, your example is very greatly there. In Dean Stan- 
 ley's History of the Jewish Church, this fact is well brought 
 out. He attempts to bring before us the schools of the 
 prophets, and the power of the prophet as a commanding 
 teacher and leader of the people. He brings out, with 
 considerable distinctness and force, the prophetic insight 
 into the human heart ; the close connection of the prophet 
 with the thoughts, hearts, and consciences of men ; the 
 consciousness of the presence of God ; the teaching of the 
 future, constantly speaking of things to come ; the power 
 of the future both for the Church and the individual. 
 " The whole prophetic teaching stakes itself on the issue 
 that all will go well with us when once we turn. The 
 future is everything, the past is nothing. The turning, the 
 change, the fixing our faces in the right instead of the 
 wrong direction, this is the difficulty, the crisis of hfe ; but 
 this done, then, cried the prophet, ' Though your sins be as 
 scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.' ' He will turn 
 again. He will have compassion upon us ; He will subdue 
 our iniquities ; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the 
 depths of the sea.' " Dean Stanley says : — 
 
 O if the spirit of our profession, of our order, of our body, 
 were the spirit, or anything like the spirit, of the ancient 
 prophets ! if with us, truth, charity, justice, fairness to opj)o- 
 nents, were a passion, a doctrine, a point of honor, to be upheld, 
 through good report and evil, with the same energy as that 
 with which we uphold our position, our opinions, our interpre- 
 tations, our partnerships ! A distinguished prelate has well 
 said, " It makes all the difference in the world whether we put 
 the duty of Truth in the first place or in the second place." 
 Yes ! that is exactly the difference between the spirit of the 
 world and that of the Bible. The spirit of the world asks, 
 Jvrsty "Is it safe? is it jnous ? " secondly, "Is it true?" The 
 
Nationalihj of ike Hebrew Prophet. ^ i 
 
 spirit of the prophets asks, fir^t^ " Is it true ? " secondly^ " Is it 
 safe?" The spirit of the worid asks,^rs^, "Is it prudent?" 
 secondly^ " Is it right ? " The spirit of the prophets asks, Jtr^st^ 
 " Is it right ? " 8econdly^ " Is it prudent ? " It is not that they 
 and we hold different doctrines on these matters, but that we 
 hold them in different proportions. What they put first, we put 
 second ; what we put second, they put first. The religious 
 energy which we reserve for objects of temporary and second- 
 ary importance, they reserved for objects of eternal and primary 
 importance. When Ambrose closed the doors of the church, of 
 Milan against the blood-stained hands of the devout Theodo- 
 sius, he acted in the spirit of a proi)het. When Ken, in spite 
 of his doctrine of the divine right of kings, rebuked Charles 
 II. on his death-bed for his long unrepented vices, those who 
 stood by were justly reminded of the ancient j)rophets. When 
 Savonarola, at Florence, threw the whole energy of his re- 
 ligious zeal into burning indignation against the sins of the 
 city, high and low, his sermons read more like Hebrew prophe- 
 cies than modern homilies.* 
 
 And I will touch upon one very powerful source of inspi- 
 ration through the whole Jewish prophet-host — ^it was na- 
 tional ; they saw, they felt God in their history. I am 
 amazed that this is not more frequently, to us, inspiration 
 in our pulpit. I wonder much, and often seem to hear, 
 the old prophet saying to us : " What iniquity have your 
 fathers foimd in me, saith the Lord." Turn, for contrast, 
 to the Hebrew pages. What stories of battles ! the harp 
 of Deborah, and the hand of Barak ; when the storm of 
 sleet and hail burst over the Canaanites ; and the rains de- 
 scended, and the winds blew, and the flood and the torrent 
 swept them away. What hero in uninspired story reaches 
 the dimensions of Gideon, the victor over Zebah and Zal- 
 munnah? The slirill blasts of those trumpets, the crash 
 of those pitchers ? How the tradition stirs us now ! One 
 of the most glowing and glorious enchantments of Hebrew 
 
 ^Lectures on the Jewish Church, Vol. !., pp. 41, 452. 
 
^2 The Vocation of the Preacher. 
 
 poetry is its nationality. The surge of Hebrew song 
 brought on every wave the thought, "God is with us." 
 This, in all ages, gave the ecstasy and passion to their 
 mighty tones of triumph. And how, as they all sang, the 
 thought of the God who called them and sanctified them, 
 gave the roll and the rush of melody ! It must be admit- 
 ted, there have been no other such national lyrics. " God 
 save the Queen," and " Rule Britannia," awaken thrillings 
 and tinglings of blood and soul ; but they are poor affairs 
 compared with the national songs of Judea ; and in our 
 national songs the music is far finer than the words. We 
 have never set our national incident to music. We are 
 poor in patriotic songs. Even the French, perhaps, exceed 
 us in this ; and The Marseillaise tingles and kindles even 
 more than " Ye Mariners of England." In Judea the na- 
 tional history was well known, was burnt into the hearts of 
 the people. In a very tame way, I fancy, our liistory is 
 apprehended. Thus, for instance, the well-known, perhaps 
 the best known, national incident, the destruction of the 
 Armada, the Spanish Armada, the Invincible Armada ; how 
 differently has Macaulay recited the story to the way in 
 which we can conceive it recited by some ancient Hebrew 
 in a similar, instance. Our poet dwells, indeed, on the 
 mustering of the nation ; btlt the true poem is left unsung. 
 We have the gathering of the people, not the scattering of 
 the foe. There is very much in that projected invasion 
 which reminds us of the invasion of Israel by Sisera ; and 
 many of the words of that glorious song of Deborah might 
 weU befit our case. It is quite wonderful what a propensity 
 there has been in tyrants, from time immemorial, to reckon 
 their chickens before they were hatched ; as the mother of 
 Sisera sang, ** Have they not sped ? have they not divided 
 the prey ; to every man a damsel or two ; to Sisera a prey 
 of divers colors, a prey of divers colors of needlework, of 
 divers colors of needlework on both sides, meet for the 
 
Our Preachers sliould be National. 
 
 S3 
 
 necks of them that take the spoil ? " We wonder how a 
 Hebrew would have chanted the story of those nnach mis- 
 guided asses, the captains and chief governors of that most 
 imperial ass that ever was, Philip II., who had prepared 
 his armada as a gorgeous flotilla, for a very festival of con- 
 quest : fitting out his large fleet vnth soldiers and inquisi- 
 tors, who were to murder and to havoc in the streets of 
 London, and make the sack of Antwerp pale. Alas ! they 
 calculated badly. London w^as all before their anxious 
 eyes. There was velvet, and gold, and baggage, for the tii- 
 umph ; Hghts and torches for the illumination, lolwn Lon- 
 don should be sacked. Every captain had received some 
 gift from the prince to make himseK brave ; and lances so 
 gorgeous — 'twas a preparation for a triumph, not for a 
 war. And then came that night, and the sob of the storm, 
 and the drip of the mysterious oars, and the devil-ships of 
 GianibeUi, and the flame, and the mist, and the tempest ;* 
 and so — but we know the rest : only, what would an 
 Israelite have said over such a victory ? — " Thou breakest 
 the ships of Tarshish with an east wind." 
 
 These are the things in a nation's history which make a 
 people look up. These are the foundations of national 
 pride and exultation. It is possible, indeed, that in many 
 a lonely Methodist chapel, in many a far-away village cot- 
 tage, the sentiment, God for England, is felt just as truly, 
 and perhaps as profoundly, as in the hearts of the ancient 
 Hebrew. But these things have not entered into the text- 
 ure of our national poetry. We have very httle of what 
 may be called national poetry, and what we have does not 
 ring with the grand sentiment of " God is with us," the 
 perpetual sentiment of Hebrewism. Does this arise, as 
 some have said, from the fact that Christianity disclaims 
 patriotism ? I am disposed in part to admit this ; that no 
 land ever has been and ever can be what Palestine was to 
 the Jew ; and hence, too, while he had no epic poet, every- 
 
^4 Tlie Vocation of the Preaclier. 
 
 thing in his land became epical, and as I have said and 
 seen, all things of institution and of scenery became greatly 
 represented. 
 
 Our history has incidents as glowing and marvellous ; 
 but have we the heart of the ancient Hebrew to recite the 
 story ? Why, it is in the memory of men living now, and 
 here, how Napoleon I. spread his mighty camp along the 
 heights of Boulogne, where a hundred thousand men waited 
 for the moment when, beneath the leadership of the First 
 Consul, they were to spring on England — those prepara- 
 tions were vast — and fifty thousand men spread along the 
 coast from Brest to Antwerp. " Let us be masters of the 
 Channel," said Napoleon, " for six hours, and we are mas- 
 ters of the 'world.'" Also the master of the French 
 Mint received orders to strike a medal commemorating the 
 conquest — and although the die had to be broken, there 
 ^are three copies taken ; two are in France and one in 
 England — the Emperor crowned with laurel, and the in- 
 scription in French, "London taken, 1804." But there 
 was One sitting in the heavens who laughed : the Lord 
 had them in derision. " He spoke unto them in His wrath, 
 and vexed them in His sore displeasure ; " for, alas, alas 1 
 Admiral La Touche TreviUe, having received orders to put 
 to sea, he alone knowing the destiny of the fleet, fell sick, 
 poor man, and died just then ; and there was no head to 
 direct, and no hand to strike, and the thing had to be post- 
 poned. But Napoleon, Emperor Napoleon, did not give 
 up ; in 1805 he was waiting still in Boulogne ! London 
 was not taken, to be sure, in 1804, but it might be in 1805. 
 He chmbed the heights, again and again, and waited for 
 the junction of the fleets ; but he strained his eyes in 
 vain : his admirals blundered, and so that fleet which was 
 to have taken London, while Napoleon supposed it hasten- 
 ing to Brest, was flying to Cadiz, there to meet with Nelson 
 at Trafalgar ; and so, — in fact London was not taken. 
 
Tlie Preaching of Henry Smith. ^^ 
 
 But what would an ancient Hebrew have said ? He would 
 have said, " As we have Jieard, so have we seen : " " God 
 is known in her palaces for a refuge. For, lo, the kings 
 were assembled, they passed by together. They saw it, 
 and so they marvelled ; they were troubled, and hasted 
 away." "We have thought of Thy loving kindness, O 
 God, in the midst of thy temple." He would have sung 
 as Deborah sang, "So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord : 
 but let them that love Thee be as the sun when he goeth 
 forth in his might." 
 
 And fire your spirits by the consideration of the Hves and 
 ^vritings of those men who have eminently illustrated the 
 vocation of the preacher. I am sorry I am unable to point 
 you to a cheap edition of the sermons of Heney Smith ;* 
 he was one of the early Puritans — one of the reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth, mentioned by Marsden, with Udall 
 and Penry ; he was, by the hints of his memoriahst, old 
 Thomas Fuller, only saved from their doom by the special 
 protection of Lord Burleigh, accorded to him, no doubt, 
 from his family ties with a large baronial family in Leices- 
 tershire. Udall and Penry were of more worthless extrac- 
 tion ; and, therefore, fitting food for the gaUows and the 
 gaol. But Henry Smith was of the very Praetorian band 
 of Puritans ; he ran a brief course of faithfulness, and his 
 words ran very nimbly. I apprehend few of the Puritans 
 of that age had, in so eminent a degTee, the blessing of 
 Napthali. "He was a hind let loose, and he gave goodly 
 words." BCis was specially the eloquence that "makes 
 straight paths for its feet." No knotty or perplexed ques- 
 tion, or discussion, could ever induce him to turn aside. 
 When the Strand was a wide street to that we see it now, 
 and St. Clement Danes a very different church, it was 
 thronged to listen to the intense earnestness of this youth- 
 
 * There is now an excellent edition, published by Mr. Nichol, in 
 the " Library of Standard Puritan Divines.'" 
 
^6 The Vocation of the Preacher. 
 
 fill Puritan, for he died young. Let me read to you some 
 illustrations of the method he adopted in dealing with the 
 conscience, and pressing Scripture home upon it. Thus he 
 exclaims on the text — Many are the afflictions of the right' 
 eons, but the Lord delivereth him out of them all : — 
 
 This is the anchor of the righteous; as he looks upon his 
 troubles, the promise cometh in like a messenger from Christ, 
 (while he is praying and weeping) and saith, The Lord will de- 
 liver thee out of all. Then he resolveth like Nehemiah, and 
 saith, Shall such a man as I fly? Shall such a man as I recant ? 
 If I be faint in the day of adversity, Solomon saith, "Thy 
 strength is small ; " as if he should say, I was never strong, but 
 did counterfeit like Demas. If I want comfort in trouble, Solo- 
 mon saith, " A good conscience is a continual feast." As if he 
 should say, that I have not a good conscience, if I have not com- 
 fort in the Cross. Therefore, I will wait the Lord's leisure, be- 
 cause Essay saith. Faith maketh no haste. I will not break his 
 bands ; because, then, I am like the heathen. I will not flatter 
 the judge ; because Solomon saith it is in vain. I will not be- 
 tray the cause ; because God hath appointed it to try me. I 
 will not offend my brethren ; because Paul had rather die than 
 do so. I will not charge my conscience ; because it can vex me 
 more than their bands. I will not turn from my profession ; be- 
 cause I learned it of God, and vowed to leave all for it, in the 
 day that I was baptized a Christian. Though my friends tempt 
 me, like Job's wife; though my flesh flatter me, like Eve; 
 though my persecutors would bribe me, like Balaac; though 
 those which suffer with me should revolt for fear, yet I will be as 
 Joshua, which stood alone ; and as Elkana was instead of chil- 
 dren to Hannah, so Christ shall be instead of comfort, instead of 
 wealth, and health, and liberty to me. For many were the 
 troubles of Joseph ; and the Lord delivered him out of all : 
 many were the troubles of Abraham, and the Lord delivered 
 him out of all : many were the troubles of David, and the Lord 
 delivered him out of all : many were the troubles of Job, and 
 the Lord delivered him out of all ; therefore, he can deliver me 
 out of all. But if he do not, (saith Sidrach, Misaac, and Abed- 
 
Tlie Preaching of Henry Smith. ^n 
 
 nego) yet we will not do evil to escape danger : because Christ 
 hath sufiered more for us. Therefore, if I perish, I perish, 
 saith Hester. She was content that her life should perish : but 
 if my purse suffer, my money doth but perish : if my body be 
 imprisoned, my pleasures do but perish : and who can tell when 
 he hath suffered that which is appointed ? Therefore, God 
 saith, When I see convenient time, I will execute judgment. Not 
 when thou dost think it a convenient time. Therefore, saith 
 David to the Lord, In thee do 1 trust all the day : that is, if He 
 come not in the morning. He will come at noon ; if He come 
 not at noon. He will come at night ; at one hour of the day He 
 will deliver me : and then, as the calm was greater after the 
 tempest than it was before, so my joy shall be sweeter after tears 
 than it was before. The remembrance of Babylon will make us 
 sing more joyful in Sion. 
 
 Thus Moses describeth the journey of the righteous, as if they 
 should go thorow the sea, and wilderness, as the Israelites went 
 to Canaan. Look not for ease nor pleasure in your way, but for 
 beasts, and serpents, and thieves : until you be past the wilder- 
 ness, all is strait, and dark, and fearful ; but as soon as you are 
 thorow the narrow gate, all is large, and goodly, and pleasant, 
 as if you were in Paradise. Seeing, then, your kingdom is not 
 here, look not for a golden life in an iron world ; but lemember 
 that Lazarus doth not mourn in heaven, though he suffered pains 
 on earth ; but the glutton mourneth in hell, that stayed not for 
 the pleasures of heaven. To which pleasures the Lord Jesus 
 bring us, when this cloud of trouble is blown over us. Amen. 
 
 Again, from the text, Almost thou persuadest me to be a 
 Christian. 
 
 Is this altogether like Paul or like Festus ? Not at all. Now, 
 if we be almost Christians, let us see what it is to be almost a 
 Christian. Almost a son, is a bastard; almost sweet, is unsa- 
 vory ; almost hot is lukewarm, which God spueth out of His 
 mouth, Pev. iii. 16. So almost a Christian, is not a Christian, 
 but that which God spueth out of His mouth. A Christian al- 
 most is like a woman which dieth in travail ; almost she brought 
 forth a son, but that almost killed the mother and the son too. 
 3* 
 
r8 The Vocation of the Preacher. 
 
 Almost a Christian^ is like Jeroboam, -wMch said, "7^5 is too far 
 to go to Jerusalem to icorship^^'' and therefore cliose rather to wor- 
 ship calves at home. 
 
 Almost a Christian is like Micah, which thought himself re- 
 ligious enough, because he had gotten a priest into his house. 
 Almost a Christian is like theEphraimites, which could not pro- 
 nounce Shibboleth, but Sibboleth. Almost a Christian is like An- 
 anias, which brought a part, but left a part behind. Almost a 
 Christian is like Eli's sons, which polled the sacrifices ; like the 
 fig tree, which deceived Christ with leaves ; like the virgins, 
 which carried lamps without oil ; like the willing unwilling son, 
 which said he would come and would not. What is it to be 
 born almost. If the new man be born almost^ he is not born. 
 What is it to be married almost into Christ ? He which is mar- 
 ried but almost is not married. What is it to oflfer sacrifice 
 almost ? The sacrifice must be killed, or ever it can be sacri- 
 ficed. He which gives almost^ gives not, but denieth. He 
 which believeth almost^ believeth not, but doubteth. Can the 
 door which is but almost shut keep out the thief? Can the cup 
 which is but almost whole hold any wine ? Can the ship which 
 is but almost sound keep out water ? The soldier which dotli 
 but almost fight, is a cow^ard. The physician which doth but 
 almost cure, is a slubberer. The servant which doth but almost 
 labor, is a loiterer. I cannot tell what to make of these defec- 
 tives, nor where to place them, nor unto w^hat to liken them. 
 They are liJce unto children which sit in the marl^et-place, where 
 there is mourning and piping^ and they neither weep nor dance^ but 
 keep a note between them both ; they weep almost., and dance 
 almost, Believest thou almost ? Be it unto thee (saith Christ) 
 as thou lelicvest. Therefore, if thou believest, thou shalt be 
 saved — if thou believest almost.^ thou shalt be saved almost. 
 As when a pardon comes while the thief hangs upon the gal- 
 lows, he is almost saved, but the pardon doth him no good. So 
 he which is almost a Christian, almost zealous, almost righteous, 
 which doth almost love, almost believe, shall be almost saved ; 
 that is, if he had not been a Christian altogether., he should not 
 be damned. Thus every man is a Christian almost., before he be 
 a Christian altogether. 
 
The Preacliing of Mohert JHohinson. i;g 
 
 Yes, there are two admirable men not very often referred 
 to — Henry Smith and Robeet Robinson — ^ both in their way 
 apostolic men ; they are models of perspicuous force and 
 of ready clearness. If I desired that my words should 
 flow like a torrent, I would study Henry Smith ; if I desired 
 the style of calm persuasion, of quaint and concentrated 
 power, I would read and study Robert Robinson. Henry 
 Smith is, every way, one of the happiest representatives of 
 the genius of the old Puritan pulpit ; while Robinson, 
 alas! alas! was a sort of passionless farmhouse Abelard. 
 They both spoke to the multitude, recoihng from all mystic 
 questions. Eminently they kept the high road. Robin- 
 son's sentences have more the ring and sound of the ham- 
 mer, and the accompanying spark ; Henry Smith's have 
 more of the trumpet, the tone of the soldier, the conflict, 
 and the clash of the field. Robinson did not so much 
 preach to you as enter into conversation with you, and his 
 sermons, although so impressive for the pulpit, would have 
 been as impressive if spoken by the fireside. Smith ran 
 nimbly along like a prophet of the Lord sounding an alarm 
 upon the way, and bringing himself into immediate per- 
 sonal relations with the souls of men. These men have no 
 place in estimation by the great masters of the pulpit ; but 
 if you rightly understand what a model should be, and 
 study those men, you will bo far more able teachers than if 
 you gave youi* days and nights to Jeremy Taylor, or South, 
 to Barrow, or even to Hall. 
 
 Yes, Robert Robinson, of Cambridge,* was a remarkable 
 man, of whom Robert Hall, his illustrious successor, said, 
 " He had a musical voice, and was master of all its intona- 
 tions ; he had wonderful self-230Ssession, and could say 
 what he pleased, ivhen he pleased, and how he pleased." 
 
 *See Miscellaneous Works of Bobert JRdbinson, with Memoir, in 
 four vols. ; and The Select Works ^ in one vol. By Rev. William 
 Robinson. 
 
6o The Vocation of the Preacher. 
 
 With few advantages of education in early life, from an 
 unhappy and neglected childhood, and bound apprentice 
 to the not very distinguished profession of hair-dresser — 
 although the profession which gave Jeremy Taylor to the 
 bench of bishops, Tenterden to the woolsack, and Ark- 
 wright to the manufactures of England — he made himself 
 a perfect and accompHshed, although never an elegant 
 scholar. What he was as an orator the eulogy of Mr. HaU 
 has, in some measure, indicated. In truth, his style, and 
 the topics upon which he employed it were the counter- 
 parts of each other. He was a sort of Wilham Cobbett in 
 the pulpit ; he was a Bishop of Barns and Fields ; yet he 
 handled the most grave and thoughtful topics, and he never 
 handled them in the pulpit with coarse and vulgar hands. 
 Or he might be called the Warburton of the conventicle ; 
 unepiscopal, unecclesiastical, he had much of the rude 
 scholarly ruggedness and omnivorous variety of free-think- 
 ing dehght in heresy of that singular and quarrelsome pre- 
 late. He was impatient of any thoughts which ranged 
 themselves above the ranks of common sense ; and it must 
 be admitted that his mind retained a considerable degree 
 of that strength which enabled him to become the teacher 
 of the multitudes, while he raised himself above them. 
 His language was most vigorous, strongly imbued with 
 Saxon significance and vitahty ; but imagery in language 
 and mystery in rehgion seem to have been equally his con- 
 tempt. He had great power of humor and satire — more 
 of the last than the first — and these he did not hesitate to 
 employ. The gownsmen of Cambridge frequently inter- 
 rupted his service in a very disgraceful manner ; but they 
 sometimes most undoubtedly got the worst of it, as appears 
 from the following anecdote : 
 
 One hot summer's day, when he was nearly in the middle of 
 his sermon, a clergyman fifty or sixty years of age entered. Pew 
 
Robert Robinson, 6 1 
 
 doors were thrown open in vain. He walked to the table-pew, 
 took his seat and, began quizzing, and so disturbing the con- 
 gregation, to the great annoyance of the ladies. Robinson's 
 spirit was stirred within him. Having paused long^ enough to 
 regain thoroughly the diverted attention of the audience, he 
 proceeded thus:— "I was speaking about complex and simple 
 ideas, but as few are acquainted with logical terms, I will give 
 an illustration or two. If, walking in the vicinity of the India 
 House, I were to meet a person wearing powder, and silver 
 buckles, and carrying a gold-headed cane, I should have the 
 complex idea of a wealthy merchant. This would be made up 
 of a number of simple ideas ; " and the peculiarities of a suc- 
 cessful merchant were enumerated. '' Again, suppose I walking 
 in Pell Mell, I might there meet some one wearing a cocked hat, 
 a red coat, gold epaulettes, &c., and I should have the complex 
 idea of an officer of high rank in the army. This, as in the 
 former case, includes a number of simple ideas. Once more : if 
 I were walking near St. Paul's, I might see a portly gentleman, 
 in a shovel hat, full bottomed wig, black coat, black silk stock- 
 ings, silver buckles," — describing the dress before him — ^' and 
 I should have the complex idea of a venerable dignitary of the 
 Church of England. As in the former cases, tlm complex idea 
 would include many simple ideas, the gentleman, the scholar, 
 the divine ; " and then followed an eloquent description of the 
 good minister of Jesus Christ. " But, my friends, you may have 
 forgotten the text. I will repeat it. ' Judge not according to 
 outward appearance, but judge righteous judgment.' " Fixing 
 his keen eye on the stranger in the table-pew, he began to re- 
 verse the picture, and describe impertinence and folly in a black 
 dress. The intruder vanished in haste. 
 
 Robinson, moreover, was a tolerably successful farmer, 
 and as for some time the guaranteed income from his 
 church was j£i2 per annum, you wiU rejoice that he turned 
 his husbandry to good account. He was, moreover, a very 
 voluminous writer ; and, as a historian, his researches were 
 very extensive. I have often been surprised that a man so 
 able, so laborious, so self-denying, and gifted, should be 
 
62 The Vocation of ilie Preaclier. 
 
 consigned to so much obscurity. It is true, he was a her- 
 etic, a Sabellian, or something Hke it. The author (if he 
 was) of that sweet hymn, sung by the whole church. 
 
 Come, thou Fount of every blessing, 
 
 he was far from the possession of a sound faith. Moreover, 
 we have said his sermons were preached, for the most part, 
 in bams and cottages. Yet we have heard men, and men 
 of power, declare they would, for all practical purposes, ex- 
 change the style of Kobert Hall for that of Kobert Eobin- 
 son ; and others, again, that they would rather talk hke 
 him than hke any master of pulj^it eloquence. But his 
 Notes on Claude, and the History of Baptism and the Eccle- 
 siastical Researches, must, we suppose, be doomed to the 
 vault of rare, and forgotten, but valuable books. 
 
 He was born at Swaff ham, in Norfolk, the 8th of October, 
 1735. He was awakened to a knowledge of God and in- 
 terest in a rehgious life by a powerful sermon of George 
 Whitefield. He then attended the ministries of Whitefield 
 and Wesley. Dr. GUI, and John Guise, and "WiUiam Ro- 
 maine were also among his most cherished teachers. These 
 men, however, perhaps, could not have satisfied him long. 
 He soon began himself to preach in villages. In this he 
 was encouraged by that singular piece of ecclesiastical eccen- 
 tricity, John Berridge. Robinson liighly valued him ; and, 
 indeed, while the clergyman w^as considerably inferior to 
 the young convert, in the breadth and build of his mind, 
 they were very much alike in a certain rugged coarseness 
 of mind and character ; but Robinson was constantly avail- 
 ing himself of all resources for mental furniture, whether 
 talking with a day-laborer, or translating Saurin, studying 
 Greek and Latin, or attending to the economy of a farm- 
 yard. The first days of his religious life were passed among 
 the Methodists. He very soon, however, became a Baptist, 
 and in 1759 he received an invitation to become the minis- 
 
The Expositions of Hohinson. 63 
 
 ter of the congregation in Cambridge, but continued on 
 trial for two years, and did not settle in Cambridge until 
 1761. 
 
 He continued througbout his life a thorough Dissenter, 
 and was wont to ridicule, I think with a somewhat grace- 
 less severity, the observances of the EstabHshed Church. 
 "Eeally," he says, "when I compare the little cheap deco- 
 rations of Keformed Churches with the masterpieces of 
 Italy, our gaudy days with theu* grand processions, our 
 beggarly imitations of their pontifical magnificence, I caU 
 theirs j)omp, ours poverty. They are nature in the theatre 
 of the metropoHs, we are strollers uttering bombast in cast- 
 off finery in a booth at a fair." The satire is neither true 
 nor kind ; but the writer of the satire was honest. He had 
 many overtui*es made to him from Church dignitaries after 
 the appearance of his Plea for the Divinity of Chrid, but he 
 resisted all ; and the best sermons of their day continued 
 to be delivered in barns, or meeting-houses little better than 
 bams. 
 
 His expositions of Scripture were usually remarkably 
 fehcitous — very plain and lucid. Thus we have before us 
 a popular rendering of a criticism upon the text, " SIcin for 
 s/cin, yea, all that a man hath imU he give for his life" 
 
 Imagine one of these primitive fairs. A multitude of people, 
 from all paiis, of different tribes and languages, in a broad field, 
 all overspread with various commodities to be exchanged. Im- 
 agine this fair to be held after a good hunting season, and a bad 
 harvest. The skinners are numerous, and clothing cheap. 
 Wheat, the staff of life, is scarce, and the whole fair dread a 
 famine. How many skins this year will a man give for this 
 necessary article, without which he and his family must inev- 
 itably die ? Why, each would add to the heap, and put skin 
 upon skin^for all the skins that a man hath will he give for his 
 life. Imagine the wheat-growers, of which Job was one, carry- 
 ing home the skins, which he had taken for wheat. Imagine 
 
64 The Vocation of the Preacher, 
 
 the party engaged to protect them raising the tribute, and threat- 
 ening if it were not paid to put them to death. What propor- 
 tion of skins would these merchants give, in this case of neces- 
 sity ? Skin upon shin^ all the skins that they have will they give 
 for their lives. The proverb then means, that we sliould save 
 our lives at any price. Let us apply it to ourselves.* 
 
 Most of these sermons were addressed to villagers en- 
 gaged in the occupations of farmhouse and country life. 
 Such a congregation would, we may suppose, very keenly 
 appreciate the exercise on early rising. The following ex- 
 tract is leng-thy, but it is perfectly beautiful in the succes- 
 sion of suggestions and pictures it calls to the eye. The 
 text of the preacher gives the refrain of each paragraph. 
 
 Let us look about us, and take notice, at least, of some of the 
 beauties of nature in a morning, for the heavens declare the glory 
 of God^ the frmamerit sheiceth his handy icorl:^ and day uttereth 
 speech. How incomparably line is the dawning of the day, when 
 the soft and stealthy light comes at first glimmering with the 
 stars, and gradually eclipses them all ! How beautifully fitted 
 to excite our attention is the folding and the parting of the grey 
 clouds, drawn back lihe a curtain to give us a sight of the most 
 magnificent of all appearances, the rising of the sun ! How rich 
 the dew, decking every spire of grass with colored spangles of 
 endless variety and inexpressible beauty ! Larks mount and fill 
 the air with a cheap and perfect music, and every bush and every 
 tree, every steeple and every hovel, emits a cooing or a twittering, 
 a warbling, or a chirping, a hailing of the return of day. Amidst 
 so many voices, shall man be dumb ? Surely a good man must 
 say, My voice also shalt thou hear in the morning^ Lord. 
 
 It is in the morning, remarkably, that the ox hnoweth his oicner, 
 and tJie ass his master^ s crih. Then, if ever, man feels himself 
 the monarch, and to him who rises first, all domestic animals 
 pay their homage. One winds and purrs about him, another 
 frisks and capers and doth all but speak. The stern mastiff* and 
 the plodding ox, the noble horse and the harmless sheep, the 
 
 * Village Sermons. 
 
Tlie PreacMng of Robert Robinson, 65 
 
 prating poultry and the dronish ass, all in their own way express 
 their joy at the sight of their master ; he is a god to them, for 
 the eyes of all wait on him^ and lie givetli tlieni their meat in season. 
 It is to these animals that the prophet sends us for instruction, 
 and from their behavior to us he would have us learn our duty 
 to God. Let us observe how much these creatures contribute to 
 our ease and comfort through life ; let us remark that we owe 
 them all they look to us for ; let us acknowledge the debt, and 
 our inability to discharge it without the supplies of Providence ; 
 let us address our prayers and praises to that good Master in 
 heaven, whose stewards we have the honor to be ; let us lay up 
 for this great family, w^io have neither storehouse nor ham ; let 
 us supply them with a liberal hand ; and for wisdom and pru- 
 dence to perform all these duties, let us resolve with the psalm- 
 ist, " My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord. In the 
 morning vnW I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up." 
 
 When man walks abroad in a morning, every sense is feasted, 
 and the finest emotions of an honest and benevolent heart are 
 excited. It is next to impossible to be sour or dull. Above, the 
 spacious canopy, the talernacle or tent for the sun^ in a thousand 
 clouds of variegated forms, glowing with colors in every con- 
 ceivable mixture, skirted and shaded with sulky mists, afford a 
 boundless track of pleasure to the eye. Around, the fragrant 
 air, perfumed by a variety of flowers, refreshes his smell. He 
 snuffs the odor, and tastes, as it were, in delicate mixtures, tho 
 sours and the sweets. 
 
 The village pours forth its healthful sons, each with his cattle 
 parting off to his work, with innocence in his employment, a 
 ruddy health in his countenance, and spirits and cheerfulness in 
 his address, that mak^ him an object of envy to a king. Here 
 the sly shepherd's boy surveys and plots for his flock, and there 
 the old herdman tales and talks to his cattle, and loves patting 
 their flanks to chant over the history of every heifer under his 
 care. And have I only nothing to do in this busy scene : have I 
 nothing to say among so many voices ? Am I a man, and have 
 I no pleasure in seeing the peace and plenty, the health and hap- 
 piness of my fellow-creatures ? Have I no good wishes for 
 them ? Lord^ in the morning will T direct my prayer unto thee, 
 and loill hole wp. 
 
66 Tlie Vocation of the P readier. 
 
 Should we make our observations on a different season of the 
 year, on the morning after a tempestuous night, in which the 
 howling winds had torn up our timbers by the roots, overset our 
 tottering chimneys, and carried half the thatch of our cottages 
 away ; or in which our sheep lay buried in drifts of snow, and 
 the other cattle were deprived of all their green winter meat ; 
 or in which our rivers had swelled into floods, bloT\Ti up the 
 banks, laid all our meadows under water, covered the very ridges 
 of our corn, threatened the lives of all our flock, and de&troyed 
 the hope of man; in all these, and in all other such cases, the 
 perfections of God are displayed, the emotions of men and 
 Christians excited, and the language of the text enforced, My 
 voice shalt thou hear in the morning^ Lord^ in the morning will 
 I direct my prayer unto thee^ and will loolc up,^ 
 
 The following most characteristic letter gives an idea of 
 the mingled industry, humor, and roughness of the man ; 
 but I suppose few ministers could give such an account of 
 the spending of one day. It is addi^essed to Henry Keene, 
 Esq., of Walworth. 
 
 Old Friend — You love I should write folios : that depends 
 upon circumstances, and if the thunder-storm lasts it will be so ; 
 but what a sad thing it is to be forced to write when one has 
 nothing to say. Well, you shall have an apology for not writing, 
 — that is a diary of one day. 
 
 Rose at three o^'clock — crawled into the library — and met 
 one who said, " Yet a little while is the light with you : walk 
 while ye have the light — the night cometh when no man can 
 work — my Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Rang the 
 great bell, and roused the girls to milking — went up to the 
 farm, roused the horse-keeper- fed the horses while he was 
 getting up — called the boy to suckle the calves, and clean out 
 the cow-house — lighted the pipe — walked round the gardens 
 to see wh^t was wanted there — went up to the paddock to see 
 if the weanling calves were well — went down to the ferry to 
 see whether the boy had scooped and cleaned the boats — re- 
 
 * Village Sermons. 
 
Queer Description of a Preaclier''s Day, 67 
 
 turned to the farm — examined the shoulders, heels, traces, chaff, 
 and corn of eight horses going to plough — mended the acre- 
 staff — cut some thongs, whip-corded the boys' plough-whips — 
 pumped the troughs full — saw the hogs fed — examined the 
 swill-tub, and then the cellar — ordered a quarter of malt, for 
 the hogs want grains and the men want beer — filled the pipe 
 again, returned to the river, and bought a lighter of turf for 
 dairy fires, and another of sedge for ovens — hunted up the 
 wheelbarrows and set them a trundling — returned to the'farm, 
 called the men to breakfast, and cut the boys' bread and cheese, 
 and saw the wooden bottles filled — sent one plough to three 
 roods, another to the three half acres, and so on — shut the 
 gates, and the clock struck five — breakfast — set two men to 
 ditch the five roods — two more to chop sads, and spread about 
 the land — two more to throw up muck in the yard — and three 
 men and six women to weed wheat — set on the carpenter to re- 
 pair cow-cribs, and set them up till winter — the wheeler to mend 
 up the old carts, cart-ladders, rakes, etc., preparatory to hay- 
 time and harvest — walked to the six acres, found hogs in the 
 grass — went back, and sent a man to hedge and thorn — sold 
 the butcher a fat calf, and the suckler a lean one — the clock 
 strikes nine — walked into barley-field — barleys fine, picked off 
 a few tiles and stones, and cut a few thistles — the i)eas fine, but 
 foul ; the charlock must be topj)ed — the tares doubtful ; the fly 
 seems to have taken them — prayed for rain, but could not see a 
 cloud — came round to the wheat field — wheat rather thin, but 
 the finest color in the world — sent four women on the shortest 
 wheats — ordered one man to weed the ridge of the long wheats, 
 and two women to keep up rank and file with him in the fur- 
 rows — thistles many — blue-bottles no end — traversed all the 
 wheat-field — came to the fallow-field — the ditches have run 
 crooked — set them straight — the flag-sads cut too much — 
 rush-sads too little, strength wasted, show the men how to three- 
 comer them — laid out more work for the ditchers — went to the 
 ploughs — set the foot a little higher, cut a wedge, set the coulter 
 deeper, must go and get a new mould-board against to-morrow 
 — went to th6 other plough — picked up some wool and tied 
 over the traces — mended a horse-tree, tied a thong to the plough 
 
68 TliG Vocation of the Preacher, 
 
 hammer — went to see which lands wanted ploughing first — sat 
 down under a bush — wondered how any man could be so silly 
 as to call me reverend — read two verses, and thought of His 
 loving-kindness in the midst of His temple, gave out, " Come all 
 harmonious tongues," and set Mount Ephraim tune — rose up — 
 whistled — the dogs wagged their tails, and on we w^ent — got 
 home — dinner ready — filled the pipe — drank some milk — 
 and fell asleep — woke by the carpenter for some slats, which 
 the sawyer must cut — the Reverend Messrs. A. in a coat, B. in a 
 gown of black, and C. in one of purple, came to drink tea, and 
 settle whether Gomer was the father of Celts, and Gauls, and 
 Britons, or only the uncle — proof sheet from Mr. Archdeacon 
 — corrected it — washed — dressed — went to meeting, and 
 preached from The end of all things is at hand, he ye sober and 
 watch unto prayer — found a dear brother reverence there, who 
 went home with me, and edified us all out of Solomon's song, 
 with a dish of tripe out of Leviticus, and a golden candlestick 
 out of Exodus. Really and truly we look for you and Mrs. 
 Keene, and Mr. Dore at harvest, and if you do not come, I know 
 what you all are. Let Mr. Winch go where he can better him- 
 self. Is not this a folio ? And like many other folios ? 
 
 R. Robinson.* 
 
 There was much in the affability of Robinson, most 
 pleasant and commendable. We read that it was a maxim 
 with him, that if a child lisped to give you pleasure, you 
 ought to be pleased. The smallest expression of kindness 
 from villagers, if but the lighting of his pipe, was followed 
 by tokens of his esteem. Wlien preaching in barns, he de- 
 lighted to visit his poor brethren ; he not only was pleased 
 to regale himself with their brown bread and black tea, but 
 he took care that his poor friends should lose nothing by 
 their attentions. He often used to say, "When a poor 
 person shows anxiety to administer to your comfort, do not 
 interrupt him ; why deprive him of the pleasure of ex- 
 pressing his friendship?" After his death, among his 
 
 * Memoirs of Robert Robinson. By George Dyer, 1796. 
 
Robert Robinson, 69 
 
 papers was found a list of memoranda, or little commis- 
 sions to be executed by him when in London, such as the 
 following : — "B.'s petitions; gown for poor M. ; M. M.'s 
 son to be seen ; H. wishes Mrs. H. to be merciful ; W. 
 thinks his son's wages are too small ; Watts's Hymns for T. 
 H. ; Testament for C." He appeared nowhere to more 
 advantage than among the poorest of his flock. Each 
 Sunday he devoted the intervals betwixt morning and 
 evening service to friendly intercourse, and being fond of 
 a pipe, though he was no drinker, he used to get his poor 
 people round him at an old widow-woman's house near the 
 meeting: here he gratified himself in hearing their- dis- 
 tresses, in answermg their difficulties, and, to the best of 
 his power, in relieving their wants. Robinson's brethren 
 often found fault with him for attending to farming. He 
 was not very courteous in his mode of replying to their 
 condemnations of him. "Godly boobies," he would say, 
 " too idle, many of them, to work, too ignorant to give in- 
 struction, and too conceited to study, spending their time 
 in tattling and mischief ; are these the men to direct my 
 conduct, to censure my ministry ? " 
 
 He died in Birmingham, whither he had travelled to 
 preach for Dr. Priestly. He had been somewhat depressed 
 in health ; but the night before his death he rallied, and 
 seemed to have regained his usual vivacity : — 
 
 Soon after eleven o'clock he retired to rest, and was found in 
 the morning dead, the bed-clothes being unruffled, the features 
 not distorted, the body almost cold. The physicians pronounced 
 the disease of which he died to be angina pectoris. His wish 
 had been to die " softly, suddenly, and alone." 
 
 The extracts I have given will sufficiently indicate the 
 style of Robinson and the structure of his mind. I have 
 said the architecture of his mind was of the plain barn-door 
 style. His writings abound in illustrations of plain, and 
 
no The Vocation of the Preacher. 
 
 simple, and unaffected grace ; but his sentences can never be 
 called graceful. They go right forward to their object, and 
 they always reach it, and their directness produces a pleas- 
 ing impression on the mind ; but this is all. And the style 
 is irresistible, but by the force of simphcity. Every para- 
 graph is laden with convictions. It modifies the admira- 
 tion we might feel, to know that he had a manner of shock- 
 ing coarseness, in which he dehghted to express himseK ; 
 when he speaks of Calvin, Cobbett could not use language 
 more gross : " Nothing shocks me so much as to see the 
 Calvinist Baptists sing psalms around the tomb of that 
 bloody Calvin who burnt Sers^etus ;" but he did not indulge 
 in this speech in the pul]3it. Yet I find it easier to com- 
 mend the architecture of his mind, than the fulness, warmth, 
 or sufficiency of his faith. 
 
 Now, in closing for the present, let me say. Obtain an 
 empire over souls — ^not for your own sake, but for Christ's 
 sake. Start from a centre with clearly-defined principles, 
 do not be afraid if they are called prejudices, — to lay aside 
 prejudices is to lay aside principles, only see their tendency ; 
 weigh them in the balances of the sanctuary. Have preju- 
 dices, settle some things once for all ; do not have again to 
 lay the foundation. Settle some questions, and then go on. 
 Pray for strength to fulfil the vocation to which you arc 
 called ; for the weakness of your will will be shown not in 
 choice, but in execution. It is that doing which so sadly 
 defeats us alL There is a remark of Schleirmacher that, 
 "every man is a priest, so far as he draws around him 
 others in the sphere to which he has appropriated himself, 
 and in which he professes to be a master ; and every one 
 is a layman, so far as he is guided by the experience and 
 council of another within the sphere of rehgion, where he 
 is comparatively a stranger." It is one of those remarks 
 one cannot quite endorse ; but how nmch truth there is in 
 it. Preach so as to be centres — prophets to the souls of 
 
Anecdote of William Jay. ji 
 
 men. But remember your vocation. I heard the other day 
 an anecdote of a lecturer ; he had been lecturing on George 
 Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, in a very un- 
 satisfactory manner, without any appreciation of his spirit- 
 ual insight and depth ; when, as he went out of the room, 
 an old Quaker went up to him and said, "Friend, thou 
 hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep." That 
 may be said, I suppose, of many thousands of ministers. 
 How, then, can they reach the souls of men ? It ought not 
 to be said of you ; it possibly will be said of many of you. 
 You must aim, therefore, at culture — spiritual culture, that 
 you may have transactions with the souls of men, for their 
 sakes, for Christ's sake. Your power over the souls of 
 men will be from your own sense of your relation to 
 eternity. It must be power — not to charm, not to please, 
 not to attract crowds, but reaUy to obtain power over souls. 
 Man has been called a many-sided animal. I do not like 
 such definitions ; but I see that the animal races have a 
 goal to which they attain. Each tendency is fulfilled, and 
 each mdividual and race expires. "But man," says Jacobi, 
 " is a yonder-sided animal;" he is, if he is an animal at all ; 
 he has his true fulfilment beyond the rolHng river, or all our 
 traditions and our hopes are vain ; Christ is not risen, and 
 we are yet in our sins. Live, then, in the memory of these 
 gTcat endeavors, and let them crown and glorify all youi* 
 efforts. 
 
 You may be young, but " let no man despise thy youth." 
 Please to remember that your being here implies that you 
 have sown your wild oats ; surely I beheve a man should 
 have sown his wild oats before he begins to preach ; ah, not 
 merely in life — in faith. You know in whom you have be- 
 heved ; not by hearsay, but by experience, by conviction, 
 by knowledge ; if not give up, retire away. I command 
 you to remember, your value as a minister of the Gospel 
 depends not on the fifty things you do not believe, but on 
 
72 The Vocation of the Preacher. 
 
 the two or three you do. Youi' youth need not be despised ; 
 the youth of WiUiam Jay was not despised ; nor was the 
 youth of John Angell James. When a testy old gentle- 
 man said to WilHam Jay, when he first began to preach, he 
 " had no notion of beardless boys becoming preachers," he 
 said, " Pray, Sir, does not Paul say to Timothy, ' Let no 
 man despise thy youth.' You remind me. Sir, of what I 
 have read of a French monarch, who had received a young 
 ambassador and complaining, said, * Your master should 
 not have sent a beardless striphng.' * Sir,' said the youth- 
 ful ambassador, ^ had my master supposed you wanted a 
 a beard he would have sent you a goat.' " 
 
 A distinguished traveller says : — 
 
 Being at Calais, I climbed up into the lighthouse, and con- 
 versed mtli the keeper. " Suppose," said I, that one of these 
 lights should go out !" " Never ! Impossible !" he cried, with a 
 sort of consternation at the bare hypothesis. " Sir," said he, 
 pointing to the ocean, "yonder, where nothing can be seen, 
 there are ships going to every part of the world. If to-night 
 one of my burners were to go out, within six month;* would 
 come a letter, perhaps from India, perhaps from America, per- 
 haps from some place I never heard of, sapng, on such a night, 
 the watchman neglected his post, and vessels were in danger. 
 Ah, Sir ! sometimes in the dark nights, in the stormy weather, I 
 look out to sea, and feel as if the eye of the whole world were 
 looking at my light. Go out ! Burn dim ! Oh, never !" 
 
 That keeper truly felt the responsibility of his position. 
 His duty was to keep hghts continually burning during the 
 night for the guidance of vessels. The Christian minister 
 is a lighthouse keeper. The world is enveloped in moral 
 darkness. This is not merely an accident, or attribute of 
 its condition ; but its essence and principal element. It is 
 a darkness that pervades and overshadows all mankind. 
 And you are "hghthouse keepers." 
 
 In the stoiy of the Council of Nice there are two inci- 
 dents, which for the humor of the one, and the happy teach- 
 
Old Church Legends. 73 
 
 ing of tlie other, deserve to be borne in mind. It is said 
 that Nicolay, Bishop of Myra, when Anus was propounding 
 his heresies to the Council, quite impatient of all argument, 
 lifted his fist, and gave the great heresiarch a smart box on 
 the ear. A most impressive argument, and in spirit often 
 followed since. But the more happy incident is that re- 
 lated of Spiridion, a rude shepherd. It is said the disputes 
 were running high, and the philosophers sounding on their 
 perilous way, when before one of the chief arch-disputants 
 there hmped the shepherd Sx3iridion ; he had but one eye, 
 and he had a limping leg ; he had lost the use of both in 
 the heroism of martyrdom for the faith, and now abruptly 
 he broke in and said, " Christ and his apostles left us not a 
 system of logic, nor a vain deceit, but a naked truth, to be 
 guarded by faith and good works." Turning full upon the 
 disputants, especially one Eulogius, nicknamed Fair-speech, 
 he said, " In the name of Jesus Christ, hear me, philoso- 
 phers ; — there is one God, maker of heaven and earth, and 
 of all things visible and iuvisible, who made all things by 
 the w^ord of His power, and by the hohness of His Holy 
 Spirit ; — this Word, by which name we call the Son of God, 
 took compassion on men, for then.' wanderings astray, and 
 for their savage condition, and chose to be bom of a wofaan, 
 and to converse with men, and to die for them, and Ho 
 shall come to judge every one for the things done in life. 
 These things we believe without curious inquiry ; cease then 
 from the vain labors of seeking proofs against what is 
 established by faith ; and the manner in which these things 
 may be or may not be, but if thou believest, answer at once 
 the questions as I put them to you." 
 
 The philosopher was struck dumb by this new mode of 
 argument. He could only reply in a general way, that he 
 assented. "Then," answered the old man, "if thou be- 
 lievest, rise and follow me to the Lord's house, and receive 
 the sign of this faith." The philosopher was staggered, he 
 4 
 
74 
 
 The Vocation of the Preacher. 
 
 turned to the crowd of his disciples, and he said, *^ Hear 
 w£, my learned friends, so long as it was a matter of words 
 to words, whatever was opposed I overthrevv^ by my skill in 
 speaking ; but when in the place of words power came oiU 
 of the speakei^'s lips, words could no longer resist power — 
 man could no longer resist power. If any of you feel as I 
 have felt, let him believe in Christ and foUow this old man 
 in whom God has spoken." And I think this story illus- 
 trates what we desire the power of the preacher to be : the 
 magnetic power of earnestness, and its simphcity, over 
 argument and speculation. 
 
 Tliis hints to us the vocation of the preacher — it is im- 
 mediately to front, and interest, and arrest the souls of men. A 
 mighty work ; do not place it beneath any work ; magnify 
 the office, the office to which you have consecrated your- 
 selves, and beheve that no other work stands higher or 
 can stand so high ; I trust I have not to ask you to believe 
 that the vocation of either the poet or the artist, or the man 
 of letters can be higher, or can be so high. Yes ! I shall 
 say it ! I put it strongly : — to mediate between the Savioiu' 
 and souls ; to stand by the pure river of the water of life, 
 anc^ to say, " Let him that thirsteth come ;" " ho ! every 
 one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters ;" — this is the vo- 
 cation of the preacher. 
 
 Finally : arrived at this preliminary point, I think I may 
 recite to you another old Church legend. It is said of an 
 old saint of the first ages, that to him once the prince of 
 evil appeared, arrayed in jewelled robes: "I am Christ," 
 said he ; but there was one mark of Messiahship he had 
 either been unable or neglected to assume. The old saint 
 looked steadfastly on him, and then said he, " But where 
 are the prints of the nails ?" Let us remember, however 
 eloquence may ghtter or intellect aspire, that this is the 
 test — ifc must n6i be wanted : it will be still said, " Where 
 are the prints of the nails ?" 
 
III. 
 
 Lamps, Pitchers, and Trumpets in 
 the Jewish Church. 
 
 EMINDING you of the idea and definition of the 
 Christian preacher abready given, namely, that 
 he is the awakener and the searcher of the con- 
 science ; not an intellectual lecturer, not a clas- 
 sical teacher and schoolmaster, not a x^icture-painter, but a 
 man possessed by the knowledge of the infinite destinies 
 and obhgations of man ; I may yet again refer you, as I 
 referred you last week, to the character of the Hebrew 
 prophet. It is an illustration of the prodigious influence 
 of speech, that the whole history of the Hebrew people is 
 inwrought with the words of their great prophets. Pericles 
 and Demosthenes in Greece, and Cicero in Eome, were il- 
 lustrious accidents in the histories of those great repubhcs ; 
 but in Judea the prophets formed a divine and royal suc- 
 cession. Their words became, from the earhest days of 
 national history, the sceptre, passed from hand to hand ; 
 the law, from life to life ; the prophets were the masters of 
 opinion and of emotion ; the prophets roused the nation, 
 their words flamed along, lighting up the way to the battle- 
 field ; they were able to anoint, and crown, and to depose 
 kings ; perpetually, from age to age, they fronted the vices 
 (75) 
 
76 Lamps^ etc, J in the Jewish Church. 
 
 and idolatries of tlieir times ; their fiery breath, again and 
 again, cast down and consumed the idols, to which that 
 cruel and sensational people continually returned. As I 
 have said, they recited the national story ; they were the 
 inspired depositories of the nation's annals and actions ; 
 they were the inspired forerunners of the nation's hopes, 
 always pointing to the morning light, ever shining in the 
 most disconsolate epochs in the distant sky. 
 
 It was thus that Moses, the founder of the great com- 
 monwealth, was a prophet, although "He said unto the 
 Lord, oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, but slow of speech, 
 and of a slow tongue. And the Lord said unto him. Who 
 hath made man's mmtth, or who maketh the dumb, or the 
 deaf, or the seeing ? Have not I, the Lord ?" It was thus 
 that the prophet became a domestic institution in the his- 
 tory of the Church in the wilderness, when "the Spirit 
 came upon Eldad and Medad, and they prophesied," and 
 received the sanction of Moses, as he said, " Would that all 
 the Lord's people were prophets." It was thus, when the 
 faint-hear tedness of men called for " great searchings of the 
 heart," that a woman like Deborah arose, reciting the splen- 
 dors of her song beneath the old oak tree, while the sword 
 of Barak shone upon the field. Prophecy hghtens the ro- 
 mantic heroism of Gideon, and exhibits its rays of flame 
 through the wild feats of Samson. And thus Samuel — the 
 Athanasius, as he has been called, of Judea, the last repre- 
 sentative of the ancient Mediaeval Church of Judea — is ho 
 through whom the Lord revealed HimseK, and through 
 whom He inaugurated the beginning of a more distinct 
 Messianic and prophetic dispensation. Kays of prophetic 
 insight and inspiration must have gleamed through the 
 mind of Saul, thus giving to us the hint of what was lost, 
 when "he departed from the Lord" and gave himself to 
 madness. I need not remind you of the illustrious succes- 
 sion from that time. But I would present Isaiah to you 
 
Isaiah as a Model Preaclier. 
 
 77 
 
 as at once the most sublime illustration of the Hebre-w 
 prophet — the Dante of Judea — ^perhaps the loftiest of all 
 bards, inspired or uninspired, of any age, and as furnishing 
 a wonderfully complete portrait of the sacred prophet, the 
 minister in the world, or in the sanctuary, the reprover in 
 the one, and the consoler in the other. I would present 
 Isaiah to you as the preacher to our times, and would find 
 in his succession of glowing and w^onderful words the 
 types of those states of minds and society you must ad- 
 dress. 
 
 Isaiah is one of the prophets most constantly read ; and 
 his words have a most penetrating clearness. It is possible 
 to enter into the meaning of some of the prophetic state- 
 ments ; and, no doubt, miUions have, with very clear eyes 
 and hearts, read and interpreted much that flows along 
 with such astonishing power ; but it is with this book, as 
 with most other books of Scriptures, it is not read or un- 
 derstood as a whole. The clear insight of the prophet into 
 the whole worlds of cause and consequence is not under- 
 stood. He is called, most truly and appropriately, the 
 Evangelical Prophet ; but the relation of evangelical truth 
 to the great system of the world, this is seldom perceived. 
 It is, perhaps, regarded as a book of magnificent fragments 
 rather than a coherent, and consistent, and most magnifi- 
 cent whole. 
 
 It is probable that Isaiah was twenty years old when he 
 began his ministry, in the last year of the reign of Uzziah. 
 He would then be eighty at the death of Hezekiah ; he was 
 then approaching the close of his career ; hence the mourn- 
 ful and pathetic, and elegaic strain : 
 
 The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart : 
 And mercifal men are taken away, none considering 
 That the righteous is taken away from the evil to come. 
 
yS Zamps^ etc., in the Jeivish Cliurcli. 
 
 Then followed the years of Manasseh ; and tradition de- 
 clares that the great poet was one of the martyrs whose 
 innocent blood that king shed. To him also is assigned 
 the mournful dignity, the melancholy reference of the elev- 
 enth of Hebrews, — "They were sawn asunder." During 
 those years what a procession of events passed in review 
 before the eyes of the prophet, bringing with them ever 
 variegated, and brighter, or darker- colored experience. 
 No doubt, if we seek the centre from which Isaiah spoke, 
 we shall find, that to him was given that power of insight 
 by which we are able to " see into the life of things." All 
 the people round the Hebrew nation, and the Hebrew na- 
 tion itself, the distant isles of the sea, and the distant ages, 
 all became, to the mind of the prophet, concrete parts of 
 one almighty plan. Amidst the rush of the nations, Isaiah 
 maintained and proclaimed entire trust in the Lord as 
 the actual ruler and ever-present friend, watching over 
 them every moment as the husband and the father. The 
 unity of God is the " master-light of all Isaiah's philosophy, 
 moral and political ; the one lesson which in a himdred 
 forms he is continually teaching the people." We should 
 not hesitate to maintain that to Isaiah was vouchsafed, in 
 a larger proportion than to any other of the prophets, a 
 revelation, an insight, into the great drift, and tendencies, 
 and plan of Providence. No one ever saw so clearly as he 
 into the pure and essential reasons of things. " Our great- 
 est master," as Isaac Taylor well calls him, "in the pure 
 reason." His imagination was wondrously compact. He 
 saw into the life of all things. To him things the most re- 
 mote became near and present ; in the strength of the eter- 
 nal truth by which he spake, and the clearness of the light 
 by which he saw, " one day was as a thousand years, and 
 a thousand years as one day." 
 
 To attempt to interpret Isaiah beneath the slavery of 
 classical mles, is to fail of the interpretation, and to do in- 
 
Isaiali. 79 
 
 justice to the source and spring of his inspiration. He 
 cannot be understood at all, indeed, without some help 
 from that same Spirit which gave hun utterance. He be- 
 longed to a race, ethnologically and individually, to whom 
 it was given to live in the future, in the golden age to 
 come. 
 
 The Hebrews were a nation of proj)hets. Distant times 
 and ages were their goal and appointed rest, and they 
 pressed as travellers through the present, and looked for 
 the "city which hath foundations." So thoroughly this 
 imaginativeness of character pervaded not only the lan- 
 guage of the prox)hets, but the historians too ; so habitually 
 the imaginative and not the logical faculty dictated the laws 
 of Hebrew grammar, that, " It hath come to pass" refers 
 always to a future event. It was thus that Isaiah was 
 " rapt into f ature times," and sees the throne of the Lord 
 of Israel estabhshed in sovereignty over all the nations of 
 the earth, and sees all the peoples becoming willing sub- 
 jects to Him, and friendly citizens to each other. He sees 
 true hberty when aU submit themselves to Him whose ser- 
 vice is perfect freedom ; and the happiness and welfare of 
 aU is to be secured, not by some new result of civilization, 
 but by carrying out God's original purpose and plan ; that 
 the Jews should be ministers of truth to all the nations of 
 the earth, who in them should be blessed ; that " out of 
 Zion should go the law, and the word of the law from Jer- 
 usalem." He expounds the vocation of the Hebrew people. 
 He holds up the master-light to guide to all right action 
 when he says, " O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk 
 in the light of the Lord !" This concreteness of the imag- 
 ination makes the prophecy of Isaiah one. 
 
 Sir Edward Strachey* has given a conception of the 
 
 ■^ In a most instructive and delightful book ; Hebrew Politics in 
 the Times of Sargon and Sennacherib ; an Inquiry into the Jlis- 
 iorical Meaning and Purpose of the Prophecies of Isaiah, etc., 1853. 
 
8o Lamps^ etc.^ in the Jewish Church. 
 
 youthful Isaiah entering upon his mission and ministry, 
 "in the year that King Uzziah died," with considerable 
 beauty and freshness. At no period, probably, after the 
 decay and destruction of its original majesty by Shishak, 
 was the temple more magnificent than then. The youthful 
 prophet is beheld in his rough hair or woollen garment — 
 possibly not unhke the Capuchin friar in the streets of 
 Rome — going up to the temple to worship. It is very 
 necessary, to a complete knowledge of the prophet, that we 
 also obtain a distinct view of the Temple of that age ; its 
 ample courts and colonnades, and its porch with high spire- 
 hke front ; its holy house, or holy of holies ; its well-x3ro- 
 portioned, elaborate workmanship, massive, after the man- 
 ner of the Coptic peoples. Across the variegated pavement 
 the youthful prophet steps, between the tall pillars which 
 Solomon reared — Jachin and Boaz — whose magnificent pro- 
 portions especially reminded the worshippers that the king- 
 dom was established by God, and the constitution He 
 ordained would be u]3held by Him. Isaiah's eye rested 
 on the molten sea, borne upon the backs of the twelve 
 oxen, with its beautiful floral ornaments of lilies and 
 pomegranates, with its smaller lavers resting on wheels, 
 ornamented with oxen, Hons, cherubim, and palm-trees. 
 Beyond, before him, his eye beheld the great brazen altar 
 of burnt offering, with its never extinguished fire, and, over- 
 head, the roof of thick cedar beams, resting on rows of col- 
 umns. Isaiah would see through the open folding-doors of 
 cypress, carved with cherubim, and palm-trees, and open 
 flowers, and covered with gold upon the carved work, into 
 the holy place, whither, not being a priest, most probably 
 he could not enter. The Hght of the golden lamps on 
 either side would show him the cedar paneUing of the 
 walls, carved with knobs and open flowers, cherubim, and 
 palm-trees, festooned with chain-work and richly gilt ; the 
 mosaics of precious stones, the cypress floor, the altar of 
 
Isaiah^ s Vision in the Temple, 8 1 
 
 incense, the table mth the shew-bread ; and, amidst the 
 interfulgent :flashings, radiating from the solemn gloom of 
 the gorgeous furniture, would be distinguished the veil of 
 blue, and purple, and crimson, and fine linen, embroidered 
 with the cherubim, symbol of the awful presence and un- 
 approachable majesty of the King, the Lord of hosts. 
 Amidst such scenes we may conceive the young prophet 
 bowed and rapt into the thought of Him " whom the heaven 
 and the heaven of heavens could not contaui." And then 
 across his soul would sweep the memories of that house. 
 In the midst of a blaze of magnificence and pomp, faded 
 now, Solomon knelt and prayed on the brazen scaffold, near 
 the altar, "kneeling upon his knees before all the congre- 
 gation of Israel, and spreading forth his hands to heaven ;" 
 renewing the national covenant with the Lord, the God of 
 Israel, and receiving His ratification in " the cloud that filled 
 the house." In that house the hushed tramp of the men 
 of Judah and Jerusalem returning from battle had been 
 heard, when, with harps, and psalteries, and trumpets, they 
 came into the house of the Lord to celebrate their victories. 
 Down the sacred courts of that house had rushed the hosts 
 of the fierce invaders when they broke down its carved 
 work, its hallowed imagery, and destroyed, or carried away 
 its sacred things. In that house stood Jehoida and pro- 
 claimed the young king Joash, while the youth " stood in 
 the midst of the people at his pillar," as the manner was ; 
 and there the murderess, Queen Athaliah, shrieked, 
 " Treason ! Treason !" while all the people shouted, " God 
 save the King !" Deep in the patriot-soul these things were 
 fused and glorified by the mingled fires of genius, and piety, 
 and inspiration. Aspirations and ideahzations rising over 
 all, the youthful seer, with his imagination kindled and cul- 
 tivated, prepared by purifying and burning powers within, 
 there he sat. Through him God would speak. He would 
 lead His people into a knowledge of His will, of Himfself, 
 4* 
 
82 LampSy etc.^ in iJie Jewish Gliurclu 
 
 and His love, by qualifying His messenger. God can, it is 
 true, speak through instruments all unconscious of His de- 
 signs — Caesars, or Napoleons, whiilwinds, or earthquakes — 
 but not so when He intends to lead to a knowledge of Him- 
 self. " Horn this could be, how God reveals His mind and 
 will to men, how the poetic or other human faculty gives 
 form and expression to truths not imagined or discovered, 
 but communicated from on high, this can never be ex- 
 plained. 
 
 An explanation is a contradiction in terms, an assertion 
 that the infinite is definable, that the superhuman is subject 
 to the laws, and expressible in the terms of the human." 
 How, we know not, but in some way, Isaiah was qualified ; 
 and the moment when his mission became known to him- 
 self, seems to have been in the temple " in the year when 
 King Uzziah died." The throng of worshippers had left 
 the courts ; the chanting in alternate parts of the choirs of 
 singers, clothed in white linen, would have died into silence ; 
 other devout Israelites were praying apart ; and white- 
 robed priests, silently presenting their prayers in the fra- 
 grant cloud of incense which rose from the golden altars in 
 the holy place, and the stillness and solemnity of the scene 
 rather heightened than disturbed ; " then," says Sir Edward 
 Strachey, " the veil of the Temple was withdrawn, and the 
 holy of holies discovered to the projohet's eyes, and he saw 
 the Lord sitting as a king upon His throne, actually govern- 
 ing and judging. His train, the symbol of dignity and 
 glory, filled the holy place ; while around Him hovered the 
 attendant seraphim, spirits of purity, zeal, and love, chant- 
 ing in alternate choirs the holiness of their Lord : the 
 threshold vibrated with the sound, and the 'white cloud' 
 of the Divine presence, as if descending to mmgle itseK 
 with the ascending incense of prayer, filled the house. The 
 eternal archetypes of the Hebrew's symbohc worship were 
 revealed to Isaiah ; and, as the centre of them all, his eyes 
 
Tlie Burdens of Isaiah Typical. 8 3 
 
 saw the King, the Lord of hosts, of whom the actual rulers 
 from David to Uzziah had been but- the temporary and sub- 
 ordinate viceroys. In that presence, even the spirits of the 
 fire, which consumes all impurities while none can mix with 
 it, cover then* faces and their feet, conscious that they are 
 not pure in God's sight, but justly chargeable with hnper- 
 fection : and much more does Isaiah shrink from the 
 aspiring thoughts he had hitherto entertained of his fitness 
 to be the preacher of that God to his countrymen ; he, a 
 man of unclean lips, sharing the uncleanliness of the people 
 among whom he dwells. In utter self-abasement he realizes 
 the exceeding sinfulness of sin and the utter separation it 
 makes between man and the holy God."* 
 
 Thus the meaning of his mission broke upon the youthful 
 prophet's soul, and he was fitted to develop the principles 
 of eternal truth in their relation to the Church, and the 
 nations. Hence there is the burden of Babylon, the doom of 
 the empire of force : m the mountains to the north of Baby- 
 lon is heard the hum of a great multitude ; the northern 
 nations gathering to battle, mustered by the Lord of hosts 
 himself. Babylon represented the reign of mere power, and 
 by power it is to be overcome. " A man will be more pre- 
 cious than fine gold ;" for the Medes care not for gold — 
 they were for blood. The Lord had declared that he would 
 lay waste the vineyard of His own people ; but of Babylon 
 He declares that it shall not even be a pastui'e-ground ; the 
 Arab, w^andering tlu"ough the desert, shall shun it, shall 
 leave its palaces and pavilions to the owls, and the wolves, 
 and the satyrs that shall dance there, and the wild beasts 
 of the islands that shall cry in those desolate places, and 
 the dragons in their palaces. And then foUows that ode — 
 which has been pronounced the finest of its kind extant in 
 any language — a song of triumph in the form of a dirge, 
 
 * Sir Edward Strachey's Hebrew Politics, pp. 78, 79. 
 
84 Lam])s^ etc.^ in the Jewish Church. 
 
 involving an undercurrent of sarcasm and irony : "The 
 whole earth is at rest and quiet ; they break forth into 
 singing — fir-trees and cedar-trees break forth into smging ; 
 while hell from beneath, the unseen world of gloom, is 
 stirred to receive the new inhabitants. The shadowy forms 
 of giant kings, the pale and mighty spectres, rise to gxeet 
 their brothers, now become weak as the}^" Through this 
 doom, as through the rents in a ruin, shines the Divine 
 pm'pose, the righteousness of Divine intentions ; in the 
 doom of Babylon, and the analogous doom of Moab, the re- 
 trihidijon of lawless force ; and fixes and expounds, with great 
 interest, the Bible statement of the law of political society 
 and its relation to foreign conquest. 
 
 We have the burden of Egypt ; the doom of craft and false 
 wisdom. Here the prophet had to encounter the pohtical 
 wisdom and inflated sagacity of his own tunes ; and liis de- 
 nunciations of Egyptian alliances occur repeatedly through 
 the book. " Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help ; 
 and stay on horses, and trust in chariots, for they are many ; 
 and in horsemen, for they are very strong. But they look 
 not unto the Holy One of Israel, neither seek the Lord. 
 Yet He also is wise. The Eg^^ptians are men, and not 
 God ; and their horses flesh, and not spirit." In Egypt 
 there was no national unity or national purity. The one 
 was absent because the other was absent. Among a multi- 
 tude of idols and hereditary castes it was impossible that 
 either could be developed ; but priestcraft and statecraft, 
 these "controlled a population aggregated like herds of 
 cattle, but debased, and therefore isolated as men." The 
 denunciations of Isaiah in reference to Egypt were esj)ecially 
 pohtical; but " the vision was sealed." "Where there is 
 no vision," no sacred insight, "the people jperish." Isaiah 
 had to suffer the punishment of all those who stand by trae 
 insight, and oppose naeye state and worldly craft. The 
 ecstasy of dehverance from Egypt is described in language 
 
Tlie Burdens of Isaiah Typical. 85 
 
 which, no doubt, is intended to suggest the dehverance of 
 Israel of old from their enslaved alliance to ancient craft 
 and cruelty. " Ye shall have a song as in the night, when 
 a holy solemnity is kept ; and gladness of heart, as when 
 one goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the 
 Lord, to the Eock of Israel." 
 
 And there was the burden of Tyre, the doom of unhallowed 
 commerce. Tyre was the lady of kingdoms, a " joyous city, 
 whose antiquity is of ancient days ;" but who should fall 
 "because the Lord of hosts had purposed to stain the 
 pride of all glory, and to bring into contempt all the honor- 
 able of the earth." She, whose ungodly and tyrannic, and 
 cruel prowess had given, for the gains of her trade and 
 merchandise, the gods and groves, the altars and furnaces 
 of Baalitish worship, she should exclaim, "Howl ye ships 
 of Tarshish, for your strength is laid waste." All these 
 burdens are most evidently illustrations of principles in 
 themselves. The doom which fell on the nations, as I have 
 already intimated, copiously illustrates Isaiah's exuberance 
 of imagination, and love of concreteness, exhibited by such 
 expressions as " desert of the sea," '' the vaUey of vision," 
 *' the land shadowing with wings," " Ariel, the city where 
 David dwelt." But there was far more than artistic and 
 ideal concreteness ; there was moral concreteness. And 
 the various visions of the book of this prophecy become, as 
 in aU the books of Scripture, shadowed by awful but faintly 
 descried wings. Hence the message they bear down to our 
 times. 
 
 But for this they would be history and poetry, and 
 no more. But they are weighty and eternal truths. Tyre, 
 and Babylon, and Egypt existed. It was not an arbitrary 
 destruction that swept them away. Their doom followed 
 upon their departure from eternal and immutable truth, and 
 equity ; and wherever such departure is now, the same 
 consequences follow ; and like causes will ever anticipate 
 
86 LampSj etc,^ in the Jewish Church. 
 
 like effects. Isaiah, thus read, becomes, in truth, a very 
 stern and terrible book. 
 
 And this is also true of the Church. The government of 
 God is especially shown in the denunciations against, and 
 the wasting of, Judea. History declares the governmetn 
 of the providence of God. Even Niebuhr, as quoted by 
 Sir Edward Strachey, has remarked, that " there are oc- 
 casional jDoints of time at which the whole course of history, 
 and the fates of nations, is decided by some event which 
 does not grow necessarily out of previous events, and which 
 a reasonable man csm only explain by referruig to the pro- 
 vidence of God ;" and Strachey remarks : 
 
 Mr. Grote, on the other hand, recognizes, but leaves unex- 
 plained, such master-events of history. He points out, that if 
 Darius had not — contrary to probable expectation — delayed the 
 first Persian invasion till the Greeks had had twenty years for 
 efficient preparations, and Greece, such as it has been to the 
 world, would never have existed ; and he draws the general in- 
 ference, " that the history of any nation, considered as a sequence 
 of causes and efiects affording applicable knowledge, requires us 
 to study not merely real events, but also imminent contin- 
 gencies :" but there he stops. And when Mebuhr takes me a 
 step further, and shows me a " cause affording applicable know- 
 ledge," where Mr. Grote only indicated an unexplained " effect," 
 I must think that Mebuhr's is the more completely positive 
 criticism — criticism which takes scientific cognizance of all the 
 facts. I could not hear an explanation of all the facts. I could 
 not hear an explanation of the complicated workings of a steam- 
 engine, with arrangements for supplying its own water, oiling 
 its own wheels, changing vertical to horizontal movements, and 
 so on, and at last admit, that when the hand of the ever-watch- 
 ful engineer did occasionally intervene to give the machine some 
 new application, or to prevent some hideous crash, this was an 
 inexplicable occurrence — much less pass it in silence, as though 
 its explanation had no interest to a rational man. 
 
Development of Isaictlian Ideas. 87 
 
 Hence the study of history is, in a more especial sense 
 than even the study of nature itself, the study of God and 
 theology, because it is the study of moral characteristics. 
 It is no doubt true, that for a long time force and craft, 
 and mere commerce using these two, do seem to be the 
 most powerful and conquering of sph'its ; so have they al- 
 ways appeared ; for there is a mysterious power in " the 
 god of this world," by which he seems well able to help 
 his own. But things are understood in the sanctuary which 
 cannot be understood elsewhere ; and in the light of the 
 Church, and Church principles, many dark things are 
 comprehended. No doubt, in order to comprehend, we 
 have to " consider the years of the right hand of the Most 
 High ;" and hence, too, the study of the sins and the 
 punishment of Israel becomes as instructive as the study of 
 Divine judgments in heathen nations. 
 
 Such is the elucidation of the Isaiahan ideas, and can*y- 
 ing them forward to the close we read the Divine intention 
 of the prophet as made more clear to himself, from " the 
 years that bring the philosophic mind ;" for there can be 
 little doubt of the true unity pervading the whole chap- 
 ters of the prophecy — when the glow of his earlier ex- 
 pectations and hope had faded away — the human and finite 
 ideals of his youth, the fruits of his own ministry, and 
 Hezeldah's reign — when these had died down hke the flower 
 of the field, then we may conceive him, in the spirit of the 
 Petrine expression, searching " what and what manner of 
 time the Spirit within hun signified ; " and then rose more 
 clearly before him that which is even the design and idea of 
 the whole book, — God's government of Israel and of man- 
 kind, according to the laws which He has given for all their 
 relations to Himself and to each other. But this is most 
 noticeable, that in the first portion of the book he is always 
 seekmg for and setting forth this idea in the events of his 
 own times, but in the second he rises to contemplate the 
 
88 Lam])s^ etc,^ in the Jewish Church. 
 
 idea itseK, and only embodies it in such shadowy anticipa- 
 tions as to the outward form of the glorious but indefinite 
 future, as his poetic imagination can project from the facts 
 and probabihties of his own time. Hence the true glory of 
 the prophecy heightens and brightens at the close. Of all 
 the highest flights of poetry, humanly and even Divinely in- 
 spired, perhaps it is not too much to say, that there is a 
 reach of splendor, a tenderness of pathos, a range of con- 
 solatory rest and thought, touched in the fortieth chapter 
 of this prophecy alone : infinite is the tenderness of that 
 voice which sighs over the wrecks of human things, — 
 " The grass withereth, the flower fadeth ; " and mighty is 
 that other voice which rebukes the sigh, — " The word of 
 our God endureth for ever;" never, we suppose, by any 
 other voice, was there so human and so overwhelming an 
 appeal. made to the heavenly bodies, — "Lift up your eyes 
 on high, and behold who hath created these things. He 
 bringeth forth their hosts by number. For that he is 
 strong in power ; not one faileth ; " and he is the God of 
 human spirits, the sustainer of human souls. These were 
 the meditations of the old man, disappointed and perse- 
 cuted, and preparing for the martyr's crown at the close of 
 his long day of faithfulness. The thought, too, of the Ee- 
 deemer, and the perception of the region in which to 
 look for Him, brightens amongst the last chapters. The 
 introduction of the true Redeemer comes now with amaz- 
 ing force and beauty, after the voice which was heard ex- 
 claiming, " Keep silence before me, O islands ; " and that 
 bitter irony in which the silence is only broken with the 
 sounds of the carpenter's plane, the goldsmith's hammer, 
 and the blacksmith's anvil, all manufacturing their gods. 
 Then from the calm of contemplation the old prophetic 
 heat of prophecy glows through his soul iii all its most 
 ancient strength, and more than its ancient tenderness, and 
 gorgeousness, and beauty, till God the Redeemer rises 
 
Development of Isaialian Ideas, 89 
 
 through the hallowing airs of prophecy, and inspiration, 
 and song. Here, then, for the fii'st time, is seen most 
 clearly " the design conceived in the eternal mind of God 
 Himself, of which the declaration and explanation is called 
 His 1007'd ; the actual realization of the design His work ; 
 the various processes by which He is effecting that reahza- 
 tion, — the operation of His hands ; " and the ultimate end of 
 the whole is named, — the glory of God ; " It is seen that 
 " God the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth," has, 
 from the beginning, planned, and brought into operation, a 
 moral, pohtical, spiritual constitution and order, as well as 
 a physical world ; and that He has chosen one nation for 
 the first embodiment and illustration of the design, and to 
 be the main instrument for carrying it out to all other na- 
 tions, and uniting them in universal brotherhood, providing 
 also an adequate Kedeemer and Guide ; " that the work 
 extends over all ages of time, employs races as well as 
 individuals, and is, in the main, spmtual, and the work of 
 God Himself." 
 
 I have dwelt thus at length upon the character of Isaiah, 
 and the power of the j)reacher, as illustrated in the Hebrew 
 prophet, because, as the Bible furnishes the subject matter 
 of the preacher's burden, so it also famishes the best illus- 
 trations of the method the preacher should adopt. To be a 
 close student of these prophets, to study them in the light 
 of the ever-recurring, ever-varying experience of man, it 
 becomes the duty of the minister to constantly notice how 
 truly their words represent national conditions, with all 
 their sins and all their grand national characteristics ; 
 every form of speech that can seize immediately upon 
 human souls like the immediateness of hght, aU present 
 some new aspect of dealing with man ; but Isaiah seems 
 to comprehend aU in the wonderful variety, and breadth, 
 and insight to which we have copiously referred. It is at 
 once the apocalypse and the parable of the whole scheme 
 
go Lamps, etc, in the Jewish Churcli, 
 
 of Providence, of the dealings of God with the consciences 
 of men in every age, in every nation. It is history in the 
 hght of its divine idea. It is the soul in the hght of its di- 
 vine relationships. It is religion beneath the light of 
 sacrificial and Messianic hopes. 
 
Pulpit Monographs. 
 I. — The Apostolic Age : Paul. 
 
 AUL is, no doubt, the epic hero of the Christian 
 Church — of course, wholly leaving out of all 
 such thoughts and analogies the Divine Head 
 of the Church — then Paul is the greatest human 
 embodiment of its life, activity and truth. He, as a type, 
 seems at once Augustine and St. Bernard, Luther and Vin- 
 cent de Paul, of the best and purest minds of the Mediae- 
 val Church, the heroism of the Eeformation and of Puri- 
 tanism. John Knox, Samuel Eutherford, and Eichard 
 Baxter seem to be faint reproductions of him. At times, 
 he looks like Hooker, or like Herbert. He changes again 
 into a quaint, all-knowing preacher, hke Latimer, and surely 
 has all the ubiquitousness, and a thousand-fold more, of 
 Wesley. We stiU miss from our hbraries the kind of work 
 which might inflame and bear on the spirit of the reader, 
 as a portrait of this marvellous man — "least of aU the 
 apostles, not meet to be called an apostle ; " as he styled 
 himself ; " one bom out of due time." Sure I am, that if 
 there be a magnetic power in great lives — in the reahzation 
 of their fulness, their freshness, their glorious self-abandon- 
 ment, their heroic strength, daring, clearness of vision, and 
 agility of movement — then, the more the life of Paul is 
 studied, the more the proportions of the greatness of this 
 
 (91) 
 
9 2 Pidpit Monogra])lis : Paid. 
 
 princely crusader rise to the eye, the more Tvdll his conver- 
 sion, his appearance in the Church just then, and all that 
 he was, and all that he did, seem to partake of the miracu- 
 lous. There is room for another HorcE Paulince, and bearing 
 a different intention to that yigorous piece of shrewd analy- 
 sis ; while it is not possible that the acts of this Apostle 
 should be read, and the words of his Epistles compared 
 with them, without the mind of the reader becoming at first 
 insensibly, but presently sensibly, imbued with the influence 
 and sphit of this gxeat master-mind and heart. We are 
 surprised that our hterature bears so httle of biographic 
 illustration to the memory of Paul ; the materials are not 
 wanting, and they illustrate those words which have been 
 at once the sustaining food of the souls of highest and 
 holiest men, and the debatable grounds or battle-cries of 
 polemics of theologic warriors. 
 
 I have sometimes thought, that even not excepting the 
 life of Chi'ist, a sceptical mind would be more Hkely to yield, 
 give way, and be prostrate before the hfe of Paul, than be- 
 fore any other presentation. Christ was His own evidence, 
 and still beyond any other, Christ is His own evidence ; 
 still. He was seK-sustained ; his mind, whatever that awful 
 mystery may mean, or be, seems so separated and apart 
 from human and calculable motives and reasons ; nothing 
 external of argument or circumstance pressed Him into a 
 course. Coarse Infidehty and EationaHsm say, " He was a 
 wondrous fanatic ! a subhme mystic ! and there the matter 
 ends ! " He had altogether a new, almost unhuman, and 
 inappreciable way, both of looking at, and presenting Di- 
 vine things ; mappreciable, excepting to those to whom, by 
 the " mind of the Spirit," is given " the mind of Chi^ist." 
 Then, with impudent audacity, the myth-theory has been 
 invented to account for what cannot be disproved — the un- 
 accountableness of Christ. His impregnabihty to all 
 human reasons ; so that every attempt to make Him out, 
 
The Greatest Hero of the ChuTch g n 
 
 upon human principles, turns to foolishness ; while it is the 
 glory of the believer, it is the difficulty of the skeptic, who 
 comes, determined to admit no supernatural fact into his 
 estimate of that life and its results. All this is very unhke 
 what meets us in Paul. 
 
 The life of him we have here called the greatest hero of 
 the Church, in all its expressions justifies that human de- 
 signation ; a high and princely type of man, he looks in 
 all the principles, motives, and relationships of his life, 
 perfectly manly ; passion and reason contended in him for 
 mastery. "We are ceiiain, not only from the build and ar- 
 chitecture of his character throughout hfe, but from what 
 is implied as belonging to him before conversion, that it 
 must have been a most overwhelming evidence which could 
 have carried Ais convictions captive. Rare have been the 
 instances, if any, which combined a character in such equal, 
 not to say marvellous, proportions, the processes of a 
 careful, slow, but accumulating logical faculty, with such 
 a triumphant wing of the mystical and the imaginative, and 
 all fused in the fires of a dominant, grasping, and far- 
 reaching passion ; or, say rather, ardent spiritual affection. 
 
 This man talks like a mystic, but he also talks Hke a bar- 
 rister. The close of the eighth chapter of Romans, in 
 which occur forms of expression over which the minds of 
 Dionysius, or Everard, hover with delight, is the triumph- 
 ant termination of a chain of reasoning, so closely plaited, 
 and flawlessly interhnked, that it commands the apposite 
 admiration of such abstract thinkers as Jonathan Edwards. 
 Was there anything fanatical in this man ? Then every 
 man is a fanatic who is a whole nature, self-devoted to one 
 great absorbing passion, or thought, which becomes to him, 
 idea, imagination, affection, and ambition. Paul, human 
 as he is, becomes humanly as unaccountable as his Master, 
 tried by any prmciple but that true one which he gives as 
 the turning-point, and henceforth the great intention of his 
 
94 Pulpit Monographs : Paul. 
 
 life, — " a light above the brightness of the sun at mid-day ! " 
 "a voice," — "I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest," — the 
 blindness — the scales falling from the eyes. " Henceforth 
 for me to live is ' Christ ! ' " 
 
 I dare to say that Kationahsm has never given, and can 
 give no account of such a phenomenon. It is trifling with 
 truth to attempt to refine upon the story ; but thus much 
 seems distinctly to emerge. The conversion of Augustine, 
 such a man as he was, is an infinite perplexity ; infidelity 
 finds itself dumb to any satisfactory reply, even in the story 
 of the great African Bishop, whose learned, and ample, and 
 vast mind has more or less influenced all Christian thought 
 from his century to this hour. But whence did this great 
 master derive his satisfactions — his Hfe — liis writings? 
 What are they all but commentaries upon portions of 
 Paxil ? And Augustine himself was but a ^nciJl portion of 
 Paul — the contemplative portion, separated from that life 
 of protracted intensity and toil, passed in tent-making in 
 Corinth — " bound with this chain " in Kome — in Elijah-like 
 communion, we may believe, with the first aspects of Chris- 
 tian truth in Arabia — " waiting " and using the season for 
 preaching to the wits and sophists of Athens — in every 
 Mnd of peiil, as he recites himseK, in the wilderness and 
 on the sea ; everywhere, like a wonderful general, master 
 of the circumstance and of the hour — everywhere with 
 wonderful agility, seeking not to be satisfied " with another 
 man's line of things, but to preach " in the " nations be- 
 yond." Apostle of the Gentiles ; first bearer of the Gos- 
 pel, possibly, probably, to Spain and these Isles ; with 
 attributes of mind steeping him in that delicious ecstasy of 
 soul which contemplative spirits so well know ; and know- 
 ing, do not resist, but cultivate, when all feehngs and fac- 
 ulties are absorbed and " caught up into the third heaven " 
 of indescribable sights, and speecUess sounds ; and yet, 
 with a nature so plain and practical, that as soon as he 
 
Intense Ardor and Cliaracter. g^ 
 
 awoke from the trance, he plunged among the ordinary- 
 things of every-day Hfe, and seems by his allusions to have 
 been f amihar with every kind of walk and work — ^the trans- 
 actions of trade, and the courses of pleasure, and uniting 
 all in the singleness of aim. The story of his life reveals, 
 whether in the Acts of the Apostles, or his own Epistles, 
 " this one thing I do " — '" All things are dross, that I may 
 win Clirist and be found of Him." I repeat it, this man is 
 as unaccountable as his Master. Bits of him may be traced, 
 some lesser activity, like His ; some lesser evangelic fervor, 
 but like His ; some lesser contemplative fervor, but like 
 His, may have appeared here and there in different epochs 
 and ages of the Church ; also martyr-like cndiirance and 
 long and faithful confession. But for the whole entire 
 man, we may safely challenge the history of the world and 
 the Church to produce the counterpart of Paul. His 
 words tingle through us still. What requiem equals the 
 close of the fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to the 
 Corinthians ? What rapture, the eighth chapter of Ro- 
 mans ! What a grand resume of contemplation, the Ephe- 
 sians ! What felicitous and subtle strokes of lightning- 
 hke expressions in the Colossians ! It avails httle to us 
 that criticism cannot prove the Epistle to the Hebrews to 
 be his. We know it must be his. We feel Paul in every 
 line. It is all along his grand logic on fire ! his accumula- 
 ting crowd of images ! — until they all rush together in their 
 fiery pomp and illumination, at the close, in the altogether 
 unparalleled splendor of expression, in the eleventh and 
 twelfth chapters. A miracle of a man ! Not a tinge of 
 fanaticism about him — a simple life that something or other 
 had at some time compelled to be seraphic ! One some- 
 times thinks, had we not received the Gospels and seen the 
 Saviour, we should perforce be compelled to acknowledge 
 that God had vouchsafed a revelation distinct and individ- 
 ual, and bow before its manifestation in Paul. Such are 
 
96 Pulpit Monographs : Paul, 
 
 those reasons whicli lead me to remark that in some par- 
 ticulars it would almost seem as if his thoroughly human 
 side, and completely human character, would make Paul a 
 more accessible groimd of appeal to a sceptical nature for 
 the divinity of the revelation involved in the Christian re- 
 ligion ; and while portions of these things have been brought 
 out at times, they do not seem to us to have been wrought 
 with that thorough fulness which might make them a tri- 
 umphant appeal to that harder kind of intelligence which 
 seems as though it needed to have its human, and laT;\^er 
 like faculties touched, and possessed, before it yields up 
 the whole nature to the Divine Master, before v^hom Paul, 
 with all his splendor of endowment and being, confessed 
 himseH as '^ TwtMngJ' How shall we account for it, that 
 this rehgion has such an unaccountable Saviour, and such 
 an unaccountable first Apostle ? 
 
 Thus Paul himself furnishes one of the most overwhelm- 
 ing evidences for the truth of the whole Christian system. 
 Perhaps of all Paley's valuable contributions to the cause 
 of truth, his Horce PauUnce is the most valuable, although 
 the nature of the book necessarily limits its perusal to those 
 who are disposed only to close thinking and the fine com- 
 parison of coincidences and evidences ; we beheve still that 
 that book has neither received the profound attention it de- 
 serves, nor that which it will receive. In fact, the appear- 
 ance of Paul in the early Church is a marvellous phenom- 
 enon — ^I have already said, rightly regarded, an evidence of 
 the nature of Christianity most irresistible. We have 
 brought before us the picture of a fragile man imperson- 
 ating weakness and suffering, " filling up that which was 
 behind of the afflictions of Christ, for His body's sake, 
 which is the Church." Dr. Howson draws some parallel 
 between the appearance of the Apostle Paul and St. Ber- 
 nard, and in many points the parallel is striking. Possibly 
 they were not altogether unlike in their physique, somewhat 
 
St: Bernard and Paul. 
 
 97 
 
 alike in their structure, much ahke in the tenderness of 
 thek minds, and in the intense personal devotion they in- 
 spired in a few sympathetic followers ; but with these gen- 
 eral featui'es the hkeness terminates. Everything favored 
 St. Bernard. Of course, he had not been the noble being 
 he was had he not met and conquered and overwhelmed 
 difficulties by his personality ; but he had the whole age 
 on his side — all Europe was with him, 
 
 And kings to do him honor took dcUght. 
 
 Rome was all but imperial then, and he was the apostle 
 and chief senator of Eome. How different liis case who 
 wrote to his yomig disciple Timothy, " This thou knowest, 
 all they that be in Asia be turned away from me." Who is 
 this man, Paul ? A poor, aged man, worn by bodily and 
 mental sorrow ; who had been often scourged ; who bore 
 upon his face the traces of indignity and suffering of every 
 form ; led out of prison by Roman soldiers to death ; a 
 creature of nervous sensibihty, probably of feeble and im- 
 perfect utterance ; yearning with passion imspeakable over 
 the lost world around him ; inspired by a wonderful in- 
 stinct for souls. Such a one it was wiio, faded and worn 
 out with long months of imprisonment, and with the chain 
 on wrist and ankle, had spoken a few eloquent words in the 
 cause of Christian truth, which had awed kings ; had told 
 the tale of his own conversion in language of such simple 
 pathos that ages since have never heard the Kke. 
 
 There is something very amazing in an apparition like 
 this. Features in Paul's character are no doubt visibly 
 legible, in which his internal life seems to resemble that of 
 the great Alfred — that apostle among kings ; in his external 
 life, that great saint whose name we have quoted already. 
 But Paul is aU himself — ^he is a man utterly unlike any 
 other, and presents altogether a character marvellous in its 
 comprehensiveness. Such touches abound in his writings 
 5 
 
98 Pulpit Monographs : Paul. 
 
 as show how his emotions and intuitions apprehended 
 the most subtle and mystical views of highest spiritual 
 truth ; then unlike this order of character in general, he 
 plaits, and lays, and hnks the mail of language and of 
 thought, so that the glow of his language becomes only logic 
 on fire, taking possession of the more earthly order of rea- 
 soners, while yet some frequent glance of expression shows 
 how he related that which was intended to take captive the 
 understanding, to the highest ecstacies and hopes of the 
 soul. The question has often been asked, Could he have 
 been an orator ? Without a doubt he was an all compre- 
 hensive and complete one ; not Demosthenes himself ap- 
 parently a more successful one ; for in the most simple and 
 undesigned manner we have the account of his victories 
 over many audiences, over a band of philosophic skeptics on 
 Mars' Hill, over a monarch in the law courts, over a mob 
 on the staks in Jerusalem. The adroitness of speech 
 which we call oratory he possessed in a very eminent 
 degree ; nor less that adroitness of the pen which not only 
 wins disciples in its own age, but forms the gi-eat texts for 
 followers in all other ages. To all this was united a life of 
 intense and unceasing activity, the incessant breaking up 
 of new ground, as he says, not content to be " satisfied with 
 another man's line of things, but plunging into the regions 
 beyond." He was the Alexander, and, higher still, the 
 Charlemagne, if such parallels in such a case be not un- 
 hallowed, of the cause of Christian truth ; most eminently 
 the Apostle of the Greek, barbarian, Scythian, Eoman, in a 
 word, the Gentile world ; taking possession of new terri- 
 tories, planting the Cross there ; giving the law, disciphne, 
 and order of the Christian Church ; miiting all the 
 churches together in his large, clear, fatherly glance, 
 for, as he says, on him "came daily the care of all the 
 churches." All this seems naturally to point to a constitu- 
 tion of almost infinite elasticity, always on tlie borderland 
 
Touched Three Civilizations. 
 
 99 
 
 of death ; in hungering and famine, in scourging and 
 wandermg, in prison, stoned almost to death, in shipwreck 
 on the deep, in perils of the wilderness, and in perils of false 
 brethren ; and this, too, with some especial trial which he 
 calls the " thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buf- 
 fet him " — to us apparently a mysterious trial, one which 
 coarser natures have sought to identify with the severe 
 temptations of the flesh, but which Luther tenderly, yet in- 
 dignantly, set aside, — " Ah, no, dear Paul, it was not that 
 manner of temptation that troubled thee ; " which some 
 modem critics are satisfied to have identified with weakness 
 of vision, by many little hhits running over the Apostle's 
 writing. All these cu'cumstances of life and character, and 
 many more, meeting in such a man, present a marvellous 
 field for every kind of mental labor. 
 
 Christianity, " the city of God," was built at the conflu- 
 ence of three civilizations ; the Jews, the Greeks, and tho 
 Komans, which had prepared the world for the GosxDel. 
 Dr. Arnold has spoken of them as the three people of God's 
 election ; two for things temporal, one for things eternal. 
 There are points in Paul's character and mind which 
 touched each of these ; he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, 
 he was learned in the lore of Greece, and he had, in an 
 eminent degree, the constructive mind of Kome. What he 
 was by Providential selection, is illustrated by reference to 
 individual traits : His tact and presence of mind are illus- 
 trated in several particulars ; take, for mstance, his behav- 
 ior in the shipwreck ; what ready resources and prompt 
 good sense ! Dr. Howson says : — 
 
 The vessel is at anchor in a dark night on alee shore in a gale 
 of wind. Breakers are distinctly heard, the soundings show 
 that danger is imminent, and no one can possibly tell if the an- 
 chors will hold ; and besides this the ship is in so leaky a con- 
 dition that it is highly probable slie may go down before day- 
 break. The sailors arc doing what is very selfish, but very na- 
 
I oo Pulpit Monographs : Paul, 
 
 tural. They are lowering the boat, after having given a plausi- 
 ble excuse to the passengers, but simply with the intention of 
 saving themselves. If a tumult had been made, precious time 
 v/ould have been lost, and probably the sailors would have ac- 
 complished their purpose. St. Paul said nothing to them or to 
 the passengers, but quietly spoke to his friend the military offi- 
 cer and the soldiers who had charge of him ; and his argument 
 was that which all men in such cases understand : " Except these 
 abide in the ship, ye — ye — cannot be saved." The soldiers be- 
 fore this time had found good reason to trust tlie Apostle's 
 judgment; and the appeal to self-interest now was decisive. 
 With military jDromptitude they cut the ropes, and the boat fell 
 off. Tims the lives . of nearly 300 persons were saved by the 
 right words being said to the right men at the right time. We 
 may without irreverence go further, and observe that, if those 
 words had not so been spoken, if those ropes had not been cut, 
 our Bibles would have been destitute of that precious group of 
 Epistles to the PhiliiDpians, Colossians, Ephesians, and Phile- 
 mon, written from the imprisonment at Rome, and of that later 
 and not less precious group, the Pastoral Letters to Timothy and 
 Titus. • 
 
 Other instances have been cited, such as his conduct in 
 his defence before the Sanhedrim, and again, w^hen a tem- 
 porary prisoner in the barracks of Antonia (Acts xxiii. 16). 
 
 Look at his defence before Felix ; it is remarkable with 
 what subtlety and intuitional tact a nice selection of 
 words is indicated — ^how different with different people, 
 how apt in every case ! In perfect honesty his speech be- 
 came " all things to all men ;" with singular versatility and 
 ease, a Gentile to the Gentiles, a Jew to the Jew, an 
 Athenian in Greece, a Hebrew on the stairs in Jerusalem, 
 — condescending to men of low estate, or rising to the 
 height of royal auditors. Dr. Howson has shown how pe- 
 culiarly practical was the imagery of the Apostle, derived 
 from his intercourse with busy human hfe ; from marriage, 
 from the making of walls, Greek games, from the markets. 
 
Various Estimates of Ms Cliaracter, i o i 
 
 from architecture, agriculture, and slavery. Himself illus- 
 trating his own advice ; and what advice it is ! — " Walk in 
 wisdom towards them that are without. — Let your speech 
 be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know 
 how to answer every man." *' That is," says Dr. Howson, 
 " seize the opportunity while you have it — say words that fit 
 the occasion, and say them promptly — be not insipid — ^be 
 definite and to the point, and remember to whom you speak 
 — gracefully conciliate, do not rudely offend, for it may bo 
 your last opportunity of winning a soul." 
 
 These are the traits which led the witty and sceptical Lord 
 Shaftesbury to eulogise the gentlemanly bearing of "the 
 learned and elegant Apostle." But the tenderness and 
 sympathy of the Apostle were equal to his tact ; nay, it is 
 truly said, that sympathy itself is one great secret of tact, 
 as w^hen Paul advises in the very difficult task of spea,king to 
 a friend of his sins : " The tones of the voice make all the 
 difference between wounding and healing." " Considermg 
 thyself, lest thou also be tempted." And here we have 
 very interestingly brought out Paul in his weakness. It is 
 very desirable to see him so, not as a strong stalv/art hero 
 of the old mythology, or knight of the Middle Ages, but 
 weak : " When I am weak, then I am strong." This his 
 phrase looks hke the very motto of his life. Professor 
 Jowett has indeed transgressed on the other side, in repre- 
 senting Paul in the atthe of mere weakness ; but w^e may 
 believe in his frailty without beholding him at all lost to 
 the impression of personal dignity and command. His 
 nervous frame knew the alarms and fears of weaker spirits, 
 and high as was the physical and moral courage of the 
 man, he needed visions to strengthen him, and to sustain 
 him in the frequent depression of his spirits, in that inces- 
 sant craving for personal s^Tupathy, and in grieving over 
 the absence of fiiends or the defection of followers. " I 
 had no rest," said he, " in my spirit, because I found not 
 
I02 Pulpit Monographs : Paul. 
 
 Titus my brother." "Demas hath forsaken me." "AH 
 Asia hath turned aside from me." And to Timothy, "Do 
 thy dihgence to come unto me. Do thy dihgence to come 
 before winter." Then what noble indications of wounded 
 feehng ! What desire for the good opinion of others ! In 
 many ways, various and varying writers have marked the 
 completeness of his character. 
 
 Prof. Jowett {Bom. i. p. 300) quotes the saying, that St. 
 Paul was " the finest gentleman that ever lived ; " and Prof. 
 Stanley [Cor. p. 391) adds, that he is the first example in 
 detail of what we mean by " a gentleman." Dr. Newman, 
 in his Sermons, expresses the matter thus (p. 133) ; 
 " There is not any one of those refinements and deHcacies 
 of feeling, w^hich are the result of advanced civilization, 
 not any one of those properties and embellishments of 
 conduct in which the cultivated intellect delights, but he is 
 a pattern of it in the midst of that assemblage of other 
 supernatural excellences which is the common endowment 
 of Apostles and Saints." 
 
IV. 
 
 Lamps, Pitchers, and Trumpets in 
 the Early Church. 
 
 HAVE alvfays said that the history of the Chris- 
 tian Church is the history of the achievements of 
 the pulpit. If you are desirous of going through 
 a popular compendium of illustrations of the 
 character of the pulpit in the early ages, I may refer you 
 to Mr. Horace Moule's Inquiry into the History of Christian 
 Oratory^ during (lie First Five Centuries. As Church history 
 enters into your studies, you will not be able to review the 
 history of the Church without noticing the immense power 
 of speech. As in Scripture the Far stood so distinctly for 
 the whole man — " Mine ears hast thou opened," " He that 
 hath ears to hear let him hear " — of course it was to this 
 very work that the first Church directed itself. It was a 
 message, not to be dehvered in the porch, the academy, the 
 garden, the grove, or even the synagogue or the Sanhedrim ; 
 but, taking captive the people by the omnipotence of irre- 
 pressible convictions, it was to the multitude, to the poor. 
 The first method was eminently a method with the conscience. 
 The historian will tell you when the learning of the mere 
 dialectician appeared, or the mere cunning of the rhetorician ; 
 and the Church historian wiU tell you that those ages, even 
 the earhest ages, were remarkable for their spiritual weak- 
 ness, not for their spiritual strength. In the very earhest 
 
 (103) 
 
1 04 Preachers in the Early ClmrcJi. 
 
 Ckristian ages oratory v/as kept back, and was but a sec- 
 ondary agency to those without ; and the success of Chris- 
 tianity has been attributed to the three extraordinaiy 
 manifestations of its pov>^er : (1,) the singularity of con- 
 duct on the part of behevers ; (2.) their blameless and 
 virtuous Hves ; and (3.) then- heroic constancy and bold 
 confession under the p£iins of persecution. Neander says, 
 *' As to the relation of the sermon to the whole office of 
 worship, this is a point on which we must write with the 
 most o^Dposite errors of judgment.'* If, however, when 
 churches rose, and some of them very large, in the Eastern 
 and Western divisions, you had stepped in, you Vv^ould per- 
 haps have found many points of resemblance to our own, 
 and some starthng dissimilarities ; — the ambo or desk, 
 often in the centre, the preacher sitting — most natural, and 
 effective, and happy of postures for preaching ; preaching 
 was usually extemporaneous, with very rare exceptions ; 
 understanding, by that general term, aU kinds of delivery, 
 short of reading from a complete manuscript, or very full 
 notes ; and it was thought very desirable that a preacher 
 should be able to discourse to the congregation on a part 
 of Scripture from the inspiration of the moment. In the 
 Church were those nuisances of our time, short-hand 
 writers, too. Usually, in length, the sermons were far 
 shorter than ours. The Greek fathers were always the 
 longer ; the Latins did not usually occupy more than haK 
 an hour, often not more than ten minutes. Very often the 
 preacher was interrupted by bursts of applause, and the 
 holy seriousness of Chrysostom was often shocked by this 
 supererogatory approbation ; while Gregory Nazianzen 
 seems to have been, on the other hand, pleased by this con- 
 tribution to vanity. 
 
 You must remember how broken these hints are v/hich 
 I am attempting to give you of those times. The apostolic 
 age I have left with scarce a remark. The pulpit — the 
 
Clemens, — Origen, — TertulUan. 1 05 
 
 ambo — ^\vas power ; doubtless it had its faults, but they do 
 not seem to have been of the order we should most con- 
 demn. Critics find in Clet*ieits declamation and diffuseness ; 
 but even in the page, as Yv^e read it, there is a warmth 
 of piety and depth of fervor ; he belongs to the philo- 
 sophical period of that age, and thus he speaks : 
 
 Though the artizan can make an idol, he has never made a 
 breathing image, or formed soft flesh out of earth. Who liqui- 
 fied the marrow ? Who hardened the bones ? Who extended 
 the nerves ? Who inflated the veins ? Y/ho infused the blood 
 into them ? Who stretched the skin around them ? Who made 
 the eye to see ? Who breathed the soul into the body ? Who 
 freely gave righteousness ? AYho has promised immortality ? 
 The Creator of all things alone, the Supreme Artizan, made man 
 a living image ; but your Olympian Jove, the image of an 
 image far dififering from the truth, is the dumb work of 
 Attic hands. The image of God is His Word ; the legitimate 
 Son of Intelligence ; the Divine Word ; the original Light of 
 light ; and the image of the Word is the true man, the mind 
 which is in man, who^ on this account, is said to be in the image 
 and likeness of God, being assimilated to the Divine Word, or 
 Reason, by the understanding in his heart, and, therefore, 
 rational. But the earthly image of the visible man, the man 
 sprung from the earth, the resemblance of man, apjDears, as it 
 were, a momentary impression, enfiayelov^ far removed from the 
 truth.* 
 
 To the same period belong Origen and Teetullian. 
 Their sins as preachers were on the side of mysticism ; and 
 perhaps there were moments when they seem to have per- 
 mitted themselves to be too much perverted and turned 
 aside by theu^ contact mth the tropical exuberances of 
 Oriental imagination ; but that which strikes us is the 
 intense reaHty v/ith which the Christian life was described 
 by them. Comparing the Christian fife with the spec- 
 
 * Moule, p. 73. 
 
I o6 Preachers in the Early Church. 
 
 tacles and the shows of Kome, TertuUian, whose style 
 has been compared with that of our Edward Irving, ex- 
 claims : — 
 
 And then if you do but reflect that even this Hfe, too, is to be 
 spent in deUghts, how can you be so ungrateful as not to be 
 content with, and not to acknowledge, the many and the great 
 pleasures that God bestows on you ? For what is more delight- 
 ful than reconciliation with God, our Father and Lord ? — than 
 the revelation of truth ? — than the discovery of errors ? — than 
 the pardon of so grievous offences past ? What greater pleasure 
 than a distaste for pleasure itself — than a contempt for the 
 whole world ? — than true Hberty ? — than a pure conscience ? — 
 than a blameless life ? — than no fear of death ? — than to tread 
 under foot the gods of the Gentiles ? — to cast out demons ? — to 
 perform cures ? — to seek for revelations ? — to live unto God ? 
 These are the pleasures, these the shows of Christians, holy, 
 everlasting, gratuitous. If knowledge, if literature delight a 
 man's mind, we have enough of books, enough of verses, enough 
 of maxims, enough also of song, enough of music; no stage 
 plots, but verities ; no cunningly wrought stanzas, but simple 
 strains. Wouldest thou have fightings and wrestlings ? Behold 
 immodesty cast down by chastity, perfidy slain by fidelity, 
 cruelty crushed by compassion, arrogance eclipsed by modesty. 
 Such are our contests in which we gain the crown. Wouldest 
 thou have also somewhat of blood ? Thou hast Christ's.* 
 
 The same motives which impel the feet of the artist to 
 Rome, that he ma^y study the ancient masters and know 
 the principles of their art, will lead you, as you possess the 
 opportunity, to make yourselves acquainted, if not in their 
 original, then in their Enghsh dress, with the life of 
 Athanasius, the tenderness of Basil, and the magnificence 
 of Chrysostom. The preaching of Athanasius was the in- 
 forming, practical mind of the first half of the fourth 
 century, and of whom we think as a severe patristic Calvin. 
 
 * Moule, p. 84. 
 
A tlianasius, 1 07 
 
 He was the head of the long illustrious line of conservative 
 theologians. I cannot commend his spirit to you so warmly 
 as his faith ; even Dr. Newman has gathered together some 
 illustrative epithets strewn along his pages — ^the flowers 
 of his rhetoric — against the Arians : Those favorite epithets 
 were,—" Devils," " Antichrists," " Maniacs," " Jews," 
 "Polytheists," "Atheists," "Dogs," "Wolves," "Lions," 
 "Hares," "Chameleons," "Hydras," "Eels," " Cuttle-iish," 
 "Gnats," "Beetles," "Leeches."* Yet we ought to know 
 the life of this great preacher, and we should remember 
 the horrible inveteracy of his foes. His life reads as one 
 long and most glowing romance ; its incidents are most 
 startling and kindling. The pul]3it occupied by him in 
 those exciting scenes and times becomes not merely the 
 great breakwater of faith, but not less, if I may say so, its 
 dramatic theatre. 
 
 There seems to have been much of Calvin in him, or 
 much of him in Calvin ; his style was barren of aU 
 splendors or tenderness ; he failed to touch the heart, or 
 disdained to attempt it ; but there was in him an amazing 
 and most vital love to the Sa\dour. He, perhaps, did not 
 understand so clearly as we do, or as we might wish we 
 understood, the rights of other individual souls, but he did 
 understand the rights of private judgment ; and his 
 position for the truth has passed into a proverb, most 
 sublime in its expressiveness, of the claims of the individual 
 sohtary judgment against the claims of general authority — 
 "Athanasius contra mundum " — Athanasius against the 
 world. 
 
 Amongst the most illustrious names of the early Christian 
 Church stands forth Basil ; in liim the orator of the Church 
 begins, and in all his writings the orator bums. An intel- 
 lectual, but stin imaginative Orientahsm pervades all. 
 
 * Aihanaslns.— Historical Treatises. Vol. ii. p. 34. Stanley's 
 llistory of the Eastern Church, p. 293. 
 
io8 P readier 8 in the Early CTiiircli. 
 
 Basil and his pupil Gregory Nazianzen were fellow students 
 of the Emperor Julian. Basil led a less stirring life than 
 Athanasius, and his sermons are characterised by a devo- 
 tional calm. He preached ostensibly to the poor ; but 
 crowds flocked to hear him. Accomplished master of the 
 science of Athenian rhetoric as he v/as, he concealed his art 
 beneath a persuasive and popular style. He gathered 
 round him the poor indeed, the mechanics cf CesarD3a, but 
 by his rare influence compeUed the multitudes of the 
 celebrated too ; and, when he died, his funeral, followed by 
 the whole province, excited envy for those who v/ere crushed 
 to death in the crowd. 
 
 Let us read what he says on psalmody : — 
 
 Psalmody is the calm of the soul, the repose of tlie spirit, the 
 arbiter of peace. It silences the wave, and conciliates the whirl- 
 wind of our passions, soothing the impetuous, tempering the 
 unchaste. It is an engenderer of friendship, a healer of dissen- 
 sion, a reconciler of enemies. For who can longer count him 
 his enemy, with whom to the throne of God he hath raised the 
 strain % Psalmody repels the demons ; it lures the ministry of 
 angels ; a weapon of defence in nightly terrors ! a respite from 
 daily toil. To the infant it is a presiding genius ; to manhood 
 a crown of glory ; a balm of comfort to the aged ; a congenial 
 ornament to women. 
 
 The following passage enforcing, or rather illustrating, 
 the duty of praise, is elaborate, but very beautiful : ^ 
 
 What reward shall we give unto the Lord, for all the benefits 
 He hath bestowed ? From the cheerless gloom of non-existence 
 He waked us into being ; He ennobled us with understanding ; 
 He taught us arts to promote the means of life ; He commanded 
 the prolific earth to yield its nurture ; He bade the animals to 
 own us as their lords. For us the rains descend ; for us the sun 
 sheddeth abroad its creative beams ; the mountains rise, the 
 valleys bloom, affording us grateful habitation and a sheltering 
 retreat. For us the rivers flow; for us the fountains murmur; 
 
Chrysostom,, — Augustine. 109 
 
 the sea opens its bosom to admit our commerce; the earth 
 exhausts its stores ; each new object presents a new enjoyment; 
 all nature pouring her treasures at our feet, through the 
 bounteous grace of Him who wills that all be ours."-^ 
 
 But what shall I say of Chbysostom ? He is said to be 
 the study of a life-time in himself. His works are volumi- 
 nous. Bishop of Antioch in its wealthiest day, his conduct 
 there commands our highest reverence. He passed his hfe 
 amidst the most virulent energies of persecution. But I 
 must refer you to Gibbon for the best, most popular and 
 comprehensive account of the Golden Mouthy and how he 
 was dispatched secretly in a post -chariot from Antioch, to 
 take the Ai-chbishoj^ric of Constantinox^le ; it being feared 
 that the people w^ould not resign their favorite preacher ; 
 an ordeal through v/hich very few preachers since have had 
 to pass in their ascent to the episcopal chair. 
 
 But immeasurably the greatest of all the preachers of the 
 early Church, was the Bishop of Hippo, the stupendous, the 
 enormous Augustink I believe if I were to commend to 
 you the preacher of all others most likely to help you in 
 the pulpit, I would say Chrysostom in his expositions. And 
 his style was very expository — there is great wisdom and 
 clearness, it was eminently practical too ; also, it was not 
 wanting in a fine declamatory fervor (some would say he 
 possessed it too abundantly) — which must be possessed by 
 the useful preacher — ^but the mental struggles of the ago 
 and of the human mind, do not appear to have affected him. 
 There was no remarkable epochs in his rehgious history, 
 and his nature had not the roominess which is shown in 
 every page of the writings of Augustine. The life of 
 Augustine made him the teacher he became ; I do not here 
 touch upon it, the tender story of his mother Monica, of 
 his life of carelessness and sin, of his studies so vast and 
 
 * Moule, pp. 118, 119. 
 
1 1 o Preacliers in the Early Church, 
 
 various in all the arts, and rhetoric, and poetry of the an- 
 cients and the pagans. He was intoxicated with sensual 
 beauty ; in Carthage, where he fixed his home, thoughtful 
 but sensuous rather than sensual, he luxmiated beneath the 
 rich bright heavens, by the beautiful waters of the Mediter- 
 ranean, and amidst all the variegated glories of art, in a 
 city, then one of the chief seats of civilization. In his sub- 
 Hme work, his affecting Confessions, he exclaims : " What 
 wert thou then to me, and how far from me ? Far verily 
 was I straying from thee, carried from the very husks of the 
 swine whom with husks I fed ; I sought for pleasures, sub- 
 limities, truths, and so fell headlong into sorrows, confu- 
 sions, errors." But his mind was of that kind that must 
 find a reason for everything. And by-and-by came the 
 highest reason. What a story it is, his struggles to become 
 free, and how he became free ! Your position to the mind 
 of Augustine must be relative. I commend Chrysostom to 
 all of you, but few can be able to plough with the heifers 
 of the Bishop of Hippo. Yet, unless you enter with him 
 into his wondrous axt, as of logic and abstraction, and 
 thought, no preacher can be more homely ; he is always 
 more illustrative than declamatory, and the racy, spiritual- 
 ising puritans derived much of then- flavor, and pith, and 
 unction from him. I must think that the pleasant in- 
 geniousness of Matthew Henry not only found its ancestor, 
 but much of its inspiration, in Augustine. 
 
 The " instrument of ten stnngs" upon which the Psalmist 
 would praise God, becomes in one place the Ten Command- 
 ments, made delightful and easy to keep by divine grace, or 
 the ten fingers which perform the mission of the will in di- 
 vine service. On the text, " Whereof every one heareth 
 twins" What twias V says he. " The Law and the Pro- 
 phets — ^the two commandments whereon hang all in the life 
 of every believer ! ' The bread, and fish, and egg' the child 
 asks of his father in the parable are explained — tho bread as 
 
Augustine. 1 1 1 
 
 soul, fish as faith which hves amidst the billows of temp- 
 tation, and the egg as hope, a something, but not the 
 chicken." 
 
 But if you do not admire these things, do not smile at 
 them, they are only motes in the sunbeam, and if you are 
 able to follow him, there is no writer in the long procession 
 of preachers who will so minister to the minister as Augus- 
 tine. Mr. Moule says : 
 
 Of Augustine it may most truly be said, that he, if any man 
 had, had experience of those phases in the soul's history when 
 "the tongue cleaves even to the roof of the mouth, and when 
 silence is kept, even from good words." It was not only his be- 
 ing Prelate of the West, instead of a Prelate of the East, that 
 occasioned the wide difference between himself and Basil, 
 Gregory, or even Chrysostom. The intense passion of his tem- 
 perament, which imparted so much energy to his intellectual 
 operations, and which is often the cause of the rich and vigorous 
 flow of his language, produces also that quiet rejection of rhetori- 
 cal ornament which we find so prevalent throughout his unpre- 
 tending sermons. The Civitati Dei has, as might be expected, a 
 good store of florid language, some specimens exhibiting the very 
 highest style of beauty. But his subject in that case, not only 
 was suited to elaborate ornament, it sometimes imperatively de- 
 manded the very grandest utterance. The general tone of Au- 
 gustine was, however, that of a man who, while he was too 
 sensible to despise the aids of artistic eloquence, was himself, 
 for the most part, far above them. His words bearing directly 
 upon the subject are tinged with a speaking sadness. " Eloquence 
 is another stream of Babylon ; it is one of the many objects 
 quce amantur et transeunt ;'''' it is a mere frigus et Aquilo^ com- 
 pared with the genial breezes of God, the Auster translatus de 
 codo. 
 
 He rose to the clear empyrean of faith himself; and 
 gradually through every school of illusion, and scepticism, 
 and heresy. He qualified liimself to reveal to the behevers 
 
112 Preachers in the Early ClntrcK 
 
 of every subsequent age the solidity of the rock on which 
 they build, and the precious vintage of consolation growing 
 on it. On the contrary, he sounded the depths of 
 Pelagianism or, as we call it, Arminianism — ^Naturalism. 
 He saw what you must distinctly see as the basis of all 
 theological chfferences, that they are in fact a different view 
 of the relation of the Infinite to the finite, of God to the 
 universe, summed up in the two distinctions of Rationalism, 
 — Arminianism — or every man his own Saviour ; and, on 
 the other hand, the doctrine of supernaturaHsm and grace ; 
 or God in Christ the only Saviour. Familiarise yourselves, 
 if you be old enough, with the mind and method of Augus- 
 tine, and you will find the cuirass which gleams beneath 
 his bishop's vest, or sword which peeps from his side at the 
 most unlikely places. He seems ready to strike a blow on 
 Donatist or Manichsean, or Pelagian, and furnishes a sug- 
 gestive method of dealing with heresies perpetually renewed, 
 because indigenous to the depraved soil on which they 
 spring. 
 
Pulpit Monograms. 1 1. 
 
 The Early Church : Chrysostom. 
 
 "T can never be to the Cliristian mind either a 
 needless or indifferent task to study again, or in 
 some new portrait to seek to retouch or bring 
 into greater vividness the sublime features of the 
 Fathers of the Early Church, whose words, while they were 
 Hving, were hke battle-cries against the idolatry, selfishness, 
 and impurity of the age, and which, although the tongue 
 of fire has long been resolved into dust, retain still an in- 
 spiring and even vocal power. The orators and preachers 
 of the Early Church form a very illustrious gallery of por- 
 traits ; there is much about them that is very exemplary. 
 As w^e study thek words and deeds, we find, in truth, how 
 much, perhaps, they owed of their fame and influence to 
 that close union and alliance of the destinies of the Church 
 with the State, which continued so manifest after the period 
 of Constantine. But it may surely be questioned whether 
 their influence at court did not result also from the im- 
 mense power they wielded over the multitudes of the cities, 
 by the purity of Christian doctrine. The reader of Church 
 history wiU very soon assure himself how the rise of the 
 Church illustrated its power by the " fooHshness of preach- 
 ing," and became a great social influence. The wonder 
 grows upon us how it came to be the mighty and hostile 
 
 (113) 
 
1 1 4 Pulpit Monogra])hs : Ohrisostom 
 
 force it exhibits itself as being ; but the study of the char- 
 acter of the early Christian preachers explains this. The 
 school of the rhetorician Vv^as changed into the Church — 
 the place of souls ; not the place for the discussion of triv- 
 ial questions, the vain spoils of philosophy — it was a new 
 moral power in the world. Those men did not obtain their 
 mighty hold over the breathless multitudes by the " dispu- 
 tations of science, falsely so-called ;" not by pretty httle 
 Platonic essays ; but by words which clave a way right 
 down to the soul : enforcing the providence of God, the re- 
 demption by Christ, the immortahty of the soul, and future 
 retribution and judgment ; these were the themes. Fan- 
 tastic legends and hteratures faded out, or fell prostrate and 
 powerless before such truths, flowing from the conscious- 
 ness of the speaker, informed by the Holy Ghost and the 
 Divine "Word, and flaming from the ardent hght of vivid 
 experience. The bar, the senate, the school, could kindle 
 no such enthusiasm, and win no such echoes and responses 
 as those which followed the words of the great teachers of 
 those early ages. 
 
 It is superfluous to say that Nonconformist teachers have 
 not paid sufficient attention to these great masters. A 
 prejudice, it must be now admitted very unfounded, has 
 obtained entrance in many minds against them. This 
 prejudice is dissolving ; and while it is the duty, especially, 
 of every minister to inform liimseK of the matters in the 
 great story of the Church, it is certainly true that he will 
 find in the first ages, and among the teachers of the third, 
 fourth, and fifth centuries, hints eminently useful to him in 
 assaihng the sins and the heresies of out* own times. Es- 
 pecially eminent, as the orator of the Church, stands forth 
 John, the great preacher of Antioch, who received in the 
 seventh century the name by which now he is only known 
 popularly, Chrysostom, or the Golden Mouth. He was bom 
 in that city over which his eloquence shed such lustre, and 
 
Contrasted tvitli Augustine, 1 1 5 
 
 amidst the uproars aad agitations of which he became so 
 central an actor, in the year 354. His parents were of 
 considerable birth and quality ; his father, Secundus, a 
 chief general of the army of Syria, died soon after John 
 was born ; his mother, Secunda — not unhke Augustine's 
 gentle Monica — although, like liis father, a Gentile pagan, 
 contmued umnamed after the death of her husband, 
 Hving for her son, as we gather from an immortal passage 
 of exquisite beauty in his writings. She appears to have 
 been a woman of great gravity, beauty, and chastity. At 
 the age of twenty Chrysostom was placed, apparently, be- 
 neath the tuition of the great Libanius, a chief master of 
 rhetoric ; fi'om him, no doubt, he obtained lessons used 
 with very different purposes to those for which they were 
 given — for John became a Christian, grew weary of what 
 seemed to him the unprofitable study of rhetoric ; and the 
 lessons intended to make the shining orator of the bar, 
 went to furnish the priest, the preacher, and father of the 
 Church. It was a source of bitter regret to his old master, 
 affid on his death-bed he grieved that there was no successor 
 to his school, because the Christians had stolen John from 
 him. 
 
 About the early history of Chrysostom, the years before 
 his conversion, there is nothing of the wonderful interest 
 attaching to the unconverted life of Augustine. Chrysos- 
 tom had not the same sensuous and passionate nature, 
 therefore had not so fierce a conflict to wage with himself ; 
 he had not the same great roommess of nature as 
 that of the Bishop of Hippo, in whose soul, before his con- 
 version, every sort and kind of heresy and infidelity seemed 
 at one time or other to find not a momentary but a logical 
 lodgment, until aU were put to flight, as he tells us in his 
 immortal Confession'^, Then Chrysostom had not very long 
 passed youth when he was converted ; Augustine, on the 
 contrary, was in the very prime of life, in all the vigor of 
 
1 1 6 Pulpit Monograplis : Clirysostom. 
 
 his studies. Chrysostom bad never known the ways of vice 
 and sin ; the warm Afiican nature of Augustine had known 
 every seduction of poetry and passion ; he had to put away 
 the person he very tenderly loved, apparently ; and we 
 know in what terms he has celebrated and made memora- 
 ble his affection for his illegitimate son Adeodatus. But 
 the conversion of Chrysostom was marked by a reality as 
 distinct as that of Augustine ; he and his friend Basil — 
 evidently not the great bishop — determined on abandomng 
 the w^orld altogether, and flying to the monastery. This 
 was easy for Basil, who had no worldly ties, but Chrysostom 
 had debts to pay to his jDosition and his property, and, 
 above all, to his mother, whose tender and overwhelming 
 appeal has been preserved to us. She reminded him of all 
 her troubles and miseries in widowhood, all the agitations 
 and disquietude attending her — a young woman, without 
 a husband — but all borne for his sake ; how she was tossed 
 in storm and tempest, determined " not to bring a second 
 husband into your father's house ; " not declining the hard- 
 ships of the iron furnace that, as she says, ** I might daily 
 behold your face while you were an infant, and have con- 
 tinually before me the image, the character, and resem- 
 blance of your father." She implored him not to involve 
 her in a second widowhood. " When you have committed 
 me to the ground, travel whither you please." Many more 
 words to the same effect the poor mother poured out into 
 the ear and heart of her son. We are afraid that she did 
 not produce so much effect upon him as circumstances. It 
 is a proof of the importance of Chrysostom in Antioch, 
 that at tliis time, although he could not have been much 
 more than twenty years of age, and had not been veiy long 
 converted, a repoi^t was spread that the Church v/as about 
 to elevate him to the office of a bishop, — our readers wiU 
 bear in mind the immense difference between our idea of a 
 bishop and that of the early Christians. He fled fi-om the 
 
Two Mothers^ Monica and Secunda, 1 17 
 
 city, going for some time to reside among the monks near 
 Antiocli. Of liis mother we only hear that she died shortly 
 afterwards ; it does not seem probable that he really joined 
 the monks until after that event. The beautiful, chaste, 
 self-denying pagan lady never saw the greatness and glory 
 of her son. She never heard any of those marvellous ora- 
 tions, did not know that the lips which had been so much 
 to her — ^kissed so fondly and so often, as mothers only can 
 kiss — were through all after ages to be called the golden. 
 She soon passes out of sight, but assuredly her son did her 
 justice, and treasured her memory. The name and memory 
 of Monica have been held very dear in Church history ; 
 but let us, as we pass bV, look lovingly and tenderly upon, 
 and set a fair white lily over, the gxave of Secanda. 
 
 Six years Chr^^sostom continued among the mountains 
 and the monasteries ; for some time he dwelt in a cave with 
 an aged hermit ; sohtary, shut up in a still more lonely cell, 
 he spent some other two years, taking httle rest, pondering 
 closely the Word, conversing with himself ; seeking out 
 that he might obtain the grace of spiritual strength to scat- 
 ter, and rout, and put to flight the sins lurking in his na- 
 ture. He seems to have been ordained by the Bishop Mile- 
 tius a reader and deacon of the Church in Antioch about 
 the year 381. He returned to the city learned and accom- 
 plished in every art and gift necessary to the sacred orator. 
 "When he left he was an accomphshed rhetorician ; and we 
 can well conceive what effect six years of sohtude among 
 the momitains, with no other book but the Sacred Word, 
 would have upon a nature able to receive it. The moment 
 soon came when his mighty oratory was put forth with aU 
 its vehemence and strength. So long as he continued in 
 Antioch his voice was hke a beU, chiming or toUing, 
 and certainly the sonorous notes of the kneU predom- 
 inate over the chime. Among the most intrepid and noble 
 of his orations is the series on The Statices, Oppressed and 
 
1 1 8 Pulpit Monographs : CJirysostorti, 
 
 harassed by taxation, the people of Antioch — naturally a 
 turbulent and unquiet race — ^rose in tumult and uproar 
 against a warrant for a new assessment. It created no 
 small irritation ; they encouraged one another to revolt, 
 until, in the turmoil in the streets, the brazen statues of 
 the emperor and his wife Mavilla were torn down, and 
 dragged ignominiously by ropes, with insolent rudeness and 
 bitter sarcasm, through the city. Scarcely had the deed 
 been done than all the inhabitants w§re in mourning and 
 fear. In our country and age such an indignity would very 
 likely produce unhappy results ; what then might be ex- 
 pected in the very era of imperial cruelty ? Fear spread on 
 every hand ; those who could fly the city, fled ; those who 
 were taken were hurried off to prison. The foi-um, a few 
 days before crowded, was deserted, and here and there a 
 few frightened and trembling people might be seen skulking 
 about with dejected looks. Images of confiscation, death, 
 and worse than death, were before all men's eyes. In the 
 panic, the good Bishop Flavianus took upon himself to go 
 as an ambassador of peace to the emperor. It was winter ; 
 he was aged, and a man of many infirmities. The distance 
 was considerable ; his sister, too, was dying ; but he went. 
 Chrysostom was left in the niouming city ; he walked 
 through it, and saw its profound distress ; its silence only 
 broken by the armed guards with swords and spears resist- 
 ing the wailhig women and children who were seeking to 
 throng the courts of justice to save their husbands and fa- 
 thers. While the bishop w' as on his way to the metropohs, 
 Chrysostom called the people daily to the church ; there, 
 in their agitated and trembhng midst, he pronounced those 
 twenty-one homihes concerning The Statues. "While the 
 bishop was seeking to turn aside the unperial wrath, Chry- 
 sostom wrought day by day upon the crowds in the church. 
 The follow^ing passage is a very fine illustration of the nat- 
 m-al and easy, yet forcible way in which the orator turns 
 
The Orations " On the Statues.'" 
 
 119 
 
 the circumstance to account, and, with great art, preaches 
 to the emperor for mercy, while, in reahty, he reproves the 
 sins and passions of the people. Thus he exclaims in a 
 passage on 
 
 THE BOUNDLESS LOYING-KINDNESS OF GOD. 
 
 A man has been insulted, and we are all in fear and trembling 
 — both those of us who have been guilty of this insult, and those 
 of us who are conscious of innocence. But God is insulted every 
 day. Why do I say every day ? Rather should I say every hoar, 
 by rich and by poor, by those who are at ease and those who are 
 in trouble, by those who calumniate and those who are calum- 
 niated ; and yet there is never a word of this ; therefore God 
 has permitted our fellow-servant to be insulted, that thou mayest 
 know the loving-kindness of the Lord. This offence has been 
 committed only for the first time, yet we do not, on that account, 
 expect to reap the advantage of excuse or apology. We provoke 
 God every day, and make no movement of returning to Him ; 
 and yet He bears with all long-suffering ; see you how great is 
 the loving-kindness of the Lord. In this present outrage, the 
 culj)rits have been apprehended, thrown into prison, and pun- 
 ished ; and yet we are in fear. He who has been insulted has 
 not heard of what has been done, nor pronounced sentence ; and 
 we are all trembling. But God hears day by day the insults of- 
 fered to Him, and no one turns to Him, although God is so kind 
 and loving. With Him it is enough to acknowledge the sin, 
 and the guilt is absolved: ... do you not hence conclude 
 how unspeakable is the love of God, how boundless, how it sur- 
 passes all description ! Here he who has been insulted is of the 
 same nature with ourselves ; only once in all his life has he been 
 so treated, and that not to his face, not while* he was present 
 and seeing and hearing, and yet none of the offenders have been 
 pardoned. But in the case of God, not one of these things can 
 be said. For so vast is the distance between man and God, that 
 no words can express it, and every day is He insulted while He 
 is present, looking on, and hearing ; and yet He neither hurls 
 thunderbolts, nor bids the sea overflow the earth and drown all 
 its inhabitants, nor commands the earth to yawn and swallow 
 
I20 Pulpit Monographs : Chrysostom. 
 
 up all wlio have insulted Him ; but He forbears, and is long- 
 suffering, and offers pardon to those by whom He has been out- 
 raged, if they only repent and j)roniise to do so no more. Oh, 
 surely it is time to exclaim, Who can utter the mighty acts of 
 the Lord ? Who can show forth His praise ? 
 
 As to the friendly bishop, it is pleasing to know that he 
 was well and kindly entertained by the emperor. He held 
 a long intercourse with him, during which the old man re- 
 minded him of the example of his ancestor, Constantine, 
 w4io, when liis statue had been miserably abused, and its 
 face battered and broken, passed his hands over his face, 
 sa^dng, " I do not feel myseK bruised and broken, and my 
 head and face seem sound and whole ; and then he used 
 the better authority of Him who said, " If ye forgive men 
 their trespasses," etc., etc. ; and the emperor courteously 
 entreated him ; and then, with pardons in his possession, 
 hastened his return back. The good old bishop, unable to 
 travel very fast, forwarded the good news before him ; and 
 we leam how, when he entered the city, it was all ablaze 
 with rejoicing lights ; the forum decorated with garlands 
 and flowers, and green boughs over all the shops and doors 
 — quite a festive solemnity. And then the dear old bishop 
 w^ent to the church to give thanks ; and Chiysostom, in the 
 place where, during the bishop's absence, he had poured forth 
 his jeremiads, now, for the prosperous success of the under- 
 taking, pronounced an oration full of gratulation and joy. 
 
 No doubt the behavior of Chrysostom on this occasion, 
 joined to his favorable eminence in opinion before, made 
 him to be a man who could not be hid. In the year 398 
 he was consecrated and enthroned bishop of Constantino- 
 ple. Ministers, at the present day, who leave one charge 
 or diocese for another, are in no danger of creating such a 
 turmoil as that caused by the rumor oX the probable de- 
 parture of Chrysostom from Antioch. The people could 
 not tolerate the idea of the departure from their midst of 
 
At Co7isfantinopIe. I2i 
 
 their admired and eloquent preacher ; nor did it appear 
 that the preacher himself desired to remove ; and, proba- 
 bly, had he known what circumstances were to come out of 
 this consecration, the emperor himself would not have been 
 so determined in his design. Fearing, however, a popular 
 tumult, a letter was written to the governor of the prov- 
 ince to manage the matter. He desired Chrysostom to 
 walk a httle way with him out of the town, decoyed him 
 into his carriage, and drove him to the next stage beyond 
 Antioch ; there he was delivered into the custody of the 
 officers of the Government sent by the emperor to receive 
 him. The emperor had desired that his consecration should 
 take place with circumstances of especial pomp and solem- 
 nity, and a convention of bishops was summoned to assist 
 at it ; and thus, by guile and craft, seldom needed in the 
 history of the Church for elevation to such dignity, the 
 people of Antioch lost their pastor, and Chrysostom became 
 a bishop. 
 
 From this time, he enters upon that course of events in 
 his life which should commend him most to the notice of 
 preachers and teachers. In the great metropolis of the 
 East, he became a great social reformer. His discoiu'ses 
 are richly exemplary ; vehemently lashing the vices of the 
 city and the vices af the clergy. There had been, indeed, 
 from the corrupt members of the Church of Constantinople, 
 considerable opposition to his elevation. Constantinople, 
 then the chief city of the world, the seat of the empire of 
 the East, the seat of the court, could not, of course, be sup- 
 posed to be exempt from those sins especially peculiar to 
 great cities. The preacher, among those of his own pro- 
 fession, and those who hved only to amuse, found and sat- 
 irized " such as sold their voices to their belhes" — a very 
 admirable description, by the bye, of many a preacher and 
 singer of succeeding times. Even Dean Milman has ap- 
 parently judged Chrysostom somewhat coldly, because ho 
 6 
 
122 Pulpit Monograplis : Chrysostom, 
 
 carried into his pubic administration more of the manners 
 of the ascetic than seemed poHtic in a position of such im- 
 portance. Gibbon, of course, cannot be expected to sym- 
 pathize with the man whose loud thunders against the 
 scandals of the Church, or the vices of the city, ere long 
 brought him into immediate hostiHty with the indignations 
 aHke of the chiefs of Church and State. It is probable that 
 such a temper as that possessed by the vehement orator of 
 St. Sophia was choleric ; and in a state of affairs languish- 
 ing beneath a plethora of ill-humors he attempted too rapid 
 a reform. The clergy were aroused, and sought to traduce 
 him to the people ; but yet, the stainless gxandeur of his 
 own life, so sombre and solemn, gave more vivid brilhancy 
 to his amazing orations. He soon found himself, however, 
 the centre of an immense conspiracy, to which also the em- 
 peror and empress lent themselves. It is possible, as Mil- 
 man very distinctly reasons, that he permitted himself to 
 be too much influenced by the representations of his deacon 
 Serapion. Finally, however, he was cited to the celebrated 
 Synod of the Oak ; forty-six charges were preferred against 
 him, which even the sceptical and sarcastic Gibbon, who 
 never misses his opportunity for snubbing and sneering at 
 a saint, says, " may justly be considered as a fair and unex- 
 ceptional panegyric." Four times the citation was served 
 upon the bishop by the representatives of the Council ; he 
 refused — as they considered, contumaciously — to intrust 
 either his life or reputation in then- hands. While the 
 envenomed conclave was sitting, he continued preachmg, 
 surrounded himseK by the bishops of his party, and re- 
 mained himself intrepid and unmoved. As we read of 
 these things, it is possible to move back, in imagination and 
 thought, to those agitated days. We are able to read 
 calmly until we remember that life and existence hung upon 
 the decision of the Council ; but amidst the troubles of his 
 companions, some of whom were m tears, some unable to 
 
On the Council of the Oak. 123 
 
 control or to confine their passion, humbly embracing, and 
 kissing his garments — " Brethren," said he, " sit down, and 
 do not weep ; for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain ;" 
 and then followed those magnificent, immortal words, we 
 presume not unknown to many of our readers ; words fall- 
 ing from his lips while the sentence of banishment was be- 
 ing pronounced : 
 
 What can I fear ? Will it be death ? But you know that 
 Christ is my life, and that I shall gain by death. Will it be ex- 
 ile ? But the earth and all its fulness is the Lord's. Will it be 
 the loss of wealth ? But we brought nothing into the world, 
 and can carry nothing out. Thus all the terrors of the world 
 are contemptible in my eyes ; and I smile at all its good things. 
 Poverty I do not fear. Riches I do not sigh for. Death I do not 
 shrink from ; and life I do not desire, save only for the progress 
 of your souls. But you know, my friends, the true cause of my 
 fall. It is that I have not lined my house with rich tapestry. 
 It is that I have not clothed me in robes of silk. It is that I 
 have not flattered the effeminacy and sensuality of certain men, 
 nor laid gold and silver at their feet. But why need I say more ? 
 Jezebel is raising her persecution, and Elias must fly; Herodias 
 is taking her pleasure, and John must be bound with chains ; 
 the Egyptian wife tells her lie, and Joseph must be thrust into 
 prison. And so, if they banish me, I shall be like Elias ; if they 
 throw me in the mire, like Jeremiah ; if they plunge me into the 
 sea, like the j)rophet Jonah ; if into the pit, like Daniel ; if they 
 stone me, it is Stephen that I shall resemble ; John the forerun- 
 ner, if they cut off my head ; Paul, if they beat me with stripes ; 
 Isaiah, if they saw me asunder. 
 
 The emperor was called upon to ratify the decree of 
 deposition pronounced by the Council ; and the too visible 
 and manifest reflections on the empress in the passage we 
 have just cited, very likely made it more easy to him to 
 yield his sanction to the sentence. He was speedily ar- 
 rested, in quite another fashion than that in which he was 
 hurried away to his stormy bishopric. He was conveyed 
 
1 24 Fulpit Monograjylis : Chrysostom, 
 
 through the city by an imperial messenger, and landed, 
 after a short navigation, at the mouth of the Euxine. The 
 people of the city were astounded. During the Council of 
 the Oak, they had been comparatively mute and passive. 
 His arrest aroused the city to such a height of indignation 
 as has not often, in such an instance, been crowned with a 
 like success, even where its object has been devotion and 
 enthusiasm to greatness and goodness, in the presence of a 
 corrupt court. Very likely, not a little was added to the 
 intensity and wonder of the hour by the throb of an earth- 
 quake, which shook the city that very night ; and, while it 
 created some rum, seemed to be portentous of more. Even 
 the empress fell on her knees before the emperor, and be- 
 sought him to recall the saintly but audacious orator. She 
 — who had certainly been involved deeply in the machina- 
 tions against him, and, no wonder, when it is remembered 
 that she had not escaped either the satire or the vehemence 
 of this Knox of the Early Church — ^now protested herself 
 quite innocent of all the troubles which had come upon him, 
 declaring how she honored him, not only as her own bishop, 
 but particularly as the person who had baptized her chil- 
 dren. Eound the palace raged' and roared the immense 
 waves of popular commotion ; it was manifest that the pub- 
 lic safety could only be purchased by the return of the min- 
 ister, and messengers were sent to hasten his return ; and 
 the historian of The Declme and Fall has, even without a 
 sneer, recited how the shores of Europe and Asia were il- 
 luminated, and the Bosphorus crowded with boats, to the 
 mouth of the Propontis, as the victorious people accom- 
 panied, with flaming torches, their archbishop from the port 
 to the cathedral, lie, indeed, with an inflexibility, which, 
 of course, was part of his character, was loath to yield to 
 any prayers for his return, imtil his innocency should be 
 vindicated before a greater synod than that by which he 
 had been condemned, and his sentence legally reversed. 
 
Iteturn from Banislwient 1 2 5 
 
 But the people were impatient of delay, and the empress 
 also sent to compliment liim, declaring that his return to 
 the city was more to her than the crown she wore ; and, 
 in approved Oriental language, expressing how she had re- 
 stored the head to the body, the pilot to the ship, the pas- 
 tor to the flock. So he yielded, and was met on his way 
 by multitudes of the people, singing hymns to God for his 
 return. Thus they bore him to the cathedral, and no pro- 
 test of his that he was under ecclesiastical censure, and had 
 no right there, was of any avail ; they would have him 
 ascend the bishop's throne, and give his blessing and an 
 extempore sermon, which has been lost, though some who 
 heard it spoke of it as one of the most considerable of his 
 life. We know little more of it than that he spoke tiU the 
 people would allow him to speak no longer — borne down 
 and overwhelmed by their acclamations. What men of 
 might were the bishops of those distant days ! 
 
 But auspicious as were the cu'cumstances of the orator's 
 return, no reader can be much surprised to find that they 
 were not omens, either of long-continued peace or of a 
 happy close to his career. He soon vexed the empress 
 again. Her irritation against him in the days of the first 
 persecution grew out of his sharp rebukes of court fashions. 
 It soon seemed that he had even a stronger and more 
 personal ground for rebuke as a Christian minister. 
 A silver statue of the empress, Eudoxia, was to be solemnly 
 erected ; it was to be elevated on a porphyry pillar in the 
 street, and not far fi^om the spot where stood the Church 
 of St. Sophia. Its elevation and inauguration were accom- 
 panied not only by many shoutings, dances, and extra- 
 vagancies, but by certain loose sports and pastimes, very 
 suitable to the idolatries of Manichseanism or semi-paganism. 
 The provost of the city was a Manichsean and therefore 
 encouraged tliis kind of looseness. Chrysostom's speech 
 rushed out instantly in an unwise blaze of vehement invec- 
 
1 26 Pulpit Monographs : Chrysostom. 
 
 tive. If readers, quietly perusing these pages of Church 
 history, think that a milder course of expostulation would 
 have been more wise, let it be conceded that Kome and the 
 world were only just then emerging from paganism — these 
 rites were of the very nature of paganism. In the latter 
 years of the reign of paganism in the empire, emperors had 
 demanded and received the blasphemy of an apotheosis. 
 Assuredly, however, the preacher could have had little 
 affection or respect for the woman herself. In one of his 
 sermons at this period, he drew the character of an ill 
 woman, affirming that no beast in the world, nor hon, nor 
 dragon, is comparable to a bad woman ; and he enforced 
 and illustrated this by many illustrations from Scripture ; 
 then, also, he turned the tables, and discoursed of the 
 quahties, nature, and actions of good women. The empress 
 was again roused to indignation. Again, from this circum- 
 stance, active machinations were formed against him ; the 
 persecution reached a considerable height ; the clergy who 
 sided with him were seized, beaten, wounded, and im- 
 prisoned ; the waters of the baptistery, where he officiated, 
 were stained with blood. Looked at from this point of 
 view, we see that it was the strong and mahgnant action 
 of paganism against a pure Christianity. 
 
 At last, power used its utmost insolence. It was de- 
 termined by the court, and that part of the Church which 
 sided with it, that he should again be deposed and banished. 
 The city was in strange agitation, when suddenly a fire 
 broke out in his magnificent cathedral. The conflagration 
 spread, and left no part of the stately fabric untouched ; 
 the triumphant flames rolled along the aisles, and some 
 choice pieces of antiquity are now probably lost to us, as 
 they perished in that great calamity, in which, however, 
 neither man nor beast was injured. The most monstrous 
 circumstance of all was, that Chrysostom was himself 
 charged with setting fire to the church ; his case was in- 
 
His Final Banishment 1 27 
 
 deed liopeless ; he had left it, he had bidden farewell to his 
 deaconesses ; he had, in fact, withdi'awn from the friendly 
 custody of his adherents, and was on his way, while his 
 church was in flames, to the Asiatic shore. The charge, 
 of course, was only one of the monstrous maHgnities of the 
 time, vexiag the heart, and increasing the agony of the 
 persecuted man. After his surrender and departure in 
 that ill night, he never saw Constantinople again. Hence- 
 forth he was a prisoner, wandering amidst places, if it 
 were possible to find them, where his friends would not 
 flock round him, to love and reverence. But his influence 
 continued during his absence. From his soHtary cell among 
 the mountains of the Caucasus, although another bishop 
 had been enthroned in his place, he governed his church, 
 almost the whole of the Eastern Church. As he entered 
 towns and neighborhoods — as when he came upon the 
 frontiers of Cappadocia and Tauro-Cilesia — ^bishops, and 
 monks, and holy women met him in great companies, 
 thronging round him with tears, and saying, that it were 
 better the sun should not shine in the heavens, than John 
 should be silenced. He carried with him a wasted and 
 painful frame ; subject to many and grievous sicknesses ; 
 he wandered, shifting from place to place, regarding woods 
 and rocks as his best security ; and Tavemier, the traveller, 
 tells of a town in Armenia, two miles from which, in the 
 midst of a plain, rises a rugged rock, in the which was a 
 hewn chamber, and bed, table, and cupboard ; and, after 
 some several steps cut in the rock, a httle gallery leading 
 to another chamber ; and the tradition of the Christians 
 of that place in the time of Tavemier was that here the 
 eloquent and saintly exile passed a hard winter. The 
 Bishop of Eome, Innocent, wrote to him, assuring him 
 of his affection, seeking thus to sustain him in his exile. 
 This was towards the close of his course. It was necessary 
 to destroy his influence, as well as to compel his exile. The 
 
128 Pulpit Monografphs : Clirysostom. 
 
 soldiers were cruel to him, by the imperial edict, compelling 
 him to travel, when liis wasted frame could bear no toil, 
 through violent rains and burning suns. 
 
 At last they came to Comana, a town in Cappadocia ; he 
 was not permitted to lodge in the town, but hurried forward 
 till they reached the oratory of St. Basil, ^nq or six miles 
 off. St. Basil had been Bishop of Comana, and died a 
 martyr under Maximian. The legend says that, the night 
 before, the martyr had appeared to Brother John and said, 
 ''Be of good cheer, brother, to-morrow we shall be together ! " 
 Moreover, the legend continues, the martyr had appeared 
 to the bishop of the place, bidding him " provide for brother 
 Jolin on the morrow." When, therefore, Chrysostom 
 reached the oratory, he requested of his guard that he 
 might stay there, but they hurried him forward. They had 
 not, however, gone more than three or four miles, when he 
 became so ill that they were obhged to return. As soon as 
 he entered, he called for the brethren to give hioi some 
 clean, white raiment. He stripped himself, and having put 
 on the clothing brought him, he received the sacrament 
 from their hands, and then, having performed these last 
 duties for himself, especially the former, indicative, we 
 have often thought, of the saintly dehcacy of his natui-e, 
 he concluded with his favorite doxology, "Glory be to 
 God for all things that happen ! " sealed it with " Amen ! " 
 gently stretched himseK out and died. 
 
 The secrecy with which he had been carried from place 
 to place and the lonely desert spot where he breathed his 
 last were unable to prevent an amazing throng of holy 
 people from following him to his grave. He was buried in 
 the same tomb with the martyr Basil, who had met him 
 and told him to "be of good comfort." His long life was 
 packed up into the small compass of fifty-two years. His 
 remains were not allowed to rest in the obscure spot in 
 which they were interred. When the Emperor Arcadius 
 
His Second Heturn. 129 
 
 and his wife Eudoxia had passed away, and Theodosius the 
 younger reigned, who had been baptized by the banished 
 bishop, he was besought to permit the restoration of the 
 venerable remains ; the request was instantly granted. 
 Once more the Bosphorus was ahve and aglow on account 
 of Chrysostom ; but this time with a more melancholy 
 pomj). As the body touched the shore, the young emperor 
 and empress, accompanied by their sisters, approached the 
 coffin ; he Idssed it ; covered it with his imperial cloak, 
 and implored forgiveness from Heaven for the wrongs his 
 parents had inflicted on the holy ascetic ; then the remains 
 were carried to their final resting-place. Envy and malice 
 had done their worst. 
 
 The memory of the holy preacher has never needed a 
 defender ; the vuTdence and the vice of party and power 
 cast him down, in his own day, but even then, and ever 
 after, his righteousness has shone forth as the light. It 
 has been said, the works of Chrysostom are the study of a 
 lifetime ; they are voluminous — the tender bursts of his 
 immortal eloquence ; if, occasionally, they seem to verge 
 toward inflation, they are nevertheless fine models of the 
 way in which Christian rhetoric may reach its most pas- 
 sionate harangue and declamation ; while, better still, his 
 more calm and sober moods furnish wiser models of exposi- 
 tion than even the wonderful and manifold pages of Augus- 
 tine. Nothing can be finer, more rich m Gospel sweet- 
 ness, and more elevated in pathos, than the following pas- 
 sage on 
 
 THE SALVATION OF THE THIEF. 
 
 Would you learn another most illustrious achievement of the 
 Cross, transcending all human thought ? The closed gate of 
 Paradise He has opened to day ; for to-day He has brought into 
 it the thief. — Two most sublime achievements these ! He both 
 opened Paradise and brought in tlie thief. He restored to him 
 the primeval fatherland of man, He let him back to the ancestral 
 6* 
 
1 30 Pulpit Monograjylis : Clirysostom, 
 
 city. " To-day shalt thou be with me," He says, " in Paradise." 
 " What sayest thou ? Thou art crucified and fixed to the Cross 
 with nails, and dost thou promise Paradise ? How wilt thou 
 confer such a gift ?" Paul, indeed, says " He was crucified in 
 weakness ;" but hear what follows, " yet He liveth," he says, " by 
 the power of God ;" and again, in another place, "My strength 
 is made j>erfect in weakness. Wherefore, now on the Cross," he 
 says, " I promise, that by this thou mayest know my power." 
 The spectacle itself is sad : look not at w^hat the cross is in 
 itself, lest thou despair, but raise thine eye to the power of the 
 Crucified, that thy countenance may gleam with the radiance of 
 joy — for this end he shows to thee there his might. 
 
 For it was not when raising the dead, it was not when com- 
 manding the sea, it was not w^hen chiding demons, — but when 
 crucified, nailed to the tree, insulted, spit upon, railed at, 
 mocked, tortured by all, — that he exerted His might in drawing 
 to himself the sinful soul of the thief. — See, on this side and 
 that, the efiiilgence of his power. He shook creation, rent the 
 rocks ; and the heart of the thief — harder than rock. He made 
 softer than wax. " To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise. 
 What sayest thou ? The cherubim and the flaming sword guard 
 Paradise, and dost thou promise admission there to the thief 'i 
 Yea, is His reply, for I am the Lord of the cherubim, and I 
 have the power of flame and hell, and life and death. And 
 therefore. He says, " To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." 
 The moment these celestial powers behold their Lord, they will 
 withdraw and give place. 
 
 Though no king would permit a thief or any one of his ser- 
 vants to occupy the same seat with him, and to ride thus into 
 the city, yet our gracious Lord did it. For at His entrance into 
 His holy fatherland. He brings in along with him the thief; 
 not dishonoring Paradise with the feet of the thief — far 
 be it from Him — but rather in this way conferring on it honor. 
 For it is the glory of Paradise to have such a Lord, so full of 
 power and love, as to be able to make a thief worthy of the joys 
 of Paradise. 
 
 For when he called publicans and harlots into the kingdom, 
 He did this not to dishonor the kingdom, but to confer on it the 
 
The Eloquence of Chrysostom, i^ i 
 
 highest renown, and to show that the Lord of the kingdom is 
 such as to be able to bestow on harlots and publicans an excel- 
 lence so perfect, that they are seen to be worthy of the honors 
 and gifts that are there. 
 
 As, therefore, we admire a physician, when we see those who 
 are laboring under incurable diseases released from their mal- 
 adies and restored to perfect health, so, beloved, admire Christ, 
 and be astonished that, laying His hand on those that are af- 
 flicted with incurable maladies of the soul, he has power to de- 
 liver them from the ctUs under which they groan, and make 
 those who have reached the utmost extremity of wickedness fit 
 for the kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 The eloquence of Cln-ysostom is of that rich order, both of 
 expression and illustration, that, weighty and magnificent 
 as it is, it becomes apprehensible by every order of mind. 
 
 How stirring it must have been, in the ancient Church, 
 in such an e]30ch, to have heard him break forth in the fol- 
 lowing exclamation, in which he contrasts the lamentations 
 of the heathen over their dead, with the lights, and hymns, 
 and sacramental service, with which the early Christians 
 celebrated the obsequies of the departed. 
 
 THE BURIAL RITES OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 
 
 Tell me what mean the bright shining torches? Do we 
 not accompany the dead as brave warriors ? What mean the 
 hymns ? Do we not praise God and render thanks to Him, that 
 He hath now crowned the departed ? that He hath freed him 
 from his sufferings, and hath taken him from misery to Himself? 
 Consider what ye sing at that moment ! " Return unto thy rest, 
 O my soul ; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee." 
 Again : " The Lord is on my side ; I will not fear ;" and again : 
 *' Thou art my hiding place from the trouble which encompasseth 
 me." (Ps. cxvi. 7 ; cxviii. 6 ; xxxii. 7.) Consider what these 
 psalms mean. But ye heed them not and are drunken with 
 grief. Or, regard the mourning of others, that ye may find 
 therein consolation for your own. Ye say ; " Return unto thy 
 
132 Pitlpit MonogTaplis : Chrysostom. 
 
 rest, O my soul ; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee 1" 
 and yet ye weejy. (Ps. xvi. 7.) 
 
 Sometimes, mth a startling, beautiful ingenuity, he seized 
 upon some little passing incident, and made it beautifully 
 effective. Thus once, while he was preaching, they began 
 to light the lamps, and he exclaimed : 
 
 Let me beg you to arouse yourselves, and to put away that 
 sluggishness of mind. But why do I say this ? At the very time 
 w^lien I am setting forth before you the Scriptures, you are turn- 
 ing your eyes away from me, and are fixing them upon the lamj)s, 
 and upon the man who is lighting the lamps. Oh I of what a 
 sluggish soul is this the mark, to leave the preacher and turn to 
 him. I, too, am kindling the fire of the Scriptures ; and upon 
 my tongue there is burning a taper, the taper of sound doctrine. 
 Greater is this light, and better than the light that is yonder. 
 For, unlike that man, it is no wick steeped in oil, that I am 
 lighting up. I am rather inflaming souls, moistened with piety, 
 by the desire of heavenly discourse. 
 
 In this age of gorgeous household architectui-e, when the 
 saints in many a neighborhood are content to dwell in their 
 ceiled houses, while the house of the Lord lies waste, per- 
 haps some may read the following with pleasure : 
 
 THE PALACE OP ABRAHAM. 
 
 Paul, when exhorting the rich not to be hjgh-minded, taught 
 them the way to guard against it. They were to examine the 
 uncertain and treacherous nature of riches. Wlierefore he 
 said : " Nor trust in uncertain riches. He is not rich who 
 possesseth much ; but he who distributeth much. Abraham was 
 rich, but loved not his wealth ; he regarded not the house of 
 this man, nor the substance of that man ; but, going forth, he 
 looked round for the stranger and the needy, that he might 
 succor poverty • that he might entertain the wayfarer. He 
 cpvered not hjs ceilings with gold, but fixing his tent near the 
 oak, he was contented with the shade of its leaves. Yet so 
 
Illustrations of Eloquence, 1 3 ^ 
 
 bright was his dwelling, that angels were not ashamed to tarry 
 with him ; for they sought not splendor of abode, but purity of 
 soul. Let us, my beloved, imitate Abraham, and dispense our 
 goods to those w^ho are in need. Rudely prepared was his 
 habitation, but more splendid than the halls of kings. No king 
 ever entertained angels ; but Abraham, sitting under the oak, and 
 ha^vdng his tent pitched, was accounted worthy of that honor. 
 Neither was he thus distinguished on account of the lowliness 
 of his dwelling; but he enjoyed this gift because of the j^urity 
 of his soul, and the treasures therein deposited. Let us not 
 then adorn our houses, but rather our souls. Is it not a disgrace 
 thoughtlessly to adorn our walls with marble, but to neglect the 
 necessities of our Christian brethren. Of what use to thee, O 
 man ! is thy palace ? Canst thou take it up and depart with it ? 
 But thy soul thou canst take up entire, and carry along with 
 thee. Lo ! now that so great peril hath come upon us, let our 
 palaces aid us ; let them deliver us from the impending danger, 
 but they cannot. And ye are my witnesses, who, leaving your 
 palaces desolate, and flying to the wilderness, shun them as 
 snares and nets. Let riches now assist us ; but the present is no 
 season for them. If the influence of riches be insufiicient to ap- 
 pease the anger of man, much less will be their power before the 
 divine and implacable seat of judgment. If gold now availeth 
 us nothing against an irritated and wrathful man, its power will 
 entirely vanish before the displeasure of God, who needeth not 
 gold. Let us build houses to dw^ell in, not to make of them a 
 vain display. That which exceedeth our necessities is superfluous 
 and. useless. Bind on a sandal larger than thy foot, and thou 
 wilt not be able to endure it. It will impede thy walking. 
 Thus also a house greater than is necessary impedeth thy pas- 
 sage to heaven. Wouldst thou raise vast and splendid habita- 
 tions ? I forbid them not ; but let them not be on earth. Build 
 tabernacles in heaven, — tabernacles impeiishable. Why ravest 
 thou about transitory things, things wdiich remain on earth ? 
 Nothing is more deceitful than wealth ; to-day with thee, to- 
 morrow against thee. It armeth on all sides the eyes of the 
 envious. It is a hostile wariior in thine own tent, an enemy in 
 thine own house ; and ye who possess it are my witnesses, who 
 in every mode are burying and concealing it. 
 
134 Pulpit Monograms : Clirysostom, 
 
 The words and sermons of Clirysostom, like those of our 
 own Reeves or Brookes, are among the httle historiettes 
 which bring vividly before us the manners, and vices, and 
 people of the cities in which he preached. One of his biog- 
 raphers says, that " the emperor, the commissioners, bish- 
 ops, and prefects, are by his genius preserved hke pieces of 
 sea-weed in amber." And, running my eye down several 
 passages, I could easily fill pages with illustrations of this ; 
 but my memoir of this illustrious Father has already ex- 
 tended to too great a length, and I must close my quota- 
 tions with a noble passage poured forth soon after his brief 
 restoration to Constantinople : 
 
 niS RETURN FROM EXILE. 
 
 Blessed be the Lord ! I said it when I departed. On my 
 return, I repeat it : and I ceased not from saying it in my ab- 
 sence. You remember that on the last day I recalled to you the 
 image of Job, and his words, " Blessed be the name of the- 
 Lord forever." It is the pledge that I left with you as I was 
 departing ; it is the thanksgiving that I bring back to you. 
 The situations are different. The hymn of gratitude is the 
 same. In exile I was always blessing. Returned from exile I 
 am blessing still. Winter and summer work to the same end, 
 the fertility of the earth. Blessed be God, who allowed me to 
 go forth; blessed again and again, in that he has called me 
 back to you. Blessed be God who unchains the tempest : bless- 
 ed be God who stills it and has made a calm. , . . Through 
 all the diversity of time the temper of the soul is the same ; 
 and the pilot's courage has been neither relaxed by the calm nor 
 overwhelmed by the tempest. . . . See what the snares of 
 my enemies have done ; they have increased affection, and 
 kindled regret for me, and have won me six hundred admirers. 
 At other times it is our own body alone who love me. To-day, 
 the very Jews do me honor ; ... it is not the enemies that 
 I thank for their change of mind, but God, who has turned 
 their injustice to my honor. The Jews crucified the Lord, and 
 the world is saved : yet it is not the Jews that I thank, but the 
 
His Faitliftdness in Preaching, i j^ 
 
 Crucified. May they see that which our God sees ; the peace, 
 the glory that their snares have been worth to me. At other 
 times, the church alone used to be filled. Now the public 
 square is become the church. All heads are as immovable as 
 if they were one. All are silent, though no one orders silence. 
 All are contrite, too. There are games in the circus to-day : but 
 no one assists at them. All flow to the temple like a torrent. 
 The torrent is your multitude. The river's murmur is your 
 voices, that rise up to heaven, and tell of the love you bear to 
 your Father. Your prayers are to me a brighter crown than all 
 the diadems of earth. 
 
 On the whole, none of the great names of those early 
 ecclesiastical ages wins from us more admiration and affec- 
 tion than that of this illustrious man. Great as he was as 
 an orator, he shines not merely by the splendors of his 
 rhetoric ; indeed, he steadily resisted the growing, and too 
 prevalent idea, that the Christian teacher should be a mere 
 orator. He reproved the growing error of his times, a pas- 
 sion for pubhc discourses, and the disposition of auditors, 
 as he says, " to conduct themselves like spectators at the 
 heathen games." He constantly reproved the disposition 
 to applaud, and frequently, when it broke forth in homage 
 to himself, he exclaimed, " The church is not a theatre, in 
 which we should Hsten to be amused ; of what avail to me 
 are those shouts — this applause, this tumult ? The praise 
 I seek is, that you show forth in your works the thinejs I 
 have spoken to you." Applause in the church, very com- 
 mon in his day, he strongly denounced, as transferring to 
 that hallowed place the laws of the theatre. He set a very 
 high standard for the Christian minister : " Let him," said 
 he, " not approach the pulpit who can neither combat the 
 enemies of our faith, nor bring every thought into cap- 
 tivity to the obedience of Christ, nor cast down vain ima- 
 ginations." When he spoke of the preachers in his time 
 as going about rather after the fashion of harlots, " to seek 
 
136 Pulpit Monographs : Clirysostom^ 
 
 the favor of the people, than to instruct them," it is not 
 surprising that rebuke so vehement and indignant brought 
 down upon his head the condemnation of his own holiness. 
 Immense as was his power v/hile living, and greater still 
 and more extensive as his fame has been since his death, 
 Chrysostom does not flatter the theory of those who de- 
 mand a gi'and and im^DOsing figure for the loftiest oratory. 
 He was low of stature ; his head w^as big, but entirely bald ; 
 his forehead large and full of wiinliles ; sfcill more singular, 
 his eyes were not prominent^ but deep-set, sunk mwards, 
 though they are described as amiable and affectionate, nor 
 does his manner seem to be that of which we speak as the 
 " flood of eloquence" — it was the grandeur of expression, 
 the hohness and purity of -conception, united, of course, to 
 a voice of considerable flexibihty and strength of tone ; — 
 nor does he seem to have attempted to inflame the people 
 by much action. Distinctness, — we gather to have been a 
 power with him ; and in the old church, either of Antioch 
 or Constantinople, we do not find it difficult to conceive 
 the quiet power of his maimer, expressing the delightful 
 and graceful graciousness of many a paragraph, or the 
 fore-finger of the right hand elevated till it clenched the 
 argument ; or, as was more common with him, expressing 
 some vehement and indignant sentence by pressmg it on 
 the palm of the left hand. He had, as is abundantly 
 shown, great copiousness and plenty of words, infinite 
 sweetness, and an impetus of soul and nervous efficacy, 
 which gave material strength to all his speech. Thus, in 
 every x)oint of view, he compels our attention ; we feel 
 that we are not merely with a man great in his own hour, 
 or age, or city. He had, in a very eminent degree, the tal- 
 ents of facihty conjoined to perspicuity. We could trust 
 him not merely when a multitude has to be commanded, 
 but when a text has to be elucidated. Meantime, he also 
 had, in a very eminent degi-ee, that profound intensity of 
 
Compared witli Paul, i ^7 
 
 character, which, we are persuaded, is the root of all tiniest 
 oratory, which itself is the organ of faith, and wliieh, as 
 in tliis illustrious instance, makes the life a high and noble 
 consistency. Writers have, ere now, compared Augustine 
 to St. John, Clirysostom to St. Paul ; the correctness of 
 the comparison is not, at first sight, most distinctly recog- 
 nized ; yet the more w^e look uj)on the men, the more we 
 see this is theii* order ; and much m the history of the 
 mind and life of Clirysostom suggests comparison with 
 him whose writings he most dearly loved and closely 
 studied. Of course, we must not push the comj)arison too 
 far ; Paul w^as an infinite man. We have said already 
 Chrysostom is the study of a lifetime ; our knowledge of 
 his hfe and works is sufficient for the compilation of this 
 brief, and we trust not unuseful paper, from popular 
 sources. Those of my hearers who desire to know more, 
 may consult the Paris edition of Bernard Montfaugon, a 
 Benedictine monk, in thirteen foho volumes. Tliere is an- 
 other, the Eton Saville edition, in eight folio volumes. We 
 only mention these, to justify the expression that this 
 great Father would take a life to know him well. 
 
V. 
 
 Mediaeval and Post- Mediaeval 
 Preachers. 
 
 ITH the preaching and the preachers of the Mid- 
 dle Ages most readers have but a very shght 
 acquaintance ; and many, indeed, fancy that the 
 pulpit and its powers were the birth of the Ee- 
 formation, but this is far from true ; no doubt, the stories 
 of the pulpit of those darker times are most inaccessible ; 
 they are in other languages, and buried in the hbraries of 
 colleges and monasteries, or they are scattered through the 
 hugh masses and mcidental references of miscellaneous 
 church hterature ; but could they be rescued from their ob- 
 scurity they would tell a very wonderful tale of the power 
 of speech in those rude times. The accomphshed and la- 
 mented Dr. Neale has done this work in a slight, interest- 
 ing, and popular book,* and with this may be mentioned 
 another even more interesting work, dealing with less 
 known names,f by a scholar whose taste leads him into the 
 
 * MedicRKal Preachers and Mediceval Preaching. A Series of 
 Extracts, translated from the Sermons of the Middle Ages, with Notes 
 and an Introduction. By Rev. J. M. Neale, M.A., Warden of Sack- 
 ville College. 
 
 f Post-Medioival Preachers : Some Account of the Most Celebrated 
 
 (138) 
 
Pulpit Light in Dai'h Ages, 1^9 
 
 study of all strange folk-lore — and truly these anecdotes of 
 preachers belong to a kind and branch of folk-lore — Mr. 
 Baring-Gould. Anecdotes of the pulpit, of the monastery, 
 and the Cathohc Church are found strewn along the pages of 
 those immense and insane piles of manifold reading and 
 learning, The Mares Catholici, and the Compitum of Mr. 
 Kenelm Digby, but there is no weU-wTOught history of those 
 times ; and he who would write it must spend his days and 
 nights for a long time among dusty piles of church an- 
 tiquities, and be a very Bollandist in industry and patience. 
 As these lectures are not a course upon Church History, 
 so neither are they iatended to be a complete review of the 
 history of pulpit eloquence ; in leaving, therefore, the 
 earlier ages for the mediaeval, I do not feel called upon to 
 trace the distinct links of instruction which held together 
 the doctrines and teachings of those times ; specially when 
 barbarian hordes were ploughmg up all the ancient land- 
 marks of civilization in Europe. In many lonely cloistered 
 places the truth of form and the truth of feeling survived. 
 The sermons of the venerable Bede are known to us ; they 
 are short and popular. We must also, in any measure of 
 prejudice we may feel against the follies and falsehoods and 
 tyrannous cruelties of the Papacy, be wise to distinguish 
 between the men and the ages. Dr. Neander's invaluable 
 Memorials of the Christian Life and his Light shining in Dark 
 Places wiU show you that in rude times the "fire the Ke- 
 deemer came to kindle on the earth, among the human race, 
 never ceased to burn, either with a clearer or a duUer flame ; 
 that rude stock of humanity communicated its rudeness to 
 the chosen to be trained by it, and in virtue of human 
 freedom, it could be trained in no other way. " Christianity 
 wa^ propagated in a few intelligible doctrines which verified theni- 
 
 Preachers of the l^th, 16th, and 17th Centuries; with Outlines of 
 their Sermons and Specimens of their Style. By S. Baring-Gould, 
 M.A. 
 
1 40 Mediceval and Post-Mediceval Preachers, 
 
 selves as the power of God in tJie souls of men ; for the true 
 dignity of man does not consist in the harmonious cultiva- 
 tion of all the moral and spiritual tendencies of his nature, 
 but in the Divine received into the interior of the soul." ^ 
 
 There was darkness enough ; we do know they were 
 dark ages ; I especially allude to the period from the sixth 
 to the twelfth centuries ; but I suppose that the pulpit had 
 its place in those times, and from the twelfth the hght be- 
 gan to stream with a steady clearness, and even to blaze. 
 
 That attention was given to the art of reading in public 
 and preaching, even in the earliest times, is evident fi-om 
 the book Be InstUiitiojie Clericoriiniy by Eabanus Maurus, 
 afterwards Archbishop of Mentz ; this work was written in 
 819, but Dr. Maitland, in his work on the Dark Ages, in 
 quoting it, shows that for much of it Maurus was indebted 
 to Isidor of Seville, who wrote more than two hundred 
 years before ; but volumes might easily be filled with ex- 
 tracts illustrating the faith and the mental and the spiritual 
 power of those, and the subsequent times, evidenced in the 
 words and the works of the pulpit, referring more generally 
 to the method of the pulpit of those times ; from all that 
 I know of it, I am sorry to agree with Dr. Neale when ho 
 afi&rms that there was an immense and intuitive knowledge 
 of Scripture possessed by those preachers, setting them, in 
 these particulars, far above the preachers of our own or of 
 any times since the Reformation ; there was a perfect 
 affluence of Scripture reference in them very instructive ; 
 as Mr. Gould has said, " they did not make long extracts, 
 but with one light sweep brushed up a whole bright string 
 of sparlding Scripture instances," and he gives the follow- 
 ing extract, we know not from whom it is taken : 
 
 "many are called, but few ahe chosen." 
 "Noah preached to the old world for a hundred years the 
 
 * Neander's Memorials of the Christian Life, &c., p. 415. 
 
The Many Called^ — Few Chosen, 141 
 
 coming in of the flood, and how many were saved when the 
 world was destroyed ? Eight souls, and among them was the 
 reprobate Ham. Many were called, but only eight were chosen. 
 
 " When God would rain fire and brimstone on the cities of the 
 plain, were ten saved ? No ! only four, and of these four one 
 looked back. Many were called, but three were chosen. 
 
 " Six hundred thousand men, besides women and children, 
 went through the Red Sea, the like figure whereunto Baptism 
 doth even now save us. The host of Pharaoh and the Egyptians 
 went in after them, and of them not one reached the further 
 shore. And of these Israelites, who passed through the sea out 
 of Egypt, how many entered the promised land, the land flowing 
 with milk and honey ? Two only — Caleb and Joshua. Many — 
 six hundred thousand — w^ere called, few, even two, were chosen. 
 All the host of Pharaoh, a shadow of those who despise and set 
 at nought the Red Sea of Christ's blood, perish without excep- 
 tion ; of- God's chosen people, image of His Church, only few 
 indeed are saved. 
 
 " How many multitudes teemed in Jericho, and of them how 
 many escaped wiien Joshua encamped against the city ? The 
 walls fell, men and women perished. One house alone escaj)ed, 
 known by the scarlet thread, type of the blood of Jesus, and 
 that was the house of a harlot. 
 
 " Gideon went against the Midianites with thirty-two thousand 
 men. The host of Midian w^as without number, as the sand of 
 the sea-side for multitude. How many of these thirty-two 
 thousand men did God sufier Gideon to lead into victory? Three 
 hundred only. Many, even thirty- two thousand men, were 
 called ; three hundred chosen. 
 
 " Type and figure this of the many enrolled into the Church's 
 army, of whom so few go on to ^ fight the good fight of faith ! ' 
 
 " Of the tribes of Israel ticelve men only were chosen to be 
 Apostles ; and of those tAvelve, one was a traitor, one doubtful, 
 one denied his Master, all forsook Him. 
 
 " How many rulers were there among the Jews when Christ 
 came: but one only went to Ifim, and he he hy night! 
 
 " How many rich men were there when our blessed Lord walked 
 
142 Medioeval and Post-Mediceval Preachers. 
 
 this earth ; but one only ministered unto Him, and he only in His 
 burial ! 
 
 " How many peasants were there in the country when Christ 
 went to die ; but one only was deemed worthy to hear His cross ^ 
 and he bore it by constraint. 
 
 " How many thieves were there in Judcea when Christ was there ; 
 but one only entered Paradise^ and he was converted in his last 
 hour ! 
 
 " How many centurions were there scattered over the province ; 
 and one only saw and believed, and he by cruelly piercing the 
 Saviour's side ! 
 
 " How many harlots were there in that wicked and adulterous 
 generation ; but one only washed His feet with tears and wiped 
 them with the hair of her head! Truly ''Many are called^ but 
 few are chosen,'' " 
 
 There can be no doubt that this is earnest scriptural 
 preaching, and if the Bible is the power of God, it may 
 surely be expected that such preaching would be with 
 power. 
 
 I am not concerned to recite aU the madness of the 
 preaching friars, the races of men who wandered over 
 Europe with the rosary of St. Dominic, or the cord of St. 
 Francis, nor do I desire in this lecture to narrate their 
 achievements, but without doubt they do sufficiently affirm 
 the power of speech and of preaching. Dr. Milman has 
 shown how their popular eloquence became a new power, 
 reviving the languid faith, and rekindling the dying ardor 
 or superstition of the Church of the Middle Ages. Won- 
 drously from burning hps, the enthusiasm spread ; the 
 story of the preaching orders is a wonderful chapter in the 
 romance of the pulpit, and if we smile at, and even scorn 
 the fanaticism of some, it is impossible to forbear interest 
 in the magical effects of the harangues of St. Anthony of 
 Padua, and the spell of holiness, which even now seems to 
 attract, in the life and words of St. Bonaventura : we may 
 
Jesus gives the flavor to Mediceval Sermons. 143 
 
 laugh, indeed, when the first preaches in sober seriousness 
 — and not, hke his namesake St. Antonio of Yieyra, in 
 satire to "the fishes who approached the shore, and Hs- 
 tened to him, devoutly bowing down their heads, and 
 moving very gently." * But it is impossible, I think, to 
 misunderstand what Bonaventura intended when Thomas 
 Aquinas asked him whence he received the force and unction 
 he displayed in all his works, and he pointed to a crucifix 
 hanging on the wall of his cell and exclaimed, ** It is that 
 image which dictates all my words to me ; " he felt the presence 
 of Clirist in his lonely cell, it wrought in him, it wrought 
 through him, it was the passion of his Kedeemer which 
 moved his soul, his life, his pen. 
 
 Chi-ist, His name. His works, did give unquestionably a 
 deep and constant pathos to the words of many of these 
 preachers ; many of them seem to say, with the great Ber- 
 nard, " Jesus ; all the food of the soul is dry, if it be not 
 mingled with this oil ; is insipid, if it be not preserved 
 with this salt ; if you write, I have no reKsh unless I there 
 read of Jesus ; if you dispute or confer, I have no relish 
 unless in them I hear the name of Jesus." Thus came 
 their discourses to be so eminently Scriptural ; thus every 
 text, every incident became hallowed and perfumed with 
 the name of Jesus. There is a fragment of a sermon by 
 GuAREic of Igniac, a friend of St. Bernard, showing how 
 we ought to see Ohiist in all the histories of the Old Tes- 
 tament, and the very text strikes the note of the whole : — 
 
 "they told JACOB, SAYING, JOSEPH IS YET ALIVE." 
 
 And they told Jacoh^ saying^ Joseph is yet alke^ You will per- 
 haps say to me, It is very well ; but what is it to the point ? 
 What has Joseph to do with the joy of this day — with the 
 glory of the resurrection of Christ ? It is Easter ; and are you 
 still setting before us Lent fare ? Our soul is an hungered for 
 the Paschal Lamb, for which it has been preparing itself by so 
 
 ♦See The Life of St. Anthony of Padua. Paris, 1660. 
 
1 44 MedicBval and Post-Mediwval Preachers. 
 
 long a fast. Our heart burns within us for Jesus ; we desire 
 Jesus ; if we do not as yet merit to see Him, at least we would 
 hear of Him. We hunger for Jesus, not for Joseph ; for the 
 Saviour, not for the dreamer ; for the Lord of heaven, not of 
 Egypt ; not for him who fed the body, but for Him Who feeds 
 the soul that is hungry. In this, at least, your discourse may 
 help us, by causing that for Him after Whom we already hunger 
 we should hunger still more. For we read '' Blessed are they 
 that hunger^ for they shall be filled.'''' When we hear we hunger 
 the more ; for he who commends a feast irritates hunger. If 
 we were to hear of Jesus, we should be ^^ made to hear of 'joy 
 and gladnesn^ that the bones which icere brolcen may rejoice.'''' 
 Broken they were with our Lent affliction and grief, yet still 
 more with the sorrow of His Passion ; but they shall rejoice at 
 the tidings of His Resurrection. Why, then, are you setting 
 before us your Joseph, when we have no relish for anything of 
 which you speak except Jesus; especially to-day, when the 
 Paschal Lamb is eaten, when Christ our Passover is sacrificed for 
 us ? My brethren, I have given you an egg or a nut ; break the 
 shell and you will find the meat. Let Joseph be investigated, 
 and Jesus will be discovered — the Paschal Lamb after whom 
 ye hunger; who has so much the more sweetness in the eating 
 by how much there is more abstruseness in the hiding, and dili- 
 gence in the seeking, and difficulty in the finding. You say to 
 me, What has Joseph to do with Christ ; what has the history 
 which I proposed to do with this day ? Much in every way ; 
 — call to mind the story, and the loving kindness of the Mys- 
 tery will reveal itself of its own accord, if only ye have Jesus 
 as the interpreter, who to-day, rising from the letter that Jcilleth^ 
 speahs to His own in the way^ and opens to them the Scriptures. 
 
 Surely such passages show how sweet were the medita- 
 tions of many of these men amidst their cloisters. They 
 desired to speak plainly ; it was only in the latter part of 
 that long, and, to us, dark age, that the reproofs of An- 
 thony of Vieyra became necessary ; that great preacher 
 says, and surely his language may stand as a rebuke to 
 many of our modern follies in this way : 
 
Mediceval Bathos Reproved. \ 45 
 
 Let us learn from the heaven the way in which we are to ar- 
 range our matter and our words. How ought our words to be ? 
 Like the stars. The stars are very distinct and very clear. So 
 should be the style of sermons ; very clear and very distinct. 
 And have no fear, lest on this account it should appear low and 
 vulgar ; the stars, clear and distinct as they are, are most lofty. 
 Style may be very clear and very lofty ; so clear that those who 
 are ignorant may understand it ; and so lofty that those who 
 are wise may have much to find out in it. The countryman 
 finds in the stars rules for his husbandry, the mariner for his 
 navigation, and the mathematician for his observations and 
 judgments. So that the countryman and the sailor, who can 
 neither read nor write, understand the stars ; and the mathema- 
 tician, who has read every book that was ever written, does not 
 obtain to the complete understanding of the constellations. So 
 a sermon might be ; stars that all can sec and very few can 
 measure. 
 
 Yes, Father ; but this way of preaching is not *' the culti- 
 vated style." I wish.it were. This unfortunate style which is 
 now-a-days the fashion is called cultivated by those who wish 
 to honor it, and obscure by those who condemn it. But even 
 the latter do it too much honor. . . . Is it possible that we 
 are Portuguese, and hear a preacher in Portuguese, and cannot 
 understand what he means ? As there is a lexicon for Greek 
 and a Calepinus for Latin, so we want a vocabulary for the pul- 
 pit. I could wish one, at least, for proper names : for our culti- 
 vated preachers have unbaptized the saints, and every author 
 whom they quote is an enigma. Thus they speak of the Peni- 
 tent Sceptre ! thus of the Evangelistic Apelles ! thus of the 
 Eagle of Africa ! of the Honeycomb of Clairvaux ! of the Purple 
 of Bethlehem! of the Mouth of Gold! And this they call 
 quoting ! They say that the Penitent Sceptre means David, as 
 if no other sceptre ever felt penitence ; that the Evangelistic 
 Apelles is St. Luke ; the Honeycomb of Clairvaux, St, Bernard ; 
 the Eagle of Africa, St. Augustine; the Purple of Bethlehem, 
 St. Jerome ; the Mouth of Gold, St. Chrysostom.. But a man 
 might take it another way, and tliink that the Purple of Beth- 
 lehem was Herod ; the Eagle of Africa, Scipio : the Mouth of 
 7 
 
1 46 Mediaeval and Post-Mediceval Preacher's. 
 
 Gold, Midas. If there were an advocate who thus quoted Bar- 
 tholus or Baldus, would you trust your cause in his hands ? If 
 there were a man who thus spoke in conversation, would you 
 not consider him a fool ? That, then, which is folly in conver- 
 sation, why should it be wisdom in the pulpit ? 
 
 This reminds us of a weU-known anecdote of a young 
 preacher, or composer of sermons, who was reading a dis- 
 course before Charles Simeon for the purpose of obtaining 
 his approbation. He reached the following passage ; 
 "Amidst the tumult and the ecstacy of the children of 
 Israel, the son of Amram stood unmoved." " The son of 
 Amram?" exclaimed Simeon, "the son of Amram, who 
 was he?" "Why, sir, I meant Moses." "Then if you 
 meant Moses, why not say Moses ?" 
 
 The spirit of clearness and familiarity in these preachers 
 led them to illustrate their discourse by stories, homely 
 proverbs, and similes ; their business was to win their way 
 to the hearts of the poor ; this is best illustrated by Mr. 
 Gould ; some of the preachers from whom he cites, and 
 whose names were quite unknown to me, had in the pulpit, 
 the fancy of Hans Andersen ; it is impossible to divest the 
 mind of the feehng of an affectionate spirit pervading all 
 they said, they desired to rouse, inform, and comfort, and 
 they succeeded. In our day genius has been too proud to 
 condescend to the pulpit, or, even there, to the poor ; or if 
 the poor are condescended to, it is in mistaken language, 
 as if they lacked the power of the appreciation of the beau- 
 tiful, the tender, and the true. Some, it is true, stooped 
 to buffoonery, they loved to reproduce, in coarse and 
 homely guise, the manner of iEjSop ; like John Rauun. 
 Francis Coster followed quite another style, and while I 
 will not commend, or give my sanction to it, any more than 
 I would the deliverance of one of Mrs. Gatty's parables 
 from the pulpit, I think, in a day when the pulpit was 
 everything in the way of teaching, when there was no 
 
Han8 Anderson in tJie Pulpit 147 
 
 press, no books, there must have beeiv those to whom such 
 lessons must have been very charming, touching as they 
 did the superstitious fancies of the time. Francis Coster 
 was bom in 1531, and died in 1619, aged eighty-eight years. 
 Mr. Gould says, in introducing the story : 
 
 The stories Coster tells are very unequal. There is one de- 
 lightful mediasval tale reproduced by him which I shall venture 
 to relate, as it is full of beauty, and inculcates a wholesome les- 
 son. There is a ballad in German on the subject, to be found 
 in Pocci and Gores' Fest Kalender^ which has been translated 
 into English and published in some Roman children's books. 
 
 The story was, I believe, originated by Anthony of Sienna, 
 who relates it in his Chronicle of the Dominican Order ; and it 
 was from him that the preachers and writers of the Middle 
 Ages drew the incident. With the reader's permission I will 
 tell the story in my own words, instead of giving the stiff and 
 dry record found in Coster. 
 
 There was once a good priesjt who served a church in Lusita- 
 nia ; and he had two pupils, little boys, who came to him daily 
 to learn their letters, and to be instructed in the Latin tongue. 
 
 Now these children were wont to come early from home, and 
 to assist at mass, before ever they ate their breakfast or said 
 their lessons. And thus was each day sanctified to them, and 
 each day saw them grow in grace and in favor with God and 
 man. 
 
 These little ones were taught to serve at the Holy Sacrifice, 
 and they performed their parts with care and reverence. They 
 knelt and responded, they raised the priest's chasuble and kissed 
 its hem, they rang the bell at the sanctus and the elevation ; and 
 all they did they did right well. 
 
 And when mass was over they extinguished the altar lights ; 
 and then, taking their little loaf and can of milk, retired to a 
 side chapel for their breakfast. 
 
 One day the elder lad said to his master — 
 
 " Good father, who is the strange child who visits us every 
 morning when we break our fast ? " 
 
 " I know not," answered the priest. And when the children 
 
148 Mediceval and Post-Medmval PreacJiers. 
 
 asked the same question clay by day, the old man wondered, 
 and said, " Of what sort is he ? " 
 
 " He is dressed in a white robe without seam, and it reacheth 
 from his neck to his feet." 
 
 " AYhence cometh he ? " 
 
 " He steppeth down to us suddenly, as it w^ere, from the altar. 
 And we asked him to share our food with us : and that he doth 
 right willingly every morning." 
 
 Then the priest wondered yet more, and he asked, " Are there 
 marks by which I should know him, were I to see him ? " 
 
 " Yes, Father ; he hath wounds in his hands and feet ; and as 
 we give him our food the blood flows forth and moistens the 
 bread in his hands, till it blushes like a rose." 
 
 And when the master heard this, a great awe fell upon him, 
 and he was silent awhile. But at last he said gravely, " O my 
 sons, know that the Holy Child, Jesus, hath been with you. 
 Now when He cometh again, say to Him, * Thou, O Lord, hast 
 breakfasted with us full often, grant that we brothers and our 
 dear master may sup with Thee.' " 
 
 And the children did as the' priest bade them. The Child 
 Jesus smiled sweetly, as they made the request, and replied, 
 " Be it so ; on Thursday next, the day of My Ascension, ye shall 
 sup with Me." 
 
 So when Ascension Day arrived, the little ones came very early 
 as usual, but they brought not their loaf, nor the tin of milk. 
 And they assisted at ma«s as usual; they vested the priest, they 
 lighted the tapers, they chanted the responds, they rang the bell. 
 But when the Fax Vobiscum had been said they remained on 
 their knees, kneeling behind the priest. And so they gently 
 fell asleep in Christ, and thej^, with their dear master, sat down 
 at the marriage supper of the Lamb. 
 
 Without some such illustrations I could not give an ade- 
 quate idea of the pulpit of the Middle Ages, for the preach- 
 ers recited to the people stories and traditions recalled from 
 refectory lectures and by kitchen fii'es of monasteries ; 
 many probably, the mere invention of the cloisters, but I 
 hope not always the inventions of designing men, merely 
 
Tlie Frater Diaholus. 
 
 149 
 
 to delude and liold in the snares of designing priestcraft. 
 They all seemed, j)riGst and laity, to hve on such free and 
 easy terms with the world of souls ; and nervous, spiritual, 
 and uninformed natures, wholly innocent of all scientific 
 principles, having no procHvities towards inductive reason- 
 ing, that I am sure I cannot undertake to say to what ex- 
 tent they did or did not beHeve in their own tales. Those 
 tales vai-ied hke national myths, they seem to have been 
 not so much transmitted fi'om monastery to monastery, as 
 to have been indigenous to many. Some of them very hkely 
 were always mtended to be a land of scarcely veiled parable ; 
 one of the best known, is that which passed into the ^lag- 
 num Specvlurriy from the pages of St. Antoninus of Flo- 
 rence. It is the story of a gxeat preacher, and the fame he 
 acquned, and who at last he turned out to be — and the 
 most cautious and cultivated minds need not disdain the 
 evident lesson the story tells. A great preacher was ex- 
 pected at a certain priory church, but at the very hour 
 when the people expected his discourse he feU sick — preach- 
 ers were not more ready on the spur of the moment then, 
 than now — the prior was distressed, and knew not what to 
 do ; when at that very moment there came to the door of 
 the priory a strange brother in the garb of the order. He 
 saw the distress of the prior and inquired into its cause. 
 '' Ah ! " said he v^ry piously, " you must trust in the Lord ; 
 I hope that God by me will supply this want of yours. 
 Let me enter into your hbrary for a few moments. You 
 need not toll the bell longer than usual, I shall be ready." 
 " Thanks ! thanks ! " said the prior, as he led the strange 
 brother into the hbrary. Arrived there, he turned over the 
 Summa of St. Thomas, and the works of Albert the Great ; 
 and, in a few moments he was ready ; the strange Frater 
 was in the pulpit ; it was indeed the Frater Diabolus. He 
 talked wondrously on the joys of paradise, and the j)ains 
 of hell, and the sin and the misery of the world ; and he 
 
1 5 o MedicBval and Post-MedicBval Preachers. 
 
 moved all present to tears and compunction by his elo- 
 quence ; but there was a holy man present who Iniew him, 
 and while he wondered, he waited to mark the result. 
 After the sermon he approached the Frater Diabolus. 
 "Oh! thou accursed one," said he, "vile deceiver, how 
 couldst thou take this office upon thee," And, adjured so, 
 Frater Diabolus rephed, " Think you my discourse would 
 prevent a single soul from seeking eternal danmation? 
 Not so ; the most finished eloquence and profoundest learn- 
 ing are worthless beside one drop of unction, there was no 
 unction in my sermon. You see how I have moved the 
 people, but they will forget all, they will practise nothing, 
 and hence all the words they have heard, will serve to their 
 greater judgment ; " with which words Frater Diabolus 
 vanished. As much as we insist, it was insisted in those 
 days, that the preacher should be a builder, not of words, 
 but of life and of character, nor did he disdain to talk 
 with peasants by the wayside, with children on the grassy 
 knoll, or rustic laborers following the plough. One of them 
 said, " A spiritual pastor, hke a real shepherd, should carry 
 bread and salt in a bag, that is the bread of good life and 
 discretion ; he should use water for drink, that is, hvmg 
 water ; he should eat green herbs, that is, have provision 
 of good examples ; he should keep a dog to guard the 
 sheep, that is, a learned tongue ; he should wear coarse 
 raiment, and a leathern girdle, indicating that he despises 
 earthly pleasures and subdues the flesh ; he should sleep 
 under a low roof, implying that he has no remaining city 
 but sighs after Heaven ; he should have straw for his bed, 
 as significative of living an austere fife ; and trees and 
 leaves for sheets in heat, representing the words of Scrip- 
 ture which are his covering and defence ; he should have 
 a crook for a staff, as implying his dependence on the cross ; 
 a pipe to play on to collect the flock, denoting the voice of 
 praise and prayer ; and a sling for the wolf, to signify the 
 
Tlie Great Friar Preacliers. 1 5 1 
 
 justice with which which he may put to flight the devil."* 
 I know of no work which does any justice to the pulpit 
 of the mediaeval times, or, indeed, to the history of the 
 pulpit of any age ; the best is that by Dr. Lenz,f but it is 
 brief and quite insufficient ; and innumerable names find 
 no mention at all, although occu^^ying a large share of the 
 attention of their times. What do we now know of Berthold 
 of Ratisbon — of the age of Frederick 11. of Germany, 
 whose tomb is still, I beheve, to be seen at Ratisbon with 
 its inscription, "Bertholdus Magnus Predicator?" We 
 only know that sixty, and sometimes a hundred thousand 
 persons assembled, hoping to see him, or to hear his voice ; 
 and that still, in Bohemia, a field near Glatz, where he used 
 to preach, is called the field of Berthold to this day. 
 Great preachers in those ages were regarded with the en- 
 thusiasm which waits on great conquerors — they received 
 the highest honors, and wealthy cities contended for the 
 honor of hearing them. They were often great and mar- 
 vellous missionaries too, and a halo of splendor and holy 
 mysticism surrounds the memory of such men as St. Adal- 
 bert, the Apostle of Prussia, or John Corvino, the mission- 
 ary to the Tartars, or St. Gall ; the words of such men 
 were so persuasive and eloquent, that voices, it is said, were 
 heard over the tops of the tall mountains, and moumfnl 
 elegies through the woods and forests in the silence of the 
 night, as if the broken idols were wailing amidst the accla- 
 mations of the people who had cast them into the fire, and 
 into the water, at the call of the preachers. Such also 
 were the effects which in later years followed the words of 
 the great preachers of the Middle Ages, as they appeared 
 in the rude or rich cathedrals, or the market-places, and 
 great broadways of French, Italian, or German cities. It 
 
 ^BuccMus — 27ie Book of Golden Conformity, quoted in Compitum. 
 \Gesc7tichte der Chnstlichen IlomUetik, <&c., von C. H. G. Lenz. 
 
1^2 Medicevctl and Post Mediceval Preachers. 
 
 was so with Beenaedine of Sienna. At Bologna, it is said, 
 ail tlie dice tables were brought out and thrown into a vast 
 fire in the centre of the square ; and after preaching in 
 Florence, in the great square of Santa Croce, the hsteners 
 erected a monument on the spot, on which w^as inscribed 
 only the name of Jesus ; and it was so with Ai^thony of 
 Padua, a name associated in our memory with much super- 
 stition ; but who, after preacliing in Pavia, burnt, in one 
 fire, objects of licentiousness to the value of two thousand 
 pieces of gold ; and, after his Sermons in Sienna, Modena, 
 Perugia, committed to the flames immense piles of what 
 were termed the Castles of Satan: books — Ovid, Martial^ 
 Boccaccio — and cards, ornaments and treatises of magic 
 and necromancy. It is marvellous to hear of twenty thou- 
 sand persons assembling to hear him ; rising by night and 
 hastening by the hght of lanterns to secure good places in 
 the field in which he was to preach ; while the shops of the 
 cities were closed and all business suspended We smile 
 at it, and perhaps do not regret that we have nothing like 
 it now, or only by very remote resemblance ; but surely it 
 illustrates the wonderful power of the preacher. These 
 preachers attacked and reformed the vices of the ages. 
 Their sermons, like those of Savonaeola, combated the 
 vices and the foUies of the times — indecent ceremonies, ri- 
 diculous dresses, the painting of the face, the decorating 
 the hair — in many ways they had a faithfulness which would 
 finish the popularity of a great preacher now. 
 
 It win be very possible, in referring to the history of the 
 pulpit of the Middle Ages, to find much to condemn or to 
 take exception to ; but the pulpit was a great power, and it 
 was a power because it aimed at the consciences of men. 
 Thomas a Kempis was simiamed the " Hammer," from the 
 force with which he struck the hearts of sinners. Phhjp 
 Neei preached a sermon on non-residence before Pope 
 Gregory, and thirty bishops, it is said, started to thek 
 
The Great Friar Preachers. 
 
 153 
 
 episcopates the next day ; they were strange men, no doubt, 
 often carried out of themselves, even unto very questionable 
 speeches, as St. Fea^^cis, who commenced a sermon at 
 Spoletto, " Angels, men, devils ; " bad taste, and we wonder 
 at it, but the effect produced by the sermon was not less 
 marvellous ; the preacher, we are told, found the whole 
 city rent and confused, torn with dissensions and enmities, 
 and all parties by this sermon were reunited in love, and a 
 band of sanguinary robbers transformed into pacific and 
 blessed men. Time would quite fail to tell of these 
 preachers ; — of FexyEocco, a celebrated Dominican preacher, 
 a sort of spiritual Joe Miller ; he preached a celebrated 
 penitential sermon on one occasion, all the audience were 
 in teiTor and fell on their knees ; while showing every sign 
 of contrition, he cried, " All who are truly penitent, hold up 
 your hands." — Every man in the vast multitude held up his 
 hand ; then he said, " Holy Archangel Michael, thou who 
 with adamantine sword standest at the judgment seat of 
 God, cut me off every hand which has been held up hypo- 
 critically." — Every hand dropped. Kor can we omit to 
 mention the name of* St. Bernardine of Sienna, who 
 imagined himseK only fit to x^reach in small rustic towns 
 in the height of his celebrity ; of Bernardine of Monte 
 Eeltro, who traversed Italy in all dkections, and travelled 
 on foot, through snow and rain, over rock and marsh ; 
 of Jerome of St. Saviour, also one of those marvellous 
 mystic men ; then there was another preacher, his con- 
 temporary, Aretinus, to whom one said, " Those who hear 
 Jerome are changed into other men, they become devout 
 in manner and contrite in spirit ; those who hear you 
 depart joyous and talkative, but they do not correct their 
 ways." And Aretinus replied, " I will not deny my poverty 
 and his virtues : what I find in books I bring forth with 
 no fervor, nor do I kindle those flames in myself which 
 I ought to excite in others. I am a coal but almost ex- 
 7* 
 
154 Mediceval and Post-Mediceval P readier 8. 
 
 tinct. How should I kindle my wood, but that poor and 
 simple man is all burning, and all the sparks of his love 
 kindle to a flame the cold fuel." This was that Jerome 
 of whom it was said, " Go and hear the preacher of the 
 best sentences, but the worst rhetoric ; gather the fruit and 
 neglect the leaves ; " and even dukes and senates followed 
 him when his sermons were ended. I wish that we had 
 a more comprehensive account than has yet been pubhshed 
 of these great preachers of the Middle Ages. Amidst all 
 the abuses I am compelled to see more than sacred 
 eloquence, religious power : it is a study in itself to 
 contemplate the studies of these men. Meditation, long 
 meditation, and painful searching of Scripture marked them 
 all, or almost alL* 
 
 In many other instances, however, we shall find that the 
 ministry has been power in proportion as it has been the 
 work of the conscience upon the conscience. This is the 
 truth of all true preaching ; it is a strange instrument for 
 the Divine Spirit to play on, "the foohshness of preach- 
 ing," but God does use it as a divine instrument. Like the 
 harp or the organ, preachers are only the subjects of the 
 fingers invisible to themselves. When Jerome asked 
 Gregory of Nazianzen the meaning of a passage in Luke, 
 he referred him to the exposition he would give of it in 
 the church ; and there is, no doubt, as much difference 
 between the private exhortation and the pubHc preaching, 
 as between private and public prayer ; the sense climbs 
 higher and sinks deeper. 
 
 One of these preachers of the post-mediaeval times, most 
 remarkable and most woi-thy of imitation, and now, by an 
 admirable translation, most accessible, is the Father 
 
 * The long and curious account of many of these forgotten men 
 in the Mores Catholici^ or Ages of FaitJi, is, of course, by a most 
 intolerant Papist ; but it is very interesting. See Vol. ii., Book vi., 
 Chap. V. 
 
Father Segneri, i^^ 
 
 Segneri, he did not indeed appear until tlie seventeenth 
 centm-y ; his sermons are pervaded by intense earnestness, 
 and justify the tradition that he was inflamed when young 
 by a holy missionary ardor to follow in the steps and career 
 of Francis Xavier.f He was a Jesuit, and after he was 
 ordained a priest, while he spent the haK of every year in 
 the meditative life of a recluse, he gave the other half to 
 the task of traversing the towns, cities, and villages of Italy 
 as a home missionary. He died in 1694 He has been 
 caUed " the restorer of Itahan eloquence." He certainly 
 was a great pulpit reformer. He set Chrysostom before 
 himself as his model, but he studied so closely as to become, 
 while dignified and serious, colloquial and easy in his style ; 
 in an age of great licentiousness he rebuked with most 
 remarkable vigor, and strength, and boldness, the sins 
 of the age. Of course, being a Eomanist, the Protestant 
 will find many things in these sermons, — stories, traditions, 
 references to the hves of the saints, which will not only bo 
 displeasing, but even false, from our point of view, but they 
 are remarkable pieces of faithful and firm handhng of the 
 consciences of hearers, they may even be commended as 
 especially suitable as models for our own times ; there is a 
 very striking, happy, and impressive deahng with Scripture ; 
 as with aU the great mediaeval preachers, there is remark- 
 able freedom too in the handling of Scripture ; and in the 
 whole conduct of the discourse, whatever the topic or text, 
 these men wandered with great ease through innumerable 
 ways branching out from it. I admire Segneri ; it is im- 
 possible — even reading, and reading through a translation 
 — not to be carried away irresistibly by his earnestness ; he 
 allows no time for thought, he permits to his hearers no 
 self-complacent survey of their own position, possessions, 
 
 f See tlie edition in English, The Quaresimale of P. Paolo 
 Segneri, translated from the origin Italian, by James Ford, A.M., 
 Prebendary of Exeter Cathedral. Three Vols. 
 
1^6 Mediceval and Post-Mediceval Preacher's. 
 
 or attainments ; firm himself, and self-assured in e-very 
 word, he uses all his words with the }30wer of a master, 
 they are like lightning in the severity with which they 
 search out the subterfuges of the soul, and set before it its 
 sins ; there is tenderness and love too, but the precious 
 cup of consolation is only offered after the hearer is made 
 to drink of the wine of astonishment. Hell was a great 
 reahty to him, his pictures and personifications of HeU 
 were very daring — as in the following passage, in which he 
 deals with a well-known passage in Isaiah, often, both by 
 Protestant as well as by Papist preachers, misquoted and 
 inverted : — 
 
 What then, after all, have I this morning to do, but pour forth 
 two copious streams of inconsolable grief for the many souls, 
 who see hell open before them, and yet do not draw back, but 
 boldly i)ress on to launch themselves into its flames ? Ah, no : 
 stop, ye wretched beings, for a moment ; stop I — and, before 
 plunging with a headlong leap into that abyss, let me demand 
 of you in the words of the same Isaiah — Which of you can dwell 
 with the devouring fire ? Which of you can dwell with everlasting 
 Inirnings (xxxiii. 14, Vulg.) ? Excuse me, my people ; for this 
 once you are not to leave the Church, unless you have first made 
 a satisfactory reply to my demand — Which of you can dwell icith 
 everlasting hurnings? What sayest thou, O lady, who art so 
 tender in cherishing thy flesh ? — Canst thou dwell with everlast- 
 ing lurnings ? Now thou canst not bear it, should the point 
 of a needle at thy work lightly stain thy delicate skin. How 
 thinkest thou then ? Wilt thou be able to endure those terrific 
 engines, by which thou must feel thyself dismembered, disjoint- 
 ed, and with an everlasting butchery crushed into powder? 
 What sayest thou, O man, who art so intent on providing for 
 thy personal comforts ?— Canst thou dioell with cxerTasting 
 hurnings ? Now thou canst not tolerate the breath of a poor 
 man, who by coming near thee in the least ofiends thy organs 
 of smell. Wilt thou be able to stand those foul stenches, by 
 which thou must feel thyself poisoned, stifled, and with an 
 everlasting suffocation pressed down to the ground ? And thou, 
 
The Italian Whitefield, 157 
 
 wliat sayest thou for thyself, O priest, who art so negligent in 
 the discharge of thy duties ?— Canst thou dwell iclth everlasting 
 hnrnings ? ISTow thou art not able to remain in the choir of thy 
 church a single hour without looking indecently about thee, 
 without being restless, without indulging thy tongue in every 
 kind of gossip. How then does it strike thee? Wilt thou be 
 able to remain through all the ages of eternity, I say not, re- 
 clining on thy elegantly carved stall, but rather stretched out 
 on an iron frame-work, on a bed of flames, there to be listening 
 to the demon's howls ringing in thy ears ? What sayest thou, 
 O glutton ? What sayest thou, O slandertir ? What sayest thou, 
 O libertine ? — thou young man, luxuriating so wantonly in all 
 thy heart's desires ? — Canst thou diDell lolth cverlaHting lurnings? 
 Alas ! w^ho, who among us can ? And yet, why do I thus 
 enlarge on the case of other people ? Excuse me : of myself, 
 of myself I ought to speak ; of myself, an ecclesiastic it is true, 
 as cannot be denied from ray dress, and yet a wretched creature, 
 so unmortified, so headstrong, so vain, so averse to that true 
 penitence, which my sins demand of me 1 If I am not able to 
 remain for a short time before the presence of my Lord in tears 
 for my sins, if I am so fond of my own ease, if I am so studious 
 of my own reputation, how can I hereafter, wretch that I am, 
 stand fixed for ever and ever at the feet of Lucifer, the place 
 assigned to such as myself, to such, as having undertaken to 
 confer benefits on other men and been gifted accordingly for 
 that purpose w^ith so much light and knowledge, and so many 
 endowments, have betrayed my vow by my actions ? Ah, Lord, 
 have pity, have pity ! We have sinned ; w^e know it; we confess 
 it. " We have done ungodly, we have dealt unrighteously in all 
 thy ordinances " (Baruch ii. 12). And therefore we cannot 
 make bold to ask Thee not to punish us. Punish us, then, since 
 we well deserve it. Eeward the i)roud after their deserving 
 (Ps. xciv. 2). Only, in Thine infinite mercy, may it please Thee 
 not to sentence our souls to hell. O hell, O hell, the mere 
 mention of thee is enough to overwhelm us with horror ! This 
 is the punishment, from which, not for our merit's sake, but for 
 the sake of Thy agony, for the sake of Thy bloody sweat, we 
 entreat Thee to deliver us. Lord^ correct me, hut with jfidg- 
 
1^8 Mediceval and Post-Mediceval Preachers. 
 
 ment ; not in Thine anger ^ lest Thou hring me to nothing (Jer. x. 
 24). Behold us willing to suffer in this life the worst it may 
 please Thee to bring upon us; here, lay Thy rod upon us: 
 " Consume us here, cut us to pieces here ; only spare us in 
 Eternity" (S. Augustine) ! Send us poverty now; that we may 
 be spared in Eternity. Send us reproach now ; that we may be 
 spared in Eternity. Send us sickness now; that we may be 
 spared in Eternity. Send us just as many evils as may please 
 Thee, in this world, provided we be spared for ever in the world 
 to come — that we may be spared in Eternity ! that we may be 
 spared in Eternity. 
 
 This preacher had a very impressive and, usually, a very 
 real and natural way of turning the incidents of the Old 
 Testament to account for the purpose of alarming the con- 
 science. 
 
 THE FALL OP JERICHO. 
 
 No one can know for a certainty when that day will be, which 
 God has appointed for the exercise of a vengeance, terrible in 
 proportion as it is delayed. This must depend upon the secret 
 disposal of those judgments, which the Father hath placed in His 
 own poicer. (Acts i. 7.) For even the heathen could say, " The 
 gods have feet of wool." Hence they step so softly over thy 
 head, that with thy utmost attention, thou art not aware of their 
 approach. Nothwithstanding, if with any probability we may 
 infer the future from the past, according to the famous saying of 
 S. Jerome, " Things future are known by things past," I think 
 we may designate the very hour with some probability at least, 
 if not with certainty. Attend, that you may know when that 
 hour will be. All among you must well remember the wonder- 
 ful manner in which the city of Jericho was assaulted by the sol- 
 diers of Joshua. He had given orders that, during the space of 
 seven mornings, they should carry the Ark in circuit round the 
 walls, that the armed troops should go before, that the unarmed 
 people should follow after, and that the Priests, every time of 
 their going the round, should cause the trumpets to sound. This 
 was accordingly done ! and precisely on the seventh day, at the 
 sound of those trumpets, the walls fell down and the city was 
 
On ilie Fall of Jericho, i^g 
 
 taken. Permit me now, in my own way, to offer a few weighty 
 observations upon this victory, generally so well known. The 
 first morning, when the besieged people of Jericho beheld from 
 the top of their walls that imposing array and heard those 
 trumpets, what a terrible panic must the poor souls have suf- 
 fered ! They must have fancied that the soldiers were even al- 
 ready deploying for the attack, even already leaping on the ram- 
 parts, even already scaling the very battlements. But when they 
 soon afterwards perceived that all this noise was followed by no 
 practical effect, they must have begun to breathe a little more 
 freely. The i^econd morning, when they witnessed a like repeti- 
 tion of the same performance, their fears must have assumed the 
 form of surprise ; not one among them being able to compre- 
 hend what was the meaning of this clamorous demonstration 
 that all ended in nothing. The tliird morning their surprise 
 must have degenerated into a disposition to smile ; as was na- 
 tural to people, who now knew by repeated proof that the whole 
 assault vented itself in empty sound. But then, the fourth morn- 
 ing, and the fifth^ and the sixth^ when the besieged had more 
 thoroughly recovered their spirits ; only conceive what must 
 have been the laughter, the ridicule, the hisses, and the shout- 
 ings, with which they saluted the enemy from their heights. I 
 can quite realize the scene to my mind. " Yes," they in all 
 likelihood exclaimed, " these fine trumpets of theirs sound beau- 
 tifully. Take notice of their new invention for taking cities, not 
 by the force of battering trains, but by the effect of sound ! 
 Blow on merrily by all means ; for while you are blowing we can 
 be dancing. Why, what, in all seriousness, do you mean by 
 this ? To frighten us out of our wits by your noise, when you 
 are unable to subdue us by your valor ? We are none of those 
 big, stupid birds, who are brought down from their nests by 
 mere dint of clattering noises. If you have the hearts of men, 
 take the trumpets out of your mouth ; come on, sword in hand ; 
 and then we'll believe you." Thus with every possible insult 
 they may have cried aloud from their walls during those days. 
 But, if at any time their fear must have been at the lowest 
 point and their raillery at the highest, it was, if I mistake not, 
 on the morning of the seventh day, preceded, as that day had 
 
1 6o Mediceval and Post-Medicevvl P readier s. 
 
 been, by so many circumstances calculated to embolden tlieir 
 minds under a feeling of their security. And, behold, it was on 
 that tery morning that the entire overthrow of their city took 
 place. At the seventh time^ when the priests llew with the trumiyets, 
 the icallfell down flat. (Josh. vi. 16-20.) Now, you will con- 
 ceive, whether this overthow was not all the more terrible from 
 its being the less expected. The wretched inhabitants find them- 
 selves with a smile on their lips, when, on a sudden, behold their 
 bastion wall tumbling down, their towers falling headlong, and 
 themselves, too, involved in the dreadful crash. And then — 
 what with the groans, of some, who were wounded, of others, 
 who were mangled to pieces, of others, who were smashed under 
 the ruins^one simultaneous, universal outcry of distress must 
 have deafened the air and aflfrighted the very stars. The 
 Israelites, in the meantime, each soldier at his proper i3ost, 
 pushed forward intrepidly over the gaping breach, and making 
 their way over the bodies of the enemy buried before they w^ere 
 dead, advanced with their pikes lowered and their swords 
 drawn. Taking different directions, they penetrated into the 
 private dwellings, and scattered on every side blood, on every 
 side havoc, on every side death, they quickly reduced the city to 
 complete desolation. ****** 
 What was it you wished to learn from me, my dear Sirs ? — 
 The time when destruction shall overtake the wicked ? Do you 
 know when it will be ? Why, when it overtook the people of 
 Jericho ; which is tantamount to saying with the prophet Isaiah, 
 at the time when they were least thinking about it; whose 
 breaking cometh suddenly at an instant. (Isaiah xxx. 13.) 
 * * H- In i\^Q midst of your merriment the wrath of heaven 
 shall fall on you ; and when you perceive how, all of a sudden, 
 such irrecoverable ruin has overtaken you, " Alas ! alas !" you 
 will exclaim, " w^e are lost and undone ! See the blood, see the 
 slaughter, see the havoc, see the desolation, see the flames, see 
 the plagues, see the death !" and amidst such outcries as these, 
 stunned and stupified, you will terminate your lives, condemned, 
 so to speak, even before you die. * * * When they shall say, 
 peace and safety — {yeace now, safety hereafter)— tA^;i sudden 
 
 destruction cometh upon them and they shall not escajic. 
 
 (1 Thess. V. 3.) 
 
The SouVs Flight from Earth to Heaven. i6i 
 
 These are very fair illustrations of the method of this 
 great Whitefield of the Itahan pulpit ; here he is but little 
 known, and anywhere now probably but httle read ; an 
 ascetic philosophy does, no doubt, prevade much of his dis- 
 course ; but his sermons bear the marks of that spiritual 
 retreat in which he x^assed so many months of every year, 
 that life of meditation without w^hich the life of the 
 preacher becomes forced, wearied, unnatural, and jaded, 
 from the incessant necessity laid upon him. In his 
 cloister, too, he probably plumed his wings for those high 
 and sweet meditative flights in wliich again and again he 
 indulges ; and as when he exclaims, at the close of the 
 strange rapture entitled The Soul's Flight from Earth to 
 Heaven : 
 
 Let all here present determine to decline accepting whatsoever 
 the earth lias to offer us ; and lifting up at last our eyes to hea- 
 ven, let us say, Glorious things, yes assuredly, glorious things 
 are written of thee, thou city of God ! (Ps. Ixxxvii. 3.) 
 
 But how am I grieved that I should have been so slow to 
 leam these glorious things that are icritten of tliee ! If, however, 
 I once so basely preferred the earth, it was not for thy demerit : 
 it only arose from this, that I knew thee not. But now who 
 shall ever prevail to shut thee out from my heai*t ? Shall trihu- 
 latlon ? (Rom. viii. 35.) — not so ; for thou shalt change it for 
 me into the sweetest contentments. Shall distress ? — ^not so ; for 
 thou shalt transform it for me into the most perfect peace. Shall 
 hunger ? — not so ; for thou shalt satisfy it for me with a most 
 luscious nectar. Shall nakedness ? — ^not so ; for thou shalt cover 
 it for me with Royal apparel. Shall j^eril ! — not so ; for thou 
 shalt turn it for me into immovable security. Shall persecution ? 
 — not so ! for thou shalt recompense it to me with a glorious 
 triumj)h. Shall the sword? — No, no ; not even the sword shall 
 ever cut me away from thee, my beautiful Celestial country ! not 
 even the sword, I say ; for thou shalt convert its steel into gold, 
 its point into rays of light, its circling edge into a crown of re- 
 joicing ! 
 
Pulpit Monographs. 
 
 III. — St Bernard : the Mediaeval 
 Preacher. 
 
 ' T. BEENARD is neither by name, character, nor 
 influence, unknown to our readers. His name 
 is a very prominent one in the Church history of 
 media3val times — of his age he is the very fore- 
 most man. He also may be designated as "the soHtaiy 
 monk that shook the world." The form of the frail man 
 rises — amidst the encircling crowd of emperors and kings, 
 and popes, princes and priests, fighting barons and crusa- 
 ders, the arch-disputants and polemical heretics of the time 
 — with commanding and most subduing power : he ruled 
 aU, he influenced all. The lone hermit touched and im- 
 pressed himself upon all the affairs of his time, always with 
 a powerful, often with a painful, distinctness. He moves 
 like the very Ehjah of Europe through the nations of those 
 times ; now pitching his voice to the shrill fervor or the 
 ensanguined furiousness of a mad apostle, as when he be- 
 came the prophet of the crusades ; now sinking it to the 
 deep and tender minor tone of Christian experiences, when 
 amidst his band of monks he breathes out his contempla- 
 tive sermons on The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's, 
 From beneath the cloistral shades of Clairvaux he molded 
 
 (162) 
 
Bernard, — Dijon, 163 
 
 princes to his will. His was the voice which determined a 
 distracted people and church in their election of a pope. 
 The spiritual vivacity of the man, in an age when nations 
 received the law fi'om the spiritual kingdom, was surpass- 
 ingly amazing. That lonely man might have said, as a far 
 different chieftain said, 
 
 Of old things all arc over old ; 
 Of good tilings none are good enough. 
 We '11 show that we can help to frame 
 A world of other stuff. 
 
 I, too, will have my kings, that take 
 From me the sign of life and death ; 
 Kingdoms shall shift about lllce clouds^ 
 Obedient to my breath. 
 
 He was a Burgundian. His father was a feudal baron, 
 lord of the Castle of Fontaines, near Dijon, by name Tes- 
 sehn. When he became the successful abbot of European 
 fame, and cloisters rose in England in connection with his 
 order, one of the most glorious and graceful in Europe 
 sprang to his honor, as well as to the honor of the Lord ; 
 and the ruins of Fontaines Abbey perpetuate the memory 
 of the birthplace of the great Middle Age monk and preacher. 
 Tesselin was, in his way, a pious fighting-man, surnamed 
 Soi^us, which meant red-headed ; a kind of Christian Rufus, 
 with a rude sense of justice, and ill-conditioned holiness in 
 him. He is described as gentle, although brave ; modest, 
 although strong ; and pious, although rich. And so also 
 the mother of our saint was an earnest, loving, devout crea- 
 ture, Ahce, or Alith, by name ; a pale, shadowy, mournful 
 mother, the latter years of her life passed in austerities and 
 devotions ; charitable after the fashion of the times, mother 
 of seven children — six sons and one daughter — such a mo- 
 ther of such a son would, of course, not be without monk- 
 ish eulogists ; and she has ever had plenty who have covered 
 
1 64 Pulpit Monographs, — St. Bernard. 
 
 her name and tomb with all legendary and traditional 
 honor. The Abbe of Dijon requested her body for the 
 church of the blessed martyi', Benignus. There she was 
 buried. She was wont to appear, we are told, after death 
 to her son Bernard, advising him to continue in his good 
 work when he avowed liimseK to monkery, in which tradi- 
 tion we are to see no more than "the robe of beauty given 
 to the tomb unseen in the sunlight," and to hear only " the 
 words of the departed," which,* as Mr. Morison, St. Ber- 
 nard's latest and best English biographer, says, " acquhe 
 a strange reverberating echo from the vaults wherem they 
 sleep." 
 
 Bernard was the child of these two good people — his 
 mind and heart, not less than his body ; he studied at Cha- 
 tillon. They were stirring times, the times of his early 
 boyhood ; they were the days of the first crusade ; there 
 was a blaze of wild enthusiasm for the hberation of the 
 Holy Land and sepulchre from the hands of the Infidels ; 
 this wild idea was "the way of God," and all men were 
 embarking upon the great pilgrimage of nations. Lands 
 were sold for the love of Christ ; barons and serfs all felt 
 the animation of a common tendency and hope. " Clirist," 
 says one old writer, " had thundered through the minds of 
 all." Some of the poor harnessed then' oxen to then- farm- 
 carts, and placed therein their goods and their little ones, 
 and started in all simplicity for the Holy City. Along the 
 bad roads and the long journey, even from province to 
 province, they went, slowly moving and creaking over 
 marsh and moor. As town or castle rose in sight, the chil- 
 dren would ask, "Is that the Jerusalem we are going to ?" 
 One of the chief leaders was the Duke of BurgTindy. Ho 
 never returned ahve ; and he desired that his remains might 
 rest among the poor monks of the wretched Abbey of 
 Citeaux, rather than in any of the more sumptuous and 
 wealthy abbeys of his dominions. Citeaux was near to the 
 
Two Instincts rule the World, 165 
 
 hearth of Fontaines, and the duke was the suzeram of Tes- 
 sehn. The good Ahth would print the lesson of this event 
 upon the mind of the little Bernard, then nine years old — ■ 
 the great crusader going forth with his warriors in full pan- 
 oply, and retiu'ning cofiined and still to the cemetery at 
 Citeaux. 
 
 It was a strange age. Two instincts ruled the world — 
 an instinct for fighting and an instinct for praying. Men 
 passed from one action to the other with ease and happi- 
 ness ; nay, at last did not j)ass from one to the other, but 
 fought and prayed in the same breath. Thus rose the 
 Society of the Templars ; hence the stream of the mad 
 crusaders ; for ordinary fighters, the usual occupation was 
 besieging a castle ; everybody was slaying or being slain. 
 A very fierce world ; and thoughtful and refined natures 
 had very little hesitation in quitting it. Dukes and princes, 
 and peasants and paupers, aU sought the haven in which 
 they desired to say their prayers, and lie down for the long 
 night in peace. 
 
 And such a haven was then opened, and inviting to all. Be- 
 tween the clash of arms and the din of wars, comes a silvery 
 peal of convent bells. In the deep, hushed winter's night, the 
 chorus song of matins is heard in measured cadence, and the last 
 chaunt of compline goes fortli as the summer sun approaches 
 the horizon. There, in the thick v/oods, sleeps the monastery, 
 from which these voices and bell-tones are heard. Calm and 
 holy it looks, casting long rays of light into the dark air, as the 
 " 'lated traveller " hastens to its welcome shelter. For a young 
 ardent spirit, entering the world, the choice practically was be- 
 tween a fife of strife, violence, wickedness, of ignoble or fero- 
 cious joys and sorrow ; or of sober, self-denying labor and soli- 
 tude, with a solemn strain in the heart, lightening and prosper- 
 ing the work of the hands.* 
 
 * The Life and Times of St. Bernard^ Abbot of Clairvaux, A. d. 
 1091-1153. By James Cottis Morison, M.A., Lincoln College, Ox- 
 ford. 
 
1 66 Pidpit MonoLjraplis, — St Bernard. 
 
 At first Bernard heard, of course, the voices of the 
 trumpets and the clang and clash of arms, but he was too 
 frail for a knight. Then, in the time of the extraordinary 
 hterary awakenment of the twelfth century, philosophy hfted 
 up her voice and called him. The great doctor of Paris, 
 Wilham of Champeaux, is celebrated throughout Europe ; 
 and still more remarkable, the young audacious knight-er- 
 rant of heresy. Master Peter Abelard, was fascinating 
 crowds of thousands, over mountains and seas, to enjoy the 
 privilege of hearing him lecture. And the spell of intellect 
 almost called Bernard aside from the life of hohness and 
 prayer, to which his mother's example and conversation had 
 incited him. Then m a dubious but all distracted mood he 
 rode on his way through the tangled forest and the bare 
 bleak moor, and presently he came to a churcli ; the clouds 
 of doubt rolled away before the rising sun of faith, and 
 upon his knees, in that wayside church, and in a torrent of 
 tears, he lifted up his hands to heaven, and poured forth 
 his heai-t like water in the presence of the Lord. That was 
 the hour of his conversion ; from that hour his determina- 
 tion to enter the monastic life never faltered. 
 
 Bnt Bernard would not enter the monastery alone. The 
 instinct was strong upon him which leads us to desire the 
 conversion of other souls immediately after the conversion 
 of our own ; and he at once displayed that commanding 
 personal ascendancy, that overpowering influence of spirit, 
 which hardly met with a defeat during his long life. His 
 uncle, his brothers, Guido and Gerard, both knights, yielded 
 very shortly to the spell of his power. Nay, the effect of 
 his preaching was such, that mothers hid their sons, and 
 wives their husbands, and companions their friends, lest 
 they should be led captive by the persuasive eloquence of 
 the youthful enthusiast. At last he had gathered round him 
 thirty adherents ; with them he retired into seclusion at 
 Chattnion, where for the space of six months they all de- 
 
Monastic Reformer , 1 67 
 
 voted themselves by preparation for the great change they 
 were to undergo. In the year 1113, Bernard, being then 
 twenty-two years old, knocked at the gate, and disappeared 
 within the walls of Citeaux. It was a severe house ; of all 
 religious houses one of the most severe. It was under the 
 rule of Stephen Harding, an Enghshman, from Sherborne in 
 Dorsetshire. Within its walls he was carrying on a system 
 of monastic reform, keeping St. Benedict's rule most 
 literally, not conventionally and with large allowances, as 
 was usual in the strictest houses. No ; — ^but eating only one 
 meal a day ; and they had risen twelve hours from their 
 couches, sung psalms, and worked in the fields, before they 
 got even that ; never tasting fish, meat, grease, or eggs, 
 and milk only rarely ; their dress consisting only of tliree 
 garments, aU of the coarsest wool ; their church, austere in 
 its simj^Hcity. There was Httle sympathy with this pleasant 
 monastic life, and a fearful epidemic raging through the 
 cloisters seemed likely to bring the dream of monastic re- 
 form to a close, when Bernard and his brethren sought ad- 
 mittance beneath its cheerless shades. 
 
 But these austerities, .and others we must not stay to par- 
 ticularize, were too few for Bernard, and he determined to 
 do his best, not only to subdue the desires of the flesh 
 which arise through the senses, but even those senses them- 
 selves. He excluded himseK from all communication with 
 the outer world ; time given to sleep he regarded as lost ; 
 when importunate friends came to converse with him he 
 heard nothing, he stopped his ears with little wads of flax, 
 and buried his head deep in the cowl ; for food he lost all 
 desire, and the little he took seemed taken rather to defer 
 death than to sustain life ; he betook himself also to hard 
 manual labor — digging, hewing wood, and carrying it on his 
 shoulders. One luxury for a time remained, the desire for it 
 unextinguished as yet, but to be also banished from the soul 
 by-and-by — ^it was the love of nature. He lived in this 
 
 //. '^ 
 
 /('TTIflVSX 
 
1 68 Pulpit Monograplis : Bernard, 
 
 love ; to him, in his first monastic clays, the love of God 
 and the love of natui^e were all ; from nature to the Bible, 
 from the Bible to nature ; the beeches and the oaks, tlie 
 woods and the fields, and the Scriptures — no word of 
 thought came between him and that glorious phantas- 
 magoria ; the result of a word of God, and at a word of 
 God, at last, to vanish away — only a procession of burning 
 thoughts swept thi'ough the soul, raptures of ecstatic love, 
 m the gloomy forest, and before the sailmg clouds, and the 
 pomp of setting suns. No world of cause and effects, and 
 laws obscured or aided his vision. He says to a friend and 
 pupil; 
 
 " Trust to one who has had experience. You will find some- 
 thing far greater in the woods than you will in books. Stones 
 and trees will teach you that which you will never learn from 
 masters. Think you not you can suck honey from the rock, and 
 oil from the flinty rock ? Do not the mountains drop sweetness ; 
 the hills run with milk and honey, and the valleys stand thick 
 with corn ?" 
 
 We have spoken of the surprise created by the selection 
 of Citeaux as the' sohtude to which* Bernard consigned him- 
 self with his thn-ty companions. Great, however, must- 
 have been the joy created by their arrival in that decaying 
 monastery. It was the turning-point in its history. Very 
 soon it became necessary to leave the spot of his selection ; 
 and, selected by the Abbot of Citeaux, he became himself, 
 although only just turned four-and-twenty, the head of a 
 new community. Stephen Harding placed a cross in Ber- 
 nard's hands, gave him twelve monks, and sent the young 
 Abbot forth to choose some spot for a new religious house 
 in the wilderness. He and his companions struck away 
 northward ; passed up by the source of the Seine, by 
 Chatillon, a place of old school-day associations till he 
 reached a place called Fertc, equally distant between 
 
In the Valley of Wormwood. 169 
 
 Troyes and Chaumont, situated on the river Aube. Four 
 miles beyond La Ferte, they came to a deep valley ; thick, 
 umbrageous forests giving a character of gloom and wildness. 
 It was called the Valley of "Wormwood ; a name, surely, be- 
 fitting the austerities we have associated with our pilgrims. 
 Here he laid the foundation of that building, whose name 
 is immortal in the history of the Church and of Europe, 
 the famous Abbey of Clairvaux. It was a singularly un- 
 pretentious building, utterly excluding from the mind all 
 romantic associations with monastic piles — a building 
 covered by a single roof, under which chapel, dormitory, 
 and refectory were all included ; miserable windows artisti- 
 cally contrived rather to exclude than to convey the light. 
 The monks' beds are described as a kind of bin of wooden 
 planks, long and wide enough for a man to lie down in ; a 
 small space hewn out with an axe allowed room for the 
 sleeper to get in or out, and the inside pleasantly strewn 
 with chaff or dried leaves ; these below, and the woodwork 
 above are the mattress and bed-clothes, which furnish to 
 om- imagination an idea of the comforts of the home. In 
 truth, all about the establishment marked its extreme 
 poverty. They were near to September when the rude 
 building was completed. Autumn and winter were ap- 
 proaching. They had no stores laid by. Their food during 
 the summer had been a compound of leaves and coarse 
 grain ; their food during the winter was to be beech-nuts 
 and roots. The austerities of Citeaux, before Bernard 
 made his appearance had been severe ; but those austerities, 
 which to him were the necessary conditions of his spiritual 
 life, began to be terrible to his twelve monks. Very shortly 
 there seem to have been signs of mutiny. Deaf to their 
 Abbot's entreaties, they talked of leaving the valley of bit- 
 terness and returning to Citeaux. At this period monkish 
 historians tax the faith of readers ^vith the traditions of 
 miracles, now commencing to perform a part in tjie history 
 8 
 
1 70 Pulpit Monographs : Bernard. 
 
 of Bernard, and henceforth never wanting to that history. 
 " Wait and ye shall see, O ye of little faith," said the 
 Abbot ; and it seems they did see ; if not miracles, marvels 
 made their appearance. But when are marvels wanting in 
 the Hfe of faith? He compelled the obedience, and, 
 eventually, the perfectly docile trust of his more faithless 
 brethren, and finally presented himseK before his diocesan 
 for consecration over the, as yet, quite incipient abbacy. A 
 precious appearance he and his are described as presenting 
 in the palace of the renowned dialectician, William of 
 Champeaux. Before the experienced master of the Paris 
 schools came the threadbare care-worn youth, with attenu- 
 ated body and emaciated countenance. That was a day in 
 which splendor was not wanting to the bishop's palace ; 
 and we can easily figure the mirth of the loungers and 
 idlers as the grotesque band made it« appearance. 
 
 But the old master soon detected the soul in the ragged 
 body, and a life-long friendship was formed between the 
 two from that hour, which, in the life of Bernard, presents 
 us with many pleasant ghmpses and particulars. And 
 now Bernard fell HI, which also is not surprising. WiUiam 
 of Champeaux, when he found his new friend resolute 
 against the relaxation of the painful austerities of his life, 
 started for Citeaux, bishop as he was, that from Stephen 
 Harding, the Abbot, he might receive the power to compel 
 the remittance of those toils and pains beneath which the 
 enfeebled constitution was failing fast. He received a com- 
 mission to manage Bernard for twelve months himself. 
 Hastening back to Clairvaux, he foimd its Abbot now obe- 
 dient and yielding. He caused a small cottage to be built 
 outside the monastery walls, and commanded that his diet 
 should no longer be regulated by monastic rule. All this 
 was irksome enough to the spirit of Bernard ; but it is 
 easy to see, that probably but for this timely interference, 
 that magic influence, which gave to Clairvaux a far more 
 
The Attractions of the Cloister. \ j i 
 
 than European fame, and moved popes, emperors, and 
 princes at its touch, had never been known. He, on his 
 part, seems to have received his lease of hfe and comfort 
 very ungraciously ; and, when William of St. Thierry 
 visited him in his hut, and asked him how he did, a satire, 
 not very common with him in those days, broke forth, as 
 he repHed, "Excellent well. I, who have hitherto ruled 
 over rational beings, by a great judgment of God, am 
 given over to obey an irrational beast." Clairvaux, mean- 
 time, began to rear its loftier buildings. William of St. 
 Thierry breaks forth into rapturous exclamations at once 
 over the the beauty of the valley, and the consecrated la- 
 bors which were there discovering themselves ; a still 
 silent solitude, yet the valley soon became full of men. 
 The sounds of labor, the chants of the brethren, and choral 
 services began now to reheve the solitudes of the forests 
 and the gorges. We have also the story of Peter de Koya, 
 who turned aside into the valley from a long habituation, as 
 he tells us, "with festive banquets and silver salvers." 
 " To him it seemed," as he says, " that he had found the 
 building whose foundation is in the holy mountains — the 
 gates loved of the Lord more than the dwellings of Jacob. 
 In Clairvaux," says he, " they have found Jacob's ladder, 
 wdth angels upon it, some descending, who so provide for 
 their bodies, that they faint not on the way : and others 
 ascending, who so nile their souls, that their bodies here- 
 after may be glorified with them." He continues: "To 
 judge from their outward appearance, their tools, their dis- 
 ordered clothes, they appear a race of fools, without speech 
 or sense ; but a true thought in my mind tells me that 
 their Hfe is hid with Christ in the heavens. Many of them, 
 I hear, are bishops and earls, and men illustrious through 
 ilieir birth and knowledge. I see Godfrey of Peronne, 
 Eaynald of Picardy, William of St. Omer, Walter of Lisle ; 
 aU of whom I knew formerly in the old man, whereof I see 
 
1^2 Pulpit Mo7iograpJis : BevTiard^ 
 
 now no trace, by God's favor." All this ended in his going 
 to Clairvaux. 
 
 From his retirement of sickness Bernard came forth, we 
 think, healthier in mind as well as in body. His nature 
 seems to have righted itself, as far as it ever righted itseK 
 in its earthly tabernacle ; and, in the course of a year or 
 two, he commenced that course of marvellous hterary la- 
 bors, infinite correspondences, sermons, extending govern- 
 ments, and travels, which alternate his name in our minds, 
 as the man of action not less than the man of contempla- 
 tion. Not that he ever became tolerant or tender to any 
 kinds of self-indulgence ; and his description of a woK of 
 a prior, whose tender regards to the necessities of human 
 flesh had succeeded in fascinating one of his monks from 
 Clairvaux to Cluny, is sufficiently humorous : hear him : 
 " Wine and the like, soup and fat things, these are for the 
 body, not for the mind ; not for the soul, but the flesh is 
 nourished by ragouts. Many brethren in Egypt serve God 
 a long time without eating fish, pepper, ginger, sage, and 
 cummin ; they, indeed, delight the palate ; but, think you, 
 youth can be passed in safety surrounded by them T He 
 bids those who fear his fasts, and vigils, and manual labors, 
 to dwell on the thought of eternal flames. " The thought 
 of outer darkness will banish all fear of solitude. If you 
 reflect, that account is to be kept of every idle word, silence 
 will stiike you as less appalHng ; and eternal weeping and 
 gnashing of teeth will make a feather-bed and mattress 
 equally indifferent. Arise, then, soldier of Christ." But 
 the soldier did not arise : the morning slumbers, and the 
 ginger, and the pepper were too much for the beech-nuts 
 of Clairvaux. 
 
 At this period of the history of Bernard we might dwell 
 a httle time, did space permit, upon the miracles which 
 form a j)ortion of the life of St. Bernard ; but we cannot 
 dwell. It may be sufficient to remark that it was an age 
 
In the Age of Miracles. 173 
 
 in which material natui'e was supposed to be at the com- 
 mand of moral goodness. — Must not the earthly give way 
 to the heavenly? Must not Christ be the conqueror of 
 Satan? One writer tells us how he saw a knight offer 
 thanks to Bernard for having cured him with a piece of 
 consecrated bread. There are plenty of stories of the dis- 
 eases which fled at the command or the blessing of Ber- 
 nard. When he came to the dedication of the church of 
 Foigny, it happened that an incredible number of flies 
 filled the place. " I excommunicate them/' said the saint. 
 Next morning they were all found dead, they covered the 
 pavement, they were shovelled out with spades, the church 
 was rid of them ; the cursing of the Foigny flies passed 
 into a proverb. Shall we laugh at these things ? Shall 
 we laugh at the story that, when his attendants were un- 
 able to catch his horse, Bernard said " Let us pray ;" and, 
 kneeling down, they were not through the Lord's prayer 
 when the horse returned and stood before Bernard ? We 
 give these stories in their crudity. At any rate, they are 
 significant enough, and show the estimation in which Ber- 
 nard was held by his cotemporaries. And we must remem- 
 ber, in looking at the matter, that our talk about miracles 
 would have availed nothing with Bernard. " Laws of Na- 
 ture !" we think we hear him exclaim ; " what do I know 
 of the laws of nature ? Miracle is the law of God." Mira- 
 cles, and ajDparitions, and Divine and demoniac interfer- 
 ences with human affaii's ! a man of the twelfth century — 
 and especially such a man as Bernard — would have as soon 
 parted with his existence as he would have parted with his 
 belief in these. Moreover, there was evidently that in the 
 psychological character of Bernard which would easily 
 hang round him the apparition of miracles to ordinary 
 miads : his whole life was a kind of miracle, resolvable by 
 us in a measure ; and, if our readers are disposed still to 
 smile, we must remind them that miracles belong to that 
 
174 Pulpit Monographs : Bernard^ 
 
 time as much as the feudal castle, vast monastic piles, and' 
 the baron's chain mail. 
 
 At the age of thirty-four Bernard travelled to fortify the 
 population of his young community. 
 
 He visited Paris, " a httle, thronged, dirty, ill-paved city : " 
 one smiles at the unrecognisable description. The schools 
 of Paris were the marvel of Europe. Bernard was re- 
 quested to enter them and lecture in them. He did not 
 enter the schools, but he was glad enough to seize the op- 
 portunity for dilating on the true philosophy, — contempt 
 for the world and voluntary poverty for Christ's sake. His 
 visit, while not entirely unsuccessful, does not seem to have 
 greatly strengthened Clairvaux. He gladly returned to his 
 peaceful seclusion, from which, indeed, he was never a will- 
 ing wanderer ; and there are many passages of his life 
 which give us glimpses of serene and thoughtful days, 
 amidst the turmoil and barbarism of that wild, ungovern- 
 able time. In his way, we are pleased also to see, that St. 
 Bernard set himseK heartily to the reformation of burgla- 
 rious barons, bishops who thought too much of their tem- 
 poralities, and abbots who gave more attention to their 
 revenues than to souls. He set himself as the representa- 
 tive of the Church, to do battle with the exuberant animal- 
 ism of the age — to tame it, and drill it — and it is truly 
 amusing, in this connection, to notice how, again and again, 
 the question of cookery forces itself upon our saint's at- 
 tention. Some passages, in which he condemns the luxury 
 of the Cluniacs, are scarcely less curious than they are hu- 
 morous. A Cluniac dinner must have been a tolerably in- 
 viting repast, " Who," says our saint, " could say, to speak 
 of nothing else, in how many forms eggs are cooked and 
 worked up ? with what care they are turned in and out, 
 made hard or soft, or chopped fine ; now fried, now roasted, 
 now stuffed ; now they are served mixed with other things, 
 now by themselves ; even the external appearance of the 
 
His Invgeacliment of tlie Monies, 17^ 
 
 dishes is such that the eye, as well as the taste, is charmed ; 
 and when even the stomach complakis that it is full, curios- 
 ity is still ahve. So also,'* he continues, " what shall I say 
 about water-drinking, when even wine and water are de- 
 spised? We all of us, it appears, directly we become 
 monks are afflicted with weak stomachs, and the important 
 advice of the apostle to use wine, we, iq a praiseworthy 
 manner, endeavor to follow, but for some unexplained rea- 
 son, the condition of a little is usually omitted." In the 
 same manner he denounces the monkish lust of dress. 
 "You say religion is in the heart ; true, but when you are 
 about to buy a cowl you rush over to the towns, visit the 
 markets, examine the fairs, dive iato the houses of the mer- 
 chants, turn over all their goods, undo their bundlee of 
 cloth, feel it with your fingers, hold it to your eyes or to the 
 rays of the sun, and if anything coarse or faded appears you 
 reject it ; but if you are pleased v^ith any object of unusual 
 beauty or brightness, you buy it, whatever the price. Does 
 this come from your heart or your simphcity ? I wonder 
 that our abbots allow these things, unless it arises from the 
 fact, that no one is apt to blame any error with confidence, 
 if he cannot trust to his own freedom from the same." 
 Nor these vices alone. He speaks of others whose vice 
 was a mock humility : " Again, vdth our bellies full of 
 beans, and our minds of pride, we condemn those who are 
 full of meat ; as if it were not better to eat a little fat on 
 occasion, than to be gorged, even to belching, with windy 
 vegetables." He looked with httle more favor upon the 
 rich architecture, now beginning to adorn the churches of 
 Europe, than the sumptuary condition of the priests. 
 " The church's walls are resplendent," exclaims he, " but 
 the poor are not there." 
 
 " In the churches are suspended, not coh^oykb^ but wheels stud- 
 ded with gems, and surrounded by lights, which are scarcely 
 brighter than the precious stones which are near them. Instead 
 
176 Pulpit Moiiograjplis : Bernard, 
 
 of candlesticks, we behold great trees of brass, fashioned with 
 wonderful skill, and glittering as much through their jewels as 
 through their own lights. What do you suppose is the object 
 of all this ? The repentance of the contrite, or the admiration 
 of the gazers ? O vanity of vanities ! but not more vain than 
 foolish. The church's walls are resplendent, but the poor are 
 not there. . . . The curious find wherewith to amuse them- 
 selves — the wretched find no stay for them in their misery. 
 Why, at least, do we not reverence the images of the saints, 
 with which the very pavement we walk on is covered ? Often 
 an angel's mouth is spit into, and the face of some saint trodden 
 on by the passers-by. . . . But if we cannot do without the 
 images, why can we not spare the brilliant colors ? What has 
 all this to do with monks, with j^rofessors of poverty, with men 
 of spiritual minds ? 
 
 " Again, in the cloisters, what is the meaning of those ridicu- 
 lous monsters, of that deformed beauty, that beautiful deformity, 
 before the very eyes of the brethren when reading ? What are 
 disgusting monkeys there for, or ferocious lions, or horrible cen- 
 taurs, or spotted tigers, or fighting soldiers, or huntsmen sound- 
 ing the bugle ? You may see there one head with many bodies, 
 or one body with numerous heads. Here is a quadruped with a 
 serpent's tail ; there is a fish with a beast's head ; there a crea- 
 ture, in front a horse, behind a goat ; another has horns at one 
 end, and a horse's tail at the other. In fact, such an endless 
 variety of forms appear everywhere, that it is more pleasant to 
 read in the stonework than in books, and to spend the day in 
 admiring these oddities than in meditating on the law of God. 
 Good God ! if we are not ashamed of these absurdities, why do 
 "we not grieve at the cost of them ? " 
 
 Thus, finally, perhaps, Bernard would not be far from a 
 disposition to pronounce the objurgation of Thomas Car- 
 lyle, " Let the devil fly away with fine arts." ".I never met 
 with a man," says Kuskin, " whose mind was fully set upon 
 the world to come, perfect and right before God, who cared 
 about art at all." We are disposed to commend the con- 
 siderations of these sundry texts from aU these w^orthies to 
 
Secular and Spiritual KniglitJiood. 1 77 
 
 those who find a strong disposition to sneer at Puritanic 
 tabernacles and conventicles, on one hand ; or who are dis- 
 posed to estimate the worth of our modem Nonconformity 
 by its aesthetic developments, on the other. 
 
 As Bernard verged towards his fortieth year, the period 
 of his comparative retirement and rest drew to a close. 
 He attended the Council of Troyes — that celebrated coun- 
 cil, famous for the part it took in founding the order of the 
 Knights Templars. In this order those two grand instincts 
 of mediaeval times to which we have aheady referred — the 
 fighting instuict and the praying instinct — ^became distiuctly 
 one. Bernard's exhortation to the Knights of the Temple • 
 is very characteristic of the times and of himself, although 
 issued some three or four years later. He contrasts the 
 secular with the monastic warfare in the following extraor- 
 dinary words, curiously remarkable for their saintly blood- 
 thirstiness. 
 
 "You always run a risk, you worldly soldier, of either killing 
 your adversary's body, and your own soul in consequence, or of 
 being killed yourself both body and soul. If, while wishing to 
 kill another you are killed yourself, you die a homicide. If you 
 vanquish and kill your enemy, you live a homicide. But what ' 
 an astounding error, what madness is it, O, Knights, to fight at 
 such cost and trouble for no wages except those of death or sin ! 
 You deck out your horses with silken trappings; you wear 
 flaunting cloaks over your steel breastplates ; you paint your 
 shields, your spears, and your saddles ; your spurs and bridles 
 shine with gold, and silver, and gems ; and in this gay pomp, 
 with an amazing and incredible madness, you rush upon death. 
 Have you not found from experience that these things are es- 
 pecially needed by a soldier, viz., that he be bold yet vigilant as 
 regards his own safety, quick in his movements, and prompt to 
 strike ? You, on the contrary, cultivate long hair, which gets 
 in your eyes ; your feet are entangled in the folds of your flow- 
 ing robes ; your delicate hands are buried in your ample and 
 spreading sleeves. In addition to all this, your reasons for fight- 
 8* 
 
1 78 Pulpit Monographs : Bernard. 
 
 ing are light and frivolous, viz., the impulses of an irrational 
 anger, or a desire of vain glory, or the wish to obtain some 
 earthly possession. Certainly, for such causes as these it is not 
 safe either to slay or to be slain. 
 
 " But Christ's soldiers can fight in safety the battles of their 
 Lord ; fearing no sin from killing an enemy ; dreading no dan- 
 ger from their own death. Seeing that for Christ's sake death 
 must be sufi'ered or inflicted, it brings with it no sin, but rather 
 earns much glory. In the one case Christ is benefited, in the 
 other Christ is gained. Christ, who willingly accepts an enemy's 
 death for revenge, and more willingly still grants himself to the 
 soldier for consolation. Christ's soldier can securely kill — can 
 more securely die : when he dies, it profits him ; when he slays, 
 it profits Christ. Not without just cause is he girded with a 
 sword. When he kills a malefactor, he is not a slayer of men, 
 but a slayer of evil, and plainly an avenger of Christ against 
 those who do amiss. But, when he is killed, he has not per- 
 ished, he has reached his goal. The Christian exults in the 
 death of a pagan because Christ is glorified. In the death of 
 the Christian the King's bountifulness is shown when the soldier 
 is led forth to his reward. The just will rejoice over the first 
 when he sees the punishment of the wicked. Of the latter men 
 will say, * Verily there is a reward for the righteous^ doubtless there 
 is a God that judgeth the earth.^ " 
 
 The following remarkable words, pervaded surely by a 
 droU grim humor, express his feelings at the departure of 
 the troops of crusaders for the Holy Land : 
 
 " But the most joyful and salutary result to be perceived is, 
 that in such a multitude of men who flock to the East there are 
 few besides scoundrels, vagabonds, thieves, murderers, perjurers, 
 and adulterers, from whose emigration a double good is observed 
 to flow, the cause of a twofold joy. Indeed they give as much 
 delight to those whom they leave as to those whom they go to 
 assist. Both rejoice, — those whom they defend and those whom 
 they no longer oppress. Egypt is glad at their departure ; yet 
 Mount Zion and the daughters of Judah shall be joyful over the 
 
Arbiter hettoeen Hostile Popes, 1 79 
 
 succor they will bring ; the one for losing its most cruel spoilers, 
 the other at receiving its most faithful defenders.'^ 
 
 The most distinct turning point in the career of St. Ber- 
 nard was, perhaps, the death of the Pope Honorius 11. on 
 Feb. 14th, 1130. His death led to a double election to the 
 papacy. On the same evening on which the Pope died, 
 Cardinal Gregory, of St. Angelo, was proclaimed supreme 
 Pontiff under the name of Innocent 11., while another 
 party went through the form of election with their Pope, 
 dressed him in pontificals, and declared that Peter Leonis 
 was the vicar of Christ, under the title of Anacletus II. 
 Innocent fled from Home to France, trusting in the alle- 
 giance of the nations of Northern Europe ; and although 
 Anacletus had been a monk of Cluny, that monastery pro- 
 duced a strong presumption in favor of Innocent by the 
 recognition of his right. But the French bisho23S had not 
 decided, although it became necessary immediately to 
 decide. A council was convened at Etampes for the pur- 
 pose of discussing the claims of the hostile Popes. To tliis 
 council Bernard was very specially invited by the king and 
 the chief bishops. He confessed afterwards that he went 
 with much fear and trembling ; nor are we surprised that 
 on the road his eyes were saluted by a vision in which he 
 saw a large church, with all the people harmoniously 
 praising God. This raised his spirits. We can scarcely 
 conceive the importance of such a schism as that which 
 the council was called in some way to heal. Fasting and 
 prayer preceded its dehberations, and no clearer impression 
 can be conveyed of the immense fame and influence Ber- 
 nard had acquired, than in the fact that the council unan- 
 imously agreed, first, that this business, which concerned 
 God, should be entrusted to the man of God, and that his 
 judgment should decide the assembly. We can scarcely 
 think that that assembly was in great ignorance as to the 
 
1 8o Pulpit Monogj'apTis : Bernard, 
 
 verdict he was likely to pronounce ; nor can we doubt tliat 
 this, too, was one of the occasions when that feHcitous and 
 mar^^ellous swell and sweep of all-subduing eloquence, 
 which mighty councils and vast convocations of princes, 
 barons, and scholars were destined yet many times to 
 prove, exliibited much of its matchlessness. He rose 
 obedient to the call and examined the whole question ; the 
 causes which led to the double election, the hfe and 
 character of the first elected ; as he advanced, it is said, 
 the Holy Ghost seemed to speak through him. He pro- 
 nounced Innocent, without hesitation or reserve, the legi- 
 timate Pope, and the only one they could accept as such, 
 and, amidst acclamations and praises, and vows of obedience 
 to Innocent, the council broke up. Henceforth, the way 
 of Bernard lay much among the higher principahties and 
 powers of Europe. 
 
 Immediately after the council it is interesting to find 
 him meeting, face to face, with our own Henry I., the 
 wisest soldier of his age, and the mightiest monk of the 
 cloisters of Christendom ; old knight and young priest ; 
 and the young priest conquered the old knight, for Henry 
 had been indisposed to acknowledge Innocent. The 
 enthusiast convinced the man of the world. "Are you 
 afraid," said he, "of incurring sin if you acknowledge 
 Innocent ; think how to answer your other sins before 
 God, and I will answer and take account of this one." And 
 Henry yielded to the quaint and not very polite reasoning. 
 It is not wonderful that Innocent should regard Bernard 
 as a necessary friend and adviser. Events, perhaps, suV 
 sequently prove that an Elijah-like kind of character was 
 not the most comfortable companion for the Vatican ; but 
 for the present he was necessary to the Pope. They met 
 at Morigny near Etampes ; they met also another man 
 whom we shall presently see much more distinctly, who 
 was one of the gueists that nig*ht with the Abbot of 
 
A Pope in tlie Valley of Wormwood. 1 8 1 
 
 Clairvaux at Morigny — Master Peter Abelard. Very short- 
 ly affcer this, Innocent, the early days of whose papacy 
 were an}i;hing but tranquil, had to receive the comparative 
 hostilities of the Emperor Lotharius at Liege. Once more 
 Bernard came to the rescue. He boldly faced Lotharius, 
 smoothed matters of difference between papal and imperial 
 claims, persuaded the Emperor to acquiesce in the claims 
 of Innocent ; finally, urged by Bernard, the Emperor went 
 on foot through the crowd towards the Pope on his white 
 palfrey, and when Innocent descended from his horse, the 
 Emperor was there to assist him ; and thus, before all men 
 in that age of forms and ceremonies, he proclaimed his 
 submission. There was a strength of texture in the stuff 
 of which these churchmen in those days were made, yet 
 their temporahties had not reached the dangerous 
 ambitiousness of more recent times, and we find Innocent 
 spent some time at Clairvaux on his way homewards. He, 
 perhaps, was surprised at the marvellous austerity, the 
 self-restraint and solemn silence of the plain unomamented 
 church, and the bare walls of the monastery. The monks 
 received the brilliant cavalcade with closed fids ; they were 
 seen of all and saw no one ; nor do they seem to have 
 treated the Pope much better than they treated them- 
 selves : we read that if a stray fish could be caught it was 
 reserved for the table of the Pope alone. 
 
 We must pass by the circumstances of the Council of 
 Eheims ; and Bernard, after this powerful intercourse with 
 the affairs and destinies of Europe, returned to the shades 
 of his own beautiful vale — ^returned to leisure, rest, reflec- 
 tion, and sohtude. Fifteen years had passed away since 
 the grotesque foundation had been laid of the now famous 
 monastery. From his obscurity he had emerged to place 
 the tiara on the head of the chief of Christendom ; but he 
 was regarded himself as the acknowledged chief of the 
 most active minds of Europe and of the age. Clairvaux 
 
1 8 2 Pulpit Monographs : Bernard. 
 
 was growing outwardly and inwardly. Houses connected 
 with it were rising in many parts of France ; and especially 
 through the broad, unbroken sohtudes of Yorkshu^e, where 
 still, two of the loveliest ruins — Eiveaux and Fontaines — 
 keep the memory of Bernard ahve, and relate the mind 
 of the visitor to the crumbling wall. But Clairvaux itself 
 was expanding ; it was too smaU. Numbers were coming, 
 and the existing site was quite insufficient for the necessi- 
 ties of the order — ^insufficient for the monks, especially for 
 the visitors. Soon a nobler structure arose. Large grants 
 of land were easily obtained, and every needful supply for 
 the erection lavishly poured in. Still it was a little haven 
 of shelter in the midst of a stormy sea. A strange and 
 motley population, we know, assembled within those walls. 
 Rough, strong, mediaeval knights, men of appetites and 
 passions, who had spent their days in intense animaHsm 
 and blood-shedding, felt a spirit touch their hearts as they 
 approached that place, or as its tidings approached them. 
 They came in the repentance of sackcloth and in strange 
 agonies of soul, bent their stiff, iron-clad knees before the 
 altar and in the cloister. We read of some, their faces on 
 the grass, foaming at the mouth. To this succeeded a 
 period of peace ; they entered the narrow pathway for life : 
 a pathway now skirted by the gates of heU, now rising to 
 the heights of heaven. 
 
 And is it not beautiful to think of Bernard returning to 
 these his brethren and his children from those interviews 
 we have seen him holding with the statesmen of his age ; 
 and in that same year, 1135, then aged forty-four, com- 
 mencing to this congregation of miscellaneous hearts — 
 some subdued and hushed to a peace deeper than that of 
 woods, and clouds, and hills, a peace that passeth all 
 understanding — and some wild, and fevered, and beating 
 still — that series of discourses which have been called 
 matchless, in which all the richness, the symbolism, the 
 
The Preacher in the Valley of Wormwood. 183 
 
 mystery, tenderness, and beauty of the Ancient Churcli 
 were pressed out — ^liis sermons on the Song of Solomon? 
 By these we suppose the name of Bernard will ever be most 
 affectionately immortalized. They form one of the richest 
 roses of the Mediseval Church. Let us read them as they 
 should be read; world- wearied and wasted, but sighing 
 after peace. Let us think of oui'selves as listening to them 
 in those still, cool aisles, sometimes while the sun is chmb- 
 ing in the early morning over the forest trees and hills, and 
 sometimes in what seems the more sweet and suitable hour 
 of meditative twilight. In reading, it is imperatively ne- 
 cessary to dismiss from the mind all the refining casuistries 
 of modern criticism ; but read by the spirit *of the ancient 
 book, and with a transference of soul to the time, the place, 
 the auditors, and preacher, there is something magical and 
 sweet in their deep experiences. The preacher himself had 
 been a man to whom hfe had been no child's play, who 
 had thought of all the burden of the weary and intolerable 
 world ; perhaps quite as much as any who suppose they 
 have suffered more in this day of more fastidious tastes, 
 sometimes mistaken for more acute sensibilities ; but he 
 had passed through his novitiate, and had reached the 
 peace spoken so deeply in every syllable of those dis- 
 courses. There came sliding in the old monk, his mortifi- 
 cations almost done ; there the young beginner, scarcely 
 yet habituated to a life so severe ; there the possessor of 
 broad lands, relinquished now for Christ's sake ; laborers 
 from the hot fields ; or, rising from the night's vigils, they 
 gathered round the man whose words and conversation 
 they verily believed to be of another world. I must let 
 you see something of these discourses, so long treasured in 
 the scriptorium of the Church, that you may estimate their 
 strength and beauty : 
 
 GOD ALL AND IN ALL. 
 
 But who can grasp the magnitude of delight comprehended 
 
1 84 Pulpit Monographs : Bernard. 
 
 in that short word ? God will be all in all. Not to speak of the 
 body, I perceive three things in the soul — reason, will, memory ; 
 and these three make up the soul. How much each of these in 
 this present world lacks of completion and perfectness, is felt by 
 every one who walketh in the Spirit. Wherefore is this, except 
 because God is not yet all in all ? Therefore it is that our rea- 
 son falters in judgment, that our will is feeble and distracted, 
 that our memory confounds us by its forgetfulness. We are sub- 
 jected unwillingly to this threefold weakness, but hope abides. 
 For He who fills with good things the desires of the soul. He 
 himself will be to the reason the fulness of light ; to the will, the 
 abundance of peace ; to the memory, the unbroken smoothness 
 of eternity. O truth ! O charity ! O eternity ! O blessed and 
 blessing Trinity ! to thee my miserable trinity miserably groans, 
 while it is in exile from thee. Departing from thee, in what er- 
 rors, griefs, and fears is it involved! Alas, for what a trinity 
 have we exchanged thee away. My heart is disturbed, and hence 
 my grief; my strength has forsaken me, and hence my fear ; the 
 light of my eyes is not with me, and hence my error. O trinity of 
 my soul ! what a changed trinity dost thou show me in mine exile ? 
 " But why art thou cast down, O my soul ! and why art thou 
 disquieted within me ? Hoi3e thou in God, for I shall yet praise 
 liim," that is, when error shall have left my mind, sorrow my 
 will, fears my memory; and serenity, sweetness, and eternal 
 peace shall have come in their stead. The first of these things 
 will be done by the God of truth ; the second, by the God of 
 charity ; the third, by the God of omnipotence ; that God may 
 be all in all : the reason receiving light inextinguishable, the 
 will peace imperturbable, the memory cleaving to a fountain 
 which shall never fail. You may judge for yourselves whether 
 you would rightly assign the first to the Son, the second to the 
 Holy Ghost, and the last to the Father; in such a manner, how- 
 ever, that you take away nothing of any of them, either from 
 the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Of course, a deep mystical fervor pervades all these ser- 
 mons, as in the following illustrative extract on 
 
 THE FEET OF GOD. 
 
 But I must not pass over in silence those spiritual feet of God, 
 
The Feet of God. 185 
 
 which, in the first place, it behoves the penitent to kiss in a 
 spiritual manner. I well know your curiosity, which does not 
 willingly allow anything obscure to pass by it ; nor indeed is it 
 a contemptible thing to know what are those feet which the 
 Scripture so frequently mentions in connection with God. Some- 
 times he is mentioned as standing on them, as " We will wor- 
 ship in the place where thy feet have stood ;" sometimes as walk- 
 ing, as " I will dwell in them and will walk in them ;" sometimes 
 even as running, as " He rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race." 
 If it appear right to the apostle to call the head of Christ God, 
 it appears to me as not unnatural to consider his feet as repre- 
 senting man — one of which I shall name mercy, and the other 
 judgment. Those two words are known to you, and the Scrip- 
 ture makes mention of them in many places. 
 
 On these two feet, fitly moving under one divine head, Christ, 
 born of a woman, he who was invisible under the law, then made 
 Emmanuel [God with us], was seen on the earth, and conversed 
 with men. Of a truth, he even now passes amongst us, relieving 
 and healing those oppressed by the devil ; but spiritually and 
 invisibly. With these feet, I say, he walks through devout 
 minds, incessantly purifying and searching the hearts and reins 
 of the faithful. 
 
 Happy is that mind in which the Lord Jesus has placed both 
 of these feet. You may recognize that mind by these two signs, 
 which it must necessarily bear as the marks of the divine foot- 
 prints. These are hope and fear. The first representing the 
 image of judgment, the other of mercy. Justly doth the Lord 
 take pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his 
 mercy; seeing that fear is the beginning of wisdom, of which 
 also hope is the increase, and charity the consummation. These 
 things being so, in this first kiss which is received at the feet, 
 is not a little fruit ; only be careful that you are not robbed of 
 either kiss. If you are pricked by the pain of sin, and the fear 
 of judgment, you have pressed your lips on the foot of judgment 
 and truth. If you temper this fear and pain by regarding the 
 divine goodness, and by the hope of forgiveness, you may know 
 that you have embraced the foot of mercy. It profits not to kiss 
 one without the other, because the dwelling on judgment only 
 
1 86 Pulpit Monograplis : BevTiard. 
 
 casts you into tlie abyss of desperation, while a deceitful trust 
 in mercy generates the worst kind of security. 
 
 To me also, wretched one, it has been given sometimes to sit 
 beside the feet of the Lord Jesus, and with all devotion to em- 
 brace first one, then the other, as far as his loving-kindness con- 
 descended to permit me. But if ever, forgetful of mercy, through 
 the stings of conscience I have dwelt too long on the thought of 
 judgment, at once cast down with incredible fear and confusion, 
 enveloped in dark shadows of horror, breathless from out of the 
 deeps I cried, " Who knoweth the power of thy wrath, and 
 through fear of thee who can reckon thy displeasure ;" if it has 
 chanced that I have then clung too closely to the foot of mercy, 
 after forsaking the other, such carelessness and indifference have 
 come upon me, that my prayers have grown cold, my work has 
 been neglected, my speech has been less cautious, my laughter 
 more ready, and the whole state of both my outer and inner man 
 less firm. Learning then from experience, not judgment alone, 
 nor mercy alone, but mercy and judgment together, will I sing 
 unto thee, O Lord ; I will neyer forget those justifications ; they 
 both shall be my song in the house of my pilgrimage, until mercy 
 being exalted above judgment, then misery shall cease, and my 
 glory shall sing to Thee for ever, and not be silent. 
 
 These were the discourses which charmed multitudes to 
 the cloisters of Clairvaux. In our day the practical bias of 
 life has so echpsed and outstripped the speculative, that it 
 is difficult to conceive how men could have renounced all 
 earthly claims and every earthly emolument and position, 
 that they might have the opportunity of hstening to such 
 spiritual raptures, and indulging in the austere pleasures 
 of the spiritual life. It is quite wonderful to us to see those 
 man-slaying barons drawn into the monastic life, often as 
 by a force they could not resist. Strange conversions took 
 place. They hovered near the abbey, half knowing, half 
 dreading their fate ; retired from it and returned, as a moth 
 retimis to the candle with increased haste. Mr. Morison 
 tells the stories of knights riding to a tournament, or a fair, 
 putting up over night at the welcome and opportune mon- 
 
The Death of his Brother Gerard. 187 
 
 astery, and spending a quieter night than was usual with 
 them. And the place, and solemnity, and order of the 
 monastery had not been witnessed in vain. The psalm- 
 singing, and the ceremonies, and the music of the frequent 
 bells, sent emotions of awe and gentleness iato the wearied 
 hearts of some of them. Perhaps they noticed some old 
 companion in arms, who was heard last shouting in the 
 shock of battle, now, instead, shouting Gregorian chants. 
 The rude barbarian nature is touched, and stays or returns, 
 to seek peace ia the monastery too. There was peace in 
 the monastery, no doubt ; but those hearts which beat so 
 vehemently beneath the cuirass and the breastplate we may 
 be sure often chafed against the new rigors of the cage. 
 The peace, however, which others felt — the peace which 
 so profoundly breathes along the sermons on the Canticles, 
 w^as scarcely. the possession of the mighty Abbot. He ex- 
 perienced rather a foretaste of its pleasures, and presented 
 it in his mellifluous eloquence. He was called upon in his 
 vast correspondence to iuterfere, not only in the care of all 
 the churches, but persons of distinction throughout Europe 
 seem to have thought that Bernard's time, attention, and 
 iofluence should be at their disposal Bishops ia England, 
 the Queen of Jerusalem, the Kiags of France, and Italy, 
 and Britain, and abbots and ecclesiastics without number. 
 
 And his brother Gerard fell sick and died ; he was one 
 of the brethren of Clairvaux. The bereaved Abbot per- 
 formed for him, whom he had most tenderly loved, the 
 funeral service. The brother had been also tenderly and 
 deeply loved by his brethren, and when his spirit passed 
 away we are told how the sobs and tears of others, not 
 less than those of Bernard, expressed their grief. Gerard 
 was his second brother. He had been a bold knight, and 
 had taken a worldly view of the Abbot's early enthusiasm. 
 " Ah ! " said the yoimg preacher, " tribulation will give thee 
 understandmg, and thou shalt fear greatly, but shalt in 
 
1 88 Pulpit Monographs : Bernard. 
 
 nowise perish." There was a prophecy in the words : 
 tribulation came. " I turn monk," said he, " a monk of 
 Citeaux." He was one of his brother's iii'st converts. It 
 was, upon the day of his death, one of Bernai'd's duties to 
 pursue his exposition of the Song of Songs, and at the 
 appointed time he ascended the pulpit and preached that 
 funeral sermon, which is also one of the most famous of 
 the whole course, from Solomon's Song i. 5 : "As the tents 
 of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon " — that is, dark as is 
 the first, comely as is the last. 
 
 And I quote again fi^om these extraordinary expositions, 
 so illustrative of the pulpit method of the cloisters of the 
 Middle Ages — A^ the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon, 
 
 We must begin from this point, because it was here that the 
 preceding sermon was brought to a close. You are waiting to 
 hear what these words mean, and how they are connected with 
 the previous clause, since a comparison is made between them. 
 Perhaps both members of the comparison, viz., " As the tents 
 of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon," refer only to the first 
 words, ^' I am black." It may be, however, that the simile is . 
 extended to both clauses, and each is compared with each. The 
 former sense is the more simple, the latter the more obscure. 
 Let us try both, beginning with the latter, which seems the 
 more difficult. There is no difficulty, however, in the first com- 
 parison, " I am black as the tents of Kedar," but only in the 
 last. For Kedar, which is interpreted to mean " darkness " or 
 " gloom," may be compared with blackness justly enough ; but 
 the curtains of Solomon are not so easily likened to beauty. 
 Moreover, who does not see that " tents " fit harmoniously with 
 the comparison ? For what is the meaning of " tents," except 
 our bodies, in which we sojourn for a time. Nor have we " an 
 abiding city, but we seek one to come." In our bodies, as 
 under tents, we carry on warfare. Truly, we are violent to take 
 the kingdom. Indeed, the life of man here on earth is a war- 
 fare ; and as long as we do battle in this body, we are absent 
 from the Lord, i.e., from the light. For the Lord is light, and 
 so far as any one is not in him, so far he is in darkness, i.e., in 
 
Tents of Kedar — Curtains of Solomon. 189 
 
 Kedar. Let each one then acknowledge the sorrowful exclama- 
 tion as his own : " Woe is me that my sojourn is prolonged ! 
 I have dwelt w^ith those who dwell in Kedar. My soul hath 
 long sojourned in a strange land." Therefore this habitation 
 of the body is not the mansion of the citizen, nor the house 
 of the native, but either the soldier's tent or the traveller's inn. 
 This body, I say, is a tent, and a tent of Kedar, because, by its 
 interference, it prevents the soul from beholding the infinite 
 light, nor does it allow her to see the light at all, except 
 through a glass darkly, and not face to face. 
 
 Do you not see whence blackness comes to the church — 
 whence a certain rust cleaves to even the fairest souls ? Doubt- 
 less, it comes from the tents of Kedar, from the practice of 
 laborious warfare, from the long continuance of a painful 
 sojourn, from the straits of our grievous exile, from our feeble 
 cumbersome bodies ; for the corruptible body presseth down 
 the soul, and the earthy tabernacle weigheth down the mind 
 that museth upon many things. Therefore the soul's desire to 
 be loosed, that being freed from the body they may fly*into the 
 embraces of Christ. Wherefore one of the miserable ones said, 
 groaning — " O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me 
 from the body of this death ? " For a soul of this kind knoweth 
 that, w^hile in the tents of Kedar, she cannot be entirely free 
 from spot or wrinkle, nor from some stains of blackness, and 
 wishes to go forth and to put them off. And here we have tho 
 reason why the spouse calls herself black as tlie J;ents of Kedar. 
 But now, how is she beautiful as the curtains of Solomon? 
 Behind these curtains I feel that an indescribable holiness and 
 sublimity are veiled, which I dare not presume to touch, save 
 at the command of Him who shrouded and sealed the mystery. 
 For I have read, " He that is a searcher of Majesty shall be over- 
 whelmed with the glory." I pass on therefore. It will devolve 
 on you, meanwhile, to obtain grace by your prayers, that we 
 may the more readily, because more confidently, recur to a 
 subject which needs attentive minds ; and it may be that the 
 pious knocker at the door will discover what the bold explorer 
 seeks in vain. 
 
 The bursting forth of the grief is most pathetic and 
 
1 90 Pulpit Monographs : Bernard. 
 
 beautiful. " It was fitting that I should depend for every- 
 thing on him who was everything to me. He left me but 
 httle besides the name and honor of superintendent, for he 
 did the work. I was called Abbot, but he monopolised the 
 Abbot's cares." 
 
 You know, my children, the reasonableness of my sorrow — 
 you know the lamentable wound I have received. You appre- 
 ciate what a friend has left me in this walk of life which I havo 
 chosen — how prompt to labor, how gentle in manner ! Who 
 w^as so necessary to me ? To whom was I equally dear ? He 
 was my brother by blood, but more than brother by religion. 
 Deplore my misfortune, I beseech you, who know these things. 
 I was weak in body, and he sustained me ; downcast in spirit, 
 and he comforted me ; slow and negligent, and he stimulated 
 me ; careless and forgetful, and he admonished me. Whither 
 hast thou been torn from me — whither hast thou been carried 
 from my arms, O thou man of one mind with me, thou man 
 after my own heart ? We loved each other in life ; how are we 
 separated in death ! O most bitter separation, which nothing 
 could have accomplished but death ! For when w^ouldest thou 
 have deserted me in life ? Truly, a horrible divorce, altogether 
 the work of death. Who would not have had pity on the sweet 
 bond of our mutual love but death, the enemy of all sweetness ? 
 Well has raging death done his work ; for, by taking one, he 
 has stricken 'two. Is not this death to me also ? Yea, verily, 
 more to me than to Gerard — to me, to whom life is preserved, 
 far gloomier than any death. I live that I may die living, and 
 shall I call that life ? How much more merciful, O stem death, 
 hadst thou deprived me of the use, than of the fruit of life. 
 For life without fruit is a more grievous death. Again, a 
 double ruin is prepared for the unfruitful tree — the axe and the 
 fire. Hating, therefore, the labors of my hands, thou hast 
 removed from me the friend through whose zeal chiefly they 
 bore fruit, if they ever did. Better would it have been for me, 
 O Gerard 1 to have lost my life than thy presence, who wcrt 
 the anxious instigator of my studies in the Lord, my faithful 
 helper, my careful examiner. Why, I ask, have we loved, only 
 
Funeral Sermon for Gerard. i g i 
 
 to lose one another ? Hard lot ! but I am to be pitied, not he ; 
 for if thou, dear brother, hast lost dear ones they are replaced 
 by dearer still ; but what consolation awaits wretched me, de- 
 prived of thee, my only comfort ? Equally pleasing to both 
 was the companionship of our bodies by reason of the unison 
 of our minds, but the separation has wounded only me. The 
 joys of life were shared between us ; its sadness and gloom are 
 mine alone. God's wrathful displeasure goeth over me, and his 
 indignation lieth hard upon me. The delights we derived from 
 each other's society and conversation, I only have lost, whilst 
 thou hast exchanged them for others, and in the exchange great 
 has been thy gain. 
 
 In place of us, dearest brother, whom thou hast not with thee 
 to-day ; what an exceeding multitude of joys and blessings is 
 thine ! Instead of me thou hast Christ ; nor canst thou feel 
 thy absence from thy brethren here, now that thou rejoicest in 
 choruses of angels. Nothing, therefore, can make thee deplore 
 the loss of our society, seeing that the Lord of Majesty and the 
 hosts of Heaven vouchsafe to thee their presence. But what 
 have I in thy stead ? What would I not give to know what 
 thou now thinkest of thy Bernard, tottering amid cares and 
 afflictions, and bereaved of thee, the staflf of my weakness ? if, 
 indeed, it be permitted to one, who is plunged into the abyss 
 of light and absorbed in the great ocean of eternal felicity, still 
 to think of the miserable inhabitants of the earth. It may be 
 that though thou knewest us in the flesh, thou knowest us no 
 more, and since thou hast entered into the powers of the Lord, 
 thou rememberest only His justice, forgetful of us. Moreover, 
 he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit, and is entirely 
 changed into one holy feeling ; neither can he think of or wish 
 for aught but God and the things which God thinks and wishes, 
 being full of God. But God is Love, and the more closely a 
 man is united to God the fuller he is of love. Further, God is 
 without passions, but not without sympathy, for His nature is 
 always to have mercy and to spare. Therefore thou must needs 
 be merciful, since thou art joined to the Merciful One ; although 
 misery now be far from thee, thou canst compassionate others 
 although thou suflferest not thyself Thy love is not weakened, 
 
192 Ful^yit Monographs : Bernard, 
 
 but changed. Nor because thou hast put on God hast thou laid 
 aside all care for us, for " He also careth for us." Thou hast 
 discarded thine infirmities, but not thy affections. ".Charity 
 never faileth ; " thou wilt not forget me at the last. 
 
 I fancy I hear my brother saying to me, " Can a woman forget 
 her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the 
 son of her womb ? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget 
 thee." Truly it were lamentable if he did. Whom shall I con- 
 sult in doubtful matters ? To whom shall I trust in trial and 
 misfortune ? Who will bear my burdens ? Who will protect me 
 from harm ? Did not Gerard's eyes prevent my steps ? Alas, 
 my cares and anxieties entered more deeply into Gerard's breast 
 than into my own, ravaged it more freely, wrung it more acutely. 
 His wise and gentle speech saved me from secular conversation, 
 and gave me to the silence which I loved. The Lord hath given 
 him a learned tongue, so that he knew when it was proper to 
 speak. By the prudence of his answers, and the grace given 
 him from above, he so satisfied both our own people and stran- 
 gers, that scarcely any one needed me who had previously seen 
 Gerard. He hastened to meet the visitors, placing himself in 
 the way lest they should disturb my leisure. Such as he could 
 not dispose of himself, those he brought in to me ; the rest he 
 sent away. O diligent man ! O faithful friend ! * 
 
 Yes it is, I think, the most wonderful of funeral orations ; 
 and then that pathetic close : '' And now my tears put an 
 end to my words, I pray Thee teach me how to put an end 
 to my tears." 
 
 To dwell upon all the minor details of the life of the il- 
 lustrious Churchman, would be to write at length the his- 
 tory of the times. The year following that in which his 
 brother died, 1140, when he was forty-nine years of age, 
 that great duel was fought, which has never been allowed 
 to pass from the memory, not merely of scholars, but even 
 of cursory readers, — the contest of Bernard with the her- 
 
 * I have quoted lengthily Mr. Morison's admirable and vigorous 
 translation, for, indeed, this is one of the most wonderful of funeral 
 orations. 
 
A helard and Bernard. 193 
 
 esies of Abelard. Time forbids me to dwell upon the ro- 
 mantic history and fortunes of that most famous of her- 
 esiarchs. From bis pages innumerable heretics have filled 
 their minds with qualms and crotchets, sometimes of con- 
 science, more frequently of notion and opinion. Perhaps 
 he may be best described by saying, that what David Hume 
 has been to our own and to the previous age, that Abelard 
 was to his own and to the immediately subsequent times. 
 He pierced into that dread domain in which men inquire 
 for human and philosophical reasons — where they declare 
 their wish to understand as well as beUeve. He and his 
 disciples were the imconscious parents of a good deal. But 
 when he was condemned and sent in custody to the mon- 
 astery of Si Bernard, it is impossible not to feel the an- 
 guish which extorted from him that cry — "Good Jesus, 
 where wast thou then?" But he was a vain, sensitive, 
 Rousseau-like being ; yet it is also impossible not to notice 
 how much of the noble there was in his character, and how 
 he labored, with practical earnestness, to reform many of 
 the crying abuses of the Church. Upon Bernard, to whom 
 religion was faith and certainty, or nothing, we can easily 
 conceive he would look with a haughty and superciHous 
 condescension and pity. I pass all his interesting relations 
 \tith Heloise, which have also, no doubt, materially added 
 to his fame. 
 
 But the mind of the man could not rest and be still 
 and silent, and he was the apostle of free inquiry. His 
 inquiries had even pierced into the holiest of all — the 
 very ark of the Trinity, The disputes of the age were most 
 significant ; and Abelard and Bernard, as the foremost men, 
 must inevitably come into colhsion. Bernard denounced 
 the opinions of Abelard, and Abelard challenged Bernard 
 to a logical disputation. All my hearers know of that great 
 gathering, that expected tournament at Sens, and how, to 
 the amazement of that wonderful assembly, when the hour 
 9 
 
1 94 Pulpit Monograplis : Bernard, 
 
 came, Abelard refused to plead, but appealed from his ad- 
 versary and from the assembly to Eome. 
 
 As Bernard drew near to the close of his life, his strength, 
 like that of meaner men, became labor and sorrow, espe- 
 cially as the time came when he very earnestly desired to 
 rest altogether. He was called to preach before the Pope 
 and the King of France the second crusade. Vezelai was 
 the place fixed for that wondrous gathering. The town 
 could not hold the people assembled. The vast throng 
 was convened upon the declivity of a hill overlooking the 
 plain of Yezelai ; the king, Louis VII., and his queen were 
 there ; barons and knights, and innumerable multitudes of 
 hardly wrought peasants. But king, or queen, or nobles 
 were not the objects of attraction. Bernard of Clairvaux 
 was there on the top of the hill. A high platform of wood 
 was raised. On this stood the preacher and the king alone. 
 Thence he could be seen by all, if not heard ; and from 
 those lips flew the words of love, aspiration, and sublime 
 self-sacrifice. The wondrous hght of that thin, calm face, 
 the flash of tenderness and terror from those dove-like eyes, 
 communicated themselves to the crowd. Then rose the cry 
 for " Crosses ! crosses ! " the murmur fi'om the vast sea of 
 faces. He scattered them broadcast among the people. 
 They were soon exhausted. He tore up his monk's cowi 
 to satisfy the demand. He did nothing but make crosses 
 so long as he remained in the town. The mind of Europe 
 spoke through Bernard. The crusade was proclaimed. 
 And now he travelled through Germany to preach the sec- 
 ond crusade at Friburg, Basle, Constance, Spires, Cologne, 
 Frankfort, Mayence ; and, wherever he went, there the 
 same tumult gathered round him. A daily repetition of 
 the scene on the hill of Vezelai took place. A simultaneous 
 rush of the whole population to see him and to hear him, 
 and then the assumption of the cross by the larger portion 
 of the able-bodied male inhabitants. Bci-nard says, that 
 
Death of the Last of the Fathers, 195 
 
 scarcely one man was left to seven women. At Frankfort, 
 lie nearly lost his life. The crowd so beset him that he was 
 in danger of being suffocated. Conrad, the Emperor, for a 
 time did his best to keep off the press ; but it was more 
 than he could do. At last, laying aside his cloak, he gripped 
 Bernard in his brawny arms, and hoisting him over his 
 shoulders, carried him away in safety. A procession of 
 nuracles, too, attended him on his way ; but they astonished 
 him. " I can 't think," he says, " what these miracles mean." 
 It is altogether a sad, painful story of the fanaticism, not 
 only of a great mind, but of the age. We turn with pleas- 
 ure from his wild proclamation of the fanaticism of the 
 sword against the Infidel, to his equally enthusiastic, and 
 more noble and Christian defence of the Jews from the hor- 
 rors of persecution. This defence was one of the few items 
 of oiu: saint's history in which he was in advance of his age. 
 
 The crusade was one long disaster ; and the fate of the 
 mighty movement was sharply visited upon the head of its 
 chief apostle. But other cares pressed upon him, especially 
 the conquest of innumerable heresies, the writing of many 
 books and letters connected with the defence of the faith, 
 and also with efforts to repress the rising of the papacy, of 
 which he only saw the beginning. 
 
 He died at the age of sixty-two. As he was dying, even 
 ecclesiastics gathered round his dying bed to talk of public 
 affairs ; but they could not interest him. " Marvel not," 
 said he, "I am already no longer of this world." Earnest 
 contendings of prayerful struggles went on around, and in 
 the delitium of their grief, his friends implored him to stay ; 
 and they created some contest in the mind of the expiring 
 saint, but only to the lifting his eyes, and the expression of 
 his wish that God's will might be done, — dying in the faith 
 and practice of his great and memorable saying, " So far 
 from being able to answer for my sins, I cannot answer 
 even for my righteousness." 
 
VI. 
 
 The Great Preachers of the Seven- 
 teenth and Eighteenth Centuries. 
 
 1 
 
 
 HAVE said that the history of the Church is the 
 history of the pulpit ; I may also say that the 
 history of Protestantism is the history of free 
 speech ; and while we have to notice, in the 
 course of the history, the alliance of many things to 
 which we can only express, for the most part, entire dis- 
 sent, it is gratifying to notice that, in our country and in 
 the pulpit of Protestantism, no speech has obtained any 
 very great or wide currency, which has not, in a very dis- 
 tinct manner, represented " the truth as it is in Je^ms" The 
 pulpit of Protestantism is placed at a great disadvantage, 
 all its faults and sins are open to the eye. The ages of 
 Protestantism have been the ages of the press ; we have 
 not had the means of exercising a rigid watchfulness over 
 the abberrations of speech of the troops of preaching friars, 
 while all the unguarded heresies of speech and thought of 
 the men of the Protestant pulpit stand as if in a panopti- 
 con. The Protestant pulpit has been remarkable for its 
 free speech — and it must be admitted that speech has not 
 at all times been guarded by good taste and good sense ; 
 we may speak in condemnation of those who have had so 
 
 (196) 
 
Free Speech in the Church. 1 97 
 
 little reverence for ignorance and infancy, that they have 
 made their pubHc address the medium for the exhibition cf 
 all the infirm deformities and ulcers, the doubts aH unre- 
 solved and unexplored in their own life and faith. 
 
 The rise of Protestantism was the birth also of Puritan- 
 ism, and in their ministry we trace the origin of a pulpit 
 power which is very distinctly separated from that of the 
 Komish Church. We have never enough cultivated that 
 which the Popish pulpit cultivated exclusively ; we confine 
 the intention of our pulpit to those twofold energies, — jper- 
 suasion and conviction, but these are so simply mental ; or, 
 if emotional, they are so entirely through the operation of 
 thought, that they very partially, I think, represent our 
 work ; and they do not represent the work of the Eo- 
 mish preacher at all ; his aim has been to subdue, to 
 overwhelm, as he overwhelms by the power of music and 
 the efficacy of sensuous representations. You will see that 
 it is possible for such preaching to affect very powerfully, 
 but to leave the conscience quite unimpressed and un- 
 touched ; such preaching is akin to the power of music, 
 and such preachers preach with the same effects and results 
 {IS those with which the master and prophet of song might 
 sing ; the very thing is described to the life in the prophet 
 Ezekiel — " Lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song, of 
 one that hath a pleasant voice and can j)lay well on an in- 
 strument, for they hear thy words, but they do them not.'' 
 
 Let me spend a moment m saying how many venerable 
 names there are all unknown. I have not taken you to St. 
 Paul's Cross, that famous place where Latimer, Hooker, 
 Hooper, EmLEY, and many another eloquent tongue spoke. 
 We do not know the wealth of the old shelves where still 
 are to be found their remains. Here I have one, Thomas 
 Playfere, belonging rather to the sixteenth than the seven- 
 teenth century, he was professor of divinity in the Univer- 
 sity of Cambridge ; a Calvinist, I may say almost, of 
 
198 In the Seventeenth and Eigliteentli Oenturies. 
 
 course : and he, further, was a fine type of the direct method 
 which Puritanism fastened on men's consciences. Dr. 
 Playfere has been called a trifler, unrivalled in an ornate and 
 flowery style ; but he is hvely, and life-giving, and resem- 
 bles, in many particulars, his predecessor, Henry Smith ; 
 he stood in the pulpit of the great unchancelled church of 
 St. Paul's Cross — no rood loft, no richly-carved or gilded 
 wood-work or screen, no paraiDhernaha of Popish idolatry 
 or corruption met the eye ; it realized the often-acted scene 
 of the chiu'ch-yard cross, in which the old friar was wont to 
 dehver his single sermon, when perchance denied the pulpit 
 of the church, but it was the whispering-gallery of the na- 
 tion. Playfere was a favorite there. I think, however he 
 may be charged with trifling, his style was one to be emi- 
 nently attractive to the multitude ; for such an audience, 
 he had what would be a very striking way of repeating, 
 reiterating, as it were reverberating, his thoughts, images, 
 and words ; notice it in the following ; 
 
 THAT THE PREACHER MUST SAY WELL AND DOE WELL. 
 
 Both pastor and people must doe that themselves which they 
 teach others to doe. That must be. First for the pastor he 
 hath two kind of garments,— a breastplate, and an Ephod : th« 
 breastplate shewes that he must have science to teach : the 
 Ephod shewes that he must have conscience to doe that which 
 he teaclieth. And in the very breastplate itseh* is written, not 
 onely Urim, but also Thummim. Urim signifies Hght. Thum- 
 mim signifies perfection. To proovc that the pastor must not 
 onely be the light of the world, but also the salt of the earth : 
 not only a light of direction in his teaching, but also a patteme 
 of perfection in his doing. For even as the snuficrs of the tab- 
 ernacle were made of pure golde : so preachers, which should 
 purge and dresse, and cleare others that they may burne-out 
 brightly, must be made of pure golde, that by doing well they 
 may also shine themselves. Hence it is that the Priest hath out 
 of the sacrifices for his share, the shake-breast and the right 
 shoulder. The shake-breast puts him in minde. of teaching 
 
Tliomas Playfere.—'' Say Well, Doe WelV 199 
 
 well: the right shoulder puts him in minde of doing well. 
 That great Prophet Ehas is called, the horseman and the Chariot 
 of Israel. A horseman directs the chariot, and keeps it in the 
 right way : a chariot goes in the right way it selfe. And so a 
 minister must not onely as a horseman direct others, and set 
 them in the right way, but also as a chariot, he must followe a 
 good course, and walke in the right way himself. He must be 
 both the horseman that teacheth, and the chariot that doth, 
 both the horseman and the chariot of Israel. Therefore he hath 
 upon the fringes of his vesture pomgranats and bells. Many 
 preachers are fall of bells which make a great ringing and 
 gingling, but because they have not pomgranats as well as bells, 
 therefore all the noise that they make is but as sounding brass, 
 or as a tinckling cymball. For the godly pastor must not onely say 
 well, and sound out the word of the Lord to others clearly as a 
 bell, but also he must doe well, and as a pomegranat be fruit- 
 full himself and full of good workes. Even as the pillars of the 
 tabernacle were made of Shittim wood, and overlaid with pure 
 gold : so preachers (which are called in the Epistle to the Ga- 
 latians the pillars of the Church) must not onely be overlaid out- 
 wardly with pure gold, teaching the word of God purely, but 
 also they must doe as they say, and inwardly be made of Shit- 
 tim woode, which never corrupteth, never rotteth, having no 
 corruption, no rottenness in their Uves. Hereupon our Lord, 
 speaking to his Prophet saies. Lift up thy voice as a trumpet. 
 Divers things there are which sound louder than a trumpet, 
 The sea, the thunder, or such like. Yet he saies not. Lift up 
 thy voice as the sea, or lift up thy voice as the thunder, but lift 
 up thy voice as a trumpet. Because a trumpeter when he sounds 
 his trumpet, he winds it with his mouth, and holds it up with 
 his hands : and so a Preacher which is a spirituall trumpeter, 
 must not onely by teaching wel, sound forth the word of life 
 with his moutli, but also by doing well he must support it, and 
 hold it up with his hands. And then doth he lift up his voice 
 as a trumpet. Those mysticall beasts in Ezekiel, which S. Gre- 
 gorie understandeth to be the ministers of the Church, had 
 hands under their wings. Many preachers are full of feathers, 
 and can scare aloft in a speculative kind of discoursing : but if 
 
200 Li tJie Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. 
 
 you should searcli for hands under their wings, perhaps you 
 should scarce find many times so much as halfe a hand amongst 
 them. But the godly pastor must have not onely wings of high 
 wisdome and know^ledge, but also hands under his wings to doe 
 that which he knoweth. For as the Prophet Malachie witness- 
 eth, The Priests lips should keepe knowledge. He sales not, 
 they should babble or utter knowledge to others, and have no 
 care to keepe it themselves, but having delivered it to others, 
 they must as well as others observe and doe it themselves. And 
 then indeede may their lips rightly be said to keepe knowledge. 
 For even as they which repaired the walls of Jerusalem, held a 
 sword in one hand and wrought with the other : so Preachers 
 which by winning souls repaire and build up the walls of the 
 heavenly Jerusalem, must not onely hold the sw^ord of the spirit, 
 which is the word of God in one hand, but also they must labor 
 with the other hand. Els they shall pull downe and destroy 
 rather than build up. But if they doe as fast as they say, then 
 they shall build apace, and edifie very much. Therefore Saint 
 Paul exhorteth Timothie to shew himself a workeman, which 
 needeth not to be ashamed, dividing the word of God aright. 
 He must not onely be a word-man, but also a workeman. He 
 must not onely hold a sword in one hand, to divide the word of 
 God aright, but also labor with the other hand, and doe his 
 best to shewe himselfe a workeman which neede not be asham'd. 
 And the same Apostle exhorteth the same Timothie againe, to 
 shewe the true patterne of holsome words. Holsome words is 
 sound teaching ; the true patterne of holsome w^ords, is well 
 doing. So that he shewes the true patterne of holsome w^ords, 
 which patternes and samples his teaching by dobig^ making 
 them both matches and paires, so that (as Marke the Eremite^ 
 speak eth) a man may easily read all his sermons, and all his ex- 
 hortations to others, written downe as it w^ere, and expressed in 
 the lines of his own life. And thus must every faithful preacher 
 doe. He must have not only a brest-plate, but also an Ephod : 
 he must have written in this brest-plate, not onely Urim, but 
 also Thummim : he must be like the snuffers of the tabernacle, 
 not onely purging others, but also made of pure gold himself: 
 he must have for his share of the sacrifices not onely the shake- 
 
Thomas Flayf ere. — '^Say Wellj Doe WellP 201 
 
 brest, but also the right shoulder : he must be as Elias was, not 
 onely the horseman, but also the chariot of Israel : he must have 
 upon the fringes of his vesture, not onely bells, but also pomgra- 
 nats : he must be like the pillars of the tabernacle, not onely 
 overlai'd outwardly with gold, but also inwardly made of Shit- 
 tim woode : he must not onely lift up his voice, but also lift it up 
 as a trumpet ; he must not onely have wings, but also hands under 
 his wings : he must not onely with his lippes utter knowledge to 
 others, but also keepe knowledge himself: he must not only 
 hold a sworde in one hand, but also labor with the other hand : 
 he must not onely devide the word of God aright, but also shewe 
 himself a workman which neede not be ashamed : he must not 
 onely deliver holsome words, but also shewe the true patterne 
 of holesome words, which is a godly life. The sum is this : 
 The faithful Pastor must not onely teach well, but also doe well. 
 For He that both doth and teacheth, the same shal be called 
 great in the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 Here also from the same sermon : 
 
 Beloved in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, it is a verie 
 monstrous thing, that any man should have more tongues then 
 hands. For God hath given us two hands, and but one tongue, 
 that we might doe much, and say but little. Yet many say so 
 much and doe so little, as though they had two tongues, and but 
 one hand : nay, three tongues and never a hand. In so much as 
 that may be aptly applied to them, which Pandulphus said to some 
 in his time ; You say much, but you doe litle : you say well, but 
 you doe ill: againe, you doe little, but say much : you doe ill, 
 but you say well. Such as these (which do either worse then 
 they teach, or lesse then they teach : teaching others to doe well, 
 and to doe much, bnt doing no whit themselves) may be re- 
 sembled to diverse things. To a whetsonc, which being blunt 
 it selfe, makes a knife sliarpe. To a painter, which beeing de- 
 formed himselfe, makes a picture faire. To a signe, which be- 
 ing weather-beaten and hanging without it selfe, directs pas- 
 sengers into the Inne. To a bell, which being deafe, and hear- 
 ing not it selfe, calls the people into the Church to hcare. To a 
 nightingale, which being restles, and sitting upon a thorne her 
 9* 
 
202 In the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. 
 
 selfe, brings others by her singing into a sweet sleepe. To a 
 goldsmith, which beeing beggerly and having not one peice of 
 plate to use himselfe, hath store for others which he shewes and 
 sels in his shoppe. Lastly, to a ridiculous actor in the citie of 
 Smyrna, pronouncing, 6 ccelum^ O heaven, pointed with his finger 
 toward the ground ; which when Polemo the chiefest man in 
 the place sawe, he could abide to stay no longer, but went from 
 the companie in a chafe, saying. This foole hath made a sole- 
 cisme with his hand; he hath spoken false Latine with his 
 hand. Such are all they which teach one thing, and do another : 
 which teach well and doe ill. They are like a blunt whetstone : 
 a deformed painter : a weather-beaten signe : a deafe bell : a 
 restless nightingale : a beggerly goldsmith : a ridiculous actor, 
 which pronounceth the heaven and pointeth to the earth. But 
 he that sitteth in the heaven shall laugh all such to scorn, the 
 Lord shall have them in derision, and hisse them off from the 
 stage. Because howsoever they have the heaven commonly at 
 their tongues ende, yet they have the earth continually at their 
 fingers end. So that they speak false Latine with their hand, nay 
 that which is worse, they speake false Divinitie with their hand. 
 Whereas we might easily avoid all such irregularitie, and make 
 true cogruitie between the tongue and the hand, if we would 
 make this text of Holy Scripture the rule of our whole life. For 
 then, I assure you, we should every one of us play our parts so 
 well, that in the ende, the tragedie of this woeful life being once 
 finished, we should have an applause and a plaudite of the whole 
 theatre, not onely of men and angels, but even of God himselfe, 
 who doth always behold us. 
 
 That which has been called his trifling style, is well illus- 
 trated in the copious manner in which he gathers up 
 images and fancies in the following passage : 
 
 Otherwise, the remembrance either of vices or vertues, is so 
 farre from putting us any whit forward, that it casteth us back- 
 ward. For as Marke the Eremite witnesseth. The remembrance 
 of former sinnes, is enough to cast him downe altogether, who 
 otherwise might have had some good hope. Our sinnes and 
 Elies sonnes are ahke. EUe hearing his sonnes were slaine, 
 
Play fere, — Copiousness of Fancy, 203 
 
 whom he himself had not chastised and corrected as hee ought, 
 fell downe backward and brake his necke. And so all they that 
 remember and hearken after their former sinnes, which they 
 should have mortified and killed, fall downe backward, and 
 turne away from God. For this is the diflference betweene the 
 godly and the wicked. Both fall, but the godly fall forward 
 upon their faces, as Abraham did when he talked with God : the 
 wicked fall backward upon the ground, as the Jews did when 
 they apprehended Christ. Hee that remembers his sinnes to be 
 sorie for them, as Abraham did, falles forward upon his face : 
 but he that remembers his sinnes, to rejoice in them as the Jews 
 did, falles backward upon the ground. Wherefore if thou bee 
 upon a mountaine, look not backward again upon Sodome as 
 Lots wife did : if thou be be within the Arke, flie not out againe 
 into the world, as Noah's crow did : if thou bee well washed, re- 
 turne not againe to the mire as the hogge doth : if thou bee 
 cleane purged, runne not again to thy filth, as the dogge doth : 
 if thou be going towards the land of Canaan, think not on the 
 flesh-pottes of Egypt : if thou be marching against the hoast of 
 Madian, drinke not of the waters of Ilarod : if thou be upon 
 the house top, come not downe : if thou hath set thy hand to 
 the j)lough, looke not behinde thee ; remember not those vices 
 which are behind thee. No, nor those vertues neither. For as 
 Gregorie writeth ; The remembrance of former vertues doth 
 many times so besot and inveigle a man, that it makes him like 
 a blinde Asse fall down into a ditcli. When Orpheus went to 
 fetch his wife Eurydice out of hell, hee had her granted to him 
 upon condition that hee should not turn backe his eyes to looke 
 upon her, till he had brought her into heaven. Yet having 
 brought her forward a great way, at length his love was so ex- 
 cessive, that he could not containe any longer but would needes 
 have a sight of her. Whereupon forthwith he lost both her 
 sight and herself, shee suddenly againe vanishing away from 
 him. This is a poeticall fiction. Nevertheless it serveth very 
 fitly to this purpose. To admonish us, that if we have any ver- 
 tue, which is to be loved as a man is to love his wife yet wee 
 must not be so blinde in affection, as to doate too much upon it, 
 or to fall in admiration of our selves for it, or to be alwaies gaz- 
 
204 In the Seventeenth and IlJigliteentli Centuries. 
 
 ing and wondering at it, lest by too mucli looking upon it, and 
 by too well liking of it, and by too often remembering it, wee 
 lost it. Because indeed he that remembers his vertues, hath no 
 vertues to remember. 
 
 Here is what would be to the audience of St. Paul's 
 Cross a delicious piece of trifling. 
 
 NAPnTHALI, THE HIND LET LOOSE. 
 
 So that the prophecie of the Patriarke Jacob is now also ful- 
 filled, who saith, Nepthalie shal be as a hind let loose giving 
 goodly words. For Christ did first jDreach in the land of Nep- 
 tlialy among the Jews. But seeing the Jews would not obey 
 him, therefore he had turned to the Gentiles. And So Nepthalie 
 is as a hind let loose, giving goodly words. Because Christ, who 
 first preached in Nepthalie, is not now any longer in prison 
 among the Jews ; but, as a hind let loose, leaping by the moun- 
 taines, and skipping by the hills, so he hath run swiftly over all 
 the world, and with his goodly words, with his gratious words, 
 he hath persuaded Japheth aud all the Gentiles, to dwell in the 
 tents of Shem, and to ride in the chariots of Amminadab. 
 These chariots of Amminadab are called in Latine, Qiiodrige^ 
 because each of them is drawne with foure horses. Which very 
 aptly befitteth the doctrine of the Gospel. For, as Calvin noteth 
 in his Epistle before his Harmonic, God hath of set purpose or- 
 dained that the Gospel should be written by foure Evangelists, 
 that so he might make a triumphant chariot for his sonne. 
 "Which being drawn with fowre horses, and running upon fowre 
 wheels might quickly pass over all the earth, and so shew the 
 glorie of the Lord, unto all his Church. 
 
 Another writer may a little hold your notice. Anthony 
 Maxey, Dean of Windsor, and apparently one of the chap- 
 lains of Charles I. In these sermons is less of strength 
 than in Playfere's, but there is assuredly even more of 
 tenderness. There is another, less argumentative than 
 Playfere, not so tender and rhetorical as Maxey, but 
 aboundiQg in strong and vigorous and more impressive 
 
Old John Sto'ughton, 205 
 
 images, John Stoughton, also one of the preachers before 
 kino's. A chaplaia of James I., and one of the thunderers 
 at St. PauFs Cross. There is one beginning of that thick 
 overlaying of the old learning and allusion, which, orna- 
 mental as it looks in print, is to be guarded agamst or very 
 dexterously used, lest it become only a means of rather 
 hiding the truth, than of reveahng it. None of these men 
 were either Basils or Chrj^sostoms ; we are not, it must be 
 confessed, so completely captivated with the setting, as in 
 the early fathers of Christian eloquence — their method in 
 the pulpit is the typo of multitudes. It would not profit 
 you, only should I amuse you, if I gave the method and 
 outline of any of the sermons of good John Stoughton, 
 especially in Baruch's Sore Gently Opened, indeed it is 
 egregiously ludicrous. Yet he was able to talk thus of 
 
 PEACE WITH CONSCIENCE. 
 
 The Bride that hath good cheere within, and good musicke, 
 and a good Biidegroome with her, may be merrie, though the 
 hail chance to rattle upon the tiles without upon her wedding 
 day : though the world should rattle about his eares, a man 
 may sit merrie that sits at the feast of good conscience : nay, 
 the child of God, by vertue of this, in the midst of the waves 
 of afiliction, is as secure as that child, which in a shipwracke 
 was upon a planke with his mother, till shee awaked him 
 securely sleeping, and then with his prettie countenance sweetly 
 smiling, and by-and-by sportingly asking a stroake to beat the 
 naughtie waves, and at last when they continued boisterous for 
 all that, sharply chiding them, as though they had been but his 
 playfellowes. O the innocencie ! O the comfort of peace ! O the 
 tranquillitie of a s^Dotless mind ? There is no heaven so cleere 
 as a good conscience. 
 
 Againe, all outward blessings cannot make a man happie that 
 hath an ill conscience, no more than warme cloath can produce 
 heat in a dead carkasse, if you would heap never so many upon 
 it : there is no peace to the wicked, Aut si imx., Icllo jjax ea 
 deterior. For with this, a man in his greatest fortunes, is but 
 
2o6 In tlie Seventeentli and EigliteeniJi Centuries. 
 
 like him that is worshipt in the street with cap and knee, but 
 as soon as he is stept within doores, is cursed and rated by a 
 scolding wife : like him that is lodged in a bed of ivorie, cover- 
 ed with cloth of gold, but all his bones within are broken : like 
 a book of Tragedies bound up in velvet, all faire without, but 
 all blacke within, the leaves are gold, but the lines are bloud ; 
 O the racke ! O the torment, O the horror of a guiltie mind ! 
 There is no hell so darke as an ill-conscience, from which no 
 earthly thing can free a man ; if hee that is bound up in a 
 velvet suit, fiUetted vath gold laces, were sure to escape this, I 
 think velvet would never be cut out for patches, to hang out for 
 signs of the tooth-ach : But is not a Crown of gold can cure 
 the head-ach, nor a velvet slipper can ease the gout, nor al the 
 Minstrels can make the Maid that is dead for sin rise and dance : 
 no more can honour, or riches, or pleasure, quiet the conscience : 
 onely the harp of David,, the holy singer of Israel can charme 
 this evil spirit. For the Hebrewes observe, that the letters in 
 the name of God, are literce quiescente.% letters of rest. God 
 only is the Center, where the soul may find this rest ; God 
 only can speake peace to the conscience, and God speaks this 
 peace only by religion which brings in the last place, peace 
 with God. 
 
 THE GOD OF PEACE. 
 
 God is the best store-house that a man can have, the best 
 Treasurie that a Kingdom can have : God is the best Shield 
 of any person, and the best Safe-guard of any Nation, if God 
 be our enemie, nothing can secure us ; if God be our friend, 
 nothing can hurt us : for when the enemie begirts a Citie round 
 about with the straightest siege, he cannot stop the passage to . 
 Heaven, and so long as that is opened, there may come releese 
 and succour from thence, if God be our friend, if He be in 
 league with us. Faith is a better Enginer than BcBdalus^ and 
 he yet made wings, with which he made an escape over the 
 high wals, within which he was imprisoned : let Pharaoh be 
 behind, the red Sea before, the mountaines on each side, the 
 Israelites can find a way, Bestat iter calo,^ c(bIo tentabimus ire : 
 When there is no other way to escape a danger, a Christian 
 can goe by Heaven. Againe, when a Citie is compast round 
 
Old John Stougliton, 207 
 
 about with a wall that is impregnable, it will yet be open 
 still toward Heaven, and therefore cannot bee out of danger, 
 if God be an enemie : for all their wals and bars, God could 
 raine fire and brimstone upon the Sodomites frgm Heaven. 
 Alexander asked the Scythians, what they were most afraid of, 
 thinking they would have said of himselfe, w^ho w^as so 
 victorious everie where; but they answered scoffingly. They 
 w^ere most afraid lest Heaven should fall upon them, meaning 
 they feared no enemy ; but we indeed need not feare anything, 
 but this onely, lest the heaven should fall upon us, lest God 
 should be our enemy. 
 
 W^ITHOUT GOD IN THE WORLD. 
 
 For as Ilcraclltus said. If the Sun w^ere w^anting, it would be 
 night for all the Stars ; so if the light of God's countenance be 
 wanting, if he frowne us, a man may sit in the shadow of death, 
 for all the glister of all worldly contentments : for, I beseech you 
 tell mee, suppose the houses were paved with pearles, and walled 
 with diamonds, if the roofe were open to the injuries of Heaven, 
 w^ould those shelter you from the storms and tempests ? w^ould 
 you chuse to bee so lodged in an hard winter ? Suppose the 
 king should set you in a Chaire of State, at a table richly 
 furnished, royally attended, but his sword hangs over your head 
 in a twined threed, would that honour make you merrie ? would 
 you desire to bee so feasted ? Suppose God himselfe should 
 make you this offer, crowne your heads with rose-buds, and 
 wash your paths in butter; cloath your selves in purple, and fare 
 deliciously everie day, take your fill of pleasures, open your 
 mouth w^ide, and I will fill you with all that heart can w ish of 
 worldly things, only this Facitum meam nunquam "cidebitis ; 
 You shall never see my face : would you think you had a good 
 offer ? would you accept of the condition ? 
 
 In this rich and delightful way the Puritan preacher 
 of Aldermanbury talked, interlacing his words with a 
 variety of recondite allusion from the Eabbins, and from 
 the classics — in the like of Him, however, and his 
 style.* 
 
 * A good deal of condensed information and acquaintance with 
 
:2o8 In the Seventeenth and Mghteenih Centuries. 
 
 The dawn of the Reformation was in a day when the 
 preaching of the Romish Church was especially cold, 
 formal, and from the lips ; the words of our Reformers, 
 and the Words of awakened Protestantism, have been 
 especially characterised by this, — they have searched tJie 
 conscience. I might attempt to dehneate the vices of the 
 French school of pulpit eloquence, and to lay down some 
 principles from the materials which the Puritan pulpit has 
 handed down to us. Both have thek faults ; true, the 
 French school, as far as it is represented to us by Bossuet, 
 seems to me audaciously sinful ; and here let me say, that 
 I have no idea that my meeting with you thus, from week 
 to week, is for the purpose of making you eloquent as that 
 term is usually understood — that is, florid, showy, artistic 
 and rhetorical speakers. The ivork of the tnie preacher- is 
 the searching of the entrance into men's consciences, by the 
 knowledge of his own. The preaching of Bossuet is sonor- 
 ous and showy sound. Versailles, in those days, in the 
 age of Louis XIII., had a theatre and a chapel, and the 
 spirit of the one presided over the other ; ahke in either 
 place it was the acting of things which did not for a 
 moment affect the auditors' life ; produced, but never 
 really touched, the passions. What, then, is in preaching ? 
 — Manner, matter. The French is almost exclusively 
 attentive to manner. 
 
 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries we are in 
 periods during which, in our country, we find the most 
 eminent illustrations of pulpit earnestness, and the most 
 remarkable illustrations of pulpit listlessness. We have 
 every variety of strange anecdote of that time, from the 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth to the close of the last century ; 
 a long period I know, but time presses. We have heard 
 
 the Pulpit of St. Paul's Cross may be found in SkeicJies of the 
 Reformation and Elizabethan Age taken from ilie Contemporan^y 
 Pulpit. By J. 0. W. Haweis, M.A. 
 
A Shop-keeping Style of Eloqiience! 209 
 
 of William Austin, in the reign of James I., who preached 
 on the words, ^' And Bartholomew" for St. Bartholomew's 
 Day. After noticing, what is perfectly true, that the name 
 of Bartholomew never appears in Scripture without being 
 preceded by the copulative particle, he proceeds to dilate 
 on the Christian duty, and benefit of mutual help, and 
 assistance, and doctrine, which was entirely evolved from 
 the words " And Baiiholomeiv." And the ingenious repartee 
 with which a preacher of this order was once met is well 
 ]ino^^^l. Having become a candidate for some lectureship, 
 he was required, in his tui'n, to exhibit his talents in the 
 pulpit, and naturally wishing to make the most of them, 
 he took for his text the word " But " ; he thence deduced 
 the lesson, that no lot is without its cross. Naaman was 
 a mighty man of valor and honorable ; Imt he was a leper. 
 The four wicked cities were as fruitful as the garden of the 
 Lord ; but the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners 
 before the Lord exceedingly. The inhabitants of Ai thought 
 that they had put the Israehtes to flight ; hut they wist not 
 that there were hers-in-wait behind the city, &c., &c. 
 "When our divine returned to the vestry, he was met by the 
 principal of the lectureshij) with the appropriate obser- 
 vation : " Sir, it was a most ingenious sermon, and we are 
 exceedingly obhged to you for it ; hut you are not the 
 lecturer that will do for us. 
 
 And this anecdote leads me to remark that tliis verbal 
 crochetiness is very characteristic of many of even the best 
 preachers of the reigns of James L and Charles L ; you 
 will remember, some of you, how this defaces the sermons 
 even of Bishop Andrewes, and of a greater mind still, that 
 of Dr. Donne. No doubt our preaching has somewhat im- 
 proved. Echart tells us of a preacher who may be said to 
 have a shop-keeping sort of eloquence. He told his hearers 
 that " Christ is a treasury of all wares and commodities," 
 and then he cried aloud, " Good people, what do you lack ? 
 
2 1 o In the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. 
 
 What do you buy ? Will you buy any balm of Gilead, and 
 eye-salve? Any myrrli, aloes, or cassia? Shall I fit you 
 with a robe of righteousness, or with a white raiment ? 
 Say, then, what is it you want ? Here is a very choice 
 armory, shall I show you a helmet of salvation, a shield 
 or breastplate of faith ? Will you please to walk in and 
 see some precious stones ? A jasper, a sapphire or a chal- 
 cedony ? Speak, what do you buy ? what do ye buy ?" To 
 some of our notions this is but Httle short of shocking. 
 But it has been usual to give the credit of all these sins 
 against bad taste, and therefore against good sense, to the 
 Puritan. Kobinson, in his edition of Claude has given a 
 multitude of instances illustrative of the sins of the 
 educated, and even of bishops and High-Church digni- 
 taries. At a later period the well-known Daniel Burgess 
 used to say : " That is the best key v^^hich fits the lock and 
 opens the door, though it be not a silver or a gold one." 
 In one of his sermons he told his congregation, that " if 
 they wanted a suit for a year they might go to Mi*. Doyley ; 
 if they wanted a suit for hfe they might go into chancery ; 
 but if they would have one to last for ever they must go 
 to Christ Jesus, and get the robe of his righteousness to 
 clothe them." In William's reign he said, " The reason why 
 the people of God who descended from Jacob were called 
 Israehtes was, because God did not choose that His people 
 should be called Jacobites." The times are full to overflow- 
 ing of such stories as these. 
 
 Amazing and amusing are some of these things in my 
 possession. I have one sermon entitled The Eoijd Merchant, 
 A Sermon preached at Whitehall, before the King^s Majesty, 
 at the Nuptuals of an Honourable Lord and his Lady. By 
 Bobert Wilkinson of Cambridge. The second edition — for it 
 passed into a second edition — ^bears the imprint of 1708 ; 
 it is mainly a description of the bride, and the happy text 
 taken — " She is like a merchant ship, she bringefch her goods 
 
A S^pecimen of Foolishness in Preaching, 211 
 
 from afar." Every line of it is the most delightful non- 
 sense. A wife is to be like a ship — a merchant ship — to 
 teach ! (1.) The merchant is a profitable ship, to teach a 
 wife in all things to endeavor her husband's profit. (2.) 
 The merchant is a painful ship, and she must be a painful 
 wife. (3.) He is the merchant, she the ship, she must con- 
 clude she was made for him, &c. (4.) She is like a mer- 
 chant's ship, that is a friendly fellow and peaceable com- 
 panion, not a man-of-war to him. Then we have the follow- 
 ing exquisite passage : 
 
 But of the Quahties, a Woman must not have one quality of 
 a Ship ; and that is too much rigging. O ! what a wonder is it 
 to see a Ship under sail, with her Tacklings, and her Masts, and 
 her tops and top-gallants, with her upper Decks and her Nether- 
 decks and so bedect ; with her Streamers, Flags, and Ensigns, 
 and I know not what ; yea, but a world of wonders it is to see a 
 Woman created in God's Image, so miscreate oftentimes and de- 
 formed, with her French, her Spanish, and her foolish fashions, 
 that he that made her, when he looks upon her shall hardly 
 know her, with her Plumes, her Fans, and a silken Vizard ; with 
 a Ruflf like a Sail ; yea, a Ruff like a Rain-bow ; with a Feather 
 in her Cap, like a flag in her Top, to tell (I think) which way 
 the Wind will blow. Isaiah made a profer, in the third of his 
 Prophecy, to set out by enumeration the Shop of these vanities ; 
 their Bonnets, and their Bracelets, and their Tablets, their Slip- 
 pers, and their Mufflers ; their Yails, their Wimples, and their 
 Crisping-pins ; of some whereof if one should say to me, (as 
 PhiUp sometimes said to the Eunuch) Understandest thou 
 what thou readest ? (Acts 8.) I might answer with the Eunuch 
 again. How can I without a Guide ? That is unless some Gentle- 
 woman would comment on the Text. But Isaiah was then, and 
 and we are now ; now that fancy hath multiplied the Text of 
 Fashions with the time, so as what was then but a Shop is now 
 increased to a Ship of Vanities. But what saith the Scriptures ? 
 The King's .Daughter is all glorious within, Psal. 45, and as 
 Ships which are the fairest in shew, yet are not always the fittest 
 for use ; so neither are Women the more to be esteemed, but the 
 
212 In the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 
 
 more to be susiDCcted for their fair trappings ; yet we condemn 
 not in greater Personages the use of Ornaments ; yea, we teach 
 that Silver, Silks and Gold were created, not only for the neces- 
 sity, but also for Ornament of the Saints : In the practice 
 whereof, Rebeccah, a holy Woman is noted to have received 
 from Isaac a Holy Man, even Ear-rings, Habiliments and Bracelets 
 .of Gold, Gen 24, therefore, this is it we teach for Rules of 
 Christian Sobriety, That if a Woman exceed neither Decency in 
 Fashion, nor the limits of her State and Degree ; and that she be 
 proud of nothing, we see no reason but she may wear any 
 thing. 
 
 It followeth, she is like a Ship, but what a Ship ? A Ship of 
 Merchants, no doubt, a great Commendation ; for the Kingdom 
 of Heaven is like a Merchant, Matt. 13. and Merchants have been 
 Princes, Isa. 23, and Princes are Gods, Psal. 82. The Merchant 
 is of all Men most laborious for his Life, the most adventurous 
 in his Labour, and the most peaceable upon the Sea, the most 
 profitable upon the Land ; yea, the Merchant is the Combination 
 and Union of Lands and Countries. She is like a Ship of Mer- 
 chants, therefore first to be reckon'd (as ye see) among the 
 Laity ; not like a Fisherman's Boat, not like St. Peter's Ship ; 
 for Christ did call no She Apostles. Indeed it is commendable 
 in a Woman, when she is able by her Wisdom to Instruct her 
 Children, and to give at Opportunities good Counsel to her Hus- 
 band : but when Women shall take upon them (as many have 
 done) to build Churches and to chalk out Discipline for the 
 Church ; this is neither commendable nor tolerable : For her 
 Hands (saith Solomon) must handle the Spindle, Ver. 19. the 
 Spindle or the Cradle, but neither the Altar nor the Temple ; for 
 St. John commendeth even to the Elect Lady, not so much her 
 talking as her walking in the Commandments, 2 John 5. 6. there- 
 fore to such preaching Women, it may be answered, as St. Ber- 
 nard sometimes answered the Image of the Blessed Virgin at 
 the great Church at Spire in Germany ; Bernard was no sooner 
 come into the Church, but the Image straight saluted him, and 
 bade him. Good morrow, Bernard, whereat Bernard well know- 
 ing the Juggling of the Fryars, made answer again out of St. 
 Paul. O (saith he) your Ladyship hath forgot yourself. It is not 
 lawful for Women to speak in the Church. 
 
The Puritan Method with the Scriptures, 2 1 3 
 
 Assuredly, all the nonsense was not on the lips of the 
 Nonconformist. Of course, the period to which I refer 
 was the time when these moral essays abounded — those 
 pretty little performances, of which it has been well said 
 by Dr. Newman, to still and to overcome the force of the 
 passions they are as effectual as the feathers of the Chinese 
 thrown into the sea to quiet the storm and to drive away 
 the devil. 
 
 I have quoted some specimens of Komanist oratory, 
 which certainly show that prejudice had not blinded my 
 eyes to any measure of excellence among the orators of 
 that Church ; but I could fill a volume with specimens of 
 nasty sermons, nonsense sermons, and vulgar sermons, 
 from the hps and pens both of Popish and Church-of-Eng- 
 land orators. After such specimens as these, who shall ridi- 
 cule the preaching of the so-called Puritan carpenters or 
 cobblers. Things come round, for the very sermons so ridi- 
 culed, were frequently preached by those who ridiculed 
 them. " Odd fate," exclaims Kobinson, " of a Puritanical 
 sermon, — studied in a jail, x^reached under a hedge, printed 
 in a garret, sold at a pedlar's stall, bought by a priest's 
 footman, uttered from a pulpit in a Cathedral, apjDlauded by 
 a bishop, and ordered to the press by a procession of 
 gentry." 
 
 A mode of treatment of Scripture truth more unlike our 
 now ordinary method, than that adopted by some of these 
 men, it is impossible to conceive. How different to Keil 
 and Dehtzsch, to Lange, Olshausen, Ebrard, Ewald, or 
 Hengstenberg ? These old men dealt with Scripture in al- 
 together another fashion. When they sat down to the 
 Bible they never said, "What do you here? Who sent 
 you ? Whence came you ? How do you prove yourseK ? " 
 There were not many of them even who said, " What is the 
 meaning of you ? " They accepted all that as understood 
 from tlie commencement ; they said to the Bible, or the 
 
214 ^^^ ^^^^ Seveiiteentli and EigliteentJi Centuries. 
 
 part of it to wliicli they addressed themselves, " You are 
 here and I am here ; comfort me, help me, talk to me, be 
 wisdom to me, light to me, treat me tenderly, guide me 
 truly." They submitted themselves to the Bible with a sim- 
 plicity and earnestness which, to most of our modern di- 
 vines, would seem the most helpless and hopeless imbecility. 
 Do we mean by this to give altogether our admii^ation and 
 adhesion to the method of the old Puritan commentators ? 
 No. We are thankful to the modem men for much ; but, 
 assuredly, the things we cannot press out of them are-- 
 comfort, refreshment, and sweetness. "Where is there one 
 of whom that can be said, which Mr. Grosart says of Rich- 
 ard Bernard's Ruth ? — " As you read, you feel refreshed as 
 with the blowing of bean-blossom-scented breezes in your 
 evening walk ; you fancy its author has a gentle spirit, 
 hving apart from the crowd in cloistered piety ; the pastor 
 of some small rural flock bringing the odor of kine and 
 grass into some antique village church." Again, he speaks 
 of him, and of another of his works — " As full of wit, wis- 
 dom, penetration, and ineffable touches, as the tints in sea- 
 shells, or the cups in flowers." We shall look a rare long 
 time among modem theologians of the scholastic or expos- 
 itory, critical or exegetical order, before we meet with any 
 likeness to things so sweetly, so simply, and delightfully 
 natural. We have no doubt that, comparing the two orders 
 of men together in breadth of thought, perhaps in the 
 quality of pure thought, the modems have an advantage 
 over their fathers ; of criticism, of course, in our sense of 
 the word, most of these fathers were entirely ignorant — 
 though even in this department we would back Owen on the 
 Hebrews against any of the innumerable efforts of modem 
 times to dig into the depths or scale the heights of that 
 stupendous epistle ; and we still remember with homage 
 the immense labors of Lightfoot and Pocock ; they excelled 
 in that which seems to be so much passed over, forgotten, 
 
Tedious and ^^FainfuV^ Preaching. 215 
 
 unknown, or unappreciated among modem theologists ; 
 whether from the pulpit, the professor's chair, or the press ; 
 these ancient men were tender and emotional, experimental. 
 The probability is, if a man assay that nowa-days, he 
 sprawls over into the most deplorable stupidity, or, with the 
 most perfect mng froid^ he offers you a glass of the most 
 watery milk and water. The old commentators were hu- 
 man, thoughtful, perfectly serious in their apprehension of 
 life and the life to come ; they were profoundly experi- 
 mental, and even now they better read the human states 
 of some of us than the men who are hving in our midst. 
 
 Their diffuseness was immense ; to us, if our convenience 
 did not permit us to skip huge gulfs, they would most of 
 them be frequently tedious. If it be true, as Guiberfc De 
 Nogent says, " A tedious sermon only causes anger, what 
 was good in it is forgotten, and men go away feeling only 
 aversion," then we think the auditors of those times must 
 have often gone away angry. It must be admitted that 
 about many of them there is a great sameness ; but they 
 are rich in illustration and in feeling. Many of them could 
 scarcely ever have laid down their pen ; they must have 
 been always in the study, they carried the study perpetually 
 with them, they communed wdth their own heart. It is 
 probable the night-lamp continued trimmed to a late hour, 
 " outwatching Tlw Bear ; " it is still more probable that they 
 were up at an early hour. One wonders how their works 
 contrived to find a sale sufficient to pay the printer — of 
 more than this they were usually careless. Conceits and 
 fancies fastened themselves like burrs upon them, and led 
 them to all sorts of even whimsical, spiritual, allegorical 
 interpretations, like Kichard Bernard's description of the 
 marshalhng the subjects of the proceedings in Manshire : 
 
 Sin is the Thief and Robbery he stealeth our graces, spoileth 
 US of every blessing, utterly undoeth us, and maketh miserable 
 both body and soul. He is a murderer ; spares no person, sex, 
 
2 1 6 In the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 
 
 or age ; a strong thief : no human power can bind him ; a subtle 
 thief: he beguiled Adam, David, yea, even Paul. The only 
 watchman to spy him out is Godly-Jealousy. His resort is in 
 Sours Town, lodging in the heart. Sin is to be sought in the 
 by-lanes, and in Sense, Thought, Word, and Deed Streets. The 
 hue and cry is after fellows called Outside, who nod or sleep at 
 Church, and, if awake, have their mind wandering : Sir Worldly 
 Wise, a self-conceited earthworm ; Sir Lukewarm, a Jack-on both- 
 sides ; Sir Plausible Civil ; Master Machiavel ; a licentious fel- 
 low named Libertine ; a snappish fellow, one Scrupulosity ; and 
 one babbling Babylonian ; these conceal the villain Sin. To es- 
 cape, he pretends to be an honest man ; calls vices by virtuous 
 names ; his relations. Ignorance, Error, Opinion, Idolatry, Sub- 
 tility. Custom, Forefathers, Sir Power, Sir Sampler, Sir Must-do, 
 Sir Silly, Vain Hope, Presumption, Wilful, and Saint-like, all 
 shelter and hide him. The Justice, Lord Jesus, issues his war- 
 rant — God's Word — to the Constable, Mr. Illuminated Under- 
 standing, dwelling in Regeneration, aided by his wife, Grace ; 
 his sons. Will and Obedience, and his daughters. Faith, Hope, 
 and Charity ; with his men Humility and Self-denial, and his 
 maids Temperance and Patience. Having got his warrant, he 
 calls to aid his next neighbor. Godly Sorrow, with his seven 
 sons. Care, Clearing, Indignation, Fear, Vehement Desire, Zeal, 
 and Revenge : these are capable of apprehending the sturdiest 
 thief. He goes to the common inn, an harlot's house called Mis- 
 tress Heart, a receptacle for all villains and thieves, no dishonest 
 person being denied houseroom. Mistress Heart married her 
 own father, an Old-man, keeping rest night and day, to prevent 
 any godJy motion from lodging there. The house has five doors. 
 Hearing, Seeing, Tasting, Smelling, and Feeling. Eleven maids, 
 impudent harlots, wait upon the guests. Love, Hatred, Desire, 
 Detestation, Vain-hope, Despair, Fear, Audacity, Joy, Sorrow, 
 and Anger, and a man-servant Will. The Dishes are the lusts 
 of the flesh, served in the platter of pleasure ; the lust of the 
 eyes, in the plate of profit ; and the pride of life. The drink is 
 the pleasure of sin ; their bedroom is natural corruption. " In 
 this room lietli Mistress Heart, all her maids, her man, and all 
 her guests together, like wild Irish." The bed is Impenitency, 
 
Their Quaint Oddity. 217 
 
 and tlie coverings Carnal Security ; when the Constable enters, 
 he attacks them all with " apprehension of God's wrath," and 
 carries them before the Judge, who examines the prisoners, and 
 imprisons them until the assizes, in the custody of the jailor 
 New Man. " If any prisoner breaks out, the sheriff— Religion 
 —must bear the blame : saying. This is your religion, is it ? " 
 The keepers and fetters, as vows, fasting, prayer, &c., are de- 
 scribed with the prison. 
 
 Or, as in another like description of the trial of the pris- 
 oner, and judgment without appeal : 
 
 The commission is conscience ; the circuit, the Soul : the coun- 
 cil for the king are Divine Reason and Quick-sightedness ; the 
 clerk, Memory ; the witness. Godly Sorrow ; the Grand Jury, 
 Holy Men, the inspired authors : the traverse jury. Faith, Love 
 of God, Fear of God, Charity, Sincerity, Unity, Patience, Inno- 
 cency. Chastity, Equity, Verity, and Contentation ; all these arc 
 challenges by the prisoners who would be tried by Nature, 
 Doubting, Careless, etc., all freeholders of great means. This 
 the Judge overrules ; Old-man is put on his trial first, and David, 
 Job, Isaiah, and Paul, are witnesses against him. He pleads, 
 *' There is no such thing as Original Corruption : Pelagius, a 
 learned man, and all those now that are called Anabaptists, have 
 hitherto, and yet do maintain that sin cometh by imitation, and 
 not by inbred pravity. Good my lord, cast not away so old a 
 man, for I am at this day 5,569 years old." He is found guilty, 
 and his sentence is : " Thou shalt be carried back to the place 
 of execution, and there be cast off, with all thy deeds, and all 
 thy members daily mortified and crucified, with all thy lusts, of 
 every one that hath truly put on Christ," Mistress Heart is then 
 tried, Moses (Gen. viii., 21), Jeremiah (xvii., 9), Ezekiel (xi., 19), 
 Matthew (xii., 34), and others give evidence, and she is con- 
 victed, and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment under the jailor, 
 New Man. All the rest of the prisoners are tried. 
 
 Some of my hearers will say, Precisely so, it is the spirit 
 of fancy and conceit ; these " quirks and quiddities" of 
 speech, with which these men abound, are not pleasant to 
 10 
 
 /f, 
 
 msiTf 
 
2 1 8 I^^ tTie Seventeentli and Eigliteenih Centuries, 
 
 us. To which we may also reply, Where such character- 
 istics are, this nimbleness of pregnant fancy brings many 
 other better things with it ; it is hke the light or the rain — 
 valuable, not only for what they are in themselves, but for 
 what they open in others. We like such words as the fol- 
 lowing, quoted by Mr. Grosart from Samuel Torshell, in 
 which he so happily sketches the humble rustic behever. 
 He says : 
 
 There lies a great deal of wealth in some obscure and neg- 
 lected Christians. They do not more ordinarily tread upon and 
 walk over the unknown veins of gold in America, than many 
 supercilious and conceited professors do pass by and neglect 
 golden and very precious spirits. One would not think what 
 dexterity in the Scriptures, what judgment in controversies, 
 what abiUty to settle and comfort a disturbed conscience, what 
 fervency and expressions in prayer, what acquaintance with God 
 and His providence, what strength of faith, what patience, meek- 
 ness, moderation, contentedness, heavenly-mindedness, and what 
 not, may be now and then found out and discovered in plain 
 people, men and women that wear plain clothes, that have plain 
 carriage and plain speech. And besides, there may haply be 
 more where grace is expected than we look for ; more in a saint 
 than a bare sentence or action will or can express. The golden 
 vein is broader and thicker than sometimes we guess it to be. 
 How then is the necessaiy use of wisdom to be able to see fur- 
 ther than the russet? Not to be cozened with reverend beards 
 and grave furs, and demure countenances (like the councillors to 
 the Muscovian that I spake of in my Hypocrite)^ as if graces and 
 gifts dwelt only at those signs. And when we find a vein, there 
 must be skill to dig it. Oh I how did the old patriarchs remove 
 their habitations for the benefit of water-springs ! how did they 
 rejoice when they found a well ; and we, when we have met with 
 these " wells of living water," how shall we fetch it up ! (Prov- 
 erbs XX., 5). 
 
 The readuig of these men was peculiar, it was a reading 
 we have learned to despise. They were not great in novels. 
 
Their Sermons Microcosms. 2 1 9 
 
 and compendious notes, and treatises of philosophy ; these 
 were few then ; indeed, modem philosophy had scarcely 
 left her kingdom of Egyptian night of the dark ages to set 
 forth upon her pilgrimage to the promised land. "We read 
 a hundred books to their one ; but for the weight of real 
 learning, we have in general, perhaps, the proportion of a 
 grain to a hundredweight. They were thoroughly well-bot- 
 tomed men, they turned over the fathers with infinite de- 
 Hght. Dear to them Gregonj the Great on Job ; dear to them 
 Augustbw on the Psalms; and words and works such as 
 these became index fingers to them of matters they were to 
 make their own by experience. They put us in miud of 
 that sohtary of the desert, who came into the city of Alex- 
 andria and carried back with him a single text of Scripture, 
 refusing afterwards to learn another because he could never 
 fully practise the firsi We find fault with them because 
 they found a whole body of theology, a perfect universe, in 
 a text ; and yet, perhaps, they were more reasonable than 
 we are, for as the whole firmament is held in a drop of rain 
 or dew, and all the forces of nature may be held in solution 
 in a single grain, so it does not seem unreasonable that 
 even a single portion of the Book of God should contain 
 the whole of the Book of God ; and it was a characteristic 
 of most of these commentators that they liked to find and 
 to dwell upon texts which were to them httle, but compre- 
 hensive Gospels, the seK-contained chapters and portions 
 of the Book of God, and every text was a kind of geomet- 
 rical staircase, and stood self-poised and balanced. Many 
 of these men can never be sufficiently loved, their lives were 
 the salt of our English earth, their ashes and memories 
 give a sanctity of memory to many an out-of-the-way village 
 church or tabernacle, and their words, while we receive 
 with thankfulness the thoughtful criticism of modern times, 
 possess a searching and sustaining gi-ace and vigor which 
 thought and criticism alone can never bestow. 
 
220 In the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. 
 
 A notice of these men, their Commentaries and Sermons, 
 would be quite incomplete if it did not inchide a reference 
 to the great and bulky books of Cheistopher Ness* and 
 John Teapp ; f the estimates formed of these seem also, for 
 the most part, the character of Thomas Gouge, of Edwaed 
 Elton, of Elnathan Paee, of Michael Jeemin, of William 
 CowPEE, of Daniel Kogees, and innumerable authors be- 
 sides ; amongst whom, it must be confessed, there is con- 
 siderable sameness of doctrine, remark, and style ; among 
 them, perhaps, Trapp may be regarded as chief, more de- 
 sultory than many, less critical, more amusing and illus- 
 trative, but very substantially the same. Trapp was no 
 commentator to please the men of the modern critical school, 
 or nice, over-refining and fastidious tastes. A great deal 
 that he said will bear perhaps no sort of close scrutiny ; he 
 set down every thing as it came to his nimble and won- 
 drously-furnished memory, and rapid glancing mind ; of 
 all the sx:)mtualizing old commentators he is the chief. 
 Matthew Henry has a flowing and felicitous style ; he is 
 often quaint, never coarse, every word may be read in the 
 family ; what he knew and had read never appears, he al- 
 ways keeps such a highway of speech that the most iUiter- 
 ate can apprehend him ; he must have known Trapp's book 
 welL Their method is very similar, and both dealt with 
 Scripture exactly as Augustine and Gregory the Great have 
 set to all times the example. We do not mean, of course, 
 to compare in weight or worth our two dear commentators 
 with the gi'and and immortally-beloved bishops of Hippo 
 
 * A Complete History and Mystery of the Old and New I'estaments, 
 Logically Discussed and Theologically Improved^ etc., etc. 4 vols., 
 folio. 1G90. 
 
 f A Commentary or Exposition upon the Whole Bible. By John 
 Trapp, M.A., once of Christ's Church, Oxford, now of Wcston-upon- 
 Avon, in Gloucestershire, 1G50-1GG0. 5 vols., folio. Now in course 
 of reprint by R. D. Dickenson, London. 
 
Jolm Trapp the Commentator . 221 
 
 and Rome. But they all treated the words of Scripture in 
 a manner which seems now to be impossible. Every re- 
 motest thread of the fringe of sacred speech was to those 
 men penetrated with divine aromas of fragrances, hke " the 
 oil that went down to the beard, even Aaron's beard, unto 
 the skirts of his garments," so spiritual power and meaning 
 pulsed along every syllable of the Holy Book. They could 
 not read a text without saying, " Surely God is in this place." 
 All the words, too, panted and were alive with spiritual 
 meanings — Ohrist must be everywhere. They constantly 
 heard him saying, in aU the texts of the old Book, " They 
 testify of Me." This is Trapp's method. A good deal of 
 modem criticism and commentary results in a beautifully 
 adroit success in lowering to the reader's mind the whole 
 tone and intention, exclusiveness and spirituahty of the 
 Book. There is a great deal of nonsense in Trapp ; we are 
 often compelled to smile, and somethmg more, perhaps, but 
 we do not hesitate to say that his nonsense is always inno- 
 cent, and we would rather have it than a great deal that 
 passes for modem critical refinement and sense. The 
 things in his pages which are most far-fetched and amusmg 
 are dehghtful compared with some of the dreary disserta- 
 tions, the occult, critical sagacities and impersonal etymo- 
 logical abstractions in which some modem miuds cut them- 
 selves adrift from aU the moormgs of sense. His reading 
 must have been extraordmary, he lays it aU under contri- 
 bution ; we have no commentary at all approaching it in 
 its multiplicity and variety of reference and suggestion. 
 The Fathers, the Greek and Latin poets, historians, and 
 philosophers, the chroniclers of our own country, all yield 
 him admirable illustrations ; he who read no book but 
 Trapp, translating, referring to, and verifying, all the au- 
 thors he quotes, could only be a learned man. Then he is 
 quaint and witty, and then he holds all in a solution of rich 
 imction and tenderness. His work abounds with aoiecdote, 
 
222 In the Seventeeiitli and EighteentJi Centuries. 
 
 and wliile there is much in so large a work with which we 
 might dispense, so that I have often thought it might be 
 well condensed for family reading, yet I am compelled to 
 feel that for ministers and teachers who desire to be mas- 
 ters of assemblies, no commentary is so rich and useful. 
 He does not refine either in learning or thought, he teems 
 Vvith corresponding texts whatever passage he expounds. 
 His knowledge of Scripture must have been, so to speak, 
 infinite ; he explains a text, and, in doing so, refers you to 
 some out-of-the-way text, or Scripture illustration, which 
 has most likely escaped your notice, and thus often guides 
 you to a whole chain of illustration. Certainly William 
 Orme's criticism, in his Bibliotheca BMia, partakes only of 
 his often ungenerous, and always cold criticism, when he 
 says that " Trapp was a man of some vigor of mind, but 
 his language is often exceedingly quaint and uncouth." 
 
 A large volume would not suffice to trace the character- 
 istics, and even sHghtly to illustrate the various featui^es of, 
 the pulpit of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 
 Yet I should like to mention some names, not offcen heard 
 now, names of men whose works are few and rare, and not 
 very likely to be reprinted : some of these are associated 
 with a rare amount of learning, of piet}'-, of calm thought, 
 and still more frequently with the excursions of a most hvely 
 fancy. Turn to the shelves of the Puritan divines — those 
 massive, square, closely-priated volumes, those stately folios 
 — ^they were all spoken in churches before the great parties 
 came to their defiant struggle, and the madness of that 
 imbecile, old, frantic Laud tore the Church in twain ; or 
 churches in villages and in towns, while the strife was 
 raging, and the Independents and Presbyterians were re- 
 newing the contest, which had been between freedom and 
 episcopacy ; or, perhaps, in lonely village chapels and con- 
 venticles, in the j)oor meeting-house, retreating into the 
 lonely lane from the sneer of the satirist, or the warrant of 
 
J dim Everard. — Kirjath-Sepher. 223 
 
 the magistrate. Let me mention a few whose names and 
 works will be Hght, and help, and aid, if you place them 
 within reach in your study. There were men to whom, I 
 confess, I have an attachment of heart — the Puiitan mys-' 
 tics ; especially Geoege Sixes, the friend and biographer of 
 Sir Hany Yane,* and his friend, Peter Sterey, whose 
 work on " The Freedom of the WiU,"' and his rare and highly 
 prized " Kise, Race, and Royalty of the Kingdom of God in 
 the Soul of Man in the Gospel," and liis posthumous work 
 " On the Appearance of God to Man," refract and glow with 
 broken and mystical splendors m every syllable, disorderly 
 and incoherent as they are. More to the level of ordinary 
 apprehension is John Eveeaed * of Kensington ; and to 
 those who care to enter upon the treasures of mystical di- 
 vinity, this volume, as weU as those mentioned before, is a 
 perfect exchequer of divine wealth and suggestion ; and 
 not at all inaptly does he illustrate a large rehgious philos- 
 ophy of his time, and the mode in which the letter of the 
 word was made to give up unexpected stores to the patient 
 seeker. An instance of this occui's in his mode of ex- 
 pounding Joshua XV. 15, 16, 17 : 
 
 THE SMITING OF KIRJATH-SEPHER. 
 
 But to all this I reduce only this part of this chapter now read, 
 to unfold and interpret all this : And for the present I have 
 made choice of these two verses, to give light to that whole chax^- 
 ter ; and that chapter is the exposition of this, as I before said : 
 O, how like is my text, and every part thereof, to those new 
 washed sheep ! Cant, iv., 2, Every word leareth twins, and there 
 is none harren among them. 
 
 Of which two verses, I shall say, as Abigail said of Imbal, 
 when David came to destroy him, 
 
 * Evangelical Essays towards the Discovery of a Gospel State. By 
 George Sikes, 1666. An Exposition of Ecclesiastes, or, Tlie PreacJi- 
 er, First printed, 1680. 
 
 *Some Gospel Treasuries Opened, or the Holiest of all Unvailing, 
 &c , &c. By John Everard, D.D. lCo3, 
 
22^ In the Seventeenth and EighteentTi Centuries. 
 
 "Regard not this son of Belial^ and let ?iot 7ny Lord he angry ^ 
 Nahal is his name^ and so is he : So I may say of this text, as 
 their names are^ so are they. 
 
 Here is Kiriath-sepher, and Caleb, and Othniel, and Aclisah. 
 "We will see what secrets and mysteries the Holy Spirit hath 
 couched under these yails ; For as they are in Hebrew, they ex- 
 press nothing to us ; but read them in English, and take off 
 their vail, and you may see what honey will come out of the mouth 
 of the eater^ and out of thi3 strong sweetness. 
 
 What, then, is Kiriath-sepher? In Hebrew it signifies the 
 City of the Boolc^ or the City of the Letter. 
 
 "We will first interpret them to you into English, and then we 
 shall come to show you what they are to every one of us ; for it 
 is the office of the ministers of the New Testament, to strive to 
 talce off the vail, that every one may see his own face in the Scrip- 
 tures. 
 
 in the next place, what is Achsah ? In Hebrew it signifies, 
 th£ rending of the vail. 
 
 And then what signifies Caleb ? In the Hebrew it is as much 
 as to say, 3fy heart, or a perfect heart, or a good heart. 
 
 And what, then, is Othniel ? In the Hebrew it is, God^s good 
 time, or the Lord^sfit opportunity. 
 
 I have, beloved, as yet read it to you but in Hebrew : And 
 then it runs as it is written, and Caleb said, Whosoever smiteth 
 the city Kiriath-sepher, and taJceth it, to him will L give Achsah my 
 daughter to wife; and Othniel, the son of Kenaz, the hrother of 
 Caleb, tooTi, it, and he gave unto him Achsah his daughter to wife, 
 and so on. But in English it is to be read thus : And my heart 
 said, or a good heart said, that whosoever smiteth and taketh 
 the City of the Letter, to him will I give the tearing or rending 
 of the vail ; And Othniel took it, as being God's fit time or op- 
 portunity, and he married Achsah ; that is, enjoyed the rending 
 of the vail, aud thereby had the blessing possessed by Achsah, 
 by the vail being rent, both the upper springs, and the nether 
 springs. To him that obtains this rending of the vail, to him 
 shall be given the mysteries of the kingdom of God ; he pos- 
 sesses /i^ZZ content, heaven and all happiness, and whatever his 
 heart can wish for, as we shall show hereafter, if God permit. 
 
TJie Smiting of Kirjat}i-Sejp7m\ 225 
 
 The smiting of this Kiriath-sepher is the smiting of the Let- 
 ter ; we must strike this Letter, this Scripture, and take it, and 
 then we shall have lonas^ the gift, or reward ; there is no getting 
 of Achsah to wife without the smiting of this Kiriath-scphei, 
 and talcing it ; you yourselves must be the Othniels, but it must 
 be a Caleb, a good heart, that must make proclamation in you, 
 encourage and put you on to this work ; you must know this, 
 Self can never smite this Letter. If you smite it for your own 
 ends — for your own carnal advantages, or for your own liberty — 
 there is enough would so smite the Letter, as St. Paul saith, to 
 abuse their liberty by Jesus Christ, to the satisfying of the flesh 
 — this is nothing but the Devil's and Satan's smiting and taking 
 the Letter : for flesh and tlie old. man wished there were no law 
 to rule and bridle it : this is not Othniel's, nor a Caleb's smiting 
 and taking ; but this is ourselves — this is not to strike it in 
 ChrisVs name^ but in our own names, and then wo shall never 
 marry Achsah. 
 
 He that rightly strikes the City of the Letter, shall have Achsah 
 to wife : observe hence — 
 
 That we may have the Scriptures, and yet not marry Achsah ; 
 we may be very conversant with, and daily use the Scriptures, 
 and yet never marry Achsah, never possess the rending of the 
 vail. Oh, brethren ! know this for certain, we may be bred and 
 born with the Scriptures, live and die with the Scriptures, rise 
 and go to bed with the Scriptures, eat and drink with the Scrip- 
 tures ; they may be always in our hands and always in use : in- 
 somuch that we may be able to give account of the whole Bible 
 by heart, and yet not marry Achsah, and yet this rocJs yield no 
 water to quench our thirst, and all because we read them as a 
 history, as things done long ago without us, and not at present 
 doing in us. 
 
 Let us labor to preserve the Letter of the Word whole, entire 
 and untouched; but the Letter is said to kill, not that it doth so 
 in its own nature, but per accidens : it is so to him who looks no 
 farther than the Letter, we make it so to ourselves^ a hilling Let- 
 ter, 
 
 As if, suppose I jhould give you a cogal, or an oyster, and I 
 should tell you, Take this, for therein is precious meat to sustain 
 10* 
 
226 I'll the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. 
 
 and nourish you. Now if you take this and keep it by you and 
 never crack the shell, that so you may come at the meat and the 
 virtue that is in it ; I may say now, the shell kills you, for if you 
 only look on the shells, and lie watching the outside only, will 
 this nourish, will this give life ? Certainly no ; but if you crack 
 it, and open it, and eat the meat^ this will nourish : yet I m.ay 
 justly and truly say, this cogal, or these oysters kill you, because 
 you depend upon that which will starve and undo you, but the 
 meat^ that gives life, so in the same sense is it spoken concerning 
 the Word. Tlie Letter hills, hut the Spirit gives life. If you be 
 always Tiandling the Letter of the Word, always chewing upon 
 that, what great things do you ? No marvel you are such starvel- 
 ings ; no marvel you thrive not ; no marvel you are such mon- 
 sters, always children, and never come to any growth ; no marvel 
 you go not on to perfection ; what do you more then every carnal 
 man may do ? w^hat do you more than hypocrites ? Do not 
 hypocrites the same ? Nay, do not the devil the same ? For he 
 knows the Letter exactly, and he can discourse excellently there- 
 of, /ar heyond the learnedest Rabby in the w^orld ; but I say then, 
 if you rest only in the Letter, that kills, except this Letter be 
 crackt, except this city, Kiriath-sepher, be smitten and taken, ye 
 cannot come at the kernel, ye cannot have Achsah Caleb's daugh- 
 ter. 
 
 Though the Letter contain in it life and nourishment, as the 
 oyster-shell doth the oyster, and as the shell of the cogal doth 
 the meat ; and ye cannot have the oyster without th& shell, yet 
 you see you cannot have the meat neither, without you crack and 
 break the shell. 
 
 This was a singular method of exposition ; the style of 
 Peter Sterry was more suggestive, rich, and magnificent, 
 literally his pages shine like the dewy spangles of the hedges 
 upon a bright summer morning, they are glowing with a 
 mystical gold and glory. Alas ! how many names for the 
 present I leave unmentioned ,the ages to which this Lecture 
 refers were the ages of Hooker, and Milton, and Barrow, 
 and Taylor, the age of the Field of Cloth of Gold of our 
 language and literature. 
 
Puritan WortJiies, 227 
 
 Every man's mind, as we shall see by-and-by, makes its 
 own style ; I do not commend this style to you, but true 
 stateliness is strength, and even the most popular stylo 
 gains by that tone suppHed by Hooker and Milton. I can- 
 not conceive either of these vast men as orators, their works 
 had no nimbleness, they move like the sails of vast ships 
 and fleets, not like the wings of birds ; this is not the im- 
 pression the pulpit is to convey, the preacher is to attack, 
 to be busy with scaling ladders, to use the arrows of choice 
 words, these men rather blow the trumpet, and parley and 
 cry aloud for a truce while one matter is being debated. 
 
 Beloved names crowd on names. I find it good to pro- 
 nounce them, but I cannot tythe the shelves that give 
 wealth to language, and speech, and thought. L can say 
 nothing of Thomas Watson ; of Thom.^ Brooks ; of Nehe- 
 MiAH EoGERs, the author of The Fast Friend, The Figless Fig 
 Tree, and other such pieces ; of Obadiah Sedgwick, a master 
 of wit and tenderness, especially in his beautiful piece, The 
 Shepherd of Isi^ael; and Godfrey Goodman, the quaint 
 author of The Fall of Man, Their faults are not so much 
 the want of clear arrangement, as of mere verbal and 
 desultory observation, a lively fancy led them too often to 
 the mere remarking about a word or a text rather than a 
 protracted inquiry into the scope and relations of it ; from 
 this vice Willet and Sclater, Jacomb and the Goodwins, 
 and Manton, are very greatly free, but of aU of them and 
 of these also it may be said for the most part they broke 
 their treatment of subjects and texts too much into heads ; 
 we read them with love, and with use, but stiU are often 
 compelled to think as we read, of Herder's definition of a 
 sermon, "An animal, with an emaciated body, stretching 
 out two heads one after the other, displaying two or three 
 teeth, and dragging after it a four, three, or two-fold tail, 
 which feebly wags." Emaciated bodies these sermons can 
 scarcely be said to possess, but they were wanting in that 
 
228 In the Sevcnteentli and Eighteenth Centuries. 
 
 arcliitecture in the laying of the bricks of the building, 
 likely to impose and to command success. 
 
 Nothing is more remarkable than that, while the writings 
 of Taylor, and South, and Barrow, should have received 
 the honor of incessant commendation and quotation, the 
 writings of Thomas Adams and Brooks and Watson should 
 be almost unknown, it cannot be the faults of their style, 
 they exist in even a larger degree in Jeremy Taylor, it 
 cannot be their inattention to the principles of ne quid 
 nimis, the presence of superfluities, that was a fault of their 
 age, there is scarce an exception to the sin of superfluity 
 in any of those whole pages upon which the fame of these 
 men has floated. Their wealth is overflowing, their lan- 
 guage a^nd their ideas and illustrations roll in waves 
 upon our mind. There is the wit and pungency with no 
 unhallowed and servile coarseness, and there is the rich- 
 ness of learning, and majesty, variety, and beauty of style, 
 with tender, imaginative pathos. 
 
Pulpit Monographs. 
 IV. — Puritan Adams. 
 
 HOMAS ADAMS has been called the Shakspeare 
 of the Puritans. In no sense does this convey 
 any idea of the place he occupies ; but perhaps 
 he was the Herbert — the George Herbert — of the 
 pulpit. There is scarcely a name the age to which he 
 belonged has preserved which is so surrounded by an 
 atmosphere of obHvion as his. He is now to us a voice out 
 of a cloud — at best a shade, and nothing more : "no man 
 knoweth his sepulchre ; " there is no likeness of him ; 
 nothing is known of his parentage ; nothing can be 
 gathered of his hfe, or his manner of life ; over his grave 
 " the inquity of oblivion/' as Sir Thomas Browne would 
 say, "has blindly scattered her poppy." He is, doubtless, 
 found in the register of God ; but all about him, if we may 
 trust the industry of those who have sought to perpetuate 
 his works, has passed from the record of man. Our folio 
 edition of his collected works bears the imprint of the year 
 1629. He was ahve in the year 1658, when the two 
 sermons were published included in Dr. Angus's edition. 
 He can be traced from pulpit to pulpit, but this is all that 
 can be gathered of him. In 1612 he was preacher of tho 
 
 (229) 
 
230 Pulpit Monograplis : Puritan Adams, 
 
 Gospel at Willington, in Bedfordshire ; in 1614 lie was at 
 Wingrave, in Buckinghamshire ; in 1618 he held the 
 preachershij) of St. Gregory's, under St. Paul's Cathedi*al, 
 and was " observant chaplain " to Sir Henry Montague, 
 the Lord Chief Justice of England ; in 1629 he published 
 the folio collection of his works, now reprinted ; in 1633 
 he published the well-known Commentary on the Second 
 Epistle of Peter ; then he vanishes from sight. Hints 
 there are of his being sequestrated during the period of 
 the Revolution and Protectorate — ^possible, even probable. 
 In 1653 he was living in a " decrepit and necessitous old 
 age," and most hkely died before the period of the Resto- 
 ration. Through what an eventful period he lived we have 
 seen ; through w^hat changes of events and princes. His 
 sermons have all the marks of the transition age ; they 
 have all the mannerisms of the Puritan theology ; while in 
 his ideas of government he had all the traces of absolute 
 Toryism. Like most of the Low Church paiiy of the 
 present day, he held no doubt to Puritanism in doctrine, 
 and Whitgiftism in Prelacy, rubric and general Church 
 symbohsm. Hence, he not only indulges in ample eulogy 
 upon Queen Elizabeth and her thrice blessed memory, but 
 floats with almost all the preachers and writers of his 
 age in flattering homage to James, and to the doctrine of 
 the divine right of kings. Puritan Adams, no doubt, 
 suffered by being what he must have been, a popular 
 preacher. Had Hooker been under the necessity of de- 
 Hvering his Ecclesiastical Polity in discom'ses at St. Paul's 
 Cross, had George Herbert been a city preacher, or Sir 
 Thomas Browne one of the divines of his day, in no 
 instance should we have had the rich, and rare, and 
 peculiar gems they have contributed to our language. 
 Adams is very popular, but his style is often very rugged. 
 He speaks to the populace, and his fancies and conceits, 
 his anagrams and conundrams of speech, are fi'equently a 
 
A Character Painter. 
 
 23] 
 
 snare to him througliout his discourses. He is usually 
 rather pretty than powerful. Instances of bad taste are 
 abundant in his writings ; are they not also said to be 
 abundant in the writings of men of his times, far greater 
 than he? Moreover, he was a preacher of an extinct 
 order ; for sermons on manners have now gone quite out 
 of date, and his were such. In the pulpit he portrayed 
 character ; we cannot say after the manner of Bishop 
 Earle, and Overbury, and Butler, since he j)receded these 
 writers. Thus, the portrait of the inconstant and unstable 
 man, like many another such a sketch, justifies this 
 remark : 
 
 He would be a Proteus too, and vary kinds. The reflection of 
 every man's views melts him; whereof he is as soon glutted. As 
 he is a noun, he is only an adjective, depending on every novel 
 persuasion ; as a verb he knows only the present tense. To-day 
 he goes to the quay to be shipped for Rome, but before the tides 
 come, his tide is turned. One party thinks him theirs ; the ad- 
 verse theirs ; he is with both — with neither ; not an hour with 
 himself. Because the birds and beasts be at controversy, he will 
 be a bat, and get him both wings and teeth. He would come to 
 heaven but for his halting. Two opinions (like two watermen) 
 almost pull him apieces, when he resolves to put his judgment 
 into a boat, and go somewhither ; jH-esently he steps back, and 
 goes with neither. It is a wonder if his affections, being but a 
 little lukewarm water, do not make his religion stomach-sick. 
 Indifference is his ballast, and opinion his sail ; he resolves not 
 to resolve. He knows not what he doth hold. He opens his 
 mind to receive notions, as one opens his palm to take a handful 
 of w^ater : he hath very much, if he could hold it. He is sure to 
 die, but not what religion to die in ! he demurs like a posed law- 
 yer, as if delay could remove some impediments. He knows not 
 whether he should say his Paternoster in Latin or English ; and 
 so leaves it, and his prayers, unsaid. He makes himself ready 
 for an appointed feast ; by the way he hears of a sermon ; he 
 turns thitherward, and yet, betwixt the church-gate and the 
 church-door, he thinks of business and retires home again. He 
 
232 Pulpit MonograpTis: Puritan Adams. 
 
 receives many judgments, retains none: embracing so many- 
 faiths that lie is little better than an infidel. . . . He loathes 
 manna, after two days' feeding, and is almost weary of the sun 
 for perpetual shining. If the Temple pavement ever be worn with 
 his visitant feet, he will run far to a new teacher. . . . His 
 best dwelling would be his confined chamber, where he would 
 trouble nothing but his pillow. He is full of business at church, 
 a stranger at home, a sceptic abroad, an observer in the street, 
 everywhere a fool. 
 
 But while he performed this task well, it required a loose 
 and rapid manner and tongue to give effect to the delinea- 
 tions. He draws with a bold hand the pictures of the 
 manners of the times. Indeed, it is impossible to read 
 Adams attentively without feeling that the writers whose 
 names we have just mentioned, not only knew, but felt 
 themselves beneath the influence of his portraitures. Ho 
 is, perhaps, rather a divine morahst than a theologian. Ho 
 foUows no thought out in the spirit of Aquinas and the 
 schools, or even in the spirit and manner of St. Augustine. 
 He is a man of quick impulses, and often seems to be 
 mastered by words and forms. He never ventures into the 
 region of abstract thought ; is never tormented by the 
 causes of thiugs. He is a preacher, and as such he holds 
 up the mirror to his hearers. He is never far from them 
 in heights or in depths. There is often a cheerful, easy 
 garruhty about him. He preached in stirring times, and he 
 knew how easily to turn the popular feelings by hints, and 
 reference to the political events of the day. He lived and 
 preached in the day of the gunpowder plot ; preaching 
 from the text, "Thou hast caused men to ride over our 
 heads," he exclaimed, " They love fire stiQ : they were then 
 for fagots, they are now for powder. If these be Catholics, 
 there are no cannibals." The point of many of his allu- 
 sions lay in the memory, and therefore in the ready sympa- 
 thy of the people. 
 
Aphorisms. 233 
 
 Of illustrative aplioristic words the reader may take the 
 following : 
 
 A beast hath one kind of eye, a natural man two, a Christian 
 three. The beast hath an eye of sense ; the natural man of sense 
 and reason ; the Christian of sense, of reason, and faith. 
 
 To want the eyes of angels is far worse than to want the eyes 
 of beasts. 
 
 Riches are called hona fortuna^ the goods of fortune ; not 
 that they come by chance, but that it is a chance if they ever be 
 good. 
 
 Philip was wont to say, that an ass laden with gold would 
 enter the gates of any city ; but the golden load of bribes and 
 extortions shall bar a man out of the city of God. All that is to 
 follow is like quicksilver ; it will be running. 
 
 Not seldom a russet coat shrouds as high a heart as a silken gar- 
 ment. You shall have a paltry cottage send up more black smoke 
 than a goodly manor. It is not, therefore, wealth, but vice, that 
 excludes men out of heaven. 
 
 There are some that " kiss their own hands " (Job xxxi. 12) 
 for every good turn that befalls them. God giveth them bless- 
 ings, and their own wit or strength hath the praise. 
 
 It is usual with God, when he hath done beating his children, 
 to throw the rod into the fire. Babylon a long time shall be the 
 Lord's hammer to bruise the nations, at last itself shall be bruised. 
 Judas did an act that redounds to God's eternal honor and our 
 blessed salvation, yet was his wages the gallows. All these ham- 
 mers, axes, rods, saws, swords, instruments, when they have done 
 those offices they nevei' meant, shall, for those they liave meant, 
 be thrown to confusion. 
 
 The five senses are the Cinque Ports^ where all the great traf- 
 fic of the devil is taken in. 
 
 When the heart is a good secretary, the tongue is a good pen ; 
 but when the heart is a hollow bell, the tongue is a loud and 
 lewd clapper. Those undefilcd virgins admitted to follow the 
 Lamb have this praise, " In their mouth was found no guile." 
 
 Ask a woman who hath conceived a child in her womb will it 
 be a son ? Peradventure so ! Will it be well-formed and fea- 
 tured ? Peradventure so ? Will it be wise ? Peradventure so I 
 
234 Pulpit Monograplis: Puritan Adams. 
 
 Will it be rich ? Peradventure so ! Will it be loug-lived ? Per- 
 adventure so ! Will it be mortal ? Yes, this is without perad- 
 venture, it will die ! 
 
 The following passage upon the almost casual expression 
 in 2 Peter i. 17 — " &uch a Voice " — ^well illustrates how a 
 word caught him, and often carried him away upon a 
 stream of learned and gorgeous fancy and discourse : 
 
 "such a voice." 
 Tully commends voices : Socrates' for sweetness ; Lysias' for 
 subtlety; Hyperides' for sharpness; j^schines' for shrillness; 
 Demosthenes' for powerfulness ; gravity in Africanus ; smooth- 
 ness in Loelius — rare voices ! In holy writ we admire a sancti- 
 fied boldness in Peter ; profoundness in Paul ; loftiness in 
 John; vehemency in him and his brother James, those two sons 
 of thunder; fervency in Simon the zealous. Among ecclesiasti- 
 cal writers, we admire weight in Tertullian ; a gracious com- 
 posure of well-mattered words in Lactantius ; a flowing speech 
 in Cyprian ; a familiar stateliness in Chrysostom ; a conscionablc 
 delight in Bernard ; and all these graces in good Saint Augus- 
 tine. Some construed the Scriptures allegorically, as Origen ; 
 some literally as Jerome ; some morally, as Gregory ; others pa- 
 thetically, as Chrysostom ; others dogmatically as Augustine. 
 The new writers have tlieir several voices : Peter Martyr, co- 
 piously judicious ; Zanchius, judiciously copious. Luther 
 wrote with a coal on the walls of his chamber: Res et 
 verba Philipvus ; res sine verbis Lutherus ; verba^ sine re 
 Erasmus : nee res nee verba Carlostadius. Melancthon had both 
 style and matter ; Luther matter without style; Erasmus style 
 without matter ; Carlsdat, neither the one nor the other. Calvin 
 was behind none, not the best of them, for a sweet dilucidation 
 of the Scriptures, and urging of solid arguments against the 
 Anti-Christians. One is hapj^y in expounding the words ; 
 another in delivering the matter ; a third for cases of conscience ; 
 a fourth to determine the school doubts. But now put all these 
 together : a hundred Peters and Pauls ; a thousand Bernards 
 and Augustines; a million of Calvins and Mclancthons. Let 
 
Ringing the Changes on a Word, 235 
 
 not their voices be once named with this voice : they all spake 
 as children. I'his is the voice of the Ancient of Days, 
 
 Thus he rang the changes very effectively on a word as 
 
 DUST. 
 
 Dus% the matter of our substance, the house of our souls, the 
 original grains whereof we were made, the top of all our 
 kindred. The glory of the strongest man, the beauty of the 
 fairest woman, all is but dust. Dust^ the only compounder 
 of differences, the absolver of all distinctions. Who can say 
 which was the client, which the lawyer; which the borrower, 
 which the lender ; which the captive, which the conqueror, 
 when they all lie together in l)lended dust ? 
 
 Dust ; not marble nor porphyry, gold nor precious stone, w^as 
 the matter of our bodies, but earth, and the fractions of the 
 earth, dust. Dust^ the sport of the wind, the very slave of the 
 besom. This is the pit from whence we are digged, and this is 
 the pit to which we shall be resolved. " Dust thou art, and to 
 dust thou shalt return again," Gen. iii. 19. They that sit in the 
 dust, and feel their own materials about them, may well renounce 
 the ornaments of pride, the gulf of avarice, the foolish lusts 
 of concupiscence. Let the covetous think. What do I scrape for? 
 a little golden dust; the ambitious. What do I aspire for? 
 a little honorable dust ; the libidinous, What do I languish for ? 
 a little animated dust^ blown away with the breath of God's dis- 
 pleasure. 
 
 Oh, how goodly this building of man appears when it is 
 clothed with beauty and honor ! A face full of majesty, the 
 throne of comeliness, wherein the whiteness of the hly contends 
 with the sanguine of the rose; an active hand, an erected 
 countenance, an eye sparkling out lustre, a smooth complexion, 
 arising from an excellent temperature and composition ; whereas 
 other creatures, by reason of their cold and gross humors, are 
 grown over, beasts with hair, fowls with feathers, fishes with 
 scales. Oh, what a worjjman was this, that could raise such a 
 fabric out of the earth, and lay such orient colors upon dust ! 
 Yet all is but <:?W5^, walking, talking, breathing dust; all this 
 
236 Ptdpit Monograplis : Puritan Adams. 
 
 beauty but the effect of a well-concocted food, and life itself but 
 a walk from dust to dust. Yea, and this man, or that woman, is 
 never so beautiful as when they sit weeping for their sins in the 
 dust : as Mary Magdalene was then fairest when she kneeled in 
 the dust, bathing the feet of Christ with her tears, and wiping 
 them with her hairs ; like heaven, fair sightward to us that are 
 without, but more fair to them that are within. 
 
 The dust is come of the same house that we are, and when 
 she sees us proud and forgetful of ourselves, she thinks with 
 herself, Why should not she that is descended as well as we 
 bear up her plumes as high as ours? Therefore she so often 
 borrows wings of the wind, to mount aloft into the air, and in 
 the streets and highways dasheth herself into our eyes, as if she 
 w^ould say. Are you my kindred, and will not know me ? 
 Will you take no notice of your own mother ? To tax the folly 
 of our ambition, the dust in the street takes pleasure to be 
 ambitious. 
 
 The mind of Pmitan Adams did not express itself in the 
 copious and sonorous eloquence of Hooker, nor had his 
 fancy the solemn, quaintly gargoyled style and thoughtful- 
 ness, the subtle paradoxical of Sii* Thomas Browne ; for, 
 as we have already said, he was a preacher, and he evidently 
 thought constantly of his audience ; but in his sermons 
 win be found many of the best characteristics of aU the wit 
 of Fuller, and the allegoric lights of Bunyan, and much 
 of the out-of-the-way learning and radiant fancy of Jeremy 
 Taylor. His method and style of treating a text or subject 
 are altogether his own ; a style, however, adopted and found 
 very taking since his day. We cannot commend it. Thus 
 in his sermon, " A Generation of Serpents," from the text, 
 " Their poison is like the poison of a serpent, hke the deaf 
 adder that stoppeth her ear," he ex230unds eleven charac- 
 ters. — 1. The Salamander y the troublesome and htigious 
 neighbor, whoever loves and Hves in the fire of contention. 
 2. The DaH, that is, the angiy man. 3. The Dij^sas, the 
 drunkard. This serpent lives altogether in moorish places : 
 
On the Tongue. 237 
 
 the serpent in the fens, the man at the ale-house. 4. The 
 Crocodile, the hypocrite. 5. The Cockatrice, said to kill 
 with its eyes — the courtesan. 6. The Caterpillar, or the 
 earthworm, emblem of the covetous. 7. The Asp, the 
 traitorous seminary. 8. The Lizard, an emblem of the 
 slothful. 9. The Sea Bea^peni, the pirate, a very common 
 character in Adams' day. 10. The Stdlkfn, the extortioner. 
 11. Draco, the great red dragon. Sometimes his illustra- 
 tions are of the very queerest. Thus he speaks of the 
 wonderful makhig of the tongue. 
 
 To create so little a piece of flesh, and to put such vigor into 
 it : to give it neither bones nor nerves, yet to make it stronger 
 than arms and legs, and those most able and serviceable parts 
 of the bpdy. 
 
 Because it is so forcible, therefore hath the most wise God 
 ordained that it shall be but little, that it shall be but one. That 
 so the paruity and singularity may abate the vigor of it. If it 
 were paired, as the arms, legs, hands, feet, it would be much 
 more unruly. For he that cannot tame one tongue, how would 
 he be troubled with twain ! 
 
 Because it is so unruly, the Lord hath hedged it in, as a man, 
 will not trust a wild horse in an open pasture, but prison him 
 in a close pound. A double fence hath the Creator given to 
 confine it — the lips and the teeth — that through those bounds 
 it might not break. 
 
 A certain quaint and frequently happy ingenuity charac- 
 terises all the sermons and the writings of Adams. We 
 have before noticed his resemblance to Herbert : the 
 quaintness of the good parson of Bemerton is found in 
 abundance here, not less than his piety. Churchman as he 
 was, we do not find, indeed, the same temple-hke stillness, 
 or carved imagery of thought. Herbert's life was secluded, 
 lonely, and hermetic ; that of Adams was passed apparently 
 for the most part in London. Herbert, too, was a more 
 intense ecclesiastic ; his fervors were monastic ; and although 
 
238 Ptdpit Monographs : Puritan Adams. 
 
 his poems are not organ-like airs, they are notes from a 
 choir, a strange piercing song. Adams was a man of action, 
 interested in all that went on in the great v/orld ; and 
 quaint as he is, his quaintness is rather that we notice 
 in the carved oak tracery of some domestic hall or ancient 
 manor, than the writhing gargoyles, or the dim forms of 
 ancient church window. He did not, like Herbert, invite 
 his fancies in to stay and converse with him ; he followed 
 them out ; and even while he followed one, a host started 
 up, and we sometimes think he chases them all in rather 
 imdignified gait or mood. Yet there are some notes, and 
 they are very frequent, which remind the reader of George 
 Herbert or more aptly Jeremy Taylor. 
 
 Men and brethren, let us be thankful. Let our meditations 
 travel with David in the 148tli Psalm, first up into* heaven. 
 Even the very heavens and heights praise Him. And those 
 blessed angels in His court sing His glory. Descend we then 
 by the celestial bodies, and we shall find the sun, moon, and 
 all the stars of light praising Him. A little lower, we shall 
 perceive the meteors and upjDer elements, the fire and hail, snow 
 ^and vapor, magnifying Him, even the wind and storms fulfilling 
 His word. Fall v/e upon the centre — the very earth. We shall 
 hear the beasts and cattle, mountains and hills, fruitful trees 
 and all cedars, extolling His name. The chirping birds still sing- 
 sweet psalms and carols to the Creator's praise, every morning 
 when they rise, every evening when they go to rest. Not so 
 much as the very creeping things, saith the Psalmist, noisome 
 dragons, and crawling serpents in the deeds, but they do, in 
 a sort, bless their Maker. Let not man, then, the first-fruits 
 of His creatures, for whose service all the rest were made, be 
 unthankful. 
 
 And the following is very sweetly expressed : — 
 
 Pride, fraud, drunkenness, is as Mount Seir to the lovers 
 of them. But, alas ! how unsafe : if stronger against, and 
 further removed from, the hand of man, yet nearer to God's 
 hand in heaven, though we acknowledge no i^lace far from God 
 
Literary Characteristics of the Age. 239 
 
 or from His thunder. But we say, it is not always tlie safest 
 sailing on the top of the mast. To live on the mountainous 
 height of a temporal estate is neither wise nor hapjDy. Men 
 standing in the shade of humble valleys, look up and wonder at 
 the height of hills, and think it goodly living there, as Peter 
 thought Tabor. But when, with weary limbs, they have 
 ascended, and find the beams of the sun melting their spirits, 
 or the cold blasts of wind making their sinews slack, flashes 
 of lightning, or cracks of thunder, soonest endangering their 
 advanced heads, then they confess (checking their proud conceit) 
 the low valley is safest. For the fruitful dews that fall fast on 
 the hills stay least while there ; but run down to the valley : 
 and though, on such a promontory, a man further sees, and is 
 further seen, yet, in the valley, where he sees less he enjoys 
 more! 
 
 Again : 
 
 There is so much comfort in sorrow as to make all affliction 
 to the elect, a song in the night. Adversity sends us to Christ, 
 as the leprosy sent those ten. Prosi^erity makes us turn our 
 backs upon Christ and leave him, as health did those nine 
 (Luke xvii.) David's sweetest songs were his tears. In mis- 
 cry he spared Saul, his great adversary; in peace, he killed 
 Uriah, his dear friend. The wicked sing with grasshoppers, in 
 fair weather ; but the faithful (in this like sirens) can sing in 
 a storm. "When a man cannot find peace upon earth, he quickly 
 runs to heaven to seek it. Afflictions sometimes maketh an 
 evil man good, always a good man better. 
 
 We could imagine the author of the Urn Burial had the 
 following in his mind in a famous j)assage : 
 
 No, they that are written in the eternal leaves of heaven, shall 
 never be wrapt in the cloudy sheets of darkness. A man may 
 have his name written in the chronicles, yet lost ; written in 
 durable marble, yet perish ; written on a monument equal to a 
 Colossus, yet be ignominious ; written on the hospital gates, 
 yet go to hell; written on his own house, yet another come to 
 possess it. All these are but writings in the dust, or upon the 
 waters, where the characters i^crish so soon as they are made. 
 
240 Pulpit Monographs: Puritan Adams. 
 
 They no more prove a man happy than the fool could prove 
 Pontius Pilate a saint, because his name was written in the Creed. 
 But they that are written in heaven^ are sure to inherit it. 
 
 But it was the age of strange conceits ; and absurdities 
 inwrought themselves with every department of taste, the 
 age had not recovered from the grotesque freaks of the 
 Elizabethan time. From those outrageous leaps, and acro- 
 batic displays of genius, even Shakespere is not free, and 
 the archictecture of the time, hke the speech, w^e know 
 abounds with strange displays ; allegoric lessons were con- 
 stantly offering their teachings from classic forms and allu- 
 sions, and essays on the wisdom of the ancients were writ- 
 ten in a way which often to us seem ludicrous enough, 
 graceless and tasteless in the different departments of 
 domestic architecture. The pulpit of those times has often 
 been found in harmony with the taste which only employed 
 the power of its genius 
 
 To raise the ceiling's fretted heigh t^ 
 Each panel in achievement's clothing, 
 
 Rich windows that exclude the light, 
 And passages that lead to nothing. 
 
 And quaintness and queemess did assuredly inspire not 
 only many of the lines of the poets and designs of the 
 architects, but the plans and conceptions of the preachers 
 too. Few could preach without interlacing the English 
 wdth little bits of Latin, — to our ears and eyes it seems 
 the merest pedantry — purposeless, for nothing is illus- 
 trated, and nothing proved. It was an absurd fashion of 
 speech, here are two illustrations of this most singular 
 mode ; from both sermons I leave out, as too long, the 
 more ludicrous of similar passages from the text " Take 
 thou thy son," &c. 
 
 Not to preface away any more tyme, please yow to call to 
 mind these four generalls observal:)le in the text : 
 
Predclimg in the Times of James L 241 
 
 1. — Victima^ the Hoast or Sacrifice; described here by a 
 double name. 1. Proper, Isaak. 2. Appellative, or a name of 
 relation, Sonne ; which likewise is further illustrated by two 
 other attributes ; the one taken ab electione divina^ the other ah 
 affcctione humana, 1. Unigenitus^ his onely sonne ; there's God's 
 inscrutable election. 2. Dilectus, his beloved sonne ; there's 
 Abraham's deerest affection. 
 
 2. — Sacerdos, the Priest which was to offer up this sacrifice. 
 The person not exprest, but in the word ToUe^ Take thow. God 
 speakes to Abraham : The Father must bee the Priest and 
 Butcher of his own sonne. 
 
 3. — Altare, the Altar or Place where this was to be offered ; 
 set downe 1, Generally, the land of Moryah. 2, Specially 8i(2)er 
 una montium, one particular mountayne in that land. 
 
 4. — JRUuSj the Kite and Manner of sacrificinge, or the kind 
 and quality of the sacrifice : Holocaustum^ it must bee an whole 
 burnt offringe. 
 
 Agata, from the text, " Then said Jesus, Father, forgive 
 
 them," &c. 
 
 In which Prayer and Supplication of his these six thinges 
 are observable. 
 
 1. — Quando^ the tyme when. When hee was hanginge now 
 on the Crosse, and ready to yield up the Ghost ; Timc^ then 
 Jesus sayd. 
 
 2. — Quis^ the party prayinge. Dixit Jestis^ it was Christ Jesus. 
 
 3. Cui or ad Quern, the object to whome his prayer is directed' 
 and th^t is God his Father. 
 
 4. — Quid, the matter and subject, or thinge for what he 
 prayed ; which is Pardon and Forgivenes. 
 
 5. — Pro quihus, for whome hee prayeth ; lllis, them, his Ene- 
 myes. 
 
 6. — Quave, the ground and reason of his petition ; which was 
 theyr Ignorance , for they know not what they doe. 
 
 The Tyme, when : the Persons, who ; the Person, to whome : 
 the Persons for whome; the Thinge, for what; and the Cause, 
 wherefore. 
 
 In a state of transition from the times which produced 
 11 
 
242 Pulpit Monographs : Puritan Adams. 
 
 these curious formularies was the age when Thomas Adams 
 began to preacL He must have been contemporary with 
 Bishop Andrewes and Dr. Donne. I love Bishop Andrewes, 
 but his style, almost through every line of it, abounds with 
 strange readings and words, thus, "Wherefore art thou 
 red in thine apparel T " Let Him be arrayed in scarlet, it 
 is His due." His "Doctor's weed" — 
 
 ON THE BIRTH OF CHRIST AT EPHRATA. 
 
 Even so, Lord, saith our Saviour, for so is thy pleasure. And 
 since it is His pleasure so to deal, it is His further pleasure (and 
 it is our lesson out of this Bethlehem minima). Even this, 7ie 
 minima minimi^ that we set not little by that which is little, 
 unless we will so set by Bethlehem and by Christ and all. He 
 will not have little places villified, little Zoar will save the body, 
 little Bethlehem the soul, nor have, saith Zacherie, dies parvus — 
 little times — despised, unless we despise this day, the Feast of 
 Humility. Nor have one of these little ones offended. Why ? 
 for, Ephrata may make amends for, parvula, ex te for tu. 
 
 How quaint and singular reads the following : — 
 
 Will ye now to this inglorious Signe heare a glorious Song ; 
 to this cratch of humiliiie, a hymne of caelestiall harmonic ? If 
 the Signe mislike you, ye cannot but like the Song^ and the 
 Queer that sing it. The song I shall not be able to reach to, 
 will ye but see the Queer ? and that shall serve for this time : 
 For, by all meanes, before I end, I would deal with somewhat 
 that might ballajjce this Signe of His low estate. This the 
 Evangelists never faile to doe; Ever, they look to this point 
 carefully : If they mention ought, that may offend, to wipe it 
 away streight, and the Scandall of it, by some other high regard. 
 See you a sort of poore Shepherds f Stay, and ye shall see a 
 troope of God''8 Angels. Heare ye one say, layd in the cratch 
 helow ? abide, and ye shall heare many sing, Gl rie on high^ in 
 honour of Him that lyeth in it. 
 
 Vidisti vilia (saith St. Ambrose) audi mirisica: Were the 
 things meane you have seen ? 
 
 Wonderful shall they be, ye now shall heare and see both. 
 
Lancelot Andrewes. 
 
 243 
 
 Yilescit prcesepe, ecce Angelicis cantibus lionoratvr : Is the Cratch 
 meane? Meane as it is, it is honoured with the musike of 
 Angels ; it hath the whole Queer of Heazen to sing about it. 
 This also will prove a signe^ if it be well looked into ; a coun- 
 ter-signe to the other : That, of His hurnilities ; this of His 
 glorie. 
 
 Lancelot Andrewes illustrates the monastic method in a 
 Protestant Church, listen to him intently, bring to his words 
 what you wiU certainly meet in them, a spirit of prayerful 
 devotion ; forgive the quaintness of the preacher for the 
 holiness which shines through aU his words, and you will 
 not listen in vain. His sermons will bear modern adapta- 
 tion, if the mind adapting them and using them be itself 
 informed and filled with ardent and seraphic reverence for 
 the great truth of the Incarnation ; for indeed there is the 
 glow of a seraph about him — quaint as he is the aureola 
 of a saint shines over him ; cloistral and monastic, his 
 sermons are wholly free from the wider inspirations of 
 thought and worldly knowledge, they are narrow in their 
 range but they are intense ; the Hve coal from off the altar 
 has given to all his faculties a pure flame ; but even as a 
 coal presents strange and grotesque faces in the fires, so 
 with the ardors of his style, they are as grotesque as they 
 are holy ; fancies in words took him captive, often it must 
 be admitted very pleasantly. Thus Christ the Conqueror 
 coming from Edom and from the grave. 
 
 And comming lacke thus, from the debellation of the spiritual 
 Edom^ and the breaking up of the true Bozra indeed, it is won- 
 dered, Who it should be. Note this that nobody knew Christ 
 at His rising ; neither Mary Magdalen nor they that went to 
 Emmaus. No more doth the Proj^het here. 
 
 Now there was reason to aske this question, for none would 
 ever think it to be Christ. There is great oddes ; it cannot be 
 He. 
 
 1. Not He : He was put to death and put into His grave and a 
 
244 P'^^^^ Monographs : Puritari Adams, 
 
 great stone upon Him not three days since. This Partie is alive 
 and alives like. His Ghost it cannot be : He glides not (as Ghosts, 
 they say, doe) hut paces the ground tevy strongly. 
 
 N'ot He: He had His apparell shared amongst the souldiers ; 
 was left all naked. 21ns Partie hath gotten Him on glorious 
 apparell, rich scarlet. 
 
 Not He: if He come, He must come in white, in the llnnen He 
 was lapped in, and laid in his grave. This partie comes in quite 
 another colour, all in red. So the colours suit not. To be short, 
 not He ; He was put to a foile — ^to a foul foile — as ever was any : 
 they did to him even what they listed; scorned and insulted upon 
 Him. It loas then the houre and power of darhnesse. This partie^ 
 whatsoever He is, hath got the upper hand, won the field; 
 marches stately ^ Conquerour-like. His the day sure. 
 
 The following little extract illustrates the refreshing way 
 Andrewes had of pressing out comfortable truth in his bar- 
 barous Latinities. 
 
 There was then a new begetting, this day. And if a new be- 
 getting, a new Paternitie and Fraternitie, both. By the hodie 
 genuite of Christmas, how soone Hee was borne of the Virgin's 
 wombe. Hee became our brother (sinne, except) subject to all 
 our infirmities ; so to mortalitie and even to death it selfe. And 
 by death that brotherhood had beene dissolved, but for this 
 dayes rising. By the hodie genuite of Easter, as soon as Hee was 
 borne again of the wombe of the grave, Hee begins a new bro- 
 ther-hood, founds a new fraternitie straight ; adopts us (wee see) 
 anew againe, by his fratres meos ; and thereby, Hee that was 
 primogenitus d mortius^ becomes primogenitus inter multos fra- 
 tres : when the first begotten from the dead, then the first be- 
 gotten in this respect, among many brethren. Before Hee was 
 ours : now wee are His. That was by the mother's side ; so, 
 Hee ours. This is by Pdtrem xestrum^ the Father's side; So 
 wee His. But halfe-brothers before ; Never of whole bloud, till 
 now. Now, by Father and Mother both, Fratres germanie^ Fra- 
 tres f rater imi^ we cannot be more. 
 
 Bishop Andrewes talks hke an old monk of the cloister, 
 
John DoiiTie. 245 
 
 devout, narrow, and intense ; John Donne, another of the 
 courtly preachers of those times, talks like a monastic 
 schoolman ; he also was a contemporary of Adams, they 
 were both city preachers. But Donne was in himself won- 
 derful, he was a kind of poetical Aquinas, in the pulpit most 
 metaphysical of preachers ; he ran his speculative spirit 
 into aU strange subtleties, his fancies were not verbal but 
 real. His mind, like mysterious lenses and glasses, ex- 
 plored the infinity revealed in httle things and large things ; 
 the remote orbs of distant, dark, and inaccessible heavens ; 
 the unsuspected recesses of homely objects and tritest 
 truths. His Gospel was the same as that which Andrewes 
 preached. As compared with Adams both Andrewes and 
 Donne had a more semi-Lutheran and semi-Romanist way 
 of regarding it, in their ideas of the functions of the Church, 
 and perhaps in their conceptions of a moral, rather than 
 forensic justification. Although none of these things must 
 be pressed too closely as the attributes of their theological 
 system. Donne had a consuming genius, its flames slew 
 him. But I have referred to him, because, amidst all its 
 magnificence, he illustrates the eccentricity of the age in 
 thought and in style, " Every man is but a sponge, a sponge 
 filled with tears." " "We fell by Adam's fall into the dirt, 
 from that we are washed in baptism, but we feU into a heap 
 of sharp stones too, and we feel all those wounds and 
 bruises our whole lives after." There is nothing simply 
 barbarous in his style ; his fancies startle, they do not de- 
 grade. 
 
 CLOUDS. 
 
 We take a star to be the thickest, and so the impurest, and 
 ignoblest part of that sphere, and yet, by the illjjstration of the 
 sun, it becomes a glorious. Clouds are but the beds, and wombs 
 of distempered and malignant impressions, of vapors, and exha- 
 lations, and the furnaces of lightnings and of thunder ; yet by 
 the presence of Christ, and his employment, these clouds are 
 
246 Pulpit Mo7iograpli8 : Puritan Adams. 
 
 made glorious chariots to bring him and his saints together. 
 Those vapors and clouds which David speaks of, St. Augustine 
 interprets of the ministers of the church, that they are those 
 clouds. Those ministers may have clouds in their understanding 
 and knowledge (some may be less learned than others), and 
 clouds in their elocution and utterance (some may have an un- 
 acceptable deliverance), and clouds in their aspect and coun- 
 tenance (some may have an unpleasing presence), and clouds in 
 their respect and maintenance (some may be-oppressed in their 
 fortunes), but still they are such clouds as are sent by Christ to 
 bring thee up to him. And as the children of Israel received 
 direction and benefit, as well by the pillar of cloud as by the 
 pillar of fire, so do the children of God in the church, as well 
 by preachers of inferior gifts, as by higher. In nubihus ; Christ 
 does not come in a chariot and send carts for us. He comes aa 
 he went ; " This same Jesus which is taken from you into heaven 
 shall so come, in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven ;" 
 say the angels at his ascension. 
 
 GOD IN A CIRCLE. 
 
 He shows no mercy which you can call his greatest mercy, his 
 mercy is never at the highest ; whatsoever he hath done for thy 
 soul or for any other in applying himself to it, he can exceed 
 that. Only he can raise a tower whose top shall reach to heaven ; 
 the basis of the highest is but the earth; but though thou be 
 but a tabernacle of earth, God shall raise thee piece by piece into 
 a spiritual building ; and after one story of creation, and another 
 of vocation, and another of sanctification, he shall bring thee to 
 meet thyself in the bosom of thy God where thou wast at first, 
 in an eternal election ; God is a circle himself, and he will make 
 thee one ; go thou not about to square either circle, to bring 
 that which is equal in itself to angles and corners into dark and 
 sad suspicions of God, or of thyself, that God can give, or that 
 thou canst receive, no more mercy than thou hast had already. 
 This, then, is the course of God's mercy, he proceeds as he begun, 
 which was the first branch of this second part, it is always in 
 motion and always moving towards all, always perpendicular, 
 right over every one of us, and always circular, always commu- 
 
^^ Tlriknown^ yet well Tcnowny 247 
 
 nicable to all; and then the particular beam of this mercy shed 
 upon Ahaz here in our text is Babit signum^ " The Lord shall 
 give you a sign." It is a great degree of mercy that he affords 
 us signs. A natural man is not made of reason alone, but of 
 reason and sense"; a regenerate man is not made of faith alone, 
 but of faith and reason; and signs, eternal things, assist us all. 
 
 But, as we said of Adams, he is now unknown, save by these 
 reliquaries of his pen, like his predecessor in metropolitan 
 fame for Puritan speech, Henry Smith, of whom, indeed, 
 little as we know, we know more, for of him we have a ru- 
 mor, and an effigy — such as it is — but of Adams nothing. 
 Surely these felicitous and happy sayings, these brilliant 
 and vivid pieces, must have won the ears of multitudes : 
 they could not have been delivered with any cold and feeble 
 mannerism. His friendships have gone, too. He knew 
 Donne : they both ministered in the same old St. Paul's 
 Church. What appreciation they had of each other — the 
 subtle, metaphysical speaker, with the clear, practical one 
 — ^the quaint creature, full of visible oddities of eloquence, 
 with the solemn spirited man, the dark sayings of whose 
 harp none the less practical, spoke to the depths of inner 
 conduct and speculation. It is interesting to think of him 
 in London, while the great roar of events rose to the ear 
 from the Continent, and throughout the land. It was a 
 glorious age — the age immediately succeeding that of Eliz- 
 abeth — the great struggle rising in England between the 
 people and prerogative ; the great struggle rising in France, 
 too — the age of the independence in Holland — the age of the 
 Mayiflower — the age of the murder of Ealeigh ; of the fall 
 of Bacon ; the translation of the Bible ; the Quixotism of 
 Laud ; the execution of Strafford ; the rise of the civil war. 
 Adams was preaching through all these events, and in the 
 most powerful and wealthy district of the city of London. 
 He was there when the members took shelter from the 
 King within its liberties ; and the spirit of that free age 
 
248 JPidpit Monographs : Puritan Adams. 
 
 seems to speak out in the words of the man. What does 
 it matter really that we know so little of him. As men Hve 
 neither in their names nor their bodies, so neither do they 
 live in their tombs nor the hatchments over them ; and of 
 millions of men, perhaps as worthy or as mighty as Adams, 
 we know as Httle, or less. So drifts away many a simple 
 parish minister, or conventicle teacher : no tombstone marks 
 his grave, no printed piece of paper commemorates his 
 name, but the "enduring substance" abides in spiritual 
 power conferred, although its ancestry cannot be traced. 
 Fame is a most capricious inheritance, even like wealth : it 
 is distributed very blindly. We know a great deal about 
 that ridiculous Pepys, and that absurd jackanapes Brum- 
 mell. Our author goes altogether out of sight, wraps his 
 invisible cloak about him, and goes altogether away from a 
 world which did not, it would seem, treat him too well, be- 
 comes possessor of the " obHvion which is not to be bribed," 
 and some may think his lot enviable. 
 
 His works have been long prized as a vast mine of illus- 
 trations, a fertile field of happy imagery. Adams we in no 
 case commend as the architect of Thought or of Theology. 
 His views — ^and decidedly Calvinistic they were — were clear 
 to himself, but they were expressed in too much of the 
 style of Paul's Cross to be the best means of furnishing a 
 student ; but, for a happy, witty characteristic, for the 
 quaint intermingling of learning, allusion, fable, and fancy, 
 for fehcitous description, for powerful appeals to, blows in- 
 deed on, the conscience of the hearer — say rather, vivid 
 lightning-like glances into the eyes of conscience — Adams, 
 we believe, has few rivals and scarcely any superior. 
 
VII. 
 
 Wit, Humor, and Coarseness in 
 the Pulpit* 
 
 MONG the contributions of Hiiram, king of 
 Tarshish, to the great builder of the temple of 
 Jerusalem — in the report presented in the Sec- 
 ond Book of Chronicles — there stands .the curious 
 item of monkeys and peacocks. Monkeys and peacocks 
 have been very plentiful in the building of the temple in all 
 
 * Among tlie innumerable volumes published illustrating this, 
 we may mention : 
 
 1. Autobiography of Peter Cartwrighty the Backicoods Preacher : 
 the Birth, Fortunes, and General Experiences of the oldest American 
 Methodist Travelling Preacher. Edited by W. P. Strickland. Lon- 
 don ; Arthur Hall, Virtue & Co. 
 
 2. The Rifle, Axe, and Saddle Bag, and other Lectures. By Wil- 
 liam Henry Milburn. With a Preface, including a Life of the Au- 
 thor. By the Rev. T. Binney. London : Sampson Low, Son & Co. 
 1857. 
 
 3. 2''en Years of Preacher Life. Chapters from an AutoUgraphy. 
 By W^illiam Henry Milburn. With Introduction by the Rev. Wil- 
 liam Arthur, M. A. Sampson, Low & Co. 
 
 4. An Essay on the Composition of a Sermon. Translated from the 
 Original French of the Rev. John Claude. With Notes by Robert 
 Robinson. In Two Volumes. 1788. 
 
 5. The Metropolitan Pulpit. By James Grant. 
 
 G. Scot's Presbyterian Eloquence. Tenth Edition, 1766. 
 
 7. Answer to Ditto, 1798. 
 
 8. English Presbyterian Eloquence, dc., 1720. 
 
 &c., &c., &c. 
 11* (249) • 
 
250 Wit, Humor J etc.j in the Pulpit 
 
 ages since, especially the apes — the monkeys. It might 
 seem singular how that quaint and disgusting beast can 
 ever minister to the service of the masters of wisdom, or 
 the priests of the temple; but it seems certain that his 
 foolishness has aided the plans and purposes of even highest 
 and holiest things. Indeed we are not squeamish in our 
 ears, whatever we may be in our appetites ; it is with food 
 for the mind as with food for the stomach : all food which 
 seems coarse is not really coarse ; good oatmeal is a fine, 
 honest, nutritive diet, while the fine kickshaws of a Paris 
 cook, drenched in condiments and sauces, are among the 
 most gross and vicious — ^the most really coarse and innutri- 
 tions abominations which can vex the stomach. The Rev. 
 Mr. Treacle sometimes has offended our gastric tastes, but 
 we could never hsten to the Bev. Mr. Honeyman for five 
 minutes without being surfeited and sickened; true, we 
 have no wish to make a meal of either the one or the 
 other. 
 
 The subject of these remarks is a veiy large one, and is 
 capable of a great variety of treatment ; it is perhaps true 
 that the taste of the nation and of the Church has im- 
 proved. Perhaps the things altogether outrageous to good 
 sense and propriety would not be dictated now to the mind 
 of any speaker. We are far from thinking they would not 
 be tolerated if uttered. And we think we perceive a dis- 
 position to return to those times when the unction of a dis- 
 course was in its gross coarseness, and its pith and its power 
 in its offensiveness. Perhaps it is impossible to wield an in- 
 fluence over immense masses of people without something 
 of this. Certainly it has usually been the case that those 
 sacred orators who have moved multitudes have done so, if 
 not principally, yet frequently by offences against the canons 
 of good taste. The time has gone by when even gentlemen 
 and scholars thus indecorously exposed themselves ; the 
 history of the pulpit furnishes some strange instances to 
 
The Function of Humor. 251 
 
 some of which we may refer — but these are comparatively- 
 old. Against the legitimate use of humor, wit, and satire 
 in the pulpit we have little to say ; those who can use them 
 with skill may find these weapons of speech as available, 
 perhaps more available, than any ; for they certainly are 
 weapons which lie on the side of the more simply human, 
 perhaps, even in the case of satire, the more shining part 
 of human nature. We gain power over men principally as 
 we remove from the regions of the abstract. Even imagi- 
 nation is most powerful, not when it ascends into the 
 heights and heavens of unrealized poetry, but when it 
 rather descends into the household and the shop ; and here 
 is its most legitimate realm. No one can doubt that humor 
 may be pmified, who has heard some of the great pulpit 
 masters of even the present day ; and we beheve that its 
 judicious use, reined and guided by piety, tenderness and 
 taste, would do more to bring truth near to the hearts of 
 the multitudes than any other element of speech. It is 
 singular that so rich as our language is in humor, in the 
 pulpit it has been so seldom employed, nay, it has become 
 so rare that it has also become distasteful ; and he who 
 uses it has to calculate on a fair share of unpopularity with 
 his brethren in the ministry for his condescension to the 
 popular infirmity of a smile, even if he stop sliort by many 
 degrees of the more flagrant heresy of a laugh. And yet 
 the minister may be sure that his successful speech will de- 
 pend greatly upon his ability to use this ; for it is humor 
 which is the great detective in character — .it distinguishes 
 the shades of minds, and hearty humor also has a keen eye 
 for the frailties and failings, the sins and infirmities, the 
 lesser and the larger sorrows, and the lighter or the 
 weightier joys of the whole human family. I have often said 
 that a man may as well preach without humanity as with- 
 out humor, but then perhaps most men do preach without 
 humanity — they find their truth, and dissect off all its human 
 
252 Wit, Humor ^ etc,^ in the Pulpit. 
 
 relations, and hold it up, a mere piece of curious theologic 
 osteology to the eye. 
 
 In the pulpit any man who does not aim to hft his aud- 
 ience out of the region of every-day life — out of the region 
 of sorrow and of sin, out of the region of doubt and 
 trembling — ^the preacher who does not perpetually aim to 
 influence the mind from higher regions, had better for his 
 own sake hold his peace ; if that guiding thought — which 
 is only what the essayists and reviewers would call the 
 ideological way of speaking of the glory of God, as the 
 reviewers' chief end — if that commanded all the faculties 
 and powers of the preacher it would balance all his efforts. 
 Truest humor is tenderness ; coarseness is always synony- 
 mous with hardness ; a gross, overflowing, sensual nature 
 may say a multitude of clever, shrewd, laughable things, 
 but not for a moment merit the character of the humorist ; 
 they may be just the luxuriant outgrowth of a hot tropical 
 climate ; that wilderness of rank luxuriance does not de- 
 light us, it is the nestling ground of very dangerous things ; 
 the very beauty needs to be educated in a less voluptuous 
 soil. Such productions may be wonderful, but scarcely 
 beautiful. Such is the coarseness with which the old pulpit 
 abounded ; hardness and blasphemy are characteristics of 
 many of the sermons of the old times.* 
 
 * No doubt, in very rude and primitive times, and over very 
 rougli and ragged congregations, this weapon even may be used, 
 and not in vain. Mr. Milburn gives us an account of an old Ameri- 
 can preacher of the backwood districts in the days of the Saddle 
 Bag: 
 
 " Take the following as a specimen of their predilections. It was 
 a discourse delivered by the Rev. James Axley, familiarly known 
 as * Old Jimmy,' a renowned and redoubtable preacher of East Ten- 
 nessee. It was related by Hugh L, White, for many years a dis- 
 tinguished judge in that State, and afterwards a conspicuous mem- 
 ber of the Federal Senate. 
 
 "It was noised through the town of Jonesborough that Mr. 
 
Singular Personal Applications. 253 
 
 Yet this is not so objectionable as many other styles of 
 preaching to which we may yet have occasion to refer. We 
 can almost match it ourselves, from the unpubhshed pulpit 
 reminiscences of a dear departed friend. It may be sixty 
 years since there frequently came to Bristol a well-known 
 Calvinistic Methodist preacher of that day — ^ui a tlay when 
 flattering titles were not very lavishly distributed — called 
 Sammy Breeze by the multitudes who dehghted in his min- 
 istry. He came periodically from the mountains of Cardi- 
 ganshire, and spoke with tolerable efficiency in Enghsh. 
 Our friend was in the chapel when, as was not unusual, two 
 ministers, Sammy Breeze and another, were to preach. 
 
 Axley would hold forth on the morning of the ensuing Sabbath. 
 The famous divine was a great favorite — with none more than with 
 Judge White. At the appointed hour, the judge, in company with 
 a large congregation, was in attendance at the house of prayer. All 
 was hushed in expectation. Mr. Axley entered, but with him a 
 clerical brother, who was * put up ' to preach. The congregation 
 was composed of a border population ; they were disappointed ; 
 this was not the man they had come to hear, consequently there 
 was a good deal of misbehavior. The discourse was ended, and Mr. 
 Axley rose. It is a custom in the new country when two or more 
 preachers are present, for each of them to have something to say. 
 The people opine that it is a great waste of time to come a long 
 distance and be put off with a short service. I have gone into 
 church at eight o'clock in the morniog, and have not come out again 
 until five o'clock in the afternoon. Short administrations are the 
 growth of thicker settlements. 
 
 '* Mr. Axley stood silently surveying the congregation until every 
 eye was riveted. He then began : 
 
 " * It may be a very painful duty, but it is a very solemn one, for 
 a minister of the Gospel to reprove vice, misconduct, and sin, when- 
 ever and wherever he sees it. But especially is this his duty on 
 Sunday and at church. That is a duty I am now about to attend 
 to. 
 
 " ' And now,' continued the reverend speaker, pointing with his 
 long finger in the direction indicated, 'that man sitting out yonder 
 behind the door, who got up and went out while the brother was 
 
254 ^^'^) Humoi\ etc.^ in the Pulpit 
 
 The other took the first place — a young man with some 
 tints of academical training, and some of the hvid lights 
 of a then only incipient Eationahsm on his mind. He took 
 for his text — " He that beheveth shall be saved, and he that 
 believeth not shaU be damned ; " but he condoned the 
 heavy condemnation, and, in an affected manner, shaded 
 off the darkness of the doom of unbehef, very much in the 
 style of another preacher, who told his hearers that he 
 " feared lest they should be doomed to a place which good 
 manners forbade him from mentioning." The young man 
 also grew sentimental, and begged pardon of an audience, 
 rather more pohte than usual, for the sad statement made 
 
 preaching, stayed out as long as lie wanted to, got his boots full of 
 mud, came back and stamped the mud off at the door, making all the 
 noise he could, on purpose to disturb the attention of the congrega- 
 tion, and then took his seat ; that man thinks I mean him. No 
 wonder he does. It doesn't look as if he had been raised in the 
 white settlements, does it, to behave that way at meeting. Now, 
 my friend, I'd advise you to learn better manners before you come 
 to church next time. — B^it I don't mean him. 
 
 " ' And now,' again pointing at his mark, ' that little girl sitting 
 there, about half-way of the house — I should j udge her to be about 
 sixteen years old — that's her with the artificial flowers on the out- 
 side of her bonnet and the inside of her bonnet ; she has a breast- 
 pin on, too (they were very severe upon all superfluities of dress), 
 she that was giggling and chattering all the time the brother was 
 preaching, so that even the old sisters in the neighborhood couldn't 
 hear what he was saying, though they tried to. She thinks I mean 
 her. I'm sorry from the bottom of my heart for any parents who have 
 raised a girl to her time of day, and haven't taught her how to be- 
 have when she comes to church. Little girl, you have disgraced 
 your parents as well as yourself. Behave better next time, won't 
 you ? — But I don't mean her* 
 
 " Directing his finger to another aim, he said, ' That man sitting 
 there, that looks as bright and pert as if he never was asleep in his 
 life, and never expected to be, but that just as soon as the brother 
 took his text, laid his head down on the back of the seat in front of 
 him, went sound asleep, slept the whole time and snored ; that 
 
Story of a Welsh PreaGliei\ 255 
 
 in the text. "But, indeed," said he, "he that believeth 
 shall be saved, and he that beheveth not, — indeed, I regret 
 to saj, I beg your pardon for uttering the terrible truth — 
 but indeed he shaU be sentenced to a place which here I 
 dare not mention." Then rose Sammy Breeze. He began 
 — " I shall take the same text to-night which you have just 
 heard. Our young friend has been fery foine to-night ; he 
 has told you some very polite things. I am not fery foine, 
 and I am not polite ; but I wiU preach a httle bit of Gos- 
 pel to you, which is this — ' He that believeth shall be saved, 
 and he that beheveth not shall be tamned,' and I begs no 
 pardons" He continued — " I do look round on this chapel ; 
 
 man thinks I mean him. My friend, don't you know the church 
 ain't the place to sleep ? If you needed rest, why didn't you stay 
 at home, take off your clothes, and go to bed ? that's the place to 
 sleep, not church. The next time you have a chance to hear a ser- 
 mon, I advise you to keep awake. — But I don't mean him.^ Thus 
 did he proceed, pointing out every man, woman, and child, who 
 had in the slightest deviated from a befitting line of conduct ; 
 characterizing the misdemeanor, and reading sharp lessons of re- 
 buke. 
 
 " Judge White was all this time sitting at the end of the front 
 seat, just under the speaker, enjoying the old gentleman's disquisi- 
 tion to the last degree ; twisting his neck around to note if the aud- 
 ience relished the ' down-comings ' as much as he did ; rubbing 
 his hands, smiling, chuckling inwardly. Between his teeth and 
 cheek was a monstrous quid of tobacco, which, the better he was 
 pleased, the more he chewed ; the more he chewed, the more he 
 spat, and behold, the floor bore witness to the results. At length, 
 the old gentleman, straightening himself up to his full height, con- 
 tinued, with great gravity : 
 
 " * And now I reckon you want to know who I do mean. I mean 
 that dirty, nasty filthy, tobacco-chewer, sitting on the end of that 
 front seat ' — his finger meanwhile, pointing true as the needle to 
 the pole — * see what he has been about ! Look at those puddles on 
 the floor ; a frog wouldn't get into them ; think of the tails of the 
 sisters' dresses being dragged through that muck.' The crest-fallen 
 judge averred that he never chewed any more tobacco in church." 
 
256 Wit J Humor ^ etc.^ in the Pulpit, 
 
 and I do see people all fery learned and intellectual. You 
 do read books, and you do study studies ; and fery likely 
 you do think that you can mend God's Book, and are fery 
 sure you can mend me. You have great — what you call 
 thoughts — and poetries. But I will tell you one little word, 
 and you must not try to mend that — but if you do it will be 
 aU the same. It is this, look you — ' He •that beheveth shall 
 be saved, and he that believeth not shall be tamned,' and I 
 hegs no pardons. And then I do look round your chaj^el, 
 and I do see you are fine people, well-dressed people, well- 
 to-do people. You are not only pious, but you have fery 
 foine hymn-books and cushions, and some red curtains, for 
 I do see you are fery rich, and you have got your monies, 
 and are getting very proud. But I will tell you it does not 
 matter at all, and I do not mind it at all — not one little bit 
 — for I must tell you the truth, and the truth is — ' He that 
 believeth shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be 
 tamned, ' and I begs no pardons. " " And now, " continued the 
 preacher, " you will say to me, ' What do you mean by talk- 
 ing to us in this way ? who are you, Sir ? ' And now I will 
 tell you I am PHly Freeze. I have come from the moun- 
 tains of Cardiganshire on my Master's business, and His 
 message I must deliver. If you will never hear me again, 
 I shall not matter much ; but while you shall hear me, you 
 shall hear me, and this is His word to me, and in me to 
 you — ' He that believeth shall be saved, and he that be- 
 heveth not shall be tamned,' and I hegs no pardons" But 
 the scene in the pulpit was a trifle to the scene in the vestry. 
 There the deacons were in a state of great anger with the 
 blunt teacher ; and one, the relative — we beheve the ances- 
 tor — of a well-known rehgious man in Bristol, exclaimed — 
 " Mr. Breeze, you have strangely forgotten yourself to-night. 
 Sir. We did not expect that you would have behaved in 
 this way. We have always been very glad to see you in 
 our pulpit ; but your sermon to-night. Sir, has been most 
 
Tlie Devil and the Herd of Swine. 257 
 
 insolent, shameful." He wound up a pretty smart con- 
 demnation by saying — " In short I don't understand you." 
 "Ho!, ho! What! you say you don't understand me. 
 Eh ! look you then, I will tell you I do understand you. 
 Up in our mountains, we have one man there, we do call 
 him exciseman. He comes along to our shops and stores, 
 and says, 'What have you here? anything contraband 
 here ? ' And if it is all right, the good man says, ' Step in, 
 Mr. Exciseman ; come in, look you.' He is all fair, and 
 open, and above-board. But if he has anything secreted 
 there, he draws back surprised, and he makes a fine face, 
 and says, * Sir, I don't understand you.' Now you do tell 
 me you don't understand me ; but I do understand you, 
 gentlemen : I do, and I do fear you have something con- 
 traband here ; and now I will say good night to you ; but 
 I must teU you one little word, that is — ' He that believeth 
 shall be saved, and he that beheveth not shall be tamned,' 
 and I begs no pardons.'' 
 
 Some sermons are much more coarse in seeming than in 
 reahty. We have lying before us now on the table the old 
 sermon, well known and often quoted, Beelzebub Driving and 
 Drowning his Hogs, by J. Burgess, with its queer divisions : 
 
 In these words, the devil verified three old English proverbs ; 
 which, as they contain the general drift of my text, shall also 
 contain the substance of this ensuing discourse. 
 
 1. The devil will play at small game, rather than none at all. 
 " All the devils besought Him, saying, Send us into the swine, 
 
 that we may enter into them." 
 
 2. They run fast whom the devil drives. 
 
 " When the unclean spirits entered into the swine," 'tis said, 
 " The whole herd ran violently." 
 
 And 3. The devil brings his hogs to a fine market. 
 
 " Behold the whole herd ran down a steep place into the sea, 
 and were choked." 
 
 But in the sermon itself there is nothing characterized by 
 
258 Witj Humor J etc., in the Pulpit 
 
 especial bad taste, while we should suppose it would, to a 
 plain people, not be dehvered without useful hint and sug- 
 gestion. There is much more real coarseness in the follow- 
 ing quotation, given by Robinson from a Eomanist sermon ;* 
 but indeed our readers do not need to be informed that, 
 for illustrations of "filthy talking," — and "foohsh talking 
 and jesting, wliich is not convenient," they will find no ser- 
 mons Hke some of the old Romanist sermons. 
 
 It is the exordium of a sermon which Father Selle, a French 
 Dominican, had the courage to preach in Poland before his Ex- 
 cellency Cardinal de Janson, ambassador there : 
 
 "Gen. ix. 13. *I do set my bow in the cloud.' It is not 
 enough for the celestial rainbow to please the eye — it conveys 
 the richest consolation into the heart ; the Word of God having 
 constituted it the happy presage of tranquilUty and peace, ' I do 
 set my bow in the cloud.' 
 
 " The ' bow,' enriched with clouds, becomes the crown of the 
 world — the gracefulness of the air — the garland of the universe 
 — the salubrity of heaven — the pomp of nature — the triumph of 
 serenity — the ensign of love — the picture of clemency — the mes- 
 senger of hberality — the mansion of amorous smiles — the rich 
 stanza of pleasure — in fine, the trumpet of peace, for ' I do set 
 my bow in the cloud.' 
 
 " It is a * bow,' gentleman, with which, the roaring thunder 
 jDcing appeased, the heavenly Orpheus, in order insensibly to 
 enchant the whole creation, already become immoveable by his 
 divine harmony, plays upon the violin of this universe, which 
 has as many strings as it has elements — for ' I do set my bow in 
 the cloud.' 
 
 " Yes ! it is a ^ bow ' in which we see Mars, the eternal god of 
 war, who was just now ready to overwhelm the world with 
 tempest, metamorphosed into a god of love. Yes ! it is a ' bow ' 
 all gilded with golden rays — a silver dew — a theatre of emer- 
 alds, rubies, and diamonds, to increase the riches of this poor 
 beggarly world. ' But you perceive, gentlemen, I am speaking 
 of that celestial star, that bow in the cloud, Mary Magdalen I ' " 
 
 * Robinson. Claude, Vol. p. 237. 
 
Coa/rse Sermcnis^ and Worse. 259 
 
 " Bravo ! Mary Magdalen is like a rainbow, and a rainbow is 
 like a fiddle-stick ! " 
 
 The Church of England, also, must bear her share of 
 this burden of coarse comparison and allusion. Here is a 
 citation from a sermon by Edward Willans, vicar of Hoxne, 
 Suffolk : 
 
 He that hath no charity in his cribbage must needs be bilkt 
 at his last account, for all that faith, which he turneth up in his 
 profession. Let us prog less for gifts, and pray more for grace. 
 The fairest way into the city of the text, is through the suburbs 
 of the verse before it. It is a bargain of God's own making, to 
 honor them that honor him. As soon as we are loosed from our 
 mother's womb, we are all bound towards the womb of our great- 
 grandmother, the earth. The most emphatical words in the 
 text (Matt. xiii. 45, 46) are borrowed either from that richer way 
 of merchandizing by wholesale, or from that poorer way of 
 peddling by retail. All usury cannot draw all the guts and gar- 
 bage of the earth into one man's coffers ; no, nor so much as the 
 white and yellow entrails of the Indian earth. 
 
 Kobinson says : 
 
 Some comparisons are odious. The filthiest sermon that ever 
 I read was preached by the glorious author of " Icon Basilike,'* 
 Dr. Gauden, before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, in 
 St. Paul's, 1659. The text is Jer. viii. 11, "They have healed 
 the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly." The Doctor 
 says, " The prophet's bowels were pained by that coarctation, 
 which fear makes upon the lactes and smaller bowels near the 
 heart." There is hardly a species of hospital nastiness which is 
 not introduced here. " The text has six parts : a patient, the 
 sick Church of England ; her hurt ; her present healing ; the 
 cheat of it ; those magniloquent mountebanks, fanaticks ; and, 
 lastly, the true way of healing by that catholicon Episcopacy." 
 
 Ah, Doctor! The Doctor's patient is "his daughter, his 
 
 sister, his mother, a forsaken virgin, a rich married wife, and a 
 poor desolate widow." This good lady has got " flesh-wounds, 
 ulcers, gangrenes, pustules, angry biles, running issues, and fis- 
 
26o Witj JHumor, etc, in the l^tdpit. 
 
 tulas ; she is plethorick and consumptiye, her spirits are flat, 
 and her head is cracked ; she has got the itch and the scratch, 
 and her inward wounds are bleeding ; " and in this miserable 
 plight '* sons of Belial commit a horrible rape upon her." Pre- 
 sently they bring " salves, elixirs, and diurnal doses, and sing 
 lullaby." At last comes Dr. Gauden, and applies " lenitives, un- 
 guents, and poultices ; he purges humors, removes proud flesh, 
 probes and cleanses festered places ; cures pantings and fainting 
 fits ; and all the other fetidity which that unmannerly medicas- 
 ter, the devil, had caused by his infernal eructations." xVll 
 
 this — and ten times worse — at St. Paul's Cathedral, before the 
 Lord Mayor and all the city magistrates, the several livery com- 
 panies, the Lord General Monk, the clergy, gentry, ladies, and 
 populace, by their " humble servant in Christ, John Gauden, 
 D.D.," afterwards the Right Rev. Father in God, John, Lord 
 Bishop of Exeter. 
 
 In reviewing the history of pulpit eloquence, we are often 
 reminded of the old fable of the cuckoo and the nightingale. 
 Both contended who should sing the sweetest : and the ass, 
 because of his long ears, was made the judge. The night- 
 ingale sung first, the cuckoo next. The ass's determination 
 was that truly the nightingale sang pretty weU ; but that 
 for a good, sweet, plain, taking song, and a fine, clear note, 
 the cuckoo sang far better. WeU, we too have our own re- 
 gards for the cuckoo, but we must remmd that bird that, 
 in fact, it is not a nightingale. We see some dispositions 
 now-a-days to elevate the cuckoo to an unseemly dignity. 
 But coarseness is, indeed, neither cuckoo or nightingale. 
 Yet in many ages of the Church has not this been the most 
 pleasant and engrafted word? There is an order of 
 preaching and of prayer which shakes hands and says 
 " Hail, fellow, well met " to blasphemy. An old volume be- 
 fore us — " Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed "* — aboimds 
 
 * It may most truly be said of this selection, An enemy hath done 
 this ; but they enter into the history of the pulpit, and are not alto- 
 gether unfair illustrations of its character in the times to which 
 
Tli^ Foolish Preaching of Good Men. 261 
 
 in illustrations of this shocking mood of mind. We select 
 a few niiistrations, far from the worst : 
 
 One John Simple, a very zealous preacher among them, used 
 to personate and act sermons in the old monkish style. At a 
 certain time he preached upon that debate. Whether a man be 
 justified by faith or by works, and acted it after this manner : 
 " Sirs, this is a very great debate; but who is that looking in at 
 the door, with his red cap ? Follow your look. Sir ; it is very 
 ill-manners to be looking in : But what's your name ? Robert 
 Bellarmine. Bellarmine, saith he, whether is a man justified by 
 faith or by works ? He is justified by works. Stand thou there, 
 man. But what is he, that honest-like man standing in the floor 
 with a long beard, and Geneva cowl [hood] ? A very honest-like 
 man! draw near; what's your name, Sir? My name is John 
 Calvin. Calvin, honest Calvin, whether is a man justified by 
 faith or by works ? He is justified by faith. Yery well, John, 
 thy leg to my leg, and we shall hough [tri2>\ down Bellarmine 
 even now." 
 
 Another time, preaching on the day of judgment, he told them, 
 " Sirs, This will be a terrible day ; we'll all be there, and in the 
 throng I, John Simple, will be, and all of you will stand at my 
 back. Christ will look to me, and he will say. Who is that 
 standing there ? I'll say again. Yea, even as ye ken'd not [hnew 
 not] Lord. He'll say, I know thou's honest, John Simple ; draw 
 near John ; now John, what good service have you done to me 
 on earth ? I have brought hither a company of blue bonnets 
 for you. Lord. Blue bonnets, John ! What is become of the 
 
 they refer. We have in our possession a curious collection of tracts 
 to the same purpose, exhibiting the defects of several sides and 
 parties — such as Pulpit Sayings ; or the Characters of the Pulpit- 
 Papist, examined in answer to the Apology for the Pulpits. Sold at 
 the Printing House on the Ditch Side, Blackfriars, 1688. A Cen- 
 tury of Eminent Presbyterian Preachers. By a Lover of Episcopacy, 
 1733. An Apology for the Pulpits ; being an Answer to the Book inti- 
 tuled Good Advice to the Pulpits, 1C38. Seventeen Arguments Prov- 
 ing the Unlawfulness, Sinfulness, and Danger of suffering Private 
 Persons to take upon them Public Preaching, 1651. The Preacher; 
 a Poem, 1700. &c., &c. 
 
262 Witj Humor ^ etc.j in the Pulpit 
 
 brave hats, the silks, and the sattins, John ? I'll tell, I know 
 not. Lord, they went a gait [a road] of their own. Well, honest 
 John, thou and thy blue bonnets are welcome to me ; come to 
 my right hand, and let the devil take the hats, the silks, and 
 the sattins." 
 
 ]VIr. Simple (whom I named before) told, " That Sampson was 
 the greatest fool that ever was born ; for he reveal'd his secrets 
 to a daft hussy [foolish wench]. Sampson ! you may well call 
 him fool Thomson ; for all the John Thomson's men [hen-j)ecH 
 men] that ever was, he was the foolest." 
 
 I have a sermon of theirs, written from the preacher's mouth 
 by one of their own zealots, whereof this is one passage : " Jacob 
 began to wrestle with God, an able hand, forsooth ! Ay, Sirs, 
 but he had a good second, that was Faith : Faith and God gave 
 two or three tousles together : at last God dings [beats] down 
 faith on its bottom ; Faith gets up to his heels, and says. Well, 
 God, is this your promise to me ? I trow, I have a ticket in my 
 pocket here : Faith brings out the ticket, and stops it in God's 
 hand, and said. Now, God ! Is not this your own write ? deny 
 your own hand-write if you dare ? Are these the promises you 
 gave me ? Look how you guide me when I come to you. God 
 reads the ticket, and said, Well, well. Faith I I remember I gave 
 you such a promise ; good sooth Faith, if you had been another, 
 thou should have got all the bones in thy skin broken." 
 
 Mr. John Welsh, a man of great esteem among their vulgar, 
 once preaching on these words of Joshua, "As for me and my 
 house we will serve the Lord," &c., had this preface : 
 
 " You think. Sirs, that I am come here to preach the old jog- 
 trot, faith and repentance to you ; not I, indeed ; What think 
 you then I am come to preach ? I came to preach a broken 
 covenant. Who brake it? even the devil's lairds, his bishops, 
 and his curates ; and the de'il, de'il, will get them all at last. I 
 know some of you are come out of curiosity to hear what the 
 "Whigs will say. Who is a Whig, Sirs? One that will not 
 swear, nor curse, nor ban ; there is a Whig for you : But you 
 are welcome. Sirs, that come out of curiosity ; you may get good 
 ere ye go back again. I'll give you an instance of it : There 
 was Zaccheus, a man of low stature, that is, a little droichy 
 
Peter Cartwright. 263 
 
 [dicarf] body, and a publican, that is, he was one of the excise- 
 men ; he went out of curiosity to see Christ, and, because he 
 was little, he went up a tree : do you think. Sirs, he went to 
 harry a pyot's nest \rijle a magpie's nesf] ? No, he went to see 
 Christ ; Christ looks up, and says, Zaccheus, thou art always 
 proving pratticks, thou'rt no bairn now ; go home, go home, and 
 make ready my dinner, I'll be with you this day at noon. After 
 that. Sirs, this little Zaccheus began to say his prayers, evening 
 and morning, as old honest Joshua did in my text : " As for me 
 and my house," &c., as if he had said, Go you to the devil and 
 you will, and I and my house will say our prayers. Sirs, as 
 Zaccheus and the rest of the apostles did." 
 
 This state of things, I might hope, has, with us, long 
 gone by, and yet we have here, circulating widely, the hfe 
 of Peter Cartwright, a gentle-minded, lamb-like Christian, 
 to whom it was about a matter of equal indifference whether 
 he should fight or preach, and whose discourses, not unfre- 
 quently, had all the most offensive vulgarity of the quota- 
 tions \7e have given above, although set to the tune of a 
 widely different theology. Now, it is with us a pretty 
 definite conviction, although we are aware how fearful the 
 hazard is, that we may be contradicted, that Christianity 
 does not smile upon and approve bullying and pugilism. 
 Certainly, if circumstances arise to develop the spirit of 
 the prize ring in the Christian preacher, tiiis does not seem 
 to be the thing to exalt to the ideal of Christian biography. 
 The age of the early Christians was very favorable to the 
 inculcation of these pugilistic lessons, but singular to say 
 the New Testament contains none. He was a strange fel- 
 low, this Peter Cartwright — no doubt much about him that 
 was manly, and noble, and truthful ; but the yoimg men 
 who read it to their great edification, may remember that, 
 even admitting some virtue in the book, it belongs to an 
 order of society we hope entirely unlike ours ; a society of 
 rowdies and fiUibusters, of scoundrels and slave-holders. 
 
 Well, we do not desii'e to see this spirit return into the 
 
264 Wit, Humor, etc., in tlie Pulpit. 
 
 midst of our pulpit life. "We have passed through the 
 midst of it. And perhaps the coarse and vulgar pugilist, 
 Peter Cartwright, was inherently a finer character than the 
 scholarly South. Meanness is never so detestable as when 
 it condescends to besmuxh itseK with grossness. "What 
 could be expected from a man who could say, " gratitude 
 among friends is like ci^edit among tradesmen, it keeps biisiness 
 up, and maintains the correspondence ; and, we pay not 
 so much out of a principle that we ought to discharge our 
 debts, as to secure ourselves a place to be trusted another 
 time ?" A nice clean sentiment for a Christian teacher ! 
 But it takes away all surprise at the following passage, 
 from a sermon preached before the King, of virtuous 
 memory. 
 
 " Who that looked upon Agathocles first handling the clay, 
 and making pots under his father, and afterwards turning rob- 
 ber, could have thought that from such a condition, he should 
 have come to be King of Sicily ? 
 
 " Who that had seen Massaniello, a poor fisherman with his 
 red cap and his angle, would have reckoned it possible to see 
 such a pitiful thing, within a week after, shining in his cloth of 
 gold, and with a word or nod absolutely commanding the whole 
 city of Na23les ? 
 
 " And who that beheld such a bankrupt, beggarly fellow as 
 Cromwell, first entering the Parliament house with a threadbare 
 torn cloak, greasy hat (perhaps neither of them paid for), could 
 have suspected that in the space of so few years, he should, by 
 the murder of one king, and the banishment of another, ascend 
 the throne ?'' At which the king fell into a fit of laughter ; and 
 turning to the Lord Rochester said, " Ods fish. Lory, your chap- 
 lain must be a bishop, therefore put me in mind of him at the 
 next death." 
 
 It is impossible to read South with pleasure : in the 
 most unlikely places the abusive sj^irit of the foul-mouthed 
 old renegade, for he had been of the Puritan party, and 
 wrote a Latin ode of fulsome adulation of Cromwell, offends 
 
Robert Soutli. 265 
 
 any reader who regards decency and decorum of language. 
 We feel that he who could write this had attained to no 
 knowledge of the text and purity of the Christian life. To 
 this he also owes much of his popularity ; yet his style is 
 certainly robust and masculine, but it is heavy, the sen- 
 tences are long, and sometimes drag wearily. It is strange 
 to say it reads hke a very honest style : there are no glow- 
 ing words, no fancies, there is nothing imaginative or ideal. 
 He never rises beyond common sense. He is impatient of 
 all those topics which belong either to the symbolism of 
 the Church or to the spiritual aspects of its faith, and his 
 wit is not profuse, and when it comes, it is either in low 
 vulgar coarseness, or it is merely a remark with some point 
 in its analogy. When those who are hot acquainted with 
 his writings read of the wit of South, they must not expect 
 the affluence and redundancy of Swift, or the smartness of 
 Sidney Smith ; and some acquaintance with his works will 
 reduce his proportions to those of a by no means extraor- 
 dinary writer, as he was in no sense an admirable man. 
 His excellency is to be traced to the fact that he stated, 
 with great clearness and precision, truths quite level to the 
 ordinary mind. His cube was a very contracted one, and 
 he had neither the intelligence nor genius nor taste to look 
 beyond, or to attempt to gauge wide relations ; this is evi- 
 dent in his sermon on Contingencies, which at once illus- 
 trates his shallowness in philosophy and abusiveness in 
 spirit. Perhaps his supposed wit and real coarseness have 
 obscured his more solid excellences, for they are to be 
 traced ; but among those who have sinned by the intro- 
 duction of drollery into the pulpit I know of none so dis- 
 gusting as he. He had not the shelter of a harassed and 
 persecuted party, nor the motives of an impulsive nature. 
 He was simply a spiteful, malevolent time-server ; there 
 was nothing kind or genial in the humor of the man, and 
 his satire was only able to take aim at Puritanism or at 
 12 
 
266 Witj UnmoVj ete.j in the Pulpit 
 
 piety. There are fine passages in South. " A blind man 
 sitting in the chimney comer is pardonable enough, but 
 sitting at the helm he is intolerable." " Solomon built his 
 temple with the tallest cedars ; and surely when God re- 
 fused the defective and the maimed for sacrifice, we cannot 
 think he requires them for the priesthood." When we find 
 him discoursing to us as follows we hsten impressed and 
 thoughtful. 
 
 Every judgment of God has a force more or less destructive, 
 according to the quality and reception of the thing that it falls 
 upon. If it seizes the body, which is but of a mortal and frail 
 make, and so, as it were, crumbles away under the pressure, 
 why then the judgment itself expires through the failure of a 
 sufficient subject or recipient, and ceases to be predatory, as 
 having nothing to prey upon. But that which comes out of its 
 Creator's hands immaterial and immortal, endures and continues 
 under the heaviest stroke of his wrath ; and so is able to keep 
 pace with the infliction (as I may so express it) both by the 
 largeness of its perception and the measure of its duration. He 
 who has a soul to suffer in, has something by which God may 
 take full hold of him, and upon which he may exert his anger 
 to the utmost. Whereas, if he levels the blow at that which is 
 weak and mortal, the very weakness of the thing stricken at 
 will elude the violence of the stroke ; as when a sharp, corrod- 
 ing rheum falls upon the lungs, that part being but of a spongy 
 nature, and of no hard substance, little or no j)ain is caused by 
 the distillation ; but the same falling upon a nerve fastened to 
 the jaw, or to a joint, (the consistency and firmness of which 
 shall give force to the impression,) it presently causes the quick- 
 est pain and anguish, and becomes intolerable. A cannon bul- 
 let will do terrible execution upon a castle-wall or a rampart, 
 but none at all upon a wool-pack. 
 
 But he will not allow us to enjoy in quiet long. Even 
 his most spiritual passages prove themselves to be the off- 
 spring of an um'cal mind, as when he closes his exposition 
 
Robert South, 267 
 
 of David's desire for the tabernacle with his customary 
 insolence. 
 
 What says David, Psalm Ixxvii. 13, " Thy way, O God, is in 
 the sanctuary." It is no doubt, but that holy jDcrson continued 
 a strict and most pious communion with God, during his wan- 
 derings upon the mountains and in the wilderness ; but still he 
 found in himself, that he had not those kindly, warm meltings 
 upon his heart, those raptures, and ravishing transports of 
 ajffection, that he used to have in the fixed and solemn j)lace of 
 God's worship. See the two first verses of the Ixiii. Psalm, en- 
 titled, " A psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of 
 Judah," how emphatically and divinely does every word pro- 
 claim the truth that I have been speaking of! " O God," says 
 he, " thou art my God ; early will I seek thee : my soul thirst- 
 eth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, 
 where no water is ; to see thy power and thy glory, so as I have 
 seen thee in the sanctuary." Much diflferent was his wish from 
 that of our nonconforming zealots now-a-days, which expresses 
 itself in another kind of dialect ; as " When shall I enjoy God 
 as I used to do at a conventicle ?" " When shall I meet with 
 those blessed breathings, those heavenly hummings and haw- 
 ings, that I used to hear at a private meeting, and at the end 
 of a table ?" 
 
 We can neither love nor respect South. " God will not 
 accept their barn-worship, nor their hogsty worship ;" all 
 Puritans are " sly, sanctified cheats ; they are all a com- 
 pany of cobblers, tailors, draymen, drunkards, whoremon- 
 gers, and broken tradesmen ; though since, I confess, dig- 
 nified with the title of the sober part of the nation." The 
 audience no doubt laughed at all this rubbish, but it does 
 not seem to me to be either elegant or witty ; some things 
 are more disgusting still, as when the execution of the King 
 is compared to the execution of Christ, which it transcended 
 in iniquity, since the murder of Christ was but His mur- 
 der, but the execution of the King was the crucifixion of 
 
268 Wit^ IIumoi\ etc.^ in the Pulpit. 
 
 Christianity itself. I push away the great droll and wit of 
 the pulpit of the Restoration, and do not care to make his 
 further acquaintance. 
 
 The greatest of aU the wits and satirists of the pulpit we 
 have known was the great Spanish orator, Antony of Vieyra ; 
 Spanish wit and humor, that wit and satire of the keen 
 Damascus blade ; the wit of Quevedo or of Cervantes shone 
 from him in a sustained and instructive manner, unlike any 
 other great pulpit master we can mention, and he dealt with 
 the sias and vices of his age, in an age of especial vice, with 
 searching and scathing severity. There is nothing of the 
 coarse buffoon, or the low droll in any of these sermons, 
 take for iustance, the celebrated 
 
 SERMON TO THE FISEEES. 
 
 What ! and are we to preach to-day to the fishes ? No audience 
 can be worse. At least fishes have two good qualities as hearers 
 — they can hear, and they cannot speak. One thing only might 
 discourage the preacher — that fishes are a kind of race who 
 cannot be converted. But this circumstance is here so very 
 ordinary, that from custom one feels it no longer. For this 
 cause, I shall not speak to-day of heaven or of hell; and thus 
 this sermon will be less gloomy than mine are usually considered, 
 from putting men continually in remembrance of these two ends. 
 
 To begin, then, with your praises, fishes and brethren. I 
 might very well tell you that, of all living and sensitive creatures, 
 you were the first which God created. He made you before the 
 fowls of the air ; He made you before the beasts of the earth ; 
 He made you before man himself. God gave to man the mon- 
 archy and dominion over all the animals of the three elements, 
 and in the charter in which He honored him with these powers, 
 fishes are the first named. " Let them have dominion over the 
 fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle." 
 Among all animals, fishes are the most numerous and the largest. 
 
 , . . For this reason, Moses, the chronicler of the creation, 
 
Vieyra^8 Sermon to the Fishes. 269 
 
 while he does not mention the name of other animals, names a 
 fish only. " God created great whales." And the three musi- 
 cians of the furnace of Babylon, brought forward in their song 
 the name of the same fish, with especial honor, " O ye whales 
 . . bless ye the Lord." These and other praises, then, and other 
 excellences of your creation and greatness, I might well, O fishes, 
 set before you ; but such a matter is only fit for an audience of 
 men who permit themselves to be carried away by these vanities, 
 and is, also, only suited to those places where adulation is al- 
 lowed, and not in the pulpit. 
 
 . . . Great praise do. ye merit, O fishes, for the respect and 
 devotion which ye have had to the preacher of the Word of God ; 
 and so much the more, because ye did not exhibit it once only. 
 Jonah went as a preacher of the same jGrod, and was on board a 
 ship when that great tempest arose. How did men then treat 
 him, and how did fishes treat him ? Men cast him into the sea, 
 to be eaten by fishes ; and the fish which followed him carried 
 him to the shores of Nineveh, that he might there preach, and 
 save those men. Is it possible that fishes should assist in the 
 salvation of men, and that men should cast into the sea the min- 
 isters of salvation ? Behold, fishes — and avoid vain-glory — how 
 much better are ye than men. . . 
 
 . . . Aristotle, speaking of fishes, says, that they alone, among 
 all animals, can neither be tamed nor domesticated. . . . There 
 they live, in their seas and rivers ; there they die in their foun- 
 tains ; there they hide themselves in their grottoes : and none 
 among them is so large as to trust man, or so small as not to 
 avoid him. Authors usually condemn this characteristic of 
 fishes, and attribute it to their little docility, or exceeding bru- 
 tishness ; but I am of a very different opinion. I do not con- 
 demn — on the contrary, I very much praise — this their retire- 
 ment ; and it seems to me that if it were not natural to them, it 
 would be a proof of their prudence. Fishes, by how much the 
 further from men, by so much the better. Hate conversation and 
 familiarity with them. God preserve you from it ! If the beasts 
 of the earth and the birds of the air choose to be man's familiars, 
 let them do it and welcome : it is at their own expense. Let the 
 nightingale sing to man : but it must be in her cage. Let tlio 
 
270 Wit, Humor, etc.^ in the Pulpit. 
 
 parrot talk to him : but it must be with her chain. Let the 
 hawk go to the chase with him : but it must be in her jesses. 
 Let the ape play the buffoon for him : but it must be with his 
 ring. Let the dog content himself with gnawing his bone : but 
 he must be dragged where he likes not, by his collar 
 
 In the time of Noah happened that flood which covered and 
 dro^Tied the world ; and of all animals, which fared the best ? 
 Of lions, only two escaped — a lion and a lioness ; and so of other 
 beasts. Of eagles, two only escaped, the male and the female ; 
 and so of other birds. And of the fishes ? All escaped ; nay, 
 and not only all escaped, but were much more at liberty than be- 
 fore : because the land and the sea were then all sea. If, then, 
 in that universal chastisement all the beasts of the earth and all 
 the birds died, why did not the fishes also die? St. Ambrose 
 says, because the other animals, as more domestic, and more 
 nearly allied, had greater communication with men ; the fishes 
 lived at a distance, and retired from them. . . . See, fishes, of 
 how great benefit it is to live at a distance from men. A great 
 philosopher, being asked which was the best country in the 
 world, replied, " That which has the largest portion of desert : 
 because it has men at the greatest distance." If St. Antony 
 preached this, also, to you, and if this was one of the benefits for 
 which he exhorted you to give thanks to God, he might well 
 have asserted with respect to himself, that, the more he sought 
 God, the more he fled from man. . . . 
 
 But before you depart, as you have heard your praises, hear 
 also that which I have to blame. It will serve to make you 
 ashamed, though you have not the power of amendment. The 
 first thing which does not edify me in you, fishes, is, that you 
 eat one another. A great scandal in itself, but the circumstances 
 make it worse. You not only eat one another, but the great eat 
 the little. If the contrary were the case, the evil would be less. 
 If the little ate the great, one would suffice for many ; but as the 
 great eat the little, a hundred — nay, and a thousand — do not suf- 
 fice for one. ... St. Augustine, who preached to men, in order 
 to set forth the atrocity of this scandal, jpointed it out to them 
 in fishes ; and I, who preach to the fishes, in order to show how 
 abominable is the custom, wish that you should look at men. 
 
The Sermon to the Mslies, 271 
 
 Look, fishes, from the sea to the land. No, no, it is not that 
 way that I mean. Are you turning your eyes to the forests and 
 to the interior ? Here, here ! it is to the city you must look. 
 Do you think it is only the Tarpongas that eat each other ? The 
 shambles here are much larger ; white men eat each other far 
 
 Is any one of them dead ? See how they all fall upon the mis- 
 erable man, to tear him in pieces and to eat him. His heirs de- 
 vour him ; his legatees devour him ; his executors devour him ; 
 his creditors devour him; the commissioners of orphans, of the 
 dead, and of the absent devour him ; the physician who helped 
 to kill him devours him ; his wife herself devours him, when 
 she gives him for a shroud the oldest sheet in the house ; he is 
 devoured by the grave-digger ; by the bell-ringer ; by those that 
 sing as they carry him to the grave : in fine, the i^oor dead man 
 is not yet swallowed up by the earth, but he is already swallowed 
 up by its inhabitants. * * * 
 
 With the flying-fish, I must also have a word : and my com- 
 plaint is not a trifling one. Tell me — did not God make you 
 fish ? and why, then, do you set up to become birds ? God 
 made the sea for you, and the air for them. Content yourselves 
 with the sea, and with swimming, and do not attempt to fly. . . 
 You seek to be better than other fishes ; and for this reason you 
 are worse off than any. Other fishes of the deep are taken with 
 the hook, or the net ; you are taken without hook or net, by your 
 own presumption, and your own caprice. The ship pursues its 
 course ; the mariners are sleeping ; and the flying-fish touches 
 the sail, or the rigging, and falls on to the deck. Other fishes 
 are killed by hunger, or deceived by the bait ; the fl}ing-fish is 
 killed by the vain desire of fiying, and his bait is the wind. 
 How much better it were to dive beneath the keel, and to live, 
 than to fly above the yards, and to die ! It is a great proof of 
 ambition that, the sea being so immense, the whole ocean does 
 not suffice to so small a fish, but he must needs desire a larger 
 element. But see, fishes, the chastisement of ambition. The 
 flying-fish was made by God a fish ; he desired to be a bird : 
 and God permits he should have the perils of a fish, and besides 
 that, those of a bird. . . . 
 
272 Wity Humor, etc., in the Pulpit. 
 
 From this example, fishes, keep, all of you, this truth in mind. 
 He that desires more than befits him, loses that which he 
 desires, and that which he has. He that can swim, and de- 
 sires to fly, the time will come when he shall neither fly nor 
 swim. . . . 
 
 With this last remark I bid you farewell, or allow you to bid 
 me farewell, my fishes. And that in departing, you may receive 
 some consolation from this sermon (for I know not when you 
 will hear another), I wish to remove from you a very ancient 
 grievance under which you have lain from the time that the 
 book of Leviticus was published. In the Ecclesiastical law, 
 God chose certain animals w^hich should be sacrificed to Him ; 
 but they were all, either beasts of the earth or birds — fishes 
 being totally excluded from these sacrifices. Who doubts that 
 this universal exclusion would be the cause of great disquietude 
 and sorrow to all the inhabitants of so noble an element which 
 afibrds the matter for the first Sacrament ? The principal mo- 
 tive for the exclusion of fishes, was this : Other animals can go 
 alive to the sacrifice, but fishes, not so ; and God desires not 
 that any dead thing should be ofiered to Him, or should ap- 
 proach His Altar. This point would be very important and 
 necessary to men, if I were preaching to them. O, how many 
 souls approach to that Altar in a state of death, because they 
 approach, and are without a fear of approaching, in mortal sin. 
 Fishes, give great thanks to God, that he has delivered you 
 from this peril ; far better is it not to approach to the sacrifice, 
 than to approach to it in a state of death. . . . 
 
 O ye whales, and all that move in the waters, bless ye the 
 Lord. Praise God, O fishes, both small and great ; .separate 
 yourselves in two choirs and praise Him with one accord. 
 Praise God, because He has created you in such numbers ; be- 
 cause He has distinguished you in so many species : because 
 He has invested you with such variety and beauty : because He 
 has furnished you with all the instruments necessary to life ; 
 because He has given you an element so large and so pure ; 
 praise God, Who coming into this world, lived amongst you, 
 and called to Him those who lived with you and of you ; praise 
 God Who sustains you, praise God Who preserves you, praise 
 
m' 
 
 The Pulpit Droll ^ Ahraliam Sancta Clara, 273 
 
 God Who multiplies you; praise God finally, by serving and 
 sustaining man, which is the end to which He created you ; 
 and as at the beginning He gave you His blessing, so may He 
 bestow it on you now. Amen. As you are not capable of 
 grace nor of glory, so your sermon neither ends with grace nor 
 with glory. 
 
 If Antony of Yieyra was the greatest satirist, Abraham 
 Sancta Clara was the greatest droll ; yet he was descended 
 from noble ancestors, near the City of Moskirch in Suabia. 
 He belonged to the order of Barefooted Augustine Monks ; 
 his fame was made as the preacher to the Convent of 
 Dachall, in Bavaria. In 1669, he became Imperial court 
 preacher to Leopold I., and filled that office for twenty 
 years ; he died in 1709. He was, although the preacher 
 to the Court, an orator of the people, his humor was of the 
 very broadest character ; he has been called "a clerical 
 zany,'* yet he is also said to have had a genuine enthu- 
 siasm for virtue and rehgion, he had " a complete mastery 
 of languages, a great " affluence of imager}^, a briUiant wit, 
 an animated deliver}^, and excoriating satire." He seems 
 to have been a good and useful man, and yet who can 
 commend such a deliverance as the following ? 
 
 THE PRODIGAL SON. 
 
 Of what country the prodigal son was, is not precisely 
 known ; but I believe he was an Irishman. What his name 
 was, is not generally understood ; but I believe it was Malefa- 
 civs. From what place he took his title (seeing he was a 
 nobleman), has not yet been discovered ; but I believe it was 
 Maidsberg or Womenham. What was the device in his coat of 
 arms, no one has described ; but I believe it was a sow's stomach 
 in a field verd. 
 
 This chap travelled with well-larded purse through various 
 countries and provinces, and returned no better but rather 
 worse. So it often happens still, that many a noble youth has 
 his travels changed to travails. Not s'eldom also, he goes forth 
 a good German and returns a bad Herman. What honor or 
 12* 
 
274 ^^*^? Humor ^ etc,^ in the Pulpit. 
 
 credit is it to the noble river Danube that it travels through 
 different lands, through Suabia, Bavaria, Austria, Hungary, and 
 at last unites with a sow. The pious Jacob saw", in his journey, 
 a ladder to heaven ; but alas ! many of our Quality jBnd, in their 
 journeys, a ladder into hell. If, nowadays, a man travel not, he 
 is called a Jack-in-the-corner and one who has set up his rest 
 behind the stove. But tell me, dear half-Germans ! (for whole 
 Germans ye have long ceased to me) Is it not true ? Ye send 
 your sons out that they may learn strange vices at great cost in 
 stranger-lands, when, with far less expense, they might be 
 acquiring virtues at home. They return with no more point to 
 to them than they went out, except that they bring home some 
 new "fashion of^WTiMace. They return no more gallant, unless 
 it be that gallant comes from the French galant. They return 
 more splendidly clad, but good habits were better than to 
 be finely habited. New-fashioned hats, new-fashioned peri- 
 wigs, new-fashioned collars, new-fashioned coats, new-fashioned 
 breeches, new-fashioned hose, new-fashioned shoes, new-fash- 
 ioned ribbons, new-fashioned buttons, — also new-fashioned 
 consciences creep into our beloved Germany through your 
 travels. Your fool's frocks change too with every moon ; and 
 soon the tailors will have to establish a university and take 
 Doctor's degrees, and afterwards bear the title of Right-reverend 
 Doctors of fashion. 
 
 If I had all the new fashions of coats for four and twenty 
 years, I would almost make a curtain before the sun with them, 
 so that men should go about with lanterns in the day-time. At 
 least, I would undertake to hide all Turkey with them, so that 
 the Constantinopolitans should think their Mahomed was play- 
 ing blind-the-cat with them. An old witch, at the request of 
 king Saul, called the prophet Samuel from the dead, that he 
 might know the result of his arms. It will soon come to pass, 
 that people will want to call from the dead the identical tailor 
 and master who made the beautiful Esther's garment, when she 
 was so well-pleasing in the eyes of Ahasuerus. * * * 
 
 * * * So the prodigal son learned but Jittle good in foreign 
 lands. His doing was wooing ; his thinking was drinking ; his 
 Latin was Proficiat^ his Italian, Brindlsi^ his Bohemian, Sas- 
 
John Ber ridge, 275 
 
 dravU liis German Gesegnets Gott. In one word, he was a goodly 
 fellow always mellow, a vagrant, a lyacchant^ an amant^ a turhant^ 
 a distillant^ &c. Now he had wasted his substance in foreign 
 pro-sdnces and torn his conscience to tatters as well as his 
 clothes. He might, with truth, have said to his father what 
 the brothers of Joseijh said, without truth, to Jacob when they 
 showed him the bloody coat, '^fera pesslma,^'' &c., ''an evil 
 beast hath devoured him." An evil beast devoured the prodi- 
 gal son ; an evil beast, the golden eagle, an evil beast, the 
 golden griffin, an evil beast, the golden buck, an evil beast, the 
 golden bear. These tavern-beasts reduced the youngster to 
 that condition that his breeches were as transparent as a fisher- 
 man's net, his stomach shrunk together like an empty bladder, 
 and the mirror of his misery was to be seen on the sleeve of his 
 dirty doublet, &c. And now when the scamp had got sick of 
 the swine-diet, more wholesome thoughts came into his mind 
 and he would go straight home to his old father and seek a 
 favorable hearing at his feet ; in vrliich he succeeded according 
 to his wish. And his own father fell quite lovingly on the neck 
 of the bad vocativo^ for which a rope would have been fitter. 
 Yea, he was introduced with special joy and jubilee into the 
 paternal dwelling, sudden preparations were made for a feast, 
 kitchen and cellar were ]3ut in requisition, and the best and 
 fattest calf must be killed in a hurry and cooked and roasted. 
 Away with the rags and tatters ! and hurrah ! for the velvet 
 coat and the prinked up hat and a gold ring 1 Bring on your 
 fiddlers ! allegro ! 
 
 Some preachers have had apparently an irresistible 
 faculty for drollery. The other day I went over to Everton 
 to look at the grave of John Berridge, one of these men 
 upon whose lips, perhaps, it became as really sacred a 
 thing — if the expression be permitted — as on those of any 
 man gifted with such a dangerous faculty. He wrote his 
 own epitaph, and here it is itseK as plainly as any word he 
 ever wrote, reveahng what mamier of man the quaint, but 
 really earnest old vicar of Everton was : — 
 
276 Wit, Humor, etc., in the PvJ/pit. 
 
 Here lie 
 The earthly remains of 
 
 Joirsr Beriiidge, 
 
 Late Vicar of Everton, 
 
 And an itinerant servant of Jesus Christ, 
 
 Who loved his Master and His work, 
 
 And after running on his errands many years, 
 
 Was called up to wait on Him above. 
 
 Eeader, 
 
 Art thou bom again ? 
 
 No salvation without New-Birth ! 
 
 I was born in Sin, February, 1716. 
 
 Remained ignorant of my fallen state till 1730. 
 
 Lived proudly on Faith and Works for salvation till 1754. 
 
 Admitted to Everton Vicarage, 1755, 
 
 Fled to Jesus alone for Eefuge, 1756. 
 
 Fell asleep in Christ, January 22nd, 1793. 
 
 But the words of honest John Berridge, if they were 
 droll, were seasoned with the salt of good conversation, 
 which has often been wanting to the words of those who 
 have indulged themselves as he did ; thus he describes the 
 doctrine of the contingency to the promise of the grace of 
 eternal life under the image of 
 
 sergeant if. 
 
 The doctrine of perseverance affords a stable prop to upright 
 minds, yet lends no wanton cloak to corrupt hearts. It brings a 
 cordial to revive the faint, and keeps a guard to check the fro- 
 ward. The guard attending on this doctrine is Sergeant If; 
 low in stature, but lofty in significance ; a very valiant guard, 
 though a monosyllable. Kind notice has been taken of the 
 Sergeant by Jesus Christ and his apostles ; and much respect is 
 due unto him from all the Lord's recruiting ofiicers, and every 
 Roldier in His army. 
 
 Pray listeu to the Sergeant's speech : " If ye continue in my 
 word, then are ye my disciples indeed." — John viii. 31. " If ye 
 do these things, ye shall never fi^]!,"— 3 Peter i. 10. " If what ye 
 have heard shall abide in you, ye shall continue in the Son and 
 
Jacob Kruber. 277 
 
 in the Father." — 1 John ii. 24. " We are made partakers of 
 Christ, IF we hold fast unto the end." — Heb. iii. 14. " Whoso 
 looketh and continueth (that is, if he that looketh does con- 
 tinue) in the perfect law of liberty, that man shall be blessed in 
 his deed." — James i. 25. 
 
 Yet take notice, Sir, that Sergeant If is not of Jewish, but of 
 Christian parentage ; not sprung from Levi, though a son of 
 Abraham ; no sentinel of Moses, but a watchman for the camp 
 of Jesus. 
 
 But drollery in the pulpit ! Artemus Ward in the pulpit ! 
 surely there is something shocking and repulsive in the 
 idea. Surely it is not so that we can conceive the Master 
 of preachers ever preaching. Surely not so did the apos- 
 tles preach. Not so ever could they preach who lived on 
 the confines of eternity, and there should the preacher ever 
 find the home of his thought and his heart ; to permit the 
 undisciplined fancy to mount a grotesque idea, and set forth 
 prancing and curveting, almost the astonishment and 
 laughter of an audience, whose lowest nature will no doubt 
 be tickled w^hile the highest intentions of the pulpit are 
 thus entirely kept out of sight. Surely if the preacher who 
 goes into the pulpit to say fine things, commits a great sia, 
 not less does he sin who turns the pulpit into a booth, on 
 whose boards he gives forth his queer, extravagant and 
 droll things, for drollery is satire on the hps of the clown ; 
 it is truth degraded to the party colors of the harlequin, or 
 the buskin of the fool, gxinning to make the multitude 
 grill ; yet nature will come on the lips of men who love to 
 be at the mercy of their own fancies. This also must be 
 said in defence of some of these children of humor, whose 
 lives were nevertheless holy and sanctified, that the droll 
 things abide in the memory of the audience, when the seri- 
 ous things, and even the intentions and lessons of the droll 
 things themselves are forgotten and pass away. Such a 
 preacher was Jacob Kruber of America ; he seemed to riot 
 
278 Witj Humor, etc., in tlie Pulpit 
 
 in the pulpit, and become intoxicated upon tlie schnapps of 
 his own free humor : perhaps he was the Eowland Hill of 
 his country and his denomination. When in Huntingxlon, 
 U. S., the Uniyersahsts, who had become a large body 
 there beneath the teaching and leadership of a person 
 named Crow — and who were influenced by the flattering- 
 doctrine, that men and women dying unconverted in this 
 world, would be converted in the next — came with their 
 preacher in thronging multitudes to hear and to mock him. 
 After a strong assault upon the doctrine itseK, he exclaimed, 
 *' Now any man who could conceive such a thing must be 
 born in a crow's nest, and he must have been brought up 
 in a crow's nest, as he never could get up any higher. 
 He must have been fed on dry bones, without any meat on 
 them or marrow in them. Lord, stir up this crow's nest ! 
 Lord ! the crow is a very ugly bird ; it is all black — make 
 it white. It has a very harsh croaking noise — Lord, j)ut a 
 new song in its mouth, even praise to our God. Lord, give 
 it wings, that it may fly away to the third heavens and be 
 converted ;" and we read that such poor drollery shot poor 
 Crow. Kruber, like most of these droll men, had as much 
 horror of anything graceful in a sermon as he had of any- 
 thing attractive and beautiful in a di*ess, and he took real 
 pleasure in trying how rough and uncouth he could be in 
 his expressions in the pulpit. The Latter day Saints told 
 him their meat was too strong for him ; he said, " Yes, it 
 is very strong ! it is tainted ; go and bury it, that it may 
 not poison any person." Then he suggested a change of 
 two words in the designation of theu^ sect, instead of " day," 
 say "night;" and instead of " samts," say "owls." Cau- 
 tioning against the rehance on conversion, however clear 
 and satisfactory — instead of aimuig at daily growth in 
 grace, he exclaimed, " some people believe if you are onc(5 
 converted, you are just as safe as if already in heaven — and 
 the door shut, and the hey lost.'' Perhaps few of oiu' 
 
Jacob Kruher. 
 
 279 
 
 readers have ever seen, and mil have no objection to read 
 his satire upon fashionable preachers, and their modes of 
 meeting and helping in cases of conversion. 
 
 lie chose for his subject the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. 
 Ananias, who resided at Damascus, was made to represent the 
 vclvet-hpped modern preacher. He thus introduced the subject : 
 " A great many years ago a bold blasphemer was smitten by con- 
 viction when he was on his way to Damascus to persecute the 
 Christians. He was taken to Damascus in great distress. 
 Ananias, after hearing of the concern of mind under which Saul 
 was laboring, started out to find him. It seems that he was 
 stopping at the house of a gentleman by the name of Judas, not 
 Judas Iscariot, for that person had been dead several years. The 
 residence of this gentleman was in the street which was called 
 Strait. I suppose it was the main street or Broadway of the 
 city, and hence it was not difficult to find. Arriving at the man- 
 sion he rang the bell, and soon a servant made her appearance. 
 He addressed her thus : " Is the gentleman of the house, Mr. 
 Judas, within ?" "Yes, sir," responded the servant, " he is at 
 liome." Taking out a glazed, gilt-edged card, on which was 
 printed, Rev. Mr. Ananias, he handed it to the servant and said : 
 " Take this card to him quickly." Taking a seat, with his hat, 
 cane, and gloves in his left hand, his right being engaged in ar- 
 ranging his classical curls, so as to present as much of an intel- 
 lectual air as possible, he awaited an answer. Presently Mr. 
 Judas makes his appearance, whereupon Mr. Ananias, rises, and 
 making a graceful bow, says : " Have I the honor to address Mr. 
 Judas, the gentleman of the house V " That is my name, sir; 
 please be seated." " I have called, Mr. Judas, to inquire if a 
 gentleman by the name of Mr. Saul, a legate of the high priest 
 at Jerusalem, is a guest at your house." " Yes, sir ; Mr. Saul is 
 in his chamber, in very great distress and trouble of mind. He 
 was brought here yesterday, having fallen from his horse a few 
 miles from the city on the Jerusalem road. " Oh ! I am very 
 sorry to hear of so painful an accident. I hope he is not 
 dangerously wounded." " No, sir, I think not, though the fall 
 has affected his sight very much, and he complains considerably 
 and prays a good deal." " Well, I am very sorry ; but that is not 
 
28 o Wit J Humor ^ etc.^ in the Pulpit, 
 
 very strange, as I believe he belongs to that sect of Jews called 
 Pharisees, who make much of j^raying. How long since he re- 
 ceived this fall, Mr. Judas ? About three days since, and all the 
 time he has not taken any refreshment or rest." *' Indeed ! you 
 don't say so ! he must be seriously hurt. May I be permitted to 
 see Mr. Saul ? " I will ascertain his pleasure, Mr. Ananias, and 
 let you know if you can have an interview." After being gone 
 a short time Mr. Judas return, and says : " Mr. Saul will be much 
 pleased to see you." When he is ushered into his presence Saul 
 is reclining on his couch in a room partially darkened. Ap- 
 proaching him, Ananias says : " How do you do, Mr. Saul ? I 
 understood you had done our city the honor of a visit. Hope 
 you had a pleasant journey. How did you leave all the friends 
 at Jerusalem ? How did you leave the high pnest ? We have 
 very fine weather, Mr. Saul. I thought I would call and pay my 
 respects to you, as I was very anxious to have some conversation 
 with you on theological subjects. I am extremely sorry to hear 
 of the accident that happened to you in visiting our city, and 
 hoj)e you will soon recover from your indisjDosition." 
 
 No man sinned more in this way than the celebrated 
 ErOTvxAND Hill. He also was a droll in the pulpit. We 
 have heard him indulging in excursions, in his extreme old 
 age, which we suppose would scarcely be tolerated now ; 
 and many of the anecdotes recorded of him are alike intol- 
 erable to good sense, good taste, and Christian feehng. 
 Rambhng and digressive, he seemed to be at the mercy of 
 his humor, and to follow it whithersoever it led him. 
 Speaking to students of Dr. Bogue's academy, he said : 
 
 The Gospel is an excellent milch-cow, which always gives 
 plenty of milk and of the best quality. I never write my ser- 
 mons. I always trust to the Gospel. I first pull at justification, 
 then give a plug at adoption, and afterwards a bit at santifica- 
 tioD, and so on, till I have in one way or other filled my pail 
 with Gospel milk ; and if you will only do the same, young men, 
 depend upon it you will make far better ministers than you will 
 ever do by writing your sermons and preaching from memory. 
 
 Again, on another occasion, he said : 
 
^:. 
 
 Rowland Hill. 281 
 
 The mere professor reminds me of a sow that I saw two hours 
 ago luxuriating in her stye when almost over head and ears in 
 the mire. ISTow, suppose any of you were to take Bess (the sow) 
 and wash her, and suppose after having dressed her in a silk 
 gown, and put a smart cap upon her head, you were to take her 
 into any of your parlors, and were to set her down to tea in 
 company, she might look very demure for a time, and might 
 not give even a single grunt ; but you would observe that she 
 occasionally gave a sly look towards the door, w^hich showed 
 that she felt herself in an uncomfortable position, and the mo- 
 ment she perceived that the door was open she would give an- 
 other proof of the fact by running out of the room as fast 
 as she could. Follow the sow, with her silk gown and her 
 fancy cap, and* in a few seconds you will find that she has re- 
 turned to her stye and is again wallowing in the mire. Just so 
 it is with the unrenewed man : sin is his element ; and though 
 he may be induced from a variety of motives to put on at times 
 a show of religion, you will easily perceive that he feels himself 
 to be under unpleasant restraints, and that he will return to his 
 sins whenever an opportunity of doing so, unknown to his ac- 
 quaintances, presents itself to him. 
 
 But this is not the whole of Bowland Hill ; his beauty 
 and true excellence are forgotten, and only the frequent 
 coarsenesses are now remembered, although Eobert Hall, 
 we understand, hyperbolically said of him, "No man has 
 ever drawn, since the days of our Saviour, such sublime 
 images from nature ; here Mr. Hill excels every other man." 
 He had a rapid succession of many-colored and many-shaped 
 ideas, and of their singularity even Mr. Edwin Sydney gives 
 many illustrations. This was remarkable in his collection 
 sermons. "There is," he exclaimed once, "a perpetual 
 frost in the pockets of some wealthy people ; as soon as 
 they put their hands into them, they are frozen and unable 
 to draw out their purses. Had I my way, I would hang all 
 misers, but the reverse of the common mode ; I would hang 
 them up by the heels, that their money might run out of 
 
282 Wity Humor, etc,^ in tlie Pulpit 
 
 their pockets, and make a famous scramble for you to pick 
 up and put in the plate." On a wet day, when a number of 
 persons took shelter in his chapel during a heavy showier, 
 w^hile he was in the pulpit, he said, " Many people are 
 greatly blamed for making their religion a cloak ; but I do 
 not think those are much better who make it an umbrella." 
 "When he was told he did not preach to the elect — upon an 
 early opportunity, in the pulpit, he said, "I don't know 
 them, or I would preach to them. Save the goodness to 
 mark them with a bit of chalk, and then I'U. talk to them." 
 "I don't like those mighty fine preachers," he said, "who 
 so beautifully round off aU theh^ sentences that they are 
 sure to roll off the sinner's conscience." "Never mind 
 breaking grammar," he said to his excellent co-pastor, The- 
 ophilus Jones, " if the Lord enables you to break the poor 
 sinner's heart." A strange illustration he gave when he in- 
 troduced his sermon on the text^ " We are not ignorant of 
 his devices : " 
 
 Many years since I met a drove of pigs in one of the streets of 
 a large town, and to my surprise they were not driven, but quietly 
 followed their leader. This singular fact excited my curiosity ; 
 and I pursued the swine, until they all quietly entered the butch- 
 ery : I then asked the man how he succeeded in getting the poor 
 stupid, stubborn pigs so willingly to follow him, when he told 
 me the secret : He had a basket of beans under his arm ; and 
 kept dropping them as he proceeded, and so secured his object. 
 Ah 1 my dear hearers, the devil has got his basket of beans, and 
 he knows how to suit his temptations to every sinner. He drops 
 them by the way, — the poor sinner is thus led captive by the 
 devil at his own will ; and if the grace of God prevent not, he 
 will get him at last intoliis butchery, and there he will keep liim 
 for ever. Oh, it is because " we are not ignorant of liis de- 
 vices," that we are anxious this evening to guard you against 
 them. 
 
 The illustration is not very elegant, but it would tell on 
 
''Bold ' Tom Bradbury: '' 283 
 
 many rude natures ; it was Scriptural— it was human, and 
 true. 
 
 " God/' says an old Scotch divine, .quoted by WilHam 
 Jay, had but one only begotten son, and he made a loreacher 
 of Him ; " the truth of which remark may perhaps be al- 
 lowed to atone for its homehness. The preacher who 
 constantly remembers this will perhaps be saved from these 
 really sinful escapades and follies of speech, which call to 
 mind the remark that there is a gxeat difference between 
 what St. .Paul calls "the foolishness of preaching" and 
 foolish preaching. 
 
 Dean Eamsay tells a story of some old Scottish lady who, 
 while mourning over the moral state of one of her relatives, 
 exclaimed, " Our John swears awfu' ; and we try to correct 
 him ; but," she added, in a candid and apologetic tone, 
 "nae doubt it is a great set-aff to conversation." It seems 
 to be so even with pulpit drollery and humor. It is very 
 much condenmed, but no doubt it is a great set-off to the 
 pulpit. It has been said,* " In every denomination there 
 will occasionally spring up a ' Tom Bradbury,' preaching 
 with eccentricity enough, and droUery enough to afflict the 
 Chm^ch and to amuse the world. Billy Dawson was one of 
 this stamp." The writer can know neither the one preacher 
 nor the other to whom he refers. I glanced, as I read this, 
 to the eleven volumes of the Sermons of Bkadbury ; The 
 Great Mystery of Godhness, and the Christus in Coelo, and 
 felt that some wonderful injustice had been done to his 
 memory ; his wit and humor were like the wit and humor 
 of South, but seem to have been more rich and genial ; 
 they were not consecrated to flatter a corrupt court and 
 triumphant cause, and did not at all mar the ample knowl- 
 
 *" Punch in the Pulpit; or, the Danger of Novelties and other 
 Improprieties in Heligion, and especially of Jocularity in the House 
 of God.'* By Philip Cater, i^uthor of ''The Great Fiction of the 
 Times." Printed for the Author. 
 
284 ^^^1 Humor, etc., in the Pulpit 
 
 edge, and soiind and lofty views of evangelical truth and 
 copious acquaintance vdtli Scripture by wliich he dehghted 
 his hearers : even iiis celebrated sermon, " The Ass and the 
 Serpent," contains httle that the fastidious of our day could 
 condemn. He hated the Stuarts, and in his sermons he 
 maintained at once with indignation and humor, the right 
 of a people to resist tyrants. 
 
 But " Tom Bradbury " has some sms to answer for ; 
 even if he deserves to live in the honor and esteem of men 
 to whom civil and rehgious liberty are blessings. Queen 
 Anne was wont to call him '* bold Bradbui-y." Few per- 
 sons, it is said, had a greater share in promoting the suc- 
 cession of the house of Hanover. It is also said, that upon 
 Queen Anne's death, he preached from the text, " Go, see 
 now this cursed woman, and bury her, for she is a king's 
 daughter : " it was he who was wont to express his dislike 
 of Dr. "Watts' psalms by saying " Let us have none of Dr. 
 Watts' Vfhims" In fact, he was the South of the Noncon- 
 formists, but he had incomparably more decency than that 
 disagreeable time-server. 
 
 Wilham Dawson may, perhaps, seem to be nearer to the 
 above author's idea of Punch in the pulpit, yet he was a 
 master there, and only disgraceful ignorance can so insult 
 his memory. He seldom indulged in droUery for its own 
 sake ; he had immense power over vast audiences. We 
 have many powerful preachers hving now, but in the power 
 of seK-abandonment we have no speaker like Dawson. He 
 spoke to the people in parables ; he sometimes spoke in 
 very bold, to our thought, even in coarse imagery and lan- 
 guage ; but the world needs preachers such as he was. 
 And the writer I have quoted finds Punch hi the pulpit 
 during the singing of many hymns. Those exquisitely 
 beautiful hymns, *' AJas ! and did my Saviour bleed," and 
 that most tender one, "The waves of trouble, how they 
 rise," awaken only his disgust. This is called "queer 
 
The Folly of Learned Sermons. 285 
 
 hjonnology." We live indeed in hypercritical times, when 
 such sweet and sacred notes of the Church can be profaned 
 by such a vulgar designation. 
 
 There is no doubt plenty of cause for a smart satire upon 
 many of the ways and words of the men of the pulpit. It 
 is a difficult thing to determine — nothing can determine but 
 the cultivated and sanctified sense of the preacher — the ex- 
 tent to which humor may be permitted in the pulpit. Some 
 will protest against its use altogether, but the boughs of 
 the old elmtree which once shed its autumn leaves in St. 
 Paul's Churchyard, and which has not been long removed, 
 w^hile preserving to the eye of memory the cross over which 
 it waved, where stood the pulpit, once the most celebrated 
 in all England — the Pulpit of St. Paul's Cross — defends the 
 use of it. Of what that pulpit was we have no resemblance 
 now ; for, indeed, times have altered, and the pulpit work 
 is different ; that pulpit was The Times newspaper of its 
 day ; it was far more, it was the platform — it was the book 
 — the focal lens — the ventilator of public opmion ; and not 
 only true things, but humorous things, did that useful 
 sounding-board echo over the multitudes. There Colet, the 
 learned Dean — there Hooker — there the grave and dignified 
 Ridley ; and there, too, was the most popular preacher of 
 them. all — the anecdotal, the witty, the fable-loving and hu- 
 morous Latimer. If we did not regret that there is found 
 so little freedom in the pulpit, we should rejoice that with 
 the multitudes of preachers there is so little infrmgemeut 
 of the bounds of good taste. At the same time it is to be 
 remembered that there is a pedantic Punch in the pulpit, 
 as well as a frolicsome one, and it is difficult to say which 
 of the two is the more irreverent. Fine sermons, learned 
 sermons, metaphysical sermons, are shocking things. A 
 very old writer has said : 
 
 Some take a text sublime and fraught with sense, 
 
 But quickly fall into impertinence. 
 
 ^ 
 
286 Wit J HtunoVj etc.j in the Pulpit. 
 
 On trifles eloquent with ^reat delight 
 
 They flourish out on some strange mystic rite ; 
 
 But to subdue the passions, or direct, 
 
 And all life's moral duties they neglect. 
 
 Most joreachers err, except the wiser few, 
 
 Thinking established doctrines, therefore, true. 
 
 Others, too fond of novelty and schemes. 
 
 Amuse the world with airy, idle dreams. 
 
 Thus too much faith or too presuming wit 
 
 Are rocks where bigots or freethinkers split. 
 
 'Tis not enough that what you say is true. 
 
 To make us feel it you must feel it too. 
 
 Show yourself warm, and that wall warmth impart 
 
 To every hearer's sympathising heart. 
 
 The style of some preachers is quite as ludicrous as that 
 ridiculed by Pluche in his History of the Heavens : — 
 
 A carpenter who understood his trade, and was in tolerable 
 circumstances, had given his son a good education, that is, had 
 made him pass through a course of liberal studies and phil- 
 osophy. We know no other method. The father dying just as 
 the son had gone through his public disputations, and leaving 
 some undertakings unflnished, the young man took a liking to 
 work, and followed his father's profession. But he bethought 
 himself of recalling his art to certain principles, and subjecting 
 it to a methodical order. He treated the whole in his head as 
 he had seen his masters treat the art of reasoning. At length 
 he got together a number of journeymen of the trade, and 
 promised to lead them by a new way to the quintessence of 
 carpentry. 
 
 Our new doctor, after a long preamble on mechanicks, which 
 he promised to treat on by genus and species, came to the first 
 question, and very seriously examined whether there was a 
 principle of force in man. He long discussed the reasons 2^ro 
 and con^ and at last enabled his disciples, knowingly, and with- 
 out any apprehension of mistake, to aflirm that man was capable 
 of a certain degree of strength, and able to communicate motion, 
 for instance, to an axe, or to a stone, if not too great. He was 
 
m 
 
 Humor OILS Juxtaposition of Ideas. 287 
 
 contented with this modest assertion, being persuaded, that, 
 with this small strength muUiplied, he might, towards the end 
 of his treatise, come to transporting the largest pieces of rough 
 marble, and to heaving of mountains. He next proceeded to 
 examine the place where this force resided ; and after many- 
 disputations on the brains, the glandula pinealis, the spirits, 
 and the muscles, he, out of economy, and for brevity's sake, 
 determined, that the arm was the chief agent, and the instru- 
 ment of human strength. 
 
 In a third paragraph (for you would have wondered how well 
 he divided and put his matter in order) the strength residing 
 in the arm gave him occasion to examine all the constituent 
 pieces of the arm, and to make an exact anatomy of it. He 
 made long dissertations on the nerves, muscles, fibres, and de- 
 scended to the minutest filaments. He multiplied the lengths 
 of the muscles by their breadths, and the product of these by 
 the sum of the fibres. ' From one calculation to another he came 
 to determine the strength of each degree of tension, and, by 
 means of these determinations, made himself able to fix the 
 strength of percussion. Thus he weighed a cuff*, and joining 
 the strength of the fist to the sum of the blow of a hammer, he 
 showed you the exact weight with which this percussion was in 
 eqaal proportion. Finally, to sum up his matters, and for the 
 conveniency of the young carpenters, he reduced this whole into 
 algebraic expressions. • 
 
 The author's conclusion on the whole w^ork is, " that not only 
 in point of religion, but also in natural philosoj^hy, wc ought to 
 be contented with the certainty of experience, and the simplic- 
 ity of Revelation." * 
 
 In thoughtlessness, in sheer vacant thoughtlessness, 
 some of the effects, equal to the most ridiculous droller)', 
 have their origin; like the escapade of speech heard from 
 the Hps of a veiy holy minister by a friend of our own, in 
 describing the happiness of the heavenly state : — " Ok, my 
 friends, there Satan shall harass you no longer; there the 
 enemy of souls can distress you no more, for there you 
 * riuche, Ill&t. of ihe Heavens, vol. ii. b. 4. 
 
288 Wit J Hiimor^ etc.^ in the Pulpit. 
 
 shall be like Him — there you shall see him as He is." It 
 is to be hoped all his auditors were sufficiently at home in 
 Scrij3ture, to understand the extraordinary juxtaposition ■ 
 of ideas.* 
 
 But I do not know that any of these strange develop- 
 ments disgust more, than what results in tame feebleness 
 from the absence of earnestness. We have the "laced 
 coat of mere orthodox twaddle," we have men who stand 
 like cast-iron pumps, and exercise then- preaching as a 
 kind of parish-pump faculty ; we have somnolence sleep- 
 ing itseK to death ; and we have the platitudes uttered, 
 when men having no voice in their own conscience, fail of 
 course to reach the consciences of others. 
 
 * One Saturday afternoon Robert Robinson received a visit from 
 the Rev. Clement Carnifex, who, at that time, lived at *' Enon, near 
 to Salim, because there was much water there." The following 
 dialogue between these t^v^o men will afford a still more striking 
 illustration of these impertinent allusions to the devil : — 
 
 Clement Carnifex. — " I am come from a great distance to hear you 
 preach to-morrow." 
 
 Robert Eobinson. — " Then, brother, you shall preach for me." 
 C. C. — " O no, no ; I cannot preach in Mr. Robinson's pulpit." 
 M. It. — " Why not ; my pulpit is a wooden one ; is not yours ? " 
 C. C. — "Yes, sir; but f cannot preach to Mr. Robinson's 
 people." 
 
 B. R. — " Why not ? my people are like other people — some good, 
 some bad — are not yours ? " 
 
 a a—" Yes, air." 
 
 R. R. — " Well, then, I daresay the sermons last Sunday at home 
 would be very suitable. What were they ? " 
 
 C. G. — '* Why, in the morning I preached from Esther vii. 9 — 
 * Hang him thereon.' " 
 
 R. R. — " Very well, brother. You had a good opportunity of 
 showing that the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. 
 Did you take it up in that light, brother ? " 
 
 C. C — " No, sir ; I considered Haman as the devil, who is always 
 endeavoring to injure the Lord's people, and would be glad to 
 destroy them." 
 
Strange Freaks of Speech in the FuJ/pit. 289 
 
 You have heard many sermons preached upon the pub- 
 lican and pharisee ; but did you ever hear that preached 
 in St. Giles-in-the-Fields. " It was sad," said the able and 
 eloquent preacher, " that any of our fellow creatures should 
 so fall, as to stand in need of such a degrading confession 
 as the pubHcan's ; but he besought his hearers to be upon 
 their guard, lest by drawing too favorably a contrast be- 
 tween such outcasts and themselves, they incurred the 
 censure pronounced on that otherwise most amiable char- 
 acter, the pharisee." And James Haldane mentions, in 
 one of his missionary tours in Scotland, that he heard a 
 minister solemnly warn his people, and he was a minister 
 of the Scotch Establishment, against putting any trust, 
 
 i?. i2. — " Very good, brother ; nothing can be more suitable. 
 Here is old Nanny, the pew-opener at our place ; she can never get 
 to meeting in time, for she says that the devil always finds her 
 something or other to do. Then there is old Farmer Jones, who 
 lives about three miles oflf. He says that before he has got half 
 way to meeting, the devil tells him that somebody is breaking into 
 liis barns, and he is obliged to return. Now, brother, if you could 
 prove that you have hanged the devil, nothing in the world would 
 be more suitable. That will do for the morning. Now, what is 
 the afternoon subject, brother ? " 
 
 01 C. — " Why, sir, in the afternoon I preached from 2 Kings 
 xviii. 36 — * Answer him not.' " 
 
 i?. It — '^ Very well, brother. You have an opportunity of show- 
 ing not only that the king's business requires haste, but that it is 
 sometimes good policy not to reveal the secrets of State affairs. 
 Did you handle it that way, brother ? " 
 
 0. C. — " No, sir. I endeavored to show that the devil would be 
 always harassing and distressing the dear people of God ; but the 
 best way was to pay no regard to his temptation. * Answer him 
 not a word.' " 
 
 i?. It'—" Ha ! ha ! brother ; that wDl never do. Now, in the 
 morning, you see, according to your sermon, you hanged the devil ; 
 that was very fortunate ; but in the afternoon you brought him to 
 life again. At any rate it must be wrong for these two subjects to 
 follow each other. 
 
 13 
 
290 Witj Humor, etc., in the P-ulpit. 
 
 wliile they continued sinners, in the blood of Chrisi 
 " Kepent," said he, " become righteous, atone for your 
 sins by probity, and virtue, and then if you please, you 
 may look to that blood, but not before." Widely different 
 all this to the "warning every man, and teaching every 
 man, that we may present every man perfect in Christ 
 Jesus." 
 
 We need not read the celebrated " Sermons to Asses."* 
 We need not go to hear the Friar Genmd.f We need not 
 listen to the preacher who took for his text " O," and said 
 a thousand fine things ; or that learned and judiciously 
 educated monk, who, preaching upon the servant of the 
 High Priest warming himself, began, " My brethren, see 
 how the evangehst relates, not merely as an liistorian 
 would — ' he warmed himself,' but as a philosopher — ' be- 
 cause he was cold.' " The speech outruns the ideas of 
 some preachers, as in the instance cited by the Wyckhamist 
 of a missionary — describing the horrors of the Cafire war, 
 and its desolating effect on his own estate, wishing to wind 
 up with a good sonorous cadence, who ended thus, in words 
 which certainly were remarkable as the experience of a 
 Hving man, " And when I got home to my house I found 
 my children fatherless and my wife a widow." We need 
 not go for the purpose of marking the humors of the pul- 
 pit to that repertory, above aU other repertoires of pulpit 
 anecdote, Eobert Eobinson's edition of " Claude," imless 
 to note how admirable are his remarks upon vulgarity in 
 the pulpit ; and they afford a reason for many of Eobin- 
 son's own frequent lapses in that way. 
 
 Nothing is more necessary than self-denial. Beside all that 
 
 * " Sermons to Asses, to Doctors of Divinity, to Lords Spiritual, 
 and to Ministers of State." By the Rev. James Murray, 1819. 
 
 f " The History of the Famous Preacher, Friar Gerund de Cam- 
 panzas, otherwise Gerund Zotes." Translated from the Spanish* 
 
 In 2 vols., 1772. 
 
Humorous Literature in the Pulpit 291 
 
 self-denial, which belongs to ministers in common with their 
 fellow-Christians, there are exercises of it peculiar to divines, 
 and essential to the discharge of the pastoral office. Visiting 
 and conversing with the iDoor, and allowing them to come for 
 spiritual advice, are articles of this kind. Can it be imagined, 
 that a man of learning is gratified by illiterate conversation ? 
 That a polite, well-bred man relishes the vulgar, awkward rude- 
 ness of clowns ? That men, who know the worth of time, and 
 who love study as they love life, can be pleased with interrup- 
 tion and nonsense, and long-winded tales of complaint, which 
 begin, perhaps, in an ale-house fray, and end in a case of con- 
 science ? Can they, whose company is courted by accomplished 
 men, who would pour into their bosoms of wise and pious con- 
 versation good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, 
 and running over — can these, I ask, of choice spend half a day 
 in searching for one grain of wheat in a bushel of cliaflf ? Yet 
 he who cannot submit to these things, however qualified for a 
 nobleman's domestic chaplain, or for a dignitary in a rich 
 church, can never make the less splendid but more useful minis- 
 ter of a parish, or pastor of a flock. A poet may give himself 
 airs, toss his haughty head, take snufi*, and chant — Odi prof a- 
 num Vulgus ; but the minister of the meek and merciful Jesus 
 must not do so. He must try to take the ton of his poor people, 
 if he would do them real spiritual good. It will be his glory 
 sometimes to be rude in speech, to conceal his abilities, to adapt 
 himself to their weaknesses, to prefer Bunyan before Beza, 
 Dodd's sayings and Wright's poems before the casuistry of 
 Hoadley, and the poetry of Milton or Young. 
 
 Thus, also, some preachers are fond of discoursing on 
 the Book of Leviticus, a book needing a very fine spiritual 
 hand and insight, and capable of yielding glorious teach- 
 ing ; yet the effect is usually bad because there is no eye 
 for the Divine meaning. Thus a young clergyman hearing 
 a minister preaching on the types, and expounding Leviti- 
 cus iii. 3 — "And he shall offer the fat that covereth the 
 inwards, and all the fat that is upon the inwards, and the 
 two kidneys, and the fat that is on them, which is by the 
 
292 Witj Humor ^ etc,^ in the Pitlpit. 
 
 flanks, and the caul above the hver, with the kidneys, it he 
 shall take away " — it is said, turned sick at the suggestive 
 pictures. It is a singular chapter in the history of the 
 human mind, the irreverence of reverent men. The shelves 
 of our own hbrary give to us John Stoughton's (not our 
 excellent friend of Kensington, but the old 1640-man) 
 " Baruch's Sore Gently Opened, and the Salve Skilfully 
 AppHed." "VVe have the " Church's Bowel Complaint,'* 
 " The Snuffers of Divine Love." Then are there not the 
 " Spiritual Mustard Pot to Make the Soul Sneeze with 
 Devotion," " A Pack of Cards to Win Christ," &c., &c. ? 
 Looking back upon these things, we almost feel that our 
 age has advanced in reverence as well as in culture. 
 
 Yet we wish we had more freedom in the pulpit. There 
 would be more useful results if ministers felt more and 
 spoke more openly and heartily ; if every man had more 
 his own style. If, in fact, the pulpit could be less than it 
 is, it would be rrwre than it is ; it over-rides far too intoler- 
 antly other ministerial duties. We ourselves speak much 
 of it, and yet we long to hear less of it. And then it will 
 do its work better, when its words shall be a flow of kindly, 
 friendly, solemn, cheerful, thoughtful talk : a conversation 
 with people, rather than the sweep of a stately flight above 
 them, talking to them — which is in sympathy — rather than 
 talking at them. Certainly, in the work of the pulpit, the 
 true preacher makes his own work, and uses, by an instinct 
 deeper than his own knowledge, the kind of method most 
 suited to his nature. Toplady says, " the painter chooses 
 the materials on which he paints — on wood, on glass, on 
 metals, on ivory, on canvas. Some natural endowments 
 are not high, there the painting is on wood ; others on 
 marble — quick sensibility and poignant feeling ; some on 
 glass, very beautiful, but especially dangerous, since by 
 the first stone of penetration they are fractured and 
 broken, and fall from their first love. The earhest an- 
 
TTie Reader and the Hearer. 293 
 
 donts painted only in water, like hypocrites; but God 
 paints in oil, accompanying Himself the word by unction 
 and by power." 
 
 And when attempts are made either to sneer down the 
 pulpit ojr to hold it up to ridicule, the response ought to 
 be — that it is really by far the most important means for 
 the education of thought and emotion in the hands of men. 
 It cannot be cared for too much, or guarded too sedulously. 
 It needs indeed to be taken away from the tongue of big- 
 otry and formalism — it needs to be made less a mere 
 amusement and luxury — more of tenderness, experience, 
 teaching — more of humanity in it ; and then it wiU bo 
 hailed as one of the most delightful means of cheering the 
 toil of the working-man with the love of Jesus, the story 
 of the Cross, and the good news from the far country, 
 inwrought with lessons and pictures of life, homely, pow- 
 erful, and practical, becoming at once light to the eye and 
 a power to the conscience. 
 
 Southey entertains us with a story of a certain Quaker 
 who took a manuscript to Franklin to print and publish. 
 Franklin looked over it, and said to the author that it was 
 somewhat deficient in arrangement. " It's no matter," said 
 the author, "print any part thou pleasest first." I almost 
 fear lest I should seem, by the fragmentary words of this 
 lecture, to lay myself open to a similar laugh. The fault 
 is, perhaps, that all persons hve too exclusively on the life 
 of the book or of the speaker. The man who Kves on the 
 orator alone may have his mental and moral life destroyed 
 by a plethora or spasm, if I may not rather call it a spon- 
 taneous combustion. The man, on the contrary, who hves 
 the life of the mere bookman may die of indigestion. 
 There is a danger of being mere bookmen, or else mere 
 hangers-on at pubHc meetings and frothy lecturings. We 
 educate our thoughts by the book, we enlarge our informa- 
 tion by the book, we extend the territory of our imaginar 
 
294 ^^^5 Humor^ etc., in the Pulpit 
 
 tion by the book ; but we educate our affections by sj)eecli, 
 we intensify our impulses by speech, we acquire the grace 
 of manner and the feliciiy of diction by speech, not merely 
 by speaking, but by hearing. The book is for the head ; 
 from the book we must expect to obtain ideas ; from the 
 book we must gain mental forms ; the book wiU surround 
 the spirit with all those graceful fictions, those ineffable 
 charms of proverb and parable, which give to the soul the 
 evergreen and the flower, as well as the hardy fruit. Speech 
 will give fire to us, it will give hght to us, such hght as 
 shines through a vault when the heavens are alive with 
 flame. The bookman becomes a mere cold critic, watchful 
 for the shps of speech ; the mere speaker or auditor be- 
 comes careless, save of all that ministers to stirring sensa- 
 tion — by drollery or humor, rhetoric or fancy — ^he is care- 
 less how it comes. 
 
 But we must kindle the torch if we intend to track our 
 way through the "palpable obscure." At present our faith 
 is not great, as a whole, either in the book or in speech. 
 And our age is too critical. In these times we seem to 
 have the obstinacy of the dogmatist without his weapon of 
 certainty. That our nature may be perfected, we must 
 permit the river of speech to flow through the ear into the 
 soul as well as the river of thought to flow through the 
 eye into the soul. By our homage to each we shall find 
 our nature built up and sustained. 
 
VIII. 
 
 The Use and Abuse of Imagina- 
 tion and Illustration. 
 
 i 
 1 
 
 m 
 
 ENEY WAED BEECHEE, the most fertHo 
 master of varied illustration in our modern pul- 
 pit, has a fine passage in one of his sermons, 
 setting forth the extent to which this wonderful 
 provision is made for us and spread out for us in the Bible, 
 spreading out everywhere into types of nature : 
 
 What if every part of your house should begin to repeat the 
 truths which have been committed to its symbolism? The 
 lowest stone would say, in silence of night, " Other foundatioDS 
 can no man lay." The corner-stone would catch the word, 
 " Christ is the corner-stone." The door would add, " I am the 
 door." The taper burning by your bedside would steam up a 
 moment to tell you, " Christ is the light of the world." If you 
 gaze upon your children, they reflect, from their sweetly-sleeping 
 faces the words of Christ, "Except ye becometh like little 
 children." If, waking, you look towards your parents' couch, 
 from that sacred place God calls Himself your father and mother ; 
 and disturbed by the crying of your children who are afirighted 
 in a dream, you rise to soothe them, and hear God saying, " So 
 will I wipe away all tears from your eyes in Heaven." Return- 
 ing to your bed, you look from tlie window, every star hails you, 
 
 (29O 
 
296 TTie Use and Abuse of Imagination. 
 
 but cliiefest, " The bright and morning star." By-and-by, flam- 
 ing from the east, the flood of morning bathes your dwelling 
 and calls you forth to the cares of the day, and then you remem- 
 ber that God is the sun, and that heaven is bright with His pres- 
 ence. Drawn by hunger, you approach the table : the loaf 
 whispers as you break it, " Broken for you," and the wheat of 
 the loaf sings, "Bruised and ground for you." The water that 
 quenches your thirst says, "I am the Water of Life." If you 
 wash' your hands, you can but remember the teachings of 
 spiritual purity. If you wash your feet, that has been done 
 sacredly by Christ as a memorial. The very roof of your dwell- 
 ing has its utterance, and bids you look for the day when God's 
 house shall receive its top-stone. 
 
 Go forth to your labor and what thing can you see that has 
 not its message ? The ground is full of sympathy : the flowers 
 have been printed with teaching. The trees, that only seem to 
 shake their leaves in sport, are framing divine sentences ; the 
 birds tell of heaven with their love warblihgs in the green 
 twilight ; the sparrow is a preacher of truth ; the hen clucks 
 and broods her chickens, unconscious that to the end of the 
 world she is part and parcel of a revelation of God to man. The 
 sheep that bleat from the pastures, the hungry wolves that blink 
 in the forest, the serpent that glides noiselessly in the grass, the 
 raven that flies heavily across the field, the lily over which his 
 shadow passes, the plough, the sickle, the wain, the barn, the 
 flail, the thrashing-floor; all of them are consecrated priests, 
 unrobed teachers, revelators that see no visions themselves, but 
 that bring to us thoughts of truth, contentment, hope, and love ; 
 all the ministers of God. The whole earth doth praise Him, and 
 show forth His glory. 
 
 Imagination lays hold upon the innermost truth, grasps 
 it firmly, and holds it up embodied to the mind ; it is thus 
 that analogy becomes one of the most, if not tlie most es- 
 sential and successful elucidator of divine truth ; it does 
 this sometimes by a close comparison of resemblance, and, 
 sometimes, by what may be regarded as more than tliis, 
 even an entering into the very innermost heart of the sub- 
 
Tlie Argument from Analogy. 297 
 
 ject, and extraction of the mystery of resemblance ; hence, 
 mystical views of divine truth have very often been very 
 helpful ; and, hence, even some pretty, and not unforced re- 
 semblance, has not been without its value as a taper, if not 
 a torch. A beautiful httle book, now almost forgotten, is 
 Barton's Analogy of Divine Wisdom^ in the Matei^ial, SensUwe, 
 Ilaral, CivU, and Spiritual System of Things (1750.) It is 
 not like Butler's work, a firmly-plaited argument ; but the 
 learning is very interesting and entertaining, and especially 
 where he uses the difficulties of mathematics for the pur- 
 pose of unfolding the difficulties of revelation. Many mat- 
 ters of science, also, are handled most interestingly. Cer- 
 tainly many readers, who find Butler difficult, will find Dr. 
 Barton's work most illuminating and entertaining, This 
 work of divine analogy is one of the most helpful torches 
 of the Christian minister, and its hterature is of rare and 
 great interest. The fame of the work of Butler has too 
 much put out of sight what has been done before ; we have 
 the Divine Analogy of Bishop Brown (1733), and the re- 
 marks upon the same subject in the Minute Philosopher of 
 Bishop Berkeley. While Butler was matui'ing his own 
 views, these works and others were emanating from the 
 minds of authors, whose words and thoughts are still 
 worthy of pondering, although the more famous work has 
 so suggested, shall we say exhausted, the depths of the sub- 
 ject. 
 
 But does the well-known argument of Butler satisfy? 
 James Martineau has, we know, ventured to exj)ress him- 
 self thus : 
 
 You have led me in your quest after analogies through the 
 great infirmary of God's creation, and so haunted am I by the 
 sights and sounds of the lazar house, that scarce can I believe in 
 anything but pestilence ; so sick of soul have I become that the 
 mountain breeze has lost its scent of health ; and you say, it is 
 all the same in the other world, and wherever the same rule ex- 
 13* 
 
298 Tlie Use and Abuse of Imagination. 
 
 tends ; then I know my fate, that in this world justice has no 
 throne. And thus, my friends, it comes to pass, that these 
 reasoners often gain indeed their victory ; but it is known only 
 to the Searcher of Hearts, whether it is a victory against natural 
 religion or in favor of revealed. For this reason I consider the 
 Analogy of Bishop Butler (one of the profoundest of thinkers, and 
 on purely moral subjects, one of the justest too), as containing, 
 with a design directly contrary, the most terrible persuasives to 
 A^theism that have ever been produced. The essential error 
 consists in selecting the difficulties, which are the rare excep- 
 tional phenomena of nature — as the basis of analogy and argu- 
 ment. 
 
 There is a remarkable conversation recorded by Wilber- 
 force with William Pitt, in whicli Pitt declared to Wilber- 
 force, " that Butler's work raised more doubts in his mind 
 than it answered." And Sit* James Macintosh is reported 
 to have said of the Analogy, " This can only be an answer 
 to Deists ; Atheists might make use of his objections, and 
 have done so." By another writer. Dr. Schedel, the argu- 
 ment of Butler has been characterized as " the analogy of 
 uncertainty," and " the analogy of mystery." While Miss 
 Hennell, a well-knovm extreme sceptical writer, has claimed 
 the Analogy as an ally to scepticism. Yet this is not the 
 impression Butler produced upon the sceptics of his own 
 day. David Hume — the great king of sceptics of almost 
 any age or nation, but especially of the later days, looked 
 upon him with something of awe ; — mentions how anxious 
 he Tvas to have the bishop's opinion upon some points in his 
 treatise on Human Nature y before its publication, and says, in 
 one of his letters, " I am at present cutting off its nobler 
 parts — i. e,y endeavoring it shall give as little offence as pos- 
 sible, before which I could not prefend to put it into the 
 Doctor's hands. This is a piece of cowardice for which I 
 blame myself, though I beheve none of my friends will 
 blame me." Hume called on Butler, but did not see him ; 
 and some persons have speculated on what might have 
 
Butler^s Analogy. 299 
 
 been, had Butler been within when Hume called — the scep- 
 tic might have been a believer. IMiss Hennell has at- 
 tempted to invalidate the argument of Butler also on per- 
 sonal grounds ; but the character of Butler every way 
 sliines forth as the clearest ; this profoundest of theologians 
 was also the simplest of believers. The great sentiment of 
 the Analogy seems to have been ever present with him, giv- 
 ing animation to all its thought. " He looked to Christ as 
 a poor sinner," he said, "for salvation." And one of the 
 most interesting anecdotes is of his walking in the garden 
 with his chaplain, Dr. Foster, stopping short and turnrag 
 round — a way he appears to have had — and with great 
 earnestness saying, " I was thinking. Doctor, what an awful 
 thing it is for a human beiag to stand before the great Moral 
 Governor of the world, and to give an account of all his 
 actions in this life." 
 
 We may well, however, as this is the state of the argu- 
 ment, desire to see the argument of analogy fairly ex- 
 pounded, and its extent and Ihnitations defined ; for there 
 is a tendency to undue extension of analogy, as when Hegel 
 affirms, " that as in the doctrine of the Trinity, the Father 
 and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, represent the infinite and 
 the finite, and the union of the two, their identity first, 
 then their distinction and their return to identity ; so the 
 doctrine of the Incarnation has a meaning no less philoso- 
 phical," &c., &c., &c. "We may well be jealous of any at- 
 tempts to establish the doctrine of the Trinity u]pon a ra- 
 tional basis, chiefly by means of certain natural analogies 
 supplied by the consciousness of the human mind ; there 
 are casuistical, Jesuitical, and refining sceptics, as well as 
 such among believers and theologists, and we believe it is 
 from such hands, perhaps on both sides, the argument of 
 analogy, and Butler's argument in particular, has suffered 
 WTong ; the application of the argument needs a broad and 
 honest mind, a mind not so much allured by certain pretti- 
 
300 The Use and Abuse of Imagination. 
 
 nesses and fanciful resemblances, as able to group and to 
 grasp its comparisons, and to rise from them to independent 
 judgment and generalisation. Thus it is that analogy has 
 been, in so many and quite countless instances, the prompt- 
 er and the guide of life ; this is the translation of Butler's 
 very modest and most pregnant starting-point in reasoning, 
 this is his point of view, of the Hkelihood of the truth of 
 the Christian system. He started fi'om this singularly 
 modest beginning — " It is not so clear that there is nothing 
 in it." The character of modem infidelity has quite changed 
 since Butler's day. His book was written in reply to the 
 elegant Deism of his times. A course of nature was 
 granted, an author of nature was admitted ; the form of 
 modem sophistry has changed, a course of nature is ad- 
 mitted but not an author. How is the modern dream of 
 Pantheism to be broken ? Will analogy serve for the wak- 
 ing ? If we think, then, we should think in order ; the 
 greatest danger in modern thought is its inconsecutive, 
 and scattered, and informative character ; but, alas ! that 
 which is inconsecutive in thought is not therefore inconse- 
 quential 
 
 Thus, analogy itseH may be like any other law of thought, 
 a dangerous guide ; the use of analogy is not to be denied, 
 it is invaluable — invaluable as speech, it is the inner speech 
 of the soul, it is the power by which the soul reaHzes and 
 expresses itself. All the discoveries in the world, — ^in me- 
 chanics, in science, seem to have been happy guesses, rea- 
 sonings from analogy : Harvey, and the cu'culation of the 
 blood ; Columbus, and the discovery of America ; Newton, 
 and his system of the universe ; Stephenson, and the prin- 
 ciple of the locomotives. Biography is full of such instances. 
 " It may be almost said, without qualification," says Arch- 
 bishop Whately, "that wisdom consists in the ready and 
 accurate perception of analogies ;" and Archbishop Thom- 
 son says, " This power of divination, this sagacity which ia 
 
Experience — Moral Analogy, 301 
 
 the mother of all science, we may call anticipation. The 
 intellect, with a dog-lihe instinct, loUl not hunt until it has found 
 the scent ; it must have some presage of the result before it 
 will turn its energies to its attainment." Thus analogy is 
 an mstinct of thought ; the poet and the metaphysician — 
 Tennyson and Bishop Berkeley — meet together in their 
 statement of this, when the one says : 
 
 Thought leapt out to wed with thought, 
 Ere thought leapt out to wed with speech ; 
 
 and the other says, " An idea which, considered in itself, is 
 particular, becomes gen<^al by being made to represent or 
 stand for all other particular ideas of the same sort." This 
 is, in fact, analogy and the statement of the law of analogy. 
 Now, how is this power in man to be used by the religious 
 teacher, man being unable to tliink or act intelligently with- 
 out the use of analogy ? Does it aid the entrance into, and 
 the dealing with, the higher facts of the universe — the uni- 
 verse and its author ; is it a hght ? — may it be made yet 
 more a hght for the exploring the kingdom of moral rela- 
 tions ? It has been finely said by Kobert Boyle, " that rev- 
 elation may be to reason what the telescope is to the eye ;" 
 but the telescope needs fixing, needs some skill in using. 
 God gives nothing — neither a hand, foot, nor spade — that 
 does not need education for useful exercise. The. very 
 charm of analogy may lead to its being misused. Expe- 
 rience is a powerful teacher, because experience is only an- 
 other name for induction or moral analogy ; hence man 
 should be taught to construct his moral science for himself 
 upon the basis of Scripture and experience ; and Dr. Bu- 
 chanan well says, " One or two instances clearly discerned 
 and intelligently apphed, by the exercise of a man's own 
 mind, will be of more practical avail than a hundred exam- 
 ples presented on paper, and read, but not followed up by 
 reflection." 
 
302 Tlie Use and Abuse of Imagination. 
 
 It is very clear that Scripture, in the appeal it makes to 
 the understanding of man, rests strongly on this instinct of 
 analogy — " the invisible things of Him are clearly seen, even 
 his eternal power and Godhead." Thus the sin of Idolatry 
 is condemned. Forasmuch then as " we are the offspring 
 of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto 
 gold or silver, or stone graven by art and man's device." 
 Dr. Whately has very directly traced our knowledge of the 
 properties of man to our knowledge of the perfections of 
 God — the showing that the proof of a being possessed of 
 them is, in fact, the very same evidence on which we believe 
 in the existence of one another. How do we know that men 
 exist, that is, not beings having a certain visible bodily form, 
 for that is not what we chiefly imply by the word man, but 
 as rational agents such as we call men ? Surely not by the 
 immediate evidence of our senses, since mind is not an ob- 
 ject of sight, but by observing the things performed — the 
 manifest result of rational contrivance. If we land in a 
 strange country doubting whether it be inhabited, as soon 
 as we find, for instance, a boat or a house, we are as per- 
 fectly ceiiain that a man has been there as if he appeared 
 before our eyes. Now we are surrounded with similar 
 proofs that there is a God. In the same manner of argu- 
 ment from analogy, I have recently read a paper by Pro- 
 fessor Hitchcock, in the BihUotheca Sacra, " On the Law of 
 Nature's Constancy as Subordinate to the Higher Law of 
 Change," — ^truly a most pregnant subject of thought — for 
 if natural changes are consistent with fixed laws, they are 
 no less consistent with perturbations which seem to shock 
 and threaten the stability of the whole system. From the 
 time of Paley to this, frequent references have been made 
 to the ceaseless disturbances upon the regularity and per- 
 manency of the celestial motions ; but so far from disturb- 
 ing, they secure the permanence perhaps of a whole Zodiac 
 — ^the faUibility of a system secures eternal stability. What 
 
Pantheism. 
 
 303 
 
 an endless lesson this reads us! The analogy of nature 
 leads us through all her works to beheve that the principle 
 of change — which has been hitherto mightier than any 
 other in the government and preservation of the universe, 
 and in promoting its happiness — has its moral analogies, 
 and that it may furnish some light as to the dealing of God, 
 not only with the Mngdoms of matter, but also with the 
 kingdom of souls. It is the modern fashion to declare that 
 this poor sort of argument is overlooked, that the apparent 
 manifestation of design is no proof of " the manifold wis- 
 dom of God ;" that hving infinite Consciousness, which we 
 call God, has been dethroned by the mighty modern 
 thinkers. 
 
 With deep intuition and mystic rite 
 
 We worship the Absolute Infinite ; 
 
 The universe Ego, the Plenary void; 
 
 The subject — object identified : 
 
 The nothing something, the Being Thought, 
 
 That mouldeth the mass of chaotic thought ; 
 
 Whose beginning unended and end unbegun 
 
 Is the One that is All, and the All that is One. 
 
 The great totality of everything 
 
 That never is, but ever doth become. 
 
 Perhaps to attempt to shiver this Pantheistic gibberish 
 by any serious appeal to argument would be vain work. 
 Mr. ManseU, in his effort to do this, has been thought to 
 be not a very serviceable ally to the cause of faith. Perhaps 
 " the great power of God" wiU never nerve with supreme 
 and ahnighty force the arm wielding the brightest sword 
 from the armory of the human understanding ; but if the 
 constitution of nature is to be augured from as a Divine inten- 
 tion, as well as existence, it will be by illustrations from the 
 wide field of analogy ; indeed, this form of argument might, 
 I believe, be most successfully and triumphantly apphed to 
 
304 TT^^ ^^^ <^^<^ Abuse of Imagination. 
 
 the utterly wild and most baseless " absolutisms" of Hegel 
 and Compt ; and it would be very interesting to ask those 
 gentlemen who look shudderingly and disdainfully on the 
 doctrine of analogy, what they think of the lawless depart- 
 ure from it, — that cheerless voyaging in the phantom ship 
 of abstract timbers of the good ship No Thing, to the Con- 
 tinent of No Where, 
 
 No doubt, the nature within the man determines the 
 character of his moral analogies, as it has been well said, 
 "The wolf, when he was learning to read, could make 
 nothing out of the letters but lamb, whatever other words 
 they might form," and the clearest and purest light will 
 bum but in certain atmospheres. The Scripture theory 
 presumes an understanding purified and prepared for a 
 clear, a holy, and correct judgment. The exercise of anal- 
 ogy is indeed to be prized as an inestimable weapon ; it is 
 valuable and available not only for the almost negative pur- 
 poses I have indicated — important as these are — it is valu- 
 able in all the parts of the building of the Christian system 
 and the Christian life. " Our Lord regarded aU nature as 
 a symbol, whose more hteral meaning had a spiritual appH- 
 cation. Hence, he spoke of knowledge, under the name of 
 light ; of spiritual renovation, as birth ; of faith, as mental 
 eyesight ; the Spirit's agency, as similar to the influence of 
 the unseen wind." Visions and symbols, types and para- 
 bles, symbolical objects and symboHcal actions abound in 
 the Scriptures of Truth — a great scheme of representation- 
 alism opens to the eye. " These things were our examples." 
 Hence, if Lord Bacon could say, " We must observe resem- 
 blances and analogies, they unite nature, and lay the foun- 
 dation of the sciences," we may say, we must observe re- 
 semblances and analogies, they unite nature and Scripture, 
 and lay the foundation, broad and immovable, of rational, 
 and faithful religion ; and, in a higher sense than that 
 which Newton wTought, the physics of the earth become 
 
An Argument from Analogy on Chat Moss, 305 
 
 the means of exploring and understanding fche mysteries of 
 the heavens. 
 
 We should be glad therefore of any help towards trim- 
 ming this lamp, and making more bright, and pure, and 
 clear the teachings of analogy. It will do very much, and 
 be very useful to enlighten intelligences, and to make more 
 vivid the perceptions for the noting the system, natural and 
 moral, beneath which we live ; as also, we may naturally 
 hope, the awakening mmds to the study of the highest 
 order of the Christian evidences, and the satisfactory per- 
 suasion of the human understanding, that there is not only 
 no discrepancy, but wondrous harmony between the works 
 and the Word of God. 
 
 Imagination is not always, however, so ambitious. A 
 stroke of illustrative analogy sometimes answers the end of 
 the speaker. When preaching from the words of our Lord, 
 — " If I have told you earthly things and ye believe not, 
 how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things ? " — I 
 foimd it impossible to forbear commencing by a reference 
 to the great legal contest for the purpose 'of throwing out 
 the Bill for the line of rail between Liverpool and Man- 
 chester. Chat Moss, over which it now passes, had been 
 for ages a vast mysterious bog — ^men, travellers and soldiers 
 had often been buried in its weltering slough. When 
 George Stephenson's plan was proposed engineers showed 
 that it would be impossible to start a train in a gale of 
 wind, and then Mr. Alderson, afterwards Baron Alderson, 
 summed up in a speech which extended over two days, he 
 declared Mr. Stephenson's plan to be the most absurd 
 scheme that ever entered into the head of man to conceive. 
 Said he : 
 
 " My learned friends almost endeavored to stop my examina- 
 tion ; they wished me to put in the plan, but I had rather have 
 the exhibition of Mr. Stephenson in that box. I say he never 
 
 ifaiflVBRSIT^ 
 
3o6 The Use and Abuse of Imagination. 
 
 had a plan. I believe he never had one. I do not believe he is 
 capable of making one. His is a mind perpetually fluctuating 
 between opposite difficulties ; he neither knows whether he is to 
 make bridges over roads or rivers, of one size or of another, or 
 to make embankments, or cuttings, or inclined planes, or in 
 what way the thing is to be carried into effect. Whenever a 
 difficulty is pressed, as in the case of a tunnel, he gets out of it 
 at one end, and when you try to catch him at that, he gets out 
 at the other." Mr. Alderson proceeded to declaim against the 
 gross ignorance of this so-called engineer, who proposed to make 
 " impossible ditches by the side of an impossible railway " upon 
 Chat Moss. *' I care not," he said, " whether iMr. Giles is right 
 or wrong in his estimate ; for whether it be effected by means 
 of piers raised up all the way for four miles through Chat Moss, 
 w^hether they are to support it on beams of wood, or by erecting 
 masonry, or whether Mr. Giles shall put a solid bank of earth 
 through it, in all these schemes there is not one found like that 
 of Mr. Stephenson's, namely, to cut impossible drains on the 
 side of this road ; and it is sufficient for me to suggest and to 
 show that this scheme of Mr. Stephenson's is impossible or im- 
 practicable, and that no other scheme, if they proceed upon this 
 line, can be suggested which will not produce enormous expense. 
 I think that has been irrefragably made out. Every one knows 
 Chat Moss, every one knows that the iron sinks immediately on 
 its being put upon the surface. I have heard of culverts, which 
 have been put upon the Moss, which, after having been surveyed 
 the day before, have the next morning disappeared ; and that a 
 house (a poet's house, who may be supposed in the habit of 
 building castles even in the air) story after story, as fast as one 
 is added, the lower one sinks ! There is nothing, it appears, 
 except long sedgy grass, and a little soil to prevent its sinking 
 into the shades of eternal night. I have now done, sir, with 
 Chat Moss, and there I leave this railroad." 
 
 Remembering how often we have travelled over Chat 
 Moss in the rushing train, whose rails were laid by the 
 man so scoffed and scorned, what an illustration it gives 
 of that mysterious truth and kingdom of which our Lord 
 
Varied Imagery. 307 
 
 said, "If I have told you earthly things and yebeheve not, 
 how shall ye beheve if I teU you of heavenly ? " 
 
 And surely I may remark here, that as an age and nation 
 of shepherds derived its imagery from pastoral occupations ; 
 an age and nation of merchants, from commerce ; the age 
 of science should derive its images from the world of 
 science, as in such an illustration from Dr. James Hamil- 
 ton : 
 
 It is of vast moment to be " just right " when starting. At 
 Preston, at Malines, at many such places, the Hnes go gently 
 asunder ; so fine is the angle that at first the paths are almost 
 parallel, and it seems of small moment which you select. But a 
 nttle further on one of them turns a corner, or dives into a tun- 
 nel, and now that the speed is full the angle opens up, and at the 
 rate of a mile a minute the divided convoy flies asunder ; one 
 passenger is on the way to Italy, another to the swamps of Hol- 
 land ; one will step out in London, the other in the Irish Chan- 
 nel. It is not enough that you book for the better country ; you 
 must keep the way, and a small deviation may send you entirely 
 wrong. A slight deflection from honesty, a slight divergence 
 from perfect truthfulness, from perfect sobriety, may throw you 
 on a wrong track altogether, and make a failure of that life 
 which should have proved a comfort to your family, a credit to 
 your country, a blessing to mankind. Beware of the bad habit, 
 &c., &c. 
 
 It was a good saying of an ancient bishop, " Lord send 
 me learning enough, that I may preach plain enough." It 
 is indeed the end of every instruction the preacher can re- 
 ceive, and it has been often remarked that prophets and 
 preachers in the Old Testament ever accommodated them- 
 selves to the capacities of those to whom they spoke. They 
 talked of fishes to the Egyptians, and droves of cattle to 
 the Arabians, and trade and traffic to the Syrians ; and our 
 Lord tells His fishermen they shall be fishers of men. 
 Hence for this very reason not only the Evangelists, but 
 
308 Tlie Use and Abuse of Lnagination. 
 
 the great preachers Hke Augustine and Ambrose spoke vul- 
 garly, they used a popular idiom and dialect in their deter- 
 mination to be understood ; they stood not always upon 
 pureness of style, being more solicitous about the matter 
 than the words. Men and children use things in very dif- 
 ferent ways, a child uses money, but with different ideas to 
 a man ; and bees and butterflies extract different tlnngs 
 from the same flowers. Thus, while some ministers only 
 desire to tip their tongues or to store their heads, the true 
 minister's idea is to save himself and those who hear him. 
 He must therefore stoop to their apprehensions, condescend 
 to their capacities, that he may save some, becoming all 
 things to all men ; Paul said he would even become " a fool 
 for Christ's sake." There can be no doubt that for the 
 purpose of teaching, one illustration is worth a thousand 
 abstractions ;* they are the windows of speech, through 
 them truth shines, and ordinary minds fail to perceive tiTith 
 clearly unless it is presented to them through their medium. 
 One of the most loved methods of illustration ever has 
 been the parable, but this is a high, rare, and very difficult 
 power ; children love tales, fauy tales, parables. The bet- 
 ter sort of grown-up children, we fancy, like them too ; for, 
 indeed, they are constantly doing that for us, which we are 
 all trying to do for ourselves, in one way or other, namely, 
 to realize. This is the hidden charm of the story-teller ; he 
 gives a local habitation and a name to thoughts which wan- 
 der through eternity ; he brings the abstract and wander- 
 ing spirit home ; he imprisons the dainty Ariel. No man 
 wiU be a favorite talker to children who does not speak in 
 parables ; and the teacher to the mighty multitudes will be 
 efficient in the proportion to his power of wielding admira- 
 bly the parable. But it requires some of the most varied 
 powers of the human mind, and it is difficult to wield it 
 
 * How affluently this is illustrated in Spencer's Yi^aiva Kai 'Kokaia 
 —Things New and Old, 1658, p. 281. 
 
" Without a Parable spake He notP 309 
 
 well. Eloquence and rhetoric may furnish a " linked sweet- 
 ness long drawn out ; " but parable opens, unfolds, ex- 
 pounds, and illustrates. The greatest of all teachers 
 adopted this expedient — " Without a parable spake He not 
 unto them." It may be, and is, and has been much abused ; 
 but no power is so likely to awaken in an auditor the Hs- 
 tening ear, and to furnish the understanding heart. This 
 is that power which John Bunyan has glorified by his pen, 
 and which made Chkistmas Evans the most popular preacher 
 of his country. Goethe delighted to use it. In no other 
 way can the subtleties and sophisms of the intellect be so 
 completely elucidated. Thus the phantasmagoria of the 
 mind are thrown upon the printer's sheet ; thus is fulfilled 
 the great injunction of the ancients, paint your ideas. Put 
 them into such a shape that you can look at them, and per- 
 mit others to look at them. The parable is to the abstrac- 
 tions of the mind what the diagram is to mathematical 
 science, or natural philosophy, or the experiment to chem- 
 istry. WeU-told parables are the diagrams of metaphysics 
 and psychology ; and, if the reader will, of theology too. 
 If the only Master who could teach infinite truth did not 
 disdain their aise, why should his disciples? Well said 
 LoKD Bacon, and Mrs. Gatty has done well in quoting the 
 saying — "Parables are more ancient than argimients." 
 And the author of the proverb, in many of his writings, 
 shows his faith in, by his pra^ctice of, this ancient principle. 
 John Wesley required of his young preachers that they 
 study, among other books, Spenser's "Fairy Queen." It is 
 well-known that Jonathan Edwards became a better preach- 
 er after reading " Clarissa Harlowe ; " and, certainly, we 
 beheve that a course of judicious fiction would be as bene- 
 ficial in training for a teacher as a course of mental or 
 moral science. 
 
 This we believe to be the law of the parable ; thought is 
 unhappy until it finds a body for itself ; it wearies of 
 
3 1 o The Use and Abuse of Imagination, 
 
 wandering to and fro among words which, at the best, can 
 only convey half a meaning ; it tires of a vara flitting 
 through the chambers of ghosts and disembodied thought, 
 forms which, if they are reaUy there, and perceived, are 
 only like phantoms dancing on the wall. Hence, the 
 parabohc form of thought is not pecuhar to any people ; 
 aU nations have their legends, and, perhaps, the unity of 
 the popular legend is one of the most interesting illustra- 
 tions of the unity of the race. Legends are not so much 
 derived from each other, tliey are rather the spontaneous 
 language of the wondering and the reahzing soul of man. 
 This is a topic that merits much more than a passing 
 remark ; but it is beyond the range of these lectures. 
 Meanwhile, it is not to be supposed that the imagery and 
 parabohc power of the mind is confined to the Eastern and 
 Scriptural illustrations. Iceland has its Edda and the 
 Sagas of Snorro Sturleston. 
 
 There is a singular disposition of the mind to regard all 
 things as human, and even inanimate things as really alive. 
 From before the days even of ^sop until now, beasts and 
 birds, and creeping things, have been made to speak, not 
 only as in the possession of consciousness^ but of reason 
 and sensibihty. Imagination plays with these things and 
 creatures ; and the happy power of the good-humored 
 caricaturist, who would cure the vices or foibles of man- 
 kind without the severity of the satirist, is never more 
 admirably displayed than when indulging these innocent 
 hcenses of fancy and speech. It is most quaint and ludi- 
 crous to notice what human hkenesses and resemblances 
 peep out from the meanest things. The echo of a human 
 heart seems to sound from all things above man, and 
 every little creature, and every thing man has made, from 
 beneath him, seems to look up and to claim a relationship. 
 Thus, in a little illustration of Anderson's way of using 
 things : — 
 
The Place and Power of Parahle. 311 
 
 There was once a Darning-needle so fine that she fancied her- 
 self a Sewing-needle. 
 
 " Now, take care, and hold me fast ! " said the Darning-needle 
 to the Fingers that took her up. " Don't lose me, pray ! If I 
 were to fall down on the floor, you would never be able to find 
 me again, I am so fine ! " 
 
 " That's more than you can tell ! " said the Fingers, as they 
 took hold of her. . 
 
 " See, I come with a train ! " said the Darning-needle, draw- 
 ing a long thread, without a single knot in it, after her. 
 
 The Fingers guided the Needle to the cook-maid's slippers ; 
 the upper leather was torn, and had to be sewn together. 
 
 " This is vulgar work I '' said the Darning-needle ; " I shall 
 never get through ; I break, I am breaking ! " And break she 
 did. " Did I not say so ? continued she ; " I am too fine I " 
 
 " Now she is good for nothing," thought the Fingers ; how- 
 ever, they must still keep their hold ; the cook-maid dropped 
 sealing-wax upon the Darning-needle and then stuck her into 
 her neckerchief. 
 
 " See, now I am a Breast-pin ! " said the Darning-needle <; " I 
 knew well that I should come to honor ; when one is something, 
 one always becomes something." And at this she laughed, 
 only inwardly, of course, for nobody has ever seen or heard a 
 Darning-needle laugh ; there sat she now at her ease, as proud 
 as if she were driving in her carriage, and looking about her 
 on all sides. 
 
 A parable is a spoken picture, — an expression of spirit- 
 ual truth through the medium of natural circumstance ; 
 while fable assigns moral quahties to unreasoning, and 
 even to inanimate things ; and the savage who called the 
 chip of wood a talking chip, when the missionary wrote in 
 pencil upon it, and sent by it a messenger to his wife, and 
 obtained back the tool he needed, only illustrates that 
 wide personification so natural to simple minds, and of 
 which poets and teachers have always been ready to avail 
 themselves. "My dear boy," says 'Douglas Jerrold, in 
 Punch's Letters to his Son^ " be a bright poker ; " it is at 
 
2 1 2 The Use and Abuse of Imagination. 
 
 once a very short proverb, and a very expressive parable. 
 By the fire place there are two pokers, one black, bent; 
 the other effulgent, speckless steel, — one for use, the other 
 for ornament The poor little black poker cracked the 
 coals, and cleared the lower bar, and stirred and levelled 
 the fire, and accommodated the tea-kettle to the coals: and, 
 in fact, did all the poking and raking, and binning, and 
 banging, and all the sweating work. The bright poker 
 was a kind of consecrated thing; and when the owner of 
 the house went out, it was even sometimes removed from 
 the grate, and swathed in flannel, oiled, and left to repose 
 in luxurious idleness, while its poor Httle friend was worked 
 to the stump, and then flung aside for vile, old iron. The 
 bright poker lasted out a dozen, doing nothing, lustrous 
 and inactive. And the image may remind my hearers how 
 this extraordinary power of the fancy invests dead, and 
 almost worthless things, with even spiritual properties, 
 setting them all a talking, and giving them from out of 
 ourselves functions so far beyond themselves, and making 
 them to be embodied teachers and representations of 
 truths. Thus that wise man, Mr. Caxton, teaches how 
 good wishes do not mend bad actions; but how good 
 actions mend bad actions. And again, when his httle son 
 came into the room, glowing and panting, health on his 
 cheek — vigor in his Hmbs — all childhood at his heart. 
 
 " Oh, mamma, I have got up the kite — so high ! — come and 
 see. Do come, papa." 
 
 " Certainly," said my father ; *' only don't cry so loud — kites 
 make no noise in rising ; yet, you see how they soar above the 
 world. Come, Kate. Where is my hat ? Ah — thank you, my 
 boy." 
 
 " Kitty," said my father, looking at the kite, which, attached 
 by its string to the peg I had stuck into the ground, rested 
 calmly in the sky, " rfever fear but what our kite shall fly as 
 high ; only, the human soul has stronger instincts to mount up- 
 
Parable in the Pulpit 313 
 
 ward than a few sheets of paper on a framework of lath. But, 
 observe, that to prevent its being lost in the freedom of space, 
 we must attach it lightly to earth ; and, observe again, my dear, 
 that the higher it soars, the more string we must give it." 
 
 Has the pulpit any connection or interest with this kind 
 of teaching ? I should think so, especially if it is ever to 
 condescend to teach, or speak to the multitudes of chil- 
 dren in Sabbath schools; — of course, to be ejQfective, or 
 even tolerable, it needs especially the touch and glow of 
 genius; arid the sermons of Christmas Evans assure us 
 that it may be useful and admirable. 
 
 It was somewhat in this manner Latimer was in the 
 habit of speaking, as when he says: — 
 
 We read a pretty story of St. Anthony, who, being in the 
 wilderness, led there a very hard and strict life, insomuch as 
 none at that time did the like, to whom came a voice saying, 
 " Anthony, thou art not so perfect as is a cobbler that dwelleth 
 at Alexandria." Anthony, hearing this, rose up forthwith, and 
 took his staff and travelled till he came to Alexandria, where he 
 found the cobbler. The cobbler was astonished to see so rev- 
 erend a father come to his house. Then Anthony said unto him, 
 *'Come and tell me thy whole conversation, and how thou 
 spendest thy time." Sir," said the cobbler, " as for me, good 
 works have I none, for my life is but simple and slender ; I am 
 but a poor cobbler ; in the morning when I rise, I pray for the 
 whole city wherein I dwell, especially for all such neighbors 
 and poor friends as I have ; after, I set me at my labor, where I 
 spend the whole day in getting my living ; and I keep me from 
 all falsehood, for I hate nothing so much as I do deceitfuluess ; 
 wherefore, when I make any man a promise I keep it and per- 
 form it truly ; and thus I spend my time poorly, with my wife 
 and children whom I teach and instruct, as far as my wit wiU 
 serve me, to fear and dread God. And this is the sum of my 
 gimple life." * 
 
 * Sermons, vol. ii. p. 737. Ed. 1759. 
 14 
 
314 ^^^ ^^ ^^^ Abuse of Imagination. 
 
 And Jeremy Taylor's well-knoTVTi appropriation of a Jew- 
 ish legend : — 
 
 When Abraham sat at his tent door, according to his custom, 
 waiting to entertain strangers, he espied an old man, stooping 
 and leaning on his staff, weary with age and travel, coming 
 towards him, who was a hundred years old. He received him 
 kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, caused him to sit 
 down ; but observing that the old man ate, and prayed not, nor 
 begged for a blessing on his meat, he asked him why he did not 
 worship the God of heaven. The old man told him that he 
 worshipped the fire only, and acknowledged no other God. At 
 which answer Abraham grew so zealously angry, that he thrust 
 the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of 
 the night and an unguarded condition. When the old man was 
 gone, God called to Abraham and asked him where the stranger 
 was ? He replied, I thrust him away because he did not wor- 
 ship thee. God answered him, I have suffered him these hun- 
 dred years, although he dishonored me ; and couldst not thou 
 endure him one night ? 
 
 One of the sweetest httle fancies I know in this way is 
 in John Pulsford's most beautiful and helpful " Quiet 
 Hours," a work which will outHve, on the waves of time, 
 many a more ambitious looking vessel. 
 
 A LITTLE bird's SERMON TO A SERMON-MAKER. 
 
 I was in the act of kneeling down before the Lord, my God, 
 when a little bird, in the lightest, freest humour, came and 
 perched near my window, and thus preached to me, all the while 
 hopping about from spray to spray. " O thou grave man look 
 on me and learn something, if not the deepest lesson, then a 
 true one. Thy God made me ; and, if thou canst conceive it, 
 loves me and cares for me. TTiou studiest Him in great prob- 
 lems, which oppress and confound thee ; thou losest sight of 
 one half of His ways. Learn to see thy God not in great mys- 
 teries only, but in me also. His burden on me is light, His 
 yoke on me is easy ; but thou makcst burdens and yokes for 
 thyself which are very grievous to be borne. I advise thee not 
 
A Little Bird's Sermon. 
 
 315 
 
 only to see God in little things ; but to see little, cheerful, sport- 
 ive things in God,, as well as great, solemn, awful things. Things 
 deep as hell and high as heaven thou considerest over much ; 
 but thou dost not ' consider the lilies ' sufficiently. Every priest 
 should put by his awful robes, &c., &c., sometimes, and go free. 
 If tliou couldst be as a lily before God, for at least one hour in 
 the twenty-four, it would do thee good ; I mean if thou couldst 
 cease to will and to think, and le only. Consider, the lily is as 
 really from God as thou art, and is a figure of something in 
 Him^ the like of which should also be in thee. 
 
 " Thou longest to grow, but the lily grows without longing ; 
 yes, without either thinking or willing, (/rows, and is beautiful 
 both to God and man. Think of that. 
 
 *' In conclusion I remind thee, that ' God has many kinds of 
 voices in the world, and none of them is without signification.' 
 But I perceive that thine ear is open only to voices of one kind. 
 Thy danger is, under the conceit of being the more godly, of 
 becoming monstrous, and not quite Godlike. Excuse a little 
 bird. I am but one of the ' many kinds of voices ' which God 
 has * in the world.' " 
 
 But there is a kind of illustration which is no illustra- 
 tion ; fancy and imagination run wild ; all separated alike 
 from good sense and good taste, which are indeed the 
 same. Sometimes thiags have been said merely to pro- 
 duce effect ; sometimes from the mere ignorance or exe- 
 crable taste in the speaker, and this may be without the 
 preacher being so bad as he who likened " the angel, hav- 
 ing the everlasting Gospel to preach, to an angel running 
 on a rainbow with a basket of stars in each hand ;" or that 
 American diviae who, describing the flight from time to 
 eternity, said, " It would be as if astride a flash of light- 
 ning — putting spurs into it to dash off to glory." Worse, 
 if possible, than this it is, when words are used only be- 
 cause fine and flourishing, while serving no purpose in the 
 work of the exposition. 
 
 In a review of the vocation of the preacher, I have been 
 
^ 1 6 The Use and A huse of Imagination. 
 
 impressed by the idea formed of it by the Rev. J. C. M. 
 Bellew. The evidence is contained in his sermons. I have 
 one on Paul preaching at Athens ; the course of descrip- 
 tion is, indeed, not new ; I remember to have met with 
 other preachers who have indulged in a similar vein of 
 fancy. A wise preacher will tui*n to admirable account his 
 wanderings through apostohc scenes, but ]\Ir. Bellew shows 
 us how not to use such travels ; page on page is occupied 
 by needless and impertinent description. As in the fol- 
 lowing, which may surely be called for a sermon a ridicu- 
 lous description of — 
 
 PAUL PREACHIJ^G AT ATHENS. 
 
 From the port of the Piraeus, at the distance of five miles, the 
 Acropolis of Athens, crowned with its ruins, rises. It is visible 
 to the traveller above the surrounding plain. When St. Paul 
 reached the port, on his voyage from Thessalonica to Beraea, 
 that rock would meet his eye, crowded with chaste and noble 
 edifices which the hands of Pericles and others left as the choic- 
 est gems of architectural taste to the world. Towering above 
 them all the Apostle would first behold an evidence of Greek 
 idolatry, in the gigantic figure of Minerva (cast out of the 
 brazen trophies of war taken at Marathon), which, grasping its 
 shield and spear, overlooked the city beneath, as the angel with 
 outstretched wings at present overlooks Rome from the castle 
 of St. Angelo. From the spot where the Apostle landed, up to 
 the city, there had formerly been one continuous street, defended 
 by the so-called " Long Walls," which memorable fortifications 
 united Athens with its port of the Piraeus. These had been 
 destroyed. Crossing the plain amidst their ruins the Apostle 
 would enter the city where the evidences of idolatry, and yet of 
 the taste and splendor of the Athenians, lay scattered thickly 
 around him. 
 
 He would at once be surrounded by altars, and temples, and 
 statues dedicated to Apollo, Jupiter, Mercury, and others, skirt- 
 ing on every side the edges of the street which led directly from 
 the Pirajan gateway to the foot of the Acropolis. Approaching 
 
A Specimen of Bathos. 3 1 7 
 
 this termination, on liis left rose the hill called the Pnyx, where 
 the Athenians held their political meetings. Beyond it again 
 stood the hill of the Areopagus, crowned with the temple of 
 Mars. To that hill we must presently proceed. Before him, an 
 immense quadrangular building intercepted his ajDproach to the 
 Acropolis. This was the Agora, or market-place of Athens, and 
 it was entered on every side by porticoes, surmounted by sta- 
 tues, on one of which as Paul passed along he may have looked 
 upon the " God of Day." We read (ver. 17) that Paul was daily 
 " in the market with them that met with him." This Agora or 
 market-place was the spot where (ver. 21) the Athenians and 
 strangers spent their time in nothing else " but either to tell or 
 to hear some new thing." It was in reality a beautiful square, 
 whose centre was planted with trees, interspersed with statues. 
 It was surrounded by cloisters, probably resembling the Campo 
 Santo at Pisa, and its walls and roofs were covered with joaint- 
 ings representing the most memorable incidents in Athenian 
 history. There the Grecian artist had depicted the glorious 
 achievement at Marathon. This colonnade received the name 
 of the Stoa Pcecile, or Painted Cloister, and it became the favour- 
 ite resort of Zeno and his disciples ; whereby they received the 
 name of Stoics, or the philosophers who frequented the painted 
 Stoa. In the gardens within the court were the statues of the 
 great men of Greece, Demosthenes, Solon, and others. Here, 
 again, the evidences of idolatry met the Apostle's view ! Mer- 
 cury, and Hercules, and Apollo received the popular reverence 
 in the midst of this market-place. The spirit of Paul was 
 stirred within him when he saw the city wholly given to idol- 
 atry (v. 16). The porticoes of the Agora within which he stood 
 were surmounted with idols. Statues of gods were erected in 
 every direction within its cloisters — even in a favored retreat 
 both of poets and philosophers ; of which Dr. Doddridge has 
 well remarked, " The prevalence of such a variety of senseless 
 superstitions in this most learned and polite city, which all its 
 neighbours beheld with so much veneration, gives a lively and 
 affecting idea of the ' need we have in the most improved state 
 of human reason, of being taught by a Divine revelation.' " 
 As Paul looked beyond, where the rock of the Acropolis rose 
 
2 1 8 The Use and Abuse of Imagination. 
 
 above the city, he would behold it crowded with the temples 
 and idols of a corrupt religion. When the Apostle " saw the 
 city," as he passed along, he would no doubt ascend the Acropo- 
 lis by its sole entrance, the Propylsea, erected by Pericles. There 
 would stand the temple of Victory, and within, or about its 
 vestibule, the figures of Mercury, Minerva, and Venus : there he 
 would see the statues of Pericles, and also of the Roman Agrippa 
 and Augustus. Upon the levelled platform of the Acropolis he 
 would behold everywhere the most choice specimens of Grecian 
 statuary, commemorating the mythological histories of the gods. 
 But superior to all, he would stand beneath that colossal figure 
 of Minerva holding her brazen-shield above the head of Athens ; 
 and he would look on that superb triumph of art, that epic of 
 poetry done in stone, the temple of Minerva, the Parthenon ! — 
 the glorious effort of the proudest days of Athens ; and even to 
 this hour in its ruins, the lasting monument which tells the 
 grandeur of that Greece which is no more ! 
 
 A witty writer, upon all this, has conceived one preach- 
 ing in Westminster in some coming ages, beginning his 
 sermon with a brief accomit of the Eeform Club, then 
 quitting that building, the Duke of York's Column and 
 Waterloo Place claim a moment's notice. Proceeding along 
 Pall Mali, the eye rests upon the equestrian statue of 
 George HE. The University Club suggests a digression to 
 the Isis and the Cam. Presently, on the left the Eoyal 
 Academy rises above Trafalgar Square, and the pictures 
 which are now exhibiting there wiU claim a hasty criticism. 
 The statue of Lord Nelson, at Charing Cross, is to an 
 EngHshman what the brazen Pallas of the Acropolis was to 
 an Athenian, and therefore it must not be forgotten ; that 
 statue looks down upon the speaker. Nor must it be for- 
 gotten that Sir Charles Napier stood erect and stiff, and Dr. 
 Jenner reclined meditatively, and the fountains played 
 feebly, and the little boys vigorously, in the square. The 
 hoary piles and the ancient memories of the Abbey and the 
 HaU will next demand attention, and so on ; but what a re- 
 
The Use of Allegory, 310 
 
 markable thing if the preacher should imagine that he is 
 piercing the conscience or preaching the Gospel aU this 
 time ! Most of Mr. Bellew's sermons display this mere 
 artistic faculty, this gathering and disposing of mental stuff 
 and wares which have been in some sense apprehended by 
 the intellect, but which have never approached, and still less 
 been absorbed into, the consciousness of spiritual truths 
 and things. 
 
 I think the question in every instance should be, — Does 
 it help ? Does that, mode of putting it help ? Would it 
 help me ? and a canon of our speech for all times should 
 be the canon of the old poet — not too much of anything ; 
 to over color is to destroy all effect ; not too much detail — 
 to know when to stop ; not too many words — to overlay the 
 ornament is to destroy all the beauty, the harmony, the 
 impressiveness, by destroying proportion. Perhaps in the 
 preacher's order of teaching, we must often use more than 
 strict good taste does allow, because we have to stimulate 
 spiritual and even intellectual appetites ; the severe style 
 tells on educated and refined minds in a state of prepara- 
 tion ; but just as pictures are for children, so also pictorial 
 words and emotions which embody and even startle, must 
 be used in dealing with the multitudes. Still the mind, as 
 it prepares itself, should come back to the question,'WiU that 
 help ? Is that too much ? This will compel the speaker to 
 feel his own images — ^his own language ; that which is real 
 to him will usually be felt to be real to the audience he ad- 
 dresses ; not in mere copiousness, but in selectness is 
 power ; not in the crowd of illustrations, but in the distinct- 
 ness of one is power. Even as we are lost in a gallery of 
 paintings, until we take refuge in one, and permit it to exer- 
 cise its impression. 
 
 But you have to manage your text by illustration, and on 
 this I must dwell a little longer. You need good skill 
 here : good taste is only the -onison of sound knowledge 
 
3 20 The Use and A huse of Imagination. 
 
 and correct feeling; but you will greatly need good taste 
 here, as a rule. If an illustration adds at all to the Hght 
 in your owo. mind, it will probably add to the hght upon 
 the text in the minds of your audience; and first, let me 
 caution you against the improper use of allegory. Do you 
 ever feel any tendencies to the use of it ? It needs super- 
 lative genius to be tolerable — a bold, strong, Bunyan-like, 
 Christmas Evans-like mind, may recite an allegory hke 
 some lofty poem; but be you very cautious how you jield 
 to the seduction. 
 
 Nay, I must say, be cautious, not only how you invent 
 the allegory for the pulpit yourselves, but how you alle- 
 gorize Divine Truth. No doubt we do find many instances 
 of such a use in Scripture, but when Origen spiritualizes 
 the account of Abraham's denying his wife, polygamy, the 
 patriarchy, and Noah's drunkenness, we must feel how dan- 
 gerous is the whole ground, and especially as many minds 
 will not fail to make this their very method of iuterpretation. 
 When men use the language of the Bible as the mere in- 
 strument of a cultivated fancy, to make their style attract- 
 ive or impressive, it is needless to say they are guilty of a 
 great irreverence toward its Divine Author; but there is a 
 danger, lest we also err in making the story the vehicle for 
 one's fancy. How eminently this was the case with the 
 Church of Alexandria.* Some writers, whom we greatly 
 respect, have made sad nonsense, even of some portions of 
 the Book of God. Let us remember, that while we must 
 not shut our eyes to the indirect and instructive apphca- 
 tions of which a text is capable, we must never so reason 
 as to forget that there is a sense pecuharly its own ; it is 
 this meaning which we are especially to unfold. What do 
 you think of this method of handling a text ? — I am sorry 
 to say I extract it from the sermon of a French refugee, 
 
 * See Dr. J. H. Newman's History of Avians, &c. Chap. i. p. 7. 
 
Improper Use of Allegory, 321 
 
 Father Gousset, from Proverbs xxx. 18, 19. — " There are 
 three things which are too wonderful for me; yea, four, 
 wliich I know not : the way of an eagle in the air ; the 
 way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the 
 midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid." 
 Gousset says, " The way of an eagle in the air is the way 
 of Jesus Christ ascending to heaven. The way of a serpent 
 upon a rock is the way of Jesus Christ in that rock in a 
 cavern of which he was buried; there remain no scent 
 by wliich the place of his sepulture could be known. The 
 way of a ship in the sea denotes the way of Jesus Christ 
 among his countrymen in the course of his ministry, which 
 left no more traces among them than a ship leaves in the 
 ocean. The way of a man with a maid signifies the mira- 
 culous birth of Christ of a virgin." And the reason as- 
 signed for this exposition is, " That the wise man speaks of 
 wonderful things ; now, there is nothing wonderful in these 
 things taken literally, but taken aUegorically, they are won- 
 derful events indeed ! " This is extorting a sense by bom- 
 barding a text. The good man also must have had a vast 
 conception of his own knowledge not to have perceived that 
 the wise man did in the text really express some of the 
 greatest mysteries of things, — in the motion of birds the 
 sleep of reptiles, the marvels of navigation, and the ways 
 of human hearts. 
 
 Ah this is nonsense, but, on the contrary, it is impossible 
 to read the Scriptures much, and to meditate upon their 
 histories, without frequently feeling a class of emotions 
 which should naturally lead you to carry them into the 
 pulpit, and usually such meditations, when they come to a 
 thoughtful, and prayerful, and pious mind, will supply ma- 
 terial very fitting for discourse. I consider there is a law 
 of Scripture — symbolism. There is a gi-eat prejudice, I be- 
 heve, in what is called the educated mmistry, against the 
 method of taking as a text some Scriptural illustration, ajid 
 14* 
 
322 Tlie Use and Abuse of Imagination. 
 
 tracing it through a series of analogies and resemblances. 
 Surely this is not the only method in the pulpit ; but just 
 as surely it is a method — a method, not necessarily out of 
 keeping with good taste ; a method admirably calculated 
 for discursive instruction, level to the majority of hearers. 
 If it was not beneath the dignity of the mind of the Spirit 
 to suggest to the holy men of God, moved by the Holy 
 Ghost, such an image, surely it is not beneath the dignity 
 of the modem ministry to seek out such unstrained modem 
 significations as may tend to edification. May I, without 
 apparent conceit, introduce two sketches of my own, as il- 
 lustrations of this dealiQg with sacred images. The first 
 from the text referred to : 
 
 I. — THE WAY OF AN EAGLE IN THE AIR. — ^PrOV. XXX. 18, 19, 
 
 The works of creation are, when they are considered, ways to 
 the Creator. Wherever the soul turns itself, it finds God in the 
 very same objects through which it forsook Him." Thus, in all 
 ages, if the things and objects of nature have been mysterious, 
 the mind, fruitful in contemplation, has turned those objects 
 into reflections of Divine wisdom ; and in the Book of God we 
 find them turned into the deepest and highest wisdom. Thus, 
 in these words of Agur, many things became to him the inlets 
 of wise reflection, especially he said, " I see four wonderful 
 things : 1. An eagle in the air ; that sublime thing, overcoming, 
 walking on the wings of the wind, sailing through the thunder- 
 storm. How wonderful ! living where lightnings play, able to 
 gaze at the sun ; this, he said, is wonderful, — '' the way of an 
 eagle in the air." S. A serpent, that long, cruel creature, its 
 coils, its rapid spring, its strange interlocking of rings, its mar- 
 vellous vertebrae, this is wonderful — '' the way of a serpent upon 
 a rock." 3. Man imitating nature — " the way of a ship in the 
 sea" — that dead yet living bird of art and science ; and still, 
 after all these years have passed, art has nothing more graceful, 
 more amazingly buoyant and natural, than "the way of a ship 
 in the sea." 4. And, more wonderful than all, the relations of 
 hearts. How two people, who never saw each other, meet, and 
 
The Way of an Eagle in the Air, 323 
 
 how a life-long relationship rises, so that if one heart is torn 
 from the other the survivor pines and almost dies. — " The way 
 of a man with a maid." 
 
 I touch one of these wonders — " the way of an eagle in the 
 air." And yet we say the eagle is one of the highest and most 
 famous images of the Book of God. When Ezekiel beheld bis 
 first great vision, he saw God's government carried on by four 
 agencies, of which " the fourth had the face of an eagle" (Ezek. 
 X. 14), and like this was the vision of John in Revelation iv. 7 — 
 " the fourth creature was like a flying eagle." Not very difficult 
 is the interpretation here ; so God carries on His government ; 
 there is that in its mode of procedure which answers to such a 
 sublime analogy. The eagle is evidently the figure for diviner 
 things ; and through all the Fathers, and in moat ages ; while 
 Matthew has been the Gospel to which has been assigned the 
 lion — the Gospel of the tribe of Judah, the Gospel of the King- 
 dom of God; and to-Mark, the man — the more human aspects; 
 andlo the more sacrificial Gospel of St. Luke ; to St. John has 
 been assigned the eagle. It is the Gospel of the heights of di- 
 vine contemplation and divine love. He sets forth our Lord's 
 Godhead in the higher sense. Everything earthly with him 
 only introduces things heavenly ; the divine attributes break al- 
 ways through the veil of words. As St. Augustine says, " How 
 sublime ought those things to be of which he treats who is com- 
 pared to the eagle." Thus the very ways of God himself, in His 
 government and administration, are as " the way of an eagle in 
 the air." But I purpose, this morning, to look for hints of the 
 divine life in man from following the way of the eagle in the air, 
 and I shall enlarge a little on four remarks : 
 I. It is heavy, and yet it flies. 
 II. The air resists its flight, and yet it flies. 
 
 III. The resistance helps it, and therefore it flies. 
 
 IV. There are extraordinary and Divine contrivances to aid 
 it, and therefore it flies. 
 
 I. It is heavy, and yet it flies. — It weighs ten, fourteen, I be- 
 lieve, twenty pounds. How remarkable that it should overcome 
 its gravitation, that its weight should even be a momentum to 
 it; not like a balloon, a part of the air, as it were, carried to and 
 
324 The Use and Abuse of Imagination. 
 
 fro of the air, borne hither and thither, but always a weight, yet 
 ever able to fly ; is not this wonderful ? This is the way of the 
 eagle in the air. This also should be the way of the human 
 soul ; the soul has its gravitation to overcome — is there not a 
 weight ? What is the first thing in the Christian course ? Is it 
 not the " laying aside of every weight ? " Does not every one 
 feel this ? To be a man, to be a woman, is to have the w^iglit 
 that fastens to the earth, and would keep us here for ever ; it is 
 m matter, which hangs upon us heavy, like lead ; it is in the 
 blood, it is in the passions, it forms temperament. Christian ! 
 you must fly. The flesh is weak in that it is heavy. Can 
 weighty things ascend ? think of the way of the eagle in the air, 
 and overcome. Then make the sublime description in Job of 
 Elihu yours (Job xxxix. 27-29), "Mount up and make thy nest 
 on high, dwell and abide on the rock, upon the crag of the 
 rock, and the strong place." 
 
 II. Remark, of the way of the eagle in the air, the air resists 
 it, and yet it flies. The air which around you prevents, by its 
 weight, your falling, resists the eagle also in advancing. It is 
 gross and heavy in itself, and there is a pressure upon it from 
 without, yet wonderful is the way of the eagle in the air. So you 
 must fly, and let me say, that one thing by w^hich we know w^e 
 fly is resistance ; a feather does not fly, a balloon does not fly, a 
 kite does not fly, — these float, there is no resistance. There is 
 resistance in ourselves ; at first we do not desire to rise, we find 
 the earth tempting and pleasant to our selfishness, and, as 
 Charles Wesley says : 
 
 Angels your march oppose 
 
 Who still in strength excel, 
 Your secret, sworn eternal foes, 
 
 Countless, invisible. 
 
 With rage that never ends, 
 
 Their hellish arts they try ; 
 Legions of dire malicious fiends, 
 
 And spirits enthroned on high. 
 
 Thus it \^ ^ wre^t)ing ; " the prince of power in the air works 
 
The Way of an Eagle in the Air. 325 
 
 in the children of disobedience." Thus we have "spiritual 
 wickedness in high places." Yet you must make your way like 
 that of the eagle in the air. And how hard — who overcomes? 
 how hardly shall they, for w^hom the w^orld has done its best, 
 " mount up with wings" their way as that of an eagle in the air ? 
 
 III. This is a negative side ; there is a positive — the way of 
 the eagle in the air^-it is when the resistance helps it, and 
 therefore it flies. There is vital force within, and not only so, 
 the air is elastic. As it flies it beats on the wing, but, as it 
 beats, by its own hard blows on the air, every blow lifts the 
 wing up again, and there is a wonderful arrangement in those 
 wings to air ; and so the air gives way, and the triumphant* bird 
 passes through. This is the action of a wing, one hundred and 
 fifty strokes in a minute, I understand. So swift, so rapid ; slow, 
 and yet so swift. Hence the Apostle's jubilant shout, " We are 
 troubled on every side, yet not distressed, cast down, not de- 
 stroyed." So we are helped, " When my heart is overwhelmed, 
 lead me to the rock that is higher than I." " Because thou hast 
 been my help, etc." God knows this. Do you remember an 
 admirable paper by the Country Parson, on " Men who have Car- 
 ried Weight in Life " ? Some men's progress seems so small 
 compared with others' — slow, ah, but although to you, they seem 
 to make no progress, to angels, they do. Theirs is the way of 
 the eagle in the air. 
 
 IV. There are extraordinary and divine contrivances to help, 
 and therefore it flies. It is a wonderful picture of the universal- 
 ity of the arrangement, — the divine pliability and adjustment of 
 the laws of nature ; that upper convex surface of the wing ; that 
 lower concavity of each wing, a kind of umbrella, turned inside 
 out, to catch the wind, and so becomes a valve, so that the force 
 may be gained below, and be harmless and helpful above ; every 
 feather is a valve. This is the way of the eagle in the air. And 
 now, can it be thought that God has designed such wonderful 
 contrivances for a poor bird's w^ing, and none for souls ? nay, 
 what contrivances and helps has God given; they are in our 
 spirits themselves, in their mould and make. There is con- 
 cealed strength in souls for dark hours ; powers abortive and 
 unknown, waiting to be employed ; these faculties were not 
 
326 Tlie Use and Abuse of Imagination. 
 
 made for night and for sin, they were for the soul. Thus come 
 the special provisions of grace, grace is spiritual contrivance, 
 and in every experience " He giveth more grace." And so the 
 way of the eagle in the air. 
 
 What an eagle was Paul, who saw afar off, entered, and saw 
 unspeakable things. Behold him there gazing on the sun from 
 his rock, — " None of these things move me," " I am persuaded," 
 etc. What an eagle was John, who saw a door opened in 
 heaven, the Lord in the midst of the golden candlesticks, and 
 left his testimony, " That which we have seen and heard, etc., 
 declare we." What an eagle was Isaiah, the old man who said 
 *' They that wait od the Lord," etc. 
 
 Now apply. Are you conscious of the weight ? Do you re- 
 sist ? Do you feel obstacles falling, giving way ? Do you feel 
 and find divine help ? Have you glimpses ? and do you find af- 
 fections rising ? 
 
 Hereafter, you shall have exceeding great and eternal weight 
 of glory. Look on the low scenes of the earth, on the sun, moon, 
 and battle-plains beneath, you shall enter into the secret place 
 of the Most High, the chambers of everlasting rest. 
 
 My second illustration is: 
 
 II. — god's righteousness like the great mountains. 
 — Ps. XXX. 6. 
 Great mountains ; few of us have seen them, but there are 
 those who, having seen them, find their hearts almost aching to 
 behold them again. How is it they are so awfully, yet so vener- 
 ably and beautifully dear to us ? They are only dead masses of 
 unfeeling rock, yet they possess the power to awaken in us all 
 feelings ; they are always differing, and changing, and yet they 
 are always the same ; nights and storms roll down upon them, 
 and clothe and conceal them ; and then mornings come ; and 
 sunsets and sunrisings behold those mists wrought into rose- 
 hues by rays that sleep there lovingly. They hold the thunders 
 — often when it is clear below, storms seem to live and contend 
 like spirits there, and long, low, protracted thunders mutter, as 
 if spirits talked in their recesses, from peak to peak, from crag 
 to crag. Snows and ice clothe their summits periDctually. The 
 
God^s Righteousness like the Mountains, 327 
 
 traveller, among their lower passes, hears the boom and toll, 
 and says that is an avalanche falling. Out of their heart, as he 
 passes along, the wanderer beholds the vast glacier — the stif- 
 fened ice torrents that " stopped amidst their maddest plunge ; " 
 ice falls now, that down enormous ravines sweep amain, but 
 there they stand, pillars of creation, monumental piles of past 
 existences, tombs of old creations, mausoleums, cenotaphs of 
 ancient worlds, wonders and mysteries. All things are mys- 
 teries ; but mountains — so human, yet so cold ; so mighty and 
 massive, and yet so silent and so unmoying — the heart must be 
 cold indeed, that does not feel the power of the great moun- 
 tains. 
 
 David looked up at them, and he said. They are like the recti- 
 tude—the holiness, the righteousness of God. He had not seen 
 the greatest, Mont Blanc, the Himalayas, the Andes ; but he saw 
 Horeb, and Sinai, and Lebanon ; and there is that, I suppose, 
 about all these which make them seem more than they are. 
 Even as the small hills of Cumberland and Scotland do for us 
 almost as much as Switzerland, the Alps and Apennines. You 
 and I also can step out this evening, and talk with God among 
 the mountains. Let us talk of God — how high, how vast I 
 That word God ! — what mysteries does it hold — does it repre- 
 sent ! " The thought," said Job, " of God was a terror to me, 
 and by reason of his highness I could not endure." We saw 
 how Job found all the suggestions of the great mountains bring- 
 ing the mind to reflect upon the inscrutableness of God, but all 
 as hints and suggestions. What a slight thing is man travers- 
 ing the shoulder of some steep and awful mountain ! What an 
 insect ! Yet lie lives and it is dead and cold. To him it may, 
 with its labyrinths of peaks, and passes, and glaciers, be called 
 incomprehensible; its cold; its glaring heat; its regions, and 
 platforms of storm ; aspects which make it like an abstraction ; 
 again, which make it like some dread personification and em- 
 bodiment of power. David looked at it, and thought : " Hoar 
 and solemn peak, thou art like the righteousness of God, mani- 
 fold in aspect, but always one, and in thyself always still." 
 
 L I suppose, what David first meant to imply by this right- 
 eousness of God like the great mountains was, — that it was 
 
328 Tlie Um and Ahiise of Imagination. 
 
 everywhere to be seen. A mountain is lofty, prominent, can be 
 seen at a great distance — wliy the Himalayas can be seen nearly 
 two liunclred and fifty miles away. Grandly it rises out of the 
 vale beneath, like a monarch over the scene. Scripture, you 
 note — you ought to notice it — involves itself in the righteous- 
 ness of God, not even His goodness so much as His righteous- 
 ness, not His love so much as His holiness. I do not wonder 
 at this, the most anxious question a man can put is this, ^' Will 
 the judge of all the earth do right ? " No question is so im- 
 mense, so vital ; that question settled ii^ell^ all must l)e well. It 
 therefore opens grand views of the righteousness of God, in- 
 volves itself in this, stakes itself on this. This is what short- 
 sighted and selfish man thinks he cannot always see. But 
 mountains are distinctly seen, so the righteousness of God is 
 distinctly seen. His rectitude, infinitely right ; the Bible is the 
 revelation of righteousness ; and the long ages as they roll, to 
 those able to read, tell the tale of righteousness. Read it in 
 law, that groove and line of rail laid down by God ; read it in 
 nations, their rise, decline, and fall ; read it in conscience, that 
 pulse of a moral nature throbbing after right in man ; immortal 
 and immovable principles in nature, in the history of men, in 
 the human soul. But what is it in God ! What know we of 
 righteousness ? Oh, we must not look in ourselves to see it, we 
 must look out and look up. It is there — vast, immutable, eter- 
 nal, it is like the great mountains. Elevate the tone of your 
 thought ; do not indulge in the cynic's sneers, those " arrows 
 which fly by day." Believe — and see it in God right, our sense 
 of self belies us. Suppose we died now, and had no immortal- 
 ity, still could we not look up, with tearful eyes and bless Him 
 for all, incomparably beyond ourselves and our desert. Where 
 « is this righteousness — where is it ? All this agony, misery, ruin 
 — well, it is working through all that. " I will," said David, 
 " remember the years of the right hand of the Most High." I 
 will remember His eternity, and my brief time. 
 
 II. But although so prominent, its foundations are out of 
 
 sight. — *'Who sunk thy sunless pillars deep in earth." The 
 
 highest mountain's peak, it is said, is not more than five miles, 
 
 . the depth of the sea has been, I believe, ascertained to be 
 
God'^8 Righteousness lilce the Mountains, 329 
 
 eleven, and liere are the roots, nay, rather the body, and the 
 portions of the everlasting hills, like the great mountains. And 
 all these weighed ! " The mountains in scales, the hills in a 
 balance!" Exact their proportion literally, to their dynamic 
 intensity or force, regulated for many purposes. So live, yet out 
 of sight. And yet how often the roots of God's righteousness 
 though concealed, are revealed to great experiences, as when 
 Jonah says in his grief, " he went down to the bottom of the 
 the mountains ; " or David sings that (2 Sam. xxii. 16) "the 
 foundations of the world were discovered." 
 
 in. Like the great mountains the righteousness may be 
 ascertained, although not comprehended. — Mountains the high- 
 est may be measured ; men have measured mountains. Very 
 wonderful are the achievements of trigonometry ; and many 
 have no hesitation in pronouncing all about God, His righteous- 
 ness, and the Trinity, who would be quite at a loss here. You 
 see the men with their posts, and chains, carefully taking the 
 base line for their calculations, then they will reduce that base 
 line by multiples and fractions, and then by their theodolites 
 they will carry on the process of what they call triangulation^ 
 and so measure without foot, or rule, or step, heights of build- 
 ings, mountains, and distances of worlds. Now, God's right- 
 eousness is like the great mountains, God Himself gives to us 
 a base of calculation, and it is " the righteousness of God which 
 is in Christ Jesus our Lord ; " and then as the surveyor goes on 
 from point to point, calculation to calculation, so " the righteous- 
 ness of God is revealed," as Paul declares " from faith to faith." 
 Christ make Himself finite that I may ascend to infinite conclu- 
 sions, but there must be the base-line for commencement, then 
 all follows. How wonderfully Paul went on from this. How 
 divine and how sublime. " Oh the depths — oh the heights." 
 
 Hence, IV. Like the great mountains God's righteousness is 
 rich and precious. Mountains are rich : — 
 
 1. In minerals^ their caves, their recesses, gold, coal, silver; 
 there the gem, the ruby lurks; there the opal, with its soft 
 edges ; there the basilisk glare of the emerald ; the sheen of the 
 ruby. What streams in God's righteousness, unknowTi, unseen, 
 
330 The Use and A huse of Imagination, 
 
 unresolved, infinite, plan, power— all righteous and infinite i)ur- 
 pose and in promise. 
 
 2. Ill pastures. — Mountains furnish the way for the nations ; 
 there they spread along the hill sides. Nations have sought 
 them. And nomadic and agricultural people have followed 
 their chain along the hill side. 
 
 3. In refreshments. — Illustration — Rivers gushing from moun- 
 tains, as in Plinlimmon. 
 
 4. In fortifications. — What, then, is His glorious position of 
 whom it is said, " His foundation is in the holy mountains." 
 
 I spoke of the evil method of allegory, or the continued 
 figure. I could give you many illustrations of this from 
 the old writers; they are often like the old pageantry which 
 met Elizabeth in her royal progress. They attempt to em- 
 body abstract quaHties, and they often fail in their attempt. 
 I remember one in which we are told how Truth hved in 
 great honor; but through the envy of her enemies, she was 
 disgraced, banished out of the city; sitting on a dunghill, 
 sad and discontented, a chariot comes by attended with a 
 great troop towards her. Soon Truth perceived who it 
 was — ^her greatest enemy, the Lady Lie, clad in a change- 
 able colored taffety, her coach covered with clouds of aU 
 the colors of the rainbow. Impudence and Hypocrisy, 
 attending on one side, and Slander and Detraction on the 
 other, and Perjury ushering along many more — more than 
 a good many in the train. 
 
 When the Lady Lie came up to Truth, she commanded 
 her to be carried captive for the greater triumph ; at night 
 she fared well, and would want for nothing ; only when 
 morning came the Lady Lie said she had to pay ; and 
 Truth had to pay for all, and the next night was hke the 
 last. But when the Lady Lie was brought before the 
 judge. Impudence and Hypocrisy justified their lady. Per- 
 jury cleared her, and Slander and Detraction laid all the 
 blame with Truth ; she was called upon to plead, and when 
 
Illustrations of Ancient Allegory, 3 3 1 
 
 she could only say, " Not guilty," and was about to be con- 
 demned, Time, an eloquent, grave, experienced counsellor, 
 stepped up, and begged to unravel the matter, lest the ui- 
 nocent should suffer for the guilty. Then Time began to 
 dispel the clouds from the Lady Lie's chariot, unmasked 
 her ugliness, and unveiled her followers, and Truth by Time 
 was cleared and set at large. 
 
 And all this is to illustrate the Scripture doctrine of truth ! 
 
 Another Kke allegory, often used in the pulpit, you will 
 know ; of the master of an orchard who committed it to 
 the keeping of two servants, and went on his journey ; but 
 one was blind, and one was lame ; the lame one saw the 
 beauty of the fruit and told it to the blind fellow, and he 
 said : " Had I the use of my Hmbs I would soon be mas- 
 ter of those apples ; " and the blind man said, " Had I but 
 my eyes my will is good if thefniit is good," so they united 
 their strength, and joined their forces together. The whole 
 blind man took the well-sighted lame man, and so they 
 reached their master's apples, and took them away. When, 
 therefore, the master returned, they each framed his own 
 excuse ; the blind man said he could not so much as see the 
 tree whereon they grew ; and the lame man said he ought 
 not to be suspected, for he had no Hmbs to cHmb. But the 
 wise master perceived the ignoble craft of his two servants, 
 he put them, as they were, the one upon the other's shoul- 
 ders, and punished them both together. And all this is to 
 show that sin is neither of the body nor the soul, but it is 
 the common act of the body and of soul. They are Simeon 
 and Levi, brothers and partners in mischief, and therefore 
 God, in His just judgment, wiU punish both body and soul 
 together, if not repaired and redeemed by Christ. And 
 this allegory, first derived from the Rabbins, has been used 
 through long generations of writers.* 
 
 * These, and many more such, will be found in Spencer's " Store- 
 house of Similes " (1658), already referred to. The last in Hyman 
 
332 The Use and A hiise of Imagination. 
 
 Imagination, I have said, seizes the innermost. And this 
 is the definition which has been given of it by RusMn ; be- 
 cause it does this, it realizes vividly, and hence, again, it 
 represents distinctly. This is not the time or place to stay 
 to analyze the faculty ; but these are its functions and its 
 manifestation. In its exercise, genius is in its highest ful- 
 ness. It is the sum of all highest po vipers in man. It is in 
 its highest exercise the focus and complement of all human 
 power. " The men of imagination,^' said Xapoleon, " rule 
 the world." It is in highest men "the retina of the uni- 
 verse."* It is the power of heart and mind made intense 
 by their marriage. It is the faculty of attention or inten- 
 sity ; it is not the less the faculty of strong affections. It 
 may be possible to have the imagination of fire and the 
 heart of ice, but not upon the objects interesting to it ; to- 
 wards these, it is at once affectionate as clear ; truths, 
 either of Scripture or of life, read without it are like truths 
 read by the hght of funeral torches ; but, read by it, they 
 are read by daylight and the sun. Thus, in descriptive 
 preaching, while tame, feeble, and learned critical correct- 
 ness paints with painful weariness — a something which is all 
 prepared, as carefully as colors are ground down for the 
 canvas, and foolishly imagines that color and form alone 
 are necessary, imagination, with one or two crayon strokes, 
 realizes the whole picture to the eye. Word-painting is 
 often the subject of a sneer, yet it is the power of the poet, 
 that truthful rendering of scenery and character, which, 
 from Homer to Shakespeare, and from Shakespeare 
 to Wordsworth or Tennyson, brings the object de- 
 scribed vividly before the eye, and affects the sense 
 vividly to realize. If this is the poet's purpose it is also 
 
 Hurwitz's charming and deliglitful book of " Hebrew Tales,'* an 
 invaluable little compendium of the ancient ahd uninspired litera- 
 ture of the Hebrews, and also in Coleridge's ** Friend." 
 * Richter. Titan. 
 
Preaching of Chalmers. 393 
 
 the preacher's. Descriptive sermons, indeed, seldom read 
 well ; audiences are usually coarse and sensational ; the 
 colors, therefore, are too often glaring and sensational, too. 
 Most of this descriptive work is hke the stained glass in 
 cathedrals and churches, very rich and showy and perhaps 
 glorious, but not perspicuous. Such sermons, like such 
 windows, need the stately roof and embowering arch ; 
 they do not read well in the study or the household room. 
 The prismatic splendors of the great Chalmers* or Henry 
 Melville, will not bear the quiet of the student's lonely 
 house. This order of imagination charms and delights, but 
 it belongs especially to the speech of the pleasant concert- 
 like sound ; it flows over the soul a wilderness of dehcious 
 melody "in which no idea is received, usually no permanent 
 impression made. 
 
 The imagination lets in the Hght, it is a window through 
 whose glasses the visions stream ; sometimes, as httle pic- 
 tures, and how impressive they are ! The essays of John 
 Foster and Coleridge abound with them ; as when the last 
 speaks of terrible lessons of experience from history ; 
 truths learned too late as : " Alas ! like lights in the stem 
 of a vessel, they illumined only the path that had been 
 
 * Yet what an effect must Chalmers have produced by his preach- 
 ing ! What a description is that in " Horae Subsecivae," by John 
 Brown, of the preaching on some simple village occasion, in a moor^ 
 land district in Tweedale. "The Drover," a notorious and brutal 
 character, who had sat down in the table seat opposite, was gazing 
 up in a state of stupid excitement ; he seemed restless, but never 
 kept his eye from the speaker. '' We all had insensibly been drawn 
 out of our seats, and were converging towards the wonderful 
 speaker." " How beautiful to our eyes did the thunderer look, ex- 
 hausted, but sweet and pure." " We went home quieter than when 
 we came ; we thought of other things, — that voice, that face ; 
 those great, simple, living thoughts ; those floods of resistless elo- 
 quence ; that piercing, shattering voice." — Ilorm Suhsecivce^ Second 
 Series, pp. 90-93. 
 
334 "^^^^ ^^^ ^^^"^ Abuse of Imagination, 
 
 passed over ; " or when he speaks of neglected truths : 
 " Truths, of all others the most awful and mysterious, and, 
 at the same time, of uniyersal interest, are considered so 
 true as to lose all the power of truth, and He bed-ridden in 
 the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most de- 
 spised and exploded errors." An image is sometimes very 
 illustrative. What is its use unless it illustrates ? I re- 
 member to have heard the Bishop of Oxford thus illustrate 
 the text — " How wilt thou manifest thyself to us and not 
 unto the world. Jesus said. If a man love me he will keep 
 my words, &c., and we will come to him and make our 
 abode with him." " Just as a dark lantern is of no use to 
 any but to him who carries it — dark everywhere, behind, 
 and on either side — ^but held by its possessor, it casts before 
 him a stream of informing light ; " and upon another text 
 the same preacher says, "Many characters seem to float 
 before our eyes in Scripture as having been visited by con- 
 victions and opportunities of grace, but only like ships, 
 which, when night is spread over the sea, emerge for a 
 moment from the darkness, as they cross the pathway of 
 the moonbeams, and then are lost again in utter gloom." 
 
 The writings of Dr. Guthrie are fertile as fields in these 
 suggestive images — images which, on right hps, instantly 
 flash out meanings. This is Dr. Guthrie's characteristic, 
 as thus : 
 
 WHO HATH DELIVEKED US FROM THE POWER OP DARKNESS. 
 
 Sailing once along a coast where a friend had suffered ship- 
 wreck, the scene which recalled his danger filled us with no fear. 
 Because, while his ship on the night she ran ashore, was cutting 
 her way through the densest fog, we were ploughing the waters 
 of a silver sea, where noble headlands, and pillared cliffs, and 
 scattered islands, and surf-beaten reefs, stood bathed in the 
 brightest moonshine. There was no danger, just because there 
 was no darkness. The thick and heavy haze is, of all hazards, 
 that which the wary seaman holds in greatest dread. 
 
On the Use of Illustrations. 335 
 
 UPON HIS HEAD WERE MANY CROWNS. 
 
 Inside those iron gratings that protect the ancient regalia of 
 our kingdom, vulgar curiosity sees nothing but a display of 
 jewels. Its stupid eyes are dazzled by the gems that stud the 
 crown and sceptre. The unreflecting multitude fix their 
 thoughts and waste their admiration on these. They go away 
 to talk of their beauty, perhaps to covet their possession ; nor 
 do they estimate the value of the crown, but by the price 
 which its pearls, and rubies, and diamonds, might fetch in the 
 market. 
 
 The eye of a patriot, gazing thoughtfully in on these relics of 
 former days, is all but blind to what attracts the gaping group. 
 The admiration is reserved for other and nobler objects. He 
 looks with deep and meditative interest on that rim of gold, not 
 for its intrinsic value, but because it once encircled the brow of 
 Scotland's greatest king, the hero of her independence — Robert 
 Bruce. Regarded in some such light, estimated by the suffer- 
 ings endured for it, how great the value of that crown which 
 Jesus wears ! What a kingdom that which cost God His Son, 
 and cost that Son his life ! 
 
 But these things are not to be stuck into sermons mere- 
 triciously, like wax or paper flowers.* 
 
 " Give us lessons, not laces," says old Thomas Adams. 
 " A garment," he continues, " to have here and there a 
 fringe, or button, or jewel is comely ; to be nothing but 
 buttons is ridiculous. We will make three borders of gold 
 with studs of silver. Divinity is that border of gold ; hu- 
 man learning the studs of silver." Once again I say the 
 question should be asked,, whether fable, allegory, analogy 
 or illustration is used. Does that help ? The use of the 
 
 * There are indeed collections of them, such as Spencer's already 
 referred to, and the similar bulky but less valuable predecessor. A 
 Treasury or Storehouse of Similes, both Pleasant^ DeligJitful and 
 Profitable for all Estates of Men in General. Newly Collected into 
 Heads and Commonplaces. By Robert Cawdray. Printed in Old 
 Change, Sign of Eagle and Child, IGOO. 
 
336 The Use and Ahum of Imagination, 
 
 imagination in the speaker embodies ; in the hearer it un- 
 bosoms ; hke Byron in the tempest on Lake Leman, who 
 felt that the vehement energy of the storm translated and 
 expounded to him his own nature, was the adequate — 
 scarcely, but still representatively, adequate — illustration 
 of the slumbering passions in his soul ; so that, as he 
 looked upon it, he was able to say, " There, there , it is — 
 that is what I have known, what I have felt." As he says : 
 
 Sky, mountain, river, winds like lightnings ! Ye 
 With night, and clouds, and thunders, and a soul 
 To make these felt, and feeling well may be 
 Things that have made me watchful ; the far roll 
 Of your departing voices is the knoll 
 Of what in me is sleepless, — ^if I rest. 
 
 And again : 
 
 Could I embody and embosom now 
 
 That which is most within me, could I wreck 
 
 My thoughts upon expressions, and thus throw 
 
 Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings, strong or weak, 
 
 All that I would have sought, and all I seek. 
 
 Bear, know, feel, and yet breathe, into one word — 
 
 And that one word were lightning, I would speak. 
 
 But as it is I live and die unheard. 
 
 With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword. 
 
 So every noble image enables the hearer to exclaim, " There, 
 there, it is ; that is my embodied feeliag, now I see it ; 
 now I understand it, as far as I can be made to understand ; 
 it is there, that expresses it." This is the real work of the 
 imagination ; hence it is such an art and such an influence 
 and power. How sublime when this is brought to bear on 
 the embodying the great truths — the noble characteristics 
 of the Christian hfe ; when meanings stand revealed by 
 the mingled lights of divine teaching and human experi- 
 ence, in the elevated and thoughtful soul ; floating feelings 
 
Emotion Translated hy Scenery. 337 
 
 transformed into convictions, and definite and determinate 
 perceptions, powers in the character and the life, as well as 
 tremendous attestations of the speaker's genius. Many 
 readers will think that Frederick Kobinson did not express 
 the whole truth of the Christian life and faith in the follow- 
 ing passages ; but in all his own subtlety of eloquence and 
 insight, he expresses that faculty of the imagination to 
 which I have alluded : 
 
 Or, again, we must all have felt, when certain effects in nature, 
 combinations of form and color, have been presented to us, our 
 own idea speaking in intelligent and yet celestial language ; 
 when, for instance, the long bars of purple, " edged with in- 
 tolerable radiance," seemed to float in a sea of pale, pure green, 
 when the whole sky seemed to reel with thunder, when the 
 night-wind moaned. It is wonderful how Ihe most common- 
 place men and women, beings who, as you would have thought, 
 had no conception that rose beyond a commercial speculation, or 
 a fashionable entertainment, are elevated by such scenes ; how 
 the slumbering grandeur of their nature wakes and acknowl- 
 edges kindred with the sky and storm. " I cannot speak," they 
 would say, " the feelings which are in me ; I have had emotions, 
 aspirations, thoughts ; I cannot put them into words. Look 
 there ! listen now to the storm ! That is what I meant, only I 
 never could say it out till now." Thus do art and nature speak 
 for us, and thus do we adopt them as our own. This is the way 
 in which His righteousness becomes righteousness for us. This 
 is the way in which the heart presents to God the sacrifice of 
 Christ ; gazing on that perfect Life we, as it were, say, " There, 
 that is my religion — that is my righteousness — what I want to 
 be, which I am not — that is my offering, my life as I would 
 wish to give it, freely and not checked, entire and perfect." So 
 the old prophets, their hearts big with unutterable thoughts, 
 searched " what or what manner of time the spirit of Christ 
 which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand of 
 the sufferings of Christ, and of the glory which should follow;" 
 and so with us, until it passes into prayer ; " My Saviour, fill up 
 15 
 
238 Tlie Use and A huse of Imagination. 
 
 the blurred and blotted sketch which my clumsy hand has 
 drawn of a divine life, with the fulness of thy perfect picture. 
 I feel the beauty which I cannot realize :r— robe me in thine un- 
 utterable purity : 
 
 " Rock of ages, cleft for me, 
 Let me hide mysQlf in thee." 
 
Pulpit Monographs. 
 V. — Christmas Evans. 
 
 EOPLE in England know little of Welsh preach- 
 ing. Nor is it possible they should know 
 much ; and it is probable that in most of our 
 congregations a larger acquaintance with it and 
 the manner of it would not have the effect of making it 
 more favorably regarded. Preaching is in Wales the great 
 national characteristic — the Derby Day is not more truly a 
 characteristic of England than the great gatherings and 
 meetings of the Associations all grouped around some 
 popular favorites. The dwellers among those mountains 
 and upon those hiU sides have no concerts, no theatres, no 
 means of stimulating or satisfying their curiosity. For we, 
 who care httle for preaching, to whom the whole sermon 
 system is perhaps becoming more tedious, we can form but 
 little idea, and have but httle sympathy with that form of 
 rehgious society where the pulpit is the orchestra, and the 
 stage, and the platform, and where the charms of music 
 and painting and acting are all looked for and found in the 
 preacher. We very likely should be disposed even to look 
 with complacent pity upon such a state of society ; it has 
 not yet expired where the Bulwers, and Dickens, and Thack- 
 
 (339) 
 
340 Pulpit MonograpTis : Christmas Evans. 
 
 erays, and Scotts are altogether unknown : there the pecu- 
 Har forms of their genius — certainly without their peculiar 
 education — display themselves in the pulpit. If you like to 
 suppose, therefore, a large amount of ignorance, well, upon 
 such a subject certainly it is possible to enter easily upon 
 the illimitable, yet it is such an ignorance as that which de- 
 veloped itself in Job and in his companions and in his age 
 — an ignorance like that which we may conceive in ^schy- 
 lus. In fact, 'in Wales the gates of every man's being have 
 been opened. It is possible to know much of the grammar, 
 and the history, and the lexicography of things, and yet to 
 be utterly ignorant, so utterly ignorant of thuigs as never 
 to have felt the sentiment of strangeness or of terror ; and 
 without having ever been informed about the names of 
 things, it is possible to have been brought into the presence 
 and the power of things themselves. Thus the ignorance 
 of one man may be higher than the intelligence of another. 
 There may be a large memory and a very narrow conscious- 
 ness. On the contrary, there may be a large consciousness, 
 while the forms it embraces may be uncertain and unde- 
 fined in the misty twilight of the soul. This is much the 
 state of many minds in Wales. It is the state of feeling 
 and of poetry, of subtle questionings, and high religious 
 musings and raptures. This state has been aided by the 
 secludedness of the country, and the exclusiveness of the 
 language, not less than by the rugged force and masculine 
 majesty and strength of the language, a language full of 
 angles and sharp goads, admirably fitted for the masters of 
 assemblies, admirably fitted to move too, Hke a wind over 
 the soul, rousing and soothing, stirring into storm and lull- 
 ing into rest. Something in it makes an orator almost ludi- 
 crous when he attempts to convey himself in another lan- 
 guage, but very powerful and impressive in that. It is a 
 speaking and living language, a language without any shal- 
 lows, a language which seems to compel the necessity of 
 
His Very Humble Origin, ^41 
 
 thought or feeling before using it. Our language is fast 
 becoming serviceable for all that large part of the human 
 family who speak without thinking. To this state the Welsh 
 can never come. That unaccommodating tongue only moves 
 with a soul behind it. 
 
 Christmas Evans was the child of very poor parents — 
 Samuel and Joanna Evans. At the age of seventeen, Christ- 
 mas could not read a w^ord. He was bom at Esgaiswen, in 
 the parish of Llandysul, Cardiganshire, on Christmas-day, 
 1766, says his friend and biographer, Ehys Stephen — 1776, 
 says his later biographer, Mr. Cross. Probably Mr. Ste- 
 phen is correct. His father was a shoemaker, but he died 
 when the lad was only nine years of age, and his wife and 
 children became even, in some measure, dependent on the 
 parish for support. He was taken by an uncle, a Mr. James 
 Lewis, to his farm, and for six years he was abandoned to 
 utter neglect. His years were passed in complete poverty, 
 in most servile employments ; he had neither friend nor 
 home. An imagination, however, so vivid and vigorous, 
 must have frequently been awakened amidst the sublime 
 scenery of the glorious hills and valleys by which he was 
 surrounded. The influences which encompassed him were 
 entirely depraving ; yet, in his seventeenth year, he became 
 the subject of deep rehgious impressions, although they 
 were kindled in a church whose pastor was strongly influ- 
 enced by Arian views, as were many ministers in Wales in 
 that day — Mr. Daniel Davies. Mr. Stephen has, in a few 
 lines, given a most lovable portrait of him.* H« was the 
 Patriarch and Pastor of Castell Hywel. He says ;: — 
 
 Mr. D. Davies was the very soul of kindness atld fine feeling ; 
 and wherever you meet one of his old i)upils, be he crergyman or 
 dissenting minister, there is a kind and admiring word for the 
 Patriarch of Castell Hywel. Nothing could be more unsophisti- 
 cated tiian his mode of living amongst his native mountains ; 
 
 * Memoirs of Christmas Evans. By David Rhys Stephen. 
 
342 Pulpit MoiiograpTis : Christmas JEkmns. 
 
 and while, in mind, he lived with the old Greeks and the mighty 
 Romans, revelling in the treasury of ancient lore, he ate, and 
 drank, and lodged, as did the small farmer of his district. With 
 few wants, and less discontent — teaching all that were sent to 
 his school ; paid most moderately, indeed, by the richest of his 
 neighbours, not at all by the poorer among them ; breaking in 
 upon the " noiseless tenour of his way " only by the sermons on 
 the Lord's-day, and occasionally at some house on week-day 
 evening, when, especially if he referred to the Prodigal Son, 
 which he w^as much addicted to, he would weep profusely, af- 
 fected by his own teaching ; at once the cause of his own felic- 
 ity, and the source of whatever power he exerted upon others. 
 
 Mr. Davies, ovei-taken by a heavy shower, called at a farm- 
 house, and begged a sheaf of straw, which, opening it in the 
 middle, he put on his head as a temporary umbrella. A poor 
 woman who met him on the road, said, "Mr. Davies, lachf you 
 have very poor shelter." " Oh !" replied the good man, " a roof 
 of straw well becomes a wall of clay." 
 
 There came a great awakening at Castell Hywel, a great 
 desire for religious knowledge. In those days scarce one 
 person in ten could read at aU, even in the language of the 
 country ; so says Christmas Evans. " We " — that is the 
 young converts — " bought Bibles and candles, and were ac- 
 customed to meet together in a bam in the evening, at 
 Penypralltfaus, and thus in about a month I was able to 
 read the Bible in my mother tongue. I was vastly de- 
 lighted with so much learning. This, however, did not 
 satisfy me, but I borrowed books and learnt a little Eng- 
 lish. Mr. Davies, my pastor, understood that I thirsted 
 for knowledge, and took me to his school, where I stayed 
 for six months. Here I went through the Latin grammar, 
 but so low were my circumstances that I could stay there 
 no longer." He soon became the subject of persecution 
 among his companions, and it was about this time that he 
 lost his eye. Six young men feU upon him unawares, and 
 beat hun very unmercifully ; one of them, using a stick, 
 
First JEfforU in the Ministry, 343 
 
 struck him above the eye, which occasioned the loss of its 
 sight. A very great mistake went abroad that Christmas 
 Evans, before his conversion, was a great boxer. So far 
 otherwise, he says he "never fought a battle in his life." 
 The night after this sad disaster, he dreamt that the day of 
 judgment was come. He says, " I saw Jesus in the clouds, 
 and all the world on fire. I was in great fear, yet crying 
 earnestly, and with some confidence, for His peace. He 
 answered and said, * Thou thoughtest to be a preacher, but 
 but what wilt thou do now ? The world is on ^q and it is 
 too late.' On this I awoke." This dream produced a deep 
 impression on his mind : it recovered him, too, from some 
 spiritual declension. He was called upon often to the exer- 
 cises of prayer and exhortation, and he testifies that to this 
 he felt " a strong inclination, though," he says, " I knew 
 myseK a mass of spiritual ignorance." His memory was 
 very tenacious ; he translated, among his first performances, 
 a sermon of Bishop Beveridge, and preached it. He also 
 committed to memory one of Mr. Rowland's sermons, and 
 preached it in the very neighborhood of the church to 
 which he belonged. A gentleman heard him, and natur- 
 ally enough expressed amazement at such a sermon from 
 an unlettered boy. The mystery was solved next day — he 
 found the sermon in a book. " However," said he, "I have 
 not done thinkmg there is something great in the son of 
 Samuel, the shoemaker, for his prayer was as good as the 
 sermon." His opinion of the young preacher would have 
 suffered some farther abatement if he had known, what was 
 the fact, that the prayer itseK was memorized. This seems 
 to have taken place before he lost his eye, before the dream ; 
 and for the youth, who could do such things, we are not 
 surprised that there was a sad backshding and repentance 
 before the period of his real promise and usefulness. Yet we 
 learn that his Christian experiences were of a painful na- 
 ture. He who was wont, before the period of true relig- 
 
344 P'K^lpit Monogr^a^ylis : OJiristmas M^aiis. 
 
 ious feeling and honest and individual application, to at- 
 tempt to shine in the robes of the departed masters, now 
 that he was thrown upon himseK felt all the depression and 
 debasement of a humble heai-t, and sometimes of a disap- 
 pointed ministry. He was wont, w^hen he preached, to 
 enter the pulpit with dread ; he conceived the very sight of 
 him was enough to becloud the hearts of his hearers, and 
 intercept the light of heaven in its efforts to shine upon 
 theu' souls. He could not ascertain that he had been the 
 means of salvation to a single hearer during five years of 
 his ministry, and he kept the state of his soul in darkness 
 and in reserve ; he drank the wormwood of thought and of 
 bitter feeling alone. We Hke to read these passages of soul 
 history ; to him they were dark moments, but the Hght 
 came by-and-by, and we shall see that his wonderful power 
 over other men was the result of his own deep and solemn 
 acquaintance with the most painful and harrassing ques- 
 tions of the human heart. His faith was no " cunningly 
 devised fable." 
 
 He married in 1790 — the year in which he was ordained 
 at Lleyn, m Caernarvonshke — Catharine Jones. She 
 greatly aided him in his ministerial work, by her spirit and 
 her character. She did not bring him property ; but she 
 brought what was of far more importance than property ; 
 she was a member of his church. She had a strong mind, 
 and she had, it seems, great aptitude for theological studies. 
 She must have been, when married, very young ; for thirty- 
 three years she walked with her husband a companion and 
 helpmeet, and as a manager she seems to have been even a 
 miracle of a woman. Her husband's income, for the greater 
 part of their married hfe, never exceeded thirty pounds ; 
 yet she gave away food to poor children and needy folks, 
 and procured and made garments for the poor members of 
 the church, and money and bread for Irish laborers who 
 passed her door on their way to and from the harvests. 
 
Home Life — Poverty — Trials. 345 
 
 Her house was always open to itinerant ministers, and she 
 readily administered to them with her own hands ; and al- 
 though her health was never robust she had so much cour- 
 age that she was able to accompany her husband on ^^q of 
 his journeys through the greatest portion of Wales, some- 
 times in the depth of the winter, often through storms of 
 rain, and snow, and hail, over dangerous ferries, and 
 through wild and desolate places. She loved the Saviour, 
 and she made all the interests of His Church hers. They 
 travelled in true apostohc style. Thus we read, when 
 Christmas Evans was forty-six years of age, he removed 
 from Lleyn to the Isle of Anglesea. Lleyn had been his 
 first church and charge, there he had been ordained, there 
 he met and married his wife ; now upon his birth-day 
 (Christmas-day) they went out to their new country, almost, 
 it might be said, not knowing whither they went. "It 
 was," he says, "a rough day of frost and snow." Of this 
 world's goods they had none. He commenced thus his 
 journey on horseback, with his wife behind him, and arrived 
 in the evening of the same day at Llangewin. Whatever 
 was the motive for his departure, it was not money ; his 
 salary in Anglesea was only £X1 pounds per annum, and 
 for twenty years he asked no more. He who said to Abra- 
 ham " Fear not : I am thy shield and exceeding great re- 
 ward," called Christmas Evans forth ; and the reason of 
 the call was soon perceived in the large additions made to 
 Abraham's seed, and the divine influence felt by innumera- 
 ble souls. In all this his wife was no obstruction. If it be 
 true that a man must ask his wife's leave to be rich, he must 
 also ask her to permit him to be useful ; she is the minis- 
 ter's minister, and his power is greatly owing to her. What 
 can we, or men such as we are, know of such men, of their 
 Hves, or of their motives ? We call them poor, we should 
 look upon them almost with contempt ; their world was 
 different to ours, their life a hidden life. Had they not 
 15* 
 
346 Pulpit Moiiogra/phs : Christmas Evans, 
 
 pleasures ? Had not our preacher pleasures ? The noise 
 of the great world scarcely ever broke on his ear. Every- 
 way the furniture of life was simple ; luxuries of the most 
 frivolous description have become necessities to us ; but as 
 we read the life of this man and his companions in the 
 ministry, all look very different. The things of eternity, 
 and the solemn thoughts of time awakening to it, seem 
 nearer to such men than to us. Mr. Stephen, in his Life, 
 has given the passing sketch and memorial of several of 
 these men, of whom our world indeed is not worthy. 
 
 Their virtues walked their narrow round, 
 
 Nor made a pause nor left a void ; 
 And sure the eternal Master found 
 
 Their single talent well employed. 
 
 It was in the second year of his ministry at Lleyn that a. 
 change came over the ministry of the man. He was in 
 feeble health, and he set off to South Wales to visit his 
 friends. He was unable to procure a horse for the journey, 
 and the small societies to which he preached were too poor 
 to provide him one. So he set forth on foot, preaching in 
 every town and village through which he passed. He gives 
 the account of many battles in spirit among the mountains. 
 He says, " The roads were lonely, and I was wholly alone. 
 I suffered no interruptions in my wrestlings with God." 
 He says this, indeed, of a later period of his spiritual diffi- 
 culties, but he knew these moments constantly, and a 
 change came over his ministrations. He says : 
 
 I now felt a power in the word, like a hammer breaking the 
 rock, and not like a rush. I had a very powerful time at Kil- 
 vowyr, and also pleasant meetings in the neighborhood of Car- 
 digan. The work of conversion was progressing so rapidly and 
 with so much energy in those parts, that the ordinance of bap- 
 tism was administered every month for a year or more, at Kil- 
 vowyr, Cardigan, Blacnywaun, Blaeuffos and Ebenezer, to from 
 
Weary of a Cold Heart, 347 
 
 ten to twenty persons each month. The chapels and adjoining 
 burying-grounds were crowded with hearers of a week-day, 
 even in the middle of harvest. I frequently preached in the 
 open air in the evenings, and the rejoicings singing, and prais- 
 ing would continue until broad light the next morning. The 
 hearers appeared melted down in tenderness at the diflferent 
 meetings, so that they wept streams of tears, and cried out, in 
 such a manner that one might suppose the whole congregation, 
 male and female, was thoroughly dissolved by the Gospel. " The 
 word of God " was now become as " a sharp two-edged sword, 
 dividing asunder the joints and marrow," and revealing unto 
 the people the secret corruptions of their hearts. Preaching was 
 now unto me a pleasure, and the success of the ministry in all 
 places was very great. The same people attended fifteen or 
 twenty diflferent meetings, many miles apart in the counties of 
 Cardigan, Pembroke, Caermarthen, Glamorgan, Monmouth and 
 Brecknock. This revival, especially in the vicinity of Cardi- 
 gan, and in Pembrokeshire, subdued the whole country, and in- 
 duced people everywhere to think wel! of religion. The same 
 heavenly gale followed down to Fishguard, Llangloflfan, Little 
 New-Castle, and Rhydwylim, where Mr. Gabriel Rees was then a 
 zealous and a powerful preacher. There was such a tender spirit 
 resting on the hearers at this season, from Tabor to Middlemill, 
 that one would imagine, by their weeping and trembling in their 
 places of worship, and all this mingled with so much heavenly 
 cheerfulness, that they would wish to abide for ever in this state 
 of mind. 
 
 It is very interesting to notice how real and deep was the 
 spiritual hfe of Christmas Evans. He says : 
 
 I was weary of a cold heart towards Christ, and His sacrifice, 
 and the work of His Spirit — of a cold heart in the pulpit, in 
 secret prayer, and in study. For fifteen years previously I had 
 felt my heart burning within, as if going to Emmaus with Jesus. 
 On a day ever to be remembered by me, as I was going from 
 Dolgelly to Machynlleth, and climbing up towards Cadair Idris 
 I considered it to be incumbent upon me to pray, however hard 
 I felt my heart, and however worldly the frame of my spirit was. 
 
348 Pulpit Monographs : Christmas JEvans. 
 
 Having begun in the name of Jesus, I soon felt as it were the 
 fetters loosening, and the old hardness of heart softening, and, 
 as I thought, mountains of frost and snow dissolving and melt- 
 ing within me. This engendered confidence in my soul in the 
 promise of the Holy Ghost. I felt my whole mind relieved from 
 some great bondage: tears flowed copiously, and I was con- 
 strained to cry out for the gracious visits of God, by restoring 
 to my soul the joy of His salvation ; and that He would visit the 
 churches in Anglesea that were under my care. I embraced in 
 my supplications all the churches of the saints, and nearly all 
 the ministers in the principality by their names. This struggle 
 lasted for three hours : it rose again and again, like one wave 
 after another, or a high flowing tide, driven by a strong wind, 
 until my nature became faint by weeping and crying. Thus I 
 resigned myself to Christ, body and soul, gifts and labors — all 
 my life — every day and every hour that remained for me ; and 
 all my cares I committed to Christ. The road was mountainous 
 and lonely, and I was wholly alone, and sufi'ered no interruptions 
 in my wrestlings with God. 
 
 From this time, I was made to expect the goodness of God to 
 churches and to myself. Thus the Lord delivered me and the 
 people of Anglesea from being carried away by the flood of 
 Sandemanianism. In the first religious meeting after this I felt 
 as if I had been removed from the cold and sterile regions of 
 spiritual frost, into the verdant fields of the divine promises. 
 The former strivings with God in prayer, and the longing 
 anxiety for the conversion of sinners, which I had experienced 
 at Lleyn, were now restored. I had a hold of the promises of 
 God. The result was, when I returned home, the first thing 
 that arrested my attention was, that the Spirit was working 
 also in the brethren in Anglesea, inducing in them a spirit of 
 prayer, especially in two of the deacons, who were particularly 
 importunate that God would visit us in mercy, and render the 
 Word of His grace efiectual amongst us for the conversion of 
 sinners. 
 
 Readers will be interested in reading the solemn cove- 
 nants ^entered into with God from time to time. Our 
 preacher represented a time and a state of things when 
 
A Singular and Solemn Covenant with God, 349 
 
 such affairs of the heart took place. We will also beg them 
 to notice those passages we have printed in itahcs, as show- 
 ing the especial care and anxiety of his heart : 
 
 " I. I give my soul and body unto thee, Jesus, the true God, 
 and everlasting life — deliver me from sin, and from eternal death, 
 and bring me into life everlasting. Amen. — C. E. 
 
 "II. I call the day, the sun, the earth, the trees, the stones, the 
 bed, the table, and the books, to witness that I come unto thee, 
 Redeemer of sinners, that I may obtain rest for my soul from the 
 thunders of guilt and the dread of eternity. Amen. — C. E. 
 
 •"III. I do, through confidence in thy power, earnestly entreat 
 thee to take the work into thine own hand, and give me a cir- 
 cumcised heart, that I may love thee, and create in me a right 
 spirit, that I may seek thy glory. Grant me that principle which 
 thou wilt own in the day of judgment, that I may not then as- 
 sume palefacedness, and find myself a hypocrite. Grant me this, 
 for the sake of thy most precious blood. Amen. — C. E. 
 
 "IV. I entreat thee, Jesus, the Son of God, in power, grant 
 me, for the sake of thy agonizing death, a covenant interest in 
 thy blood, which cleanseth ; in thy righteousness, which justi- 
 fieth ; and in thy redemption, which delivereth. I entreat an 
 interest in thy blood, for thy Uood's sake, and a part in thee, for 
 thy name's sake, which thou hast given among men. Amen. — 
 C. E. 
 
 " V. O Jesus Christy Son of the living God, take, for the sake 
 of thy cruel death, my time, and strength, and the gifts and tal- 
 ents I possess ; which, with a full purpose of heart, I consecrate 
 to thy glory in the building upof thy Church in the world, for 
 thou art worthy of the hearts and talents of all men. Amen. — 
 C. E. 
 
 " VI. I desire thee, my great High Priest, to confirm, by thy 
 power, from thy High Court, my usefulness as a preacher ^ and 
 my piety as a Christian^ as tico gardens nigh to each other ; that 
 sin may not have place in my heart, to becloud my confidence in 
 thy righteousness, and that I may not be left to any foolish act 
 that may occasion my gifts to wither, and be rendered useless 
 before my life ends. Keep thy gracious eye upon me, and watch 
 over me, O my Lord and my God, for ever ! Amen. — C. E. 
 
350 Pulpit Monographs : Ohristinas Evans. 
 
 " VII. I give myself in a particular manner to tliee, O Jesus 
 Christ, the Saviour, to be preserved from the falls into which 
 many stumble, that thy name (in thy cause) may not be blas- 
 phemed or wounded, that my peace may not be injured, that thy 
 people may not be grieved, and that thine enemies may not be 
 hardened. Amen. — C. E. 
 
 " VIII. I come unto thee, beseeching thee to be in covenant 
 with me in my ministry. As thou didst prosper Bunyan, Vava- 
 sor Powell, How^ell Harris, Rowlands, and Whitefield, O do thou 
 prosper me. Whatsoever things are opposed to my prosperity, 
 remove them out of the way. Work in me everything approved 
 of God, for the attainment of this. Give me a heart " sick Of 
 love" to thyself, and to the souls of men. Grant that I may ex- 
 perience the power of thy Word before I deliver it, as Moses felt 
 the power of his own rod, before he saw it on the land and wa- 
 ters of Egypt. Grant this, for the sake of thine infinitely pre- 
 cious blood, O Jesus, my hope, and my all in all ! Amen. — C. E. 
 
 "IX. Search me now, and lead me in plain paths of judgment. 
 Let me discover in this life what I am before thee, that I may 
 not find myself of another character, when I am shown in the 
 light of the immortal world, and open ray eyes in all the bright- 
 ness of eternity. Wash me in thy redeeming blood. Amen. — 
 C. E. 
 
 "Grant me strength to depend upon thee for food and rai- 
 ment, and to make known my requests. let thy care he over 
 me as a covenant-privilege hetwixt thee and myself^ and not like a 
 general care to feed the ravens that perish^ and clothe the lily that 
 is cast into the oven ; hut let thy care he over me as one of thy f am' 
 ily^ as one of thine unworthy hrethren. Amen. — C. E, 
 
 " XI. Grant, O Jesus ! and take upon thyself the preparing of 
 me for death, for thou art God ; there is no need, but for thee to 
 speak the word. If possible, — thy will be done, — leave me not 
 long in aflfiiction, ncr to die suddenly, without bidding adieu to 
 my brethren, and let me die in their sight, after a short illness. 
 Let all things be ordered against the day of removing from one 
 world to another, that there be no confusion nor disorder, but a 
 quiet discharge in peace. O grant me this, for the sake of thine 
 agony in the garden ! Amen. — C. E. 
 
His Power of Personification. ^51 
 
 " XII. Grant, O blessed Lord ! that nothing may grow and be 
 matured in me, to occasion thee to cast me off from the service 
 of the sanctuary, like the sons of Eli; and for the sake of thine 
 unbounded merit, let not my days be longer than my usefuluess. 
 O let me not be like lumber in a house in the end of my days, — - 
 in the way of others to work. Amen. — C. E. 
 
 *' XIII. I beseech thee, O Redeemer ! to present these my sup- 
 plications before the Father : and oh ! inscribe them in thy book 
 with thine own immortal pen, while I am writing them with my 
 mortal hand, in my book on earth. According to the depths of 
 thy merit, thine undiminished grace, and thy compassion, and 
 thy manner unto thy people, oh ! attach thy name, in thine up- 
 per court, to these unworthy petitions ; and set thine amen to 
 them, as I do on my part of the covenant. Amen. — Christmas 
 Evans, Llangevni, Anglesea, April 10, 18 — ." 
 
 No wonder, after so solemn and affecting a transaction 
 as this, Mr. Evans says, " I felt a sweet peace and tranquil- 
 lity of soul." Nor do we wonder that beneath the power 
 of such a life he increased churches by scores and members 
 by many hundreds. 
 
 The sermons of Christmas Evans can only be known 
 through the medium of translation. They perhaps do not 
 suffer as most translations suffer ; but the rendering in 
 Enghsh is feeble in comparison with the nervous, bony, and 
 muscular Welsh language. The sermons, however, clearly 
 reveal the man ; they reveal the fulness and strength of his 
 mind ; they abound in instructive thoughts ; their building 
 and structure is always good ; and many of the passages, 
 and even several of the sermons, might be taken as models 
 for strong and effective pulpit oratory. Like all the preach- 
 ers of his day, and order of mind and pecuharity of theo- 
 logical sentiment and training, his use of the imagery of 
 Scripture was remarkably free ; his use also of texts often 
 was as significant and suggestive as it was certainly origi- 
 nal, No doubt, for the appreciation of his purpose and his 
 
352 Pulpit Monographs'. Christmas Evans. 
 
 power in its larger degree, he needed an audience well ac- 
 quainted with Scripture, and sympathetic in an eminent 
 manner with the mind of the preacher. There seem to 
 have been periods and moments when his mind soared 
 aloft into some of the highest fields of truth and emotion. 
 Yet his wing never seemed little or pretty in its flight. 
 There was the firmness and strength of the beat of a noble 
 eagle. Some eloquence sings, some sounds ; in one we 
 hear the voice of a bird hovering in the air, in the other 
 we listen to the thunder of the plume ; the eloquence of 
 Christmas Evans was of the latter order. 
 
 But our preacher has often been called the Bunyan of 
 Wales — the Bunyan of the pulpit. In some measure the 
 epithet does designate him ; he was a great master of para- 
 bolic simihtude and comparison. This is a kind of preach- 
 ing ever eminently popular with the multitude ; it requires 
 rather a redundancy of fancy than imagination — perhaps a 
 mind considerably disciplined and educated would be un- 
 able to indulge in such exercises — a self-possession balanced 
 by ignorance of many of the canons of taste, or utterly ob- 
 livious and careless of them ; for this is a kind of teaching 
 of which we hear very Httle. Now we have not one preacher 
 in England who would perhaps dare to use or who could 
 use well the parabolic style. This was the especial power 
 of Christmas Evans. He excelled in personification ; he 
 would seem to have been frequently mastered by this fac- 
 ulty. The abstractions of thought, the disembodied phan- 
 toms of another world came clothed in form, and feature, 
 and color, — at his bidding they came. 
 
 Ghostly shajDes 
 Met him at noontide ; Fear, and trembling Hope, 
 Silence, and Foresight ; Death the skeleton, 
 And Time the shadow. 
 
 Thus he frequently astounded his congregations not merely 
 
Tlie Gospel Mould. 2^3 
 
 by pouring round his subject the varied hues of hght or 
 space, but by giving to the eye defined shapes and reahza- 
 tions. We do not wonder to hear him say, "If I only en- 
 tered the pulpit I felt raised as it were to Paradise — above 
 my afflictions, until I forgot my adversity ; yea, I felt my 
 mountain strong. I said to a brother once, ' Brother, the 
 doctrine, the confidence, and strength I feel will make per- 
 sons dance with joy in some parts of Wales.' 'Yea, bro- 
 ther,' said he, with tears flowing down his eyes.** He was 
 visited by remarkable dreams. Once, previous to a time 
 of great refreshing, he dreamt : 
 
 He thought he was in the church at Caerphilly, and found 
 many harps hanging about the pulpit, wrapped in coverings of 
 green. " Then," said he, " I will take down the harps of heaven 
 in this place." In removing the covering, he found the ark of 
 the covenant, inscribed with the name of Jehovah. Then 
 he cried, " Brethren, the Lord has come to us, according to his 
 promise, and in answer to our prayers." In that very place, he 
 shortly afterward had the satisfaction of receiving one hundred 
 and forty converts into the church, as the fruit of his ministry. 
 
 As we have said, nothing can well illustrate on paper the 
 power of the orator's speech, but the following may serve 
 as in some measure illustrating his method : — 
 
 THE GOSPEL MOULD. 
 
 I compare such preachers to a miner, who should go to the 
 quarry where he raised the ore, and taking his sledge in his 
 hand, should endeavor to form bars of iron of the ore in its 
 rough state, without a furnace to melt it, or a rolling-mill to 
 roll it out, or moulds to cast the metal, and conform the casts to 
 their patterns. The gospel is like a form or mould, and sinners 
 are to be melted, as it were, and cast into it. " But ye have 
 obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was deliv- 
 ered you," or into which you were delivered, as is the marginal 
 reading, so that your hearts ran into the mould. Evangelical 
 preachers have, in the name of Christ, a mould or form to cast 
 
354 Pulpit Monographs : Christmas Evans. 
 
 the minds of men into ; as Solomon, the vessels of the temple. 
 The Sadducees and Pharisees had their forms, and legal preach- 
 ers have their forms ; but evangelical preachers should bring 
 with them the " form of sound words," so that, if the hearers 
 believe, or are melted into it, Christ may be formed in their 
 hearts, — then they will be as born of the truth, and the image 
 of the truth will appear in their sentiments and experience, and 
 in their conduct in the Church, in the family, and in the neigh- 
 bourhood. Preachers without the mould, are all those who do 
 not preach all the points of the Gospel of the grace of God. 
 
 THE MAN IN THE STEEL HOUSE. 
 
 A man in a trance saw himself locked up in a house of steel, 
 through the walls of which, as through walls of glass, he could 
 see his enemies assailing him with swords, spears, and bayonets ; 
 but his life was safe, for his fortress was locked within. So is 
 the Christian secure amid the assaults of the w^orld. His " life 
 is hid with Christ in God." 
 
 The Psalmist prayed — " When my heart is overwhelmed with- 
 in me, lead me to the rock that is higher than I." Imagine a 
 man seated on a lofty rock in the midst of the sea, where he has 
 everything necessary for his support, shelter, safety, and com- 
 fort. The billows heave and break beneath him, and the hun- 
 gry monsters of the deep wait to devour him ; but he is on 
 high, above the rage cf the former, and the reach of the latter. 
 Such is the security of faith. 
 
 But why need I mention the rock and the steel house ? for 
 the peace that is in Christ is a tower ten thousand times 
 stronger, and a refuge ten thousand times safer. Behold the 
 disciples of Jesus exposed to famine, nakedness, peril, and 
 sword — incarcerated in dungeons ; thrown to wild beasts ; 
 consumed in the fire ; sawn asunder ; cruelly mocked and 
 scourged; driven .from friends and home, to wander among 
 the mountains, and lodge in dens and caves of the earth ; 
 being destitute, afflicted, tormented; sorrowful, but always 
 rejoicing ; cast down, but not destroyed ; an ocean of peace 
 within, which swallows up all their sufferings. 
 
 "Neither death," with all its terrors; "nor life," with all its 
 allurements ; " nor things present," with all their i^leasure ; 
 
Tlie Man in the Steel House. 
 
 355 
 
 "northings to come," with all their promise; " nor height" of 
 prosperity ; " nor depth " of adversity ; " nor angels " of evil ; 
 "nor principalities" of darkness ; ''shall be able to separate us 
 from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus." " God is our 
 refuge and strength ; a very present help in trouble. Therefore 
 will not we fear, though the earth be moved, and though the 
 mountains be carried into the midst of the sea — though the 
 waters thereof roar and be troubled — though the mountains 
 shake with the swelling thereof." This is the language of 
 strong faith in the peace of Christ. How is it with you amid 
 such turmoil and commotion ? Is all peaceful within ? Do you 
 feel secure in the name of the Lord, as in a strong fortress — as 
 in a city well supplied and defended ? 
 
 " There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the 
 city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most high. 
 God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved. God shall 
 help her, and that right early." "Unto the upright, there 
 ariseth light in the darkness." The bright and morning star, 
 shining upon their pathway, cheers them in their journey home 
 to their Father's house. And when they come to pass over 
 Jordan, the Sun of Righteousness shall have risen upon them, 
 with healing in his wings. Already they see the tops of the 
 mountains of immortality, gilded with his beams, beyond the 
 valley of the shadow of death. Behold, yonder, old Simeon 
 hoisting his sails, and saying — " Lord, now lettest thou thy ser- 
 vant depart in peace, according to thy word ; for mine eyes 
 have seen thy salvation." Such is the peace of Jesus, sealed to 
 all them that believe, by the blood of His cross. 
 
 When we walk through the field of battle, slippery with 
 blood, and strewn with the bodies of the slain — when we hear 
 the shrieks and the groans of the wounded and the dying — 
 when v/e see the country wasted, cities burned, houses pillaged, 
 widows and orphans wailing in the track of the victorious 
 army, we cannot help exclaiming— O, what a blessing is peace ! 
 When we are obliged to witness family turmoils and strifes — 
 when we see parents and children, brothers and sisters, masters 
 and servants, husbands and wives, contending with each other 
 like tigers — we retire as from a smoky" house, and exclaim as 
 
356 Pulpit Monographs : Cliristmas Evans, 
 
 we go — O, what a blessing is peace ! When duty calls us into 
 that Church, where envy and malice prevail, and the spirit of 
 harmony is supplanted by discord and contention — when we see 
 brethren, who ought to be bound together in love, full of pride, 
 hatred, confusion, and every evil w^ork — we quit the unhallowed 
 scene with painful feelings of repulsion, repeating the exclama- 
 tion — O, what a blessing is peace ! 
 
 But how much more precious in the case of the awakened 
 sinner ! See him standing, terror-stricken, before Mount Sinai. 
 Thunders roll above him — lightnings flash around him — the 
 earth trembles beneath him, as if ready to open her mouth and 
 swallow him up. The sound of the trumpet rings through his 
 soul — " Guilty ! guilty ! guilty ! " Pale and trembling, he looks 
 eagerly around him, and sees nothing but revelations of wrath. 
 Overwhelmed with fear and dismay, he cries out — " O wretched 
 man that I am ! Who shall deliver me ? What shall I do ? " 
 A voice reaches his ear — ^penetrates his heart — " Behold the 
 Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world ! " He 
 turns his eye to Calvary. Wondrous vision ! Emmanuel expir- 
 ing upon the cross ! the sinner's Substitute satisfying the 
 demand of the law against the sinner ! Now all his fears are 
 hushed, and rivers of peace flow into his soul. This is the 
 peace of Christ. 
 
 How precious is this peace, amid all the dark vicissitudes of 
 life ! How invaluable this jewel, through all the dangers of the 
 wilderness ! How cheering to know that Jesus, who hath loved 
 us even unto death, is the pilot of our perilous voyage ; that he 
 rules the winds and the waves, and can hush them to silence at 
 his will, and bring the frailest bark of faith to the desired 
 haven ! Trusting where he cannot trace his Master's footsteps, 
 the disciple is joyful amid the darkest dispensations of Divine 
 Providence ; turning all his sorrows into songs, and all his tribu- 
 lations into triumphs. " Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, 
 whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee." 
 
 THE MYSTERIOUS PACKET. 
 
 In this world, every man receives according to his faith ; in 
 the world to come, every man shall receive according to his 
 w^orks. " Blessed are ihe dead who died in the Lord, for they 
 
TTie Mysterious Packet 057 
 
 rest from their labors, and their works do follow them." Their 
 works do not go before them to divide the river Jordan, and 
 open the gates of heaven. This is done by their faith. But 
 their works are left behind, as if done up in a packet, on this 
 side of the river. John saw the great white throne descending 
 for judgment, the Son of Man sitting thereon, and all nations 
 gathered before him. He is dividing the righteous from the 
 wicked, as the shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats. 
 The wicked are set on the left hand, and the awful sentence is 
 pronounced — " Depart from me, ye accursed, into everlasting 
 fire, prepared for the devil and his angels ! " But the righteous 
 are placed on the right-hand, to hear the joyful welcome — 
 " Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared 
 for you from the foundation of the world ! " The books are 
 opened, and Mercy presents the packets that were left on the 
 other side of Jordan. They are all opened, and the books are 
 read wherein all their acts of benevolence and virtue are re- 
 corded. Justice examines the several packets, and answers — 
 " All right. Here they are. Thus it is written — ^ I was hungry, 
 and ye gave me meat ; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink ; 
 I was a stranger, and ye took me in ; I was naked, and ye clothed 
 me ; I was sick, and ye visited me ; I was in prison, and ye 
 came unto me.' " The righteous look upon each other with 
 wonder, and answer — " Those packets must belong to others. 
 We knew nothing of all that. "We recollect the wormwood and 
 the gall. We recollect the straight gate, the narrow way, and 
 the slough of desi3ond. We recollect the heavy burden that 
 pressed so hard upon us, and how it fell from our shoulders at 
 the sight of the cross. We recollect the time when the eyes of 
 our minds were opened, to behold the evil of sin, the depravity 
 of our hearts, and the excellency of our Redeemer. We recollect 
 the time when our stubborn wills were subdued in the day of 
 His power, so that we were enabled both to will and to do of 
 His good pleasure. We recollect the time when we obtained 
 hope in the merit of Christ, and felt the efficacy of his blood 
 applied to our hearts by the Holy Spirit. And we shall never 
 forget the time when we first experienced the love of God shed 
 abroad in our hearts. O, how sweetly and powerfully it con- 
 strained us to love Him, His cause, and His ordinances ! How 
 
358 Pulj^it Monographs : Gliristmas Evans. 
 
 we panted after communion and fellowship with Him, as the 
 hart panteth after the water-brooks ! All this, and a thousand 
 other things, are as fresh in our memory as ever. But we recol- 
 lect nothing of those bundles of good works. AVliere was it ? 
 Lord, when saw we thee hungry, and fed thee ; or thirsty, and 
 gave thee drink ; or a stranger, and took thee in ; or naked, and 
 clothed thee ? We have no more recollection than the dead, of 
 ever having visited thee in prison, or ministered to thee in sick- 
 ness. Surely, those bundles cannot belong to us." Mercy re- 
 plies — " Yes, verily, they belong to you ; for your names arc 
 upon them ; and besides, they have not been out of my hands 
 since you left them on the stormy banks of Jordan." And the 
 King answers — '' Verily, I say unto you. Inasmuch as ye have 
 done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done 
 it unto me." 
 
 If the righteous do not know their own good works, if they 
 do not recognize in the sheaves which they reap at the resurrec- 
 tion, the seed which they have sown with tears on earth, they 
 certainly cannot make these things the foundation of their hopes 
 of heaven. Christ crucified is their sole dependence for accept- 
 ance with God, in time and in eternity. Christ crucified is the 
 great object of their faith, and the centre of their aficctions ; 
 and while their love to him prompts them to live soberly, and 
 righteously, and godly, in this present evil world, they cordially 
 exclaim — " Not unto us, not unto us, but to thy name, O Lord, 
 give glory ! " 
 
 CHRIST THE CEDAR OP THE FOREST. 
 
 This cedar not only beautifies the forest, but also affords shade 
 and shelter for the fowls of the air. "We have the same idea in 
 the parable of the mustard-seed : — " the birds of the air came 
 and lodged in the branches thereof." This is the fulfilment of 
 the promise concerning the Shiloli : — " to him shall the gather- 
 ing of the people be." It is the drawing of sinners to Christ; 
 and the union of believers with God. 
 
 " All fowl of every wing." Sinners of every age and every 
 degree — sinners of all languages, colors and climes — sinners of 
 all principles, customs, and habits — sinners whose crimes are of 
 the blackest hue — sinners carrying about them the savor of the 
 
Tlie Hind of the Morning. 3^9 
 
 brimstone of hell — sinners deserving eternal damnation — sinners 
 perishing for lack of knowledge — sinners pierced by the arrows 
 of conviction — sinners ready to sink under the burdens of sin — 
 sinners overwhelmed with terror and despair — are seen flying to 
 Christ as a cloud, and as doves to their windows — moving to 
 the ark of mercy before the door is shut — seeking rest in the 
 shadow of this goodly cedar. 
 
 Mr. Evans was very fond of the use of the Old Testa- 
 ment Scriptures in their more spiritual relations. The fol- 
 lowing extract will not perhaps be acceptable to the tastes 
 of all readers, but it is an illustration of Mr. Evans's very 
 natural style : 
 
 THE HIND OF THE MOKNING ON THE MOUNTAINS. 
 
 It is generally admitted that the twenty-second psalm has par- 
 ticular reference to Christ. This is evident from his own ap- 
 propriation of the first verse upon the cross — " My God ! my 
 God I why hast thou forsaken mc ? " The title of the psahn is 
 — Aijeleth Shahar ; which signifies — A hart, or — the hind of the 
 morning. The striking metaphors which it contains are de- 
 scriptive of Messiah's peculiar sufferings. He is the hart or hind 
 of the morning, hunted by the black prince with his hell-hounds 
 — by Satan and all his allies. The " dogs," the " lions," the 
 " unicorns," and the " strong bulls of Bashan," with their de- 
 vouring, teeth, and their terrible horns, pursued Him from 
 Bethlehem to Calvary. They beset him in the manger, gnashed 
 upon Him in the garden, and well-nigh tore Him to pieces upon 
 the cross. And still they persecute Him in His <jause and in the 
 persons and interests of his people. 
 
 The faith of the church anticipated the coming of Christ, 
 " like a roe or a young heart," with the dawn of the day promised 
 in Eden ; and we hear her exclaiming in the Canticles — " The 
 voice of my beloved ! behold, he cometh, leaping upon the 
 mountains, and skipping upon the hills !" She heard him an- 
 nounce His advent in the promise — '* Lo, I come to do thy will, 
 O God ! " and with prophetic eye, saw him leaping from the 
 mountains of eternity to the mountains of time, and skipping 
 
360 Pulpit Monographs : Christmas Evans. 
 
 from hill to hill throughout the land of Palestine, going about 
 doing good. In the various types and shadows of the law, she 
 beheld Him *' standing by the wall, looking forth at the windows, 
 showing Himself through the lattice;" and then she sang — 
 " Until the daybreak, and the shadows flee away, turn my be- 
 loved, and be thou like the roe or the young hart upon the 
 mountains of Bether ! Bloody sacrifices revealed Him to her 
 view going down to the " vineyards of red wune ;'' whence she 
 traced Him to the meadows of Gospel ordinances, where " he 
 feedeth among the lilies " — to " the gardens of cucumbers," and 
 ** the beds of spices ;" and then she sang to Him again — " Make 
 haste " — or, flee away — " my beloved ! be thou like the roe or 
 the young hart upon the mountains of spices !" 
 
 Thus she longed to see Him, first "on the mountain of 
 Bether," and then on the " mountain of spices." On both moun- 
 tains she saw Him eighteen hundred years ago, and on both she 
 may still trace the footsteps of His majesty and His mercy. The 
 former He hath tracked with His own blood, and His path upon 
 the latter is redolent of frankincense and myrrh. 
 
 Bether signifies division. This is the craggy mountain of 
 calvary ; whither the " Hind of the morning " fled followed by 
 all the wild beasts of the forest, and the hunting-dogs of hell, 
 summoned to the pursuit, and urged on by the prince of perdi- 
 tion ; till the victim, in His agony, sweat great drops of blood 
 — ^where He was terribly crushed between the cliffs, and dread- 
 fully mangled by sharp and ragged rocks — where He was 
 seized by Death, the great greyhound of the bottomless pit — 
 whence He leaped the precipice without breaking a bone ; and 
 sank in the dead sea, sank to its utmost depth, and saw no cor- 
 ruption. 
 
 Behold the " Hind of the morning " on that dreadful moun- 
 tain ! It is the place of skulls, where death hold his carnival in 
 companionship with worms, and hell laughs in the face of 
 heaven. Dark storms are gathering there — convolving clouds, 
 charged with no common wrath. Terrors set tliemselves in bat- 
 tle array before the Son of God ; and tempests burst upon Him, 
 which might sweep all mankind in a moment to eternal ruin. 
 Hark ! hear ye not the subterranean thunder ? Feel ye not the 
 
TTie Hind of the Morning, ^61 
 
 trcmour of the mountain ? It is the shock of Satan's artillery, 
 playing upon the Captain of our salvation. It is the explosion 
 of the magazine of vengeance. Lo, the earth is quaking, the 
 rocks are rending, the graves are opening, the dead are rising, 
 and all nature stands aghast at the conflict of Divine mercy with 
 the powers of darkness. One dread convulsion more, one cry 
 of desperate agony, and Jesus dies — an arrow has entered into 
 His heart. IS'ow leap the lions, roaring upon their prey ; and 
 the bulls of Bashan are bellowing ; and the dogs of perdition 
 are barking ; and the unicorns toss their horns on high ; and the 
 devil, dancing with exultant joy, clanks his iron chains, and 
 thrusts up his fettered hands in defiance towards the face of 
 Jehovah ! 
 
 Go a little further upon the mountain, and you come to a new 
 tomb hewn out of the rock." There lies a dead body. It is the 
 body of Jesus. His disciples have laid it down in sorrow, and 
 returned weeping to the city. Mary's heart is broken, Peter's 
 zeal is quenched in tears, and John would fain lie down and die 
 in his Master's grave. The sepulchre is closed up and sealed, 
 and a Roman sentry placed at its entrance. On the morning of 
 the third day, while it is yet dark, two or three women come to 
 anoint the body. They are debating about the great stone at 
 the mouth of the cave, " Who shall roll it away ? " says one of 
 them. '' Pity we did not bring Peter or John with us." But ar- 
 riving, they find the stone already rolled away, and one sitting 
 upon it whose countenance is like lightning, and whose gar- 
 ments are white as the light. The steel-clad, iron-hearted sol- 
 diers lie around him like men slain in battle, having swooned 
 in terror. He speaks : — " Why seek ye the living among the 
 dead ! He is not here ; He is risen ; He is gone forth from this 
 cave victoriously." 
 
 It is even so ! for there are the shroud, and the napkin, and 
 the heavenly watchers ; and when He awoke and cast off His 
 grave-clothes, the earthquake was felt in the city and jarred the 
 gates of hell. *' The Hind of the morning " is up earlier than 
 any of his pursuers, " leaping upon the mountains, and skipping 
 upon the hills." He is seen first with Mary at the tpmb • thep. 
 with the disciples in Jerusalem ; then with two of them on tliQ 
 16 
 
 a"iViiEJ>ifij 
 
362 Ptolpit Monographs : Ch^stmas JEvans. 
 
 way to Emmaus ; then going before his brethren into Galilee ; 
 and finally leaping from the top of Olivet to the hills of Para- 
 dise ; fleeing away to " the mountain of sj)ices," where he shall 
 never more be hunted by the black prince and his hounds. 
 
 Christ is perfect master of gravitation, and all the laws of na- 
 ture are obedient to His will. Once He walked upon the water, 
 as if it were marble beneath His feet ; and now as He stands bless- 
 ing His people, the glorious form so recently nailed to the cross, 
 and still more recently cold in the grave, begins to ascend like 
 " the living creature " in Ezekiel's vision, *' lifted up from the 
 earth," till nearly out of sight ; when " the chariots of God, even 
 thousands of angels," receive Him, and haste to the celestial city, 
 waking the thrones of eternity with this jubilant chorus — " Lift 
 up your heads, O, ye gates ! and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting 
 doors ! and the King of Glory shall come in 1" 
 
 One of the most effective of IVIr. Evan's parables, even 
 in spite of the anachronism at the close, for so it must be 
 regarded was — 
 
 THE JOURNEY FOR THE YOUNG CHILD. 
 
 Herod sj^id to the wise men, " Go and search diligentlv for the 
 young child." The magi immediately commenced their inqui- 
 ries, according to the instructions they received. I see them ap- 
 proaching some village, and when they come to the gate they 
 inquire, " Do you know anything of the young child ? " The 
 gateman comes to the door ; and, supposing them to have asked 
 the amount of the toll, says, " O, three halfpence an ass is to 
 pay." "We do not ask what is to pay," reply they, *' but do 
 you know anything of the young child ? " " No ; I know noth- 
 ing in the world," answers he ; " but there is a blacksmith's shop 
 a little farther on ; inquire there, and you will be veiy likely to 
 obtain some intelligence concerning him." 
 
 The wise men proceed, and when they come to the black- 
 smith's shop, they ask, " Do you know anything of the young 
 child ? " A harsh voice answers, " There is no such thing pos- 
 sible for you, as having the asses shod now ; you shall in two 
 hours hence." " We do not aslc you to shoe the asses," say they ; 
 "but inquire for the young child, if you know anything ot 
 
Four Varieties of Preacliing. ^63 
 
 him ? " " Nothing in the world," says the blacksmith ; " but 
 inquire at the tavern that is on your road, and probably you may 
 hear something of him there." 
 
 On they go, and stand opposite the door of the tavern, and 
 cry, " Do you know anything of the young child ? " The land- 
 lord, thinking they call for porter, bids the servant attend, saying, 
 " Go, girl ; go with a quart of porter to the strangers." " We 
 do not ask for either porter or ale," say the wise men; "but 
 something about the young child that is born." " I know noth- 
 ing in the world of him," says the landlord ; but turn to the 
 shop on the left hand; the shopkeeper reads all the papers, and 
 you will be likely to hear something respecting him there." 
 
 They proceed accordingly towards the shop, and repeat their 
 inquiry, " Do you know anything of the young child, here ? " 
 The shopkeeper says to his apprentice, *i Reach half a quarter of 
 tobacco to the strangers." *' We do not ask for tobacco," say 
 the wise men; "but for some intelligence of the young child." 
 " I do not know anything of him," replies the shopkeeper ; " but 
 there is an old Rabbi living in the upper end of the village ; 
 call on him, and very probably he will give you all the informa- 
 tion you desire respecting the object of your search." 
 
 They immediately directed their course towards the house of 
 the Rabbi ; and having reached it, they knock at the door : and 
 being admitted into his presence, they ask him if he knows 
 anything of the young child. " Come in," says he ; and when 
 they have entered and are seated, the Rabbi refers to his books 
 and chronicles, and says he to the wise men, " There is some- 
 thing wonderful about to take place ; some remarkable person 
 has been or is to be born ; but the best thing is for you to go 
 down yonder street: there is living there, by the river side, the 
 son of an old priest ; you will be sure to know all of him." 
 
 Having bid the old Rabbi a respectful farewell, on tliey go : 
 and reaching the river side, they inquire of the bystanders for 
 the son of the old priest. Immediately he is pointed out to 
 them. There is a " raiment of cameVs hair about him, and a 
 leathern girdle about his loins." They ask him if he knows 
 anything of the young child. " Yes," says he, " there he is : 
 behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world ! 
 
364 P^il]yit Mo7iograplis : Ohristmas Evans. 
 
 There he is ; he will bruise the dragon's head, and bring in 
 everlasting righteousness to every one that believeth in his 
 name/' 
 
 He was wont thus to describe the — 
 
 FOUR VARIETIES OF PREACHD^G. 
 
 I perceive four strong men on their journey towards Lazarus's 
 grave, for the purpose of raising him to life. One of them, who 
 is eminent for his piety, says, '' I will descend into the grave, 
 and will take with me a bowl of the salt of duties, and will rub 
 him well with the sponge of natural ability," He enters the 
 grave, and commences his rubbing process. I watch his opera- 
 tions at a distance, and after a while inquire, "Well, are there 
 any symptoms of life there ? Does he arise, does he breathe, 
 my brother ? " " No such thing," replies he, "he is still quiet, 
 and I cannot salt him to will — and besides this, his smell is 
 rather heavy." 
 
 " Well," says the second, " come you out ; I was afraid that 
 your means would not answer the purpose ; let me enter the 
 grave." The second enters, carrying in his hand a whip of the 
 scorpions of threatening ; and, says he, " I will make him feel." 
 He directs his scorpion and fiery ministry at the dead corpse ; 
 but in vain, and I hear him crying out, " All is unsuccessful ; 
 dead he is after all." 
 
 Says the third, "Make room for me to enter, and I will see if 
 I cannot bring him to life." He enters the grave and takes with 
 him a musical pipe ; it is melodious as the song of love ; but 
 there is no dancing in the grave. 
 
 The fourth says, " Means of themselves can efi'ect nothing, but 
 I will go for Jesus, who is the resurrection and the life." Im- 
 mediately he leaves to seek for Christ, and speedily returns, ac- 
 companied by the Saviour. And when the Lord came He stands 
 in the door of the sepulchre, and cries out, " Lazarus, come 
 forth 1 " and the dead body is instantaneously instinct with life. 
 
 Let our confidence be in the voice of th6 Son of God. And 
 let us turn our faces towards the wind, and say, " O breath, 
 come from the four winds, and breathe upon these slain, that 
 they may live ! " 
 
The Abundant Entrance. 365 
 
 And the following must have been effective : 
 
 ENTERING THE PORT. 
 
 " For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly 
 into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
 Christ." 2 Pet. i. 11. This language seems to be borrowed 
 from the case of a ship bringing her j^assengers to port on a 
 pleasant afternoon, her sails all white and whole, and her flags 
 majestically waving in the breeze ; while the relatives of those 
 on board ascend the high places, to see their brothers and their 
 sisters returning home in safety from the stormy main. How 
 pleasant to a man who is about to emigrate to the new world, 
 America, when he meets with some one that has been there, and 
 who is well acquainted with the coast, knows the best landing- 
 place, and will accompany him on his passage. " Though I 
 walk through the valley and the shadow of death, I will fear no 
 evil : for thou art with me ; thy rod and thy staff they comfort 
 me." He who passed through death himself, and is Lord of the 
 sea, is our High-priest ; and, with his priestly vestments on, he 
 will stand in Jordan's current till the feeblest in all the tribes 
 shall be safely landed on Canaan's shore. How delightful must 
 be the feelings of the dying Christian, the testimony of whose 
 conscience unites with the witness of the Spirit, to assure him 
 that Jesus has paid his fare : and who knows he carries in his 
 hand the white stone with the new name, to be exhibited on the 
 pier-head, the other side, hard by his Father's house. This is 
 an abundant entrance, on a fair day, over a fine sea, with a pleas- 
 ant breeze swelling every sail. " Now lettest thou thy servant 
 depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." 
 
 O how different the entrance ministered to the careless pro- 
 fessor — the fruitless and idle — who keeps his hand in his bosom, 
 or leaning upon his implements ! Though he may reach the 
 shore with his life, it will be at midnight, surrounded by roaring 
 tempests, full of bitter remembrances and most tormenting fears. 
 Yet, with tattered sails and broken ropes, peradventure he may 
 gain the port ; " for the Lord is good, and His mercy endureth 
 for ever." But who shall describe the condition of the ungodly, 
 driven out to sea in all their wickedness ; not even allowed a 
 quarantine within sight of the heavenly Jerusalem, but obliged 
 
^66 Pulpit Monogi'aplis : Christmas Evans. 
 
 to drift about, dismantled and disabled, amid the darkness of 
 eternal storms ! Oh ! to be forced from their moorings at mid- 
 night, when they cannot see a handbreath before them ; the 
 thunders rolling; the lightnings flashing; strange voices of 
 wrath mingling with every blast ; and the great bell of eternity 
 tolling a funeral knell for the lost soul, through all its dismal, 
 and solitary, and everlasting voyage ! Let us flee for refuge, to 
 lay hold on the hope set before us, which hoj)e is as an anchor 
 of the soul, sure and steadfast, grasping the Rock of Ages with- 
 in the vail ! 
 
 THE BEAM. 
 
 Then I saw the beam of a great scale ; one end descending to 
 the abyss, borne down by the power of the atonement ; the other 
 ascending to the heaven of heavens, and lifting up the prisoners 
 of the tomb. Wonderful scheme ! Christ condemned for our 
 justification ; forsaken of His Father, that we might enjoy His 
 fellowship ; passing under the curse of the law, to bear it away 
 from the believer for ever ! This is the great scale of redemp- 
 tion. As one end of the beam falls under the load of our sins, 
 which were laid on Christ ; the other rises, bearing the basket 
 of mercy, full of pardons, and blessings, and hopes. " He who 
 knew no sin was made sin for us " — that is His end of the beam ; 
 " that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him " — 
 this is ours. " Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became 
 poor " — there goes his end down ; " that we, through his pov- 
 erty, might be rich " — here comes ours up. 
 
 From these extracts it will be seen that Christmas Evans 
 excelled in the use of parable in the pulpit. Sometimes he 
 "VNTOught this mine like a very Bunyan, and we believe no 
 pubhshed accounts of these sermons in Welsh, and certain- 
 ly none that we have found translated into EngHsh, give any 
 idea of his power. With what amazing effect some of his 
 sermons would teU on the vast audiences which in these 
 days gather together in London, and in our great towns ! 
 This method of instruction is now usually regarded as in 
 bad taste ; it does not seem to be sanctioned by the great 
 
His PreacJiing. 367 
 
 rules and masters of oratorical art. If a man could create 
 a Pilgrim's Progress and recite it, it would be found to be a 
 very doubtful article by the rhetorical sanhediim. Yet our 
 Lord used this very method, and without using some such 
 method — anecdote or illustration — it is doubtful whether 
 any strong hold can be had of the lower orders of mind. 
 Our preacher entered into the spirit of Scripture ^Darable 
 and narrative. One of the most famous of his discourses 
 is that on the Demoniac of Gadara ; some of our readers 
 will be shocked to know that in the course of some of his 
 descriptions in it he convulsed his audience with laughter 
 in the commencement. Well, he need not be imitated 
 there ; but he held it sufficiently subdued before the close, 
 and an alternation of tears and raptures not only testified to 
 his powers but to his skill in givmg a reading of the nar- 
 rative. For the purpose of producing effect, — and we mean 
 by effect, visible results in crushed and humble hearts, and 
 transformed lives, — it would be a curious thing to try in 
 England the preaching of some of the great "Welshman's 
 sermons. What would be the effect upon any audience of 
 that great picture of the Churchyard- World, and the mighty 
 controvery between Justice and Mercy ? Let it be admitted 
 that there are some things in it, perhaps many, that it 
 would not demand a severe taste to expel from the j)icture, 
 but take it as the broad, bold painting of a man not highly 
 educated, — indeed, highly educated men, as we have said, 
 could not perform such things, a highly educated man could 
 never have written the Pilgrim's Progress — ^let it be remem- 
 bered that it was delivered to men, perhaps we should say 
 rather educated than instructed ; men iUiterate in aU things 
 except the Bible. We ourselves have in som.e very large 
 congregations tried the preaching of one of the most famous 
 of Evan's sermons, " The Spirit walking in dry places, seek- 
 ing rest and finding none " — we find it in Mr. Cross's vol- 
 ume ; but our version of it was received fi'om the lips of 
 
^68 Piil;pit Monograms : Christmas Evans. 
 
 those who listened to it among the mountains of Wales. 
 The version in the volame referred to seems to be but a 
 poor caricature of the reality. Christmas Evan's preach- 
 ing was by no means defective in the bone and muscle of 
 thought and pulpit arrangement ; but no doubt herein lay 
 his great forte and power, — he could paint soul-subduing 
 pictures. They were not pieces of mere word-painting, 
 they were bathed in emotion, they were penetrated by deep 
 knowledge of the human heart. He went into the pulpit 
 mighty, from lonely wrestlings with God in mountain trav- 
 ellings ; he went among his fellow men, his audiences, 
 strong in his faith in the reaHty of those covenants wdth 
 God, whose history and character we have already present- 
 ed to our readers. There was much in his preaching of that 
 order which is so mighty in speech, but which loses so much, 
 or which seems to acquire such additional coarseness, when 
 it is presented to the eye. Preachers now live too much 
 in the presence of published sermons, to be in the high- 
 est degree effective. He who thinks of the printing press 
 cannot abandon himseK. He who uses his notes slavishly 
 cannot abandon himself ; and without abandonment, that 
 is fOrgetfulness, what is oratory ? what is action ? what is 
 passion? If we were asked what are the two greatest 
 human aids to pulpit power, we should say Self-Possession 
 and Self-Abandonment ; and the two are perfectly compat- 
 ible ; and in the pulpit the one is never powerful without 
 the other. Knowledge, BeHef, Preparation, these give self- 
 possession ; and Earnestness and Unconsciousness, these 
 give self-abandonment. The first without the last may make 
 a preacher hke a stony pillar, covered with runes and hie- 
 roglyphics ; and the last without the first may make a mere 
 fanatic, with a torrent of speech, plunged lawlessly and 
 disgracefully abroad. The two in combination in a noble 
 man and teacher become sublime. Perhaps they reached 
 their highest realization among us in Robertson of Brighton. 
 
His Preaching. 369 
 
 In another, and in a different department, not inferior 
 order, of mind, tliey were nobly realized in the subject of 
 this sketch. 
 
 It must have been, one thinks, a grand thing to have 
 heard Christmas Evans ; the extracts from his journal — the 
 story they teU of his devout and rapt communions of soul 
 with God among the mountains, the bare and solitary hills 
 — ^reveal sufficiently how in himself the preacher was made. 
 When he came into the pulpit his soul kindled and inflamed 
 by the hve coals from the altar. Some men of his own 
 country imitated him, of course — imitations are always lu- 
 dicrous, some of these were especially so. There was, says 
 one of his biographers, the shrug, the shake of the head, 
 the hurried undertoned exclamation " Bendigedig," etc. etc., 
 always reminding us, by verifying it, of Dr. Parr's descrip- 
 tion of the iniitators of Johnson, " They had the nodosities 
 of the oak without its vigor, and the contortions of the sibyl 
 without her inspiration." It was not so with him, he had 
 rare, highly spiritual, and gifted sympathies, but even in 
 his very colloquies in the pulpit there was a wing and sweep 
 of ample majesty. He preached often amidst scenes of 
 wildness and beauty, in romantic dells, or on mountain 
 sides and slopes amidst the summer hush of crags and 
 brooks, all ministering, it may be thought, to the impres- 
 sion of the whole scene, or it was in rude and unadorned 
 mountain chapels altogether alien from the aesthetics so 
 charming to modern religious sensibihties, but he never 
 lowered his tone, liis language was always intelligible, but 
 both it and the imagery he employed, even when some cir- 
 cumstances gave to it a homely light and play, always 
 ascended ; he knew the workings of the heart and knew . 
 how to lay his finger impressively upon all its movements, 
 and every kind of sympathy attested his power. It is a 
 great thing to bear men's spirits along through the subHme 
 reaches and avenues of thought and emotion, and majesty 
 
370 Pulpit Monographs : Christmas Evans. 
 
 and sublimity seem to have been the common moods of his 
 mind ; never was his speech or his puljDit hke a Gilboa on 
 which there was no dew^ He gave it as his advice to a 
 young preacher, "Never raise the voice while the heart is 
 dry, let the heart and affections shout first, let it commence 
 within." A man who could say "hundreds of prayers bub- 
 ble from the fountain of my mind," what sort of preacher 
 was he likely to make ? he " mused and the fire burned," 
 like the smith who blows upon the furnace until the iron is 
 red hot, and then strikes on the anvil till the Sjoarks fly aU 
 around him, so he preached. His words and thoughts be- 
 came radiant with fire and metaphor, they flew forth rich, 
 bright, glowing, like some rich metal in ethereal flame ; as 
 we have said, it was the nature and habit of his mind to 
 embody and impersonate, attributes and quahties took the 
 shape and form of persons, he seemed to* enter mystic 
 abodes and not to talk of things as a metaphysician or a 
 theologian, but as a spectator or actor. The magnificencies 
 of nature crowded round him, bowing in homage as he se- 
 lected from them to adorn or illustrate his theme ; aU 
 things beautiful and splendid, all things fi-esh and young, 
 all things old and venerable ; reading his discourses, for in- 
 stance the Hind of the Morning^ we are astounded at the 
 prodigality and the unity of the imagination, the coherency 
 with which the fancies range themselves as gems round 
 some central truth, drinking and reflecting its corusca- 
 tions. Astounded were the people who heard ; it was min- 
 strelsy even more than oratory, the truths were old and 
 common, there was no fine discrimination, and subtle touch 
 of expression, as in Williams, and there was no personal 
 « majesty and dignity or sonorous swell of the pomp of 
 words, as in John Ehas, but it was more, it was the wing 
 of prophecy and poetry, it was the rapture of the seer or 
 the bard, he called up image after image, grouped them, 
 made them speak and testify ; laden by grand and over- 
 
Another Covenant with God. 
 
 371 
 
 whelming feelings, lie bore the people v/ith him through 
 the valley of the shadow of death, or across the delectable 
 moimtains ; there is a spell in thought, there is a spell in 
 felicitous language, but when to these are added the vision 
 which calls up sleei3ing terror, the imagination which makes 
 living nature yet more ahve, and brings the solemn or the 
 dreadful people of the Book of God, to our home and life 
 of to-day, how terribly majestic the preacher becomes. 
 
 Late in life Mr. Evans found himself much troubled, and, 
 in consequence of some affahs in connection with his chapel, 
 even in danger of legal prosecution ; but his case in this 
 matter he very simply carried to the Lord in words of great 
 simphcity and faith, which, however, we cannot quote. And 
 he made another covenant with God in some other circum- 
 stances of sadness. On his return from the village of Tong- 
 wynlais, in the vale of the Taff, coming over the mountain 
 late in the evening, he says : 
 
 " On the Caerphilly Mountain, the spirit of prayer fell upon 
 me as it had once (when about to leave) in Anglesea. I wept 
 and supplicated, and gave myself to Christ. I wept long, and 
 besought Jesus Christ, and my heart poured forth the following 
 requests before Him on the mountain. I had the experience of 
 great nearness to Him, as though he had been by my side, and 
 my mind was filled with great confidence that He heard me, for 
 the sake of all the merits that are in His name." 
 
 This is the covenant on the Caerphilly Mountain ; it was like 
 Moriah to Abraham : 
 
 1. " Give me the favor of being led according to thy will, by 
 the intimations of thy providence and word, and the inclination 
 of my mind by the Spirit, for the sake of thine infinitely pre- 
 cious blood. Amen. C. E. 
 
 2. "Grant that, if I am to leave Caerphilly, the gale of reli- 
 gious revival vouchsafed to me there, may follow me to Cardiff^, 
 for thy great name's sake. Amen. C. E. 
 
 3. " Bless bitter things to brighten (burnish) me, and to re- 
 
372 Pulpit Monographs : Christmas Evans. 
 
 vive me more and more ; not to depress and deaden me. Amen. 
 C. E. 
 
 4. " Permit me not to be trampled under foot by proud men, 
 for tliy goodness' sake. Amen. C. E. 
 
 5. " Grant unto me tlie incalculable favor of being, in thy 
 hand, the means of calling sinners unto thee, and of edifying 
 saints, whithersoever thou sendest me, for thy name's sake. 
 Amen. C. E. 
 
 6. " If I am to stay at Caerphilly, give me a token as thou 
 didst to Gideon of old, by removing the things that discourage 
 me, and that hinder the continuance of prosi>erity there. Amen. 
 C. E. 
 
 7. " May it please the Son of Glory and Head of the Church 
 to preserve the ark of thy cause, which is thy own, in Anglesea 
 and at Caerphilly, from falling into the hands of the Philistines ; 
 reject it not, but speedily deliver it, and cause thy face to shine 
 upon it ; and by thy Spirit, and word, and providence, bring 
 about in those neighborhoods and churches, such changes in the 
 officers (of the churches), and such measures as will go to rem- 
 edy the sources of evil to the great cause which thou diedst to 
 establish in our world ; and by dispersing thoee who delight in 
 war ; and by closing the mouths of those that subvert. Amen. 
 C. E. 
 
 8. " May it please thee to give me tokens of the way before I 
 go to Liverpool, and thence to Anglesea, if it be thy will that I 
 should go thither this year. Amen. C. E. 
 
 9. " Grant me protection under the shade of the fellow-feeling 
 which thou dost cherish towards those that are tempted, and 
 the boundless power thou possessest for that pui-pose. Amen. 
 C. E. 
 
 10. " Accept my thanksgiving a hundred millions of times, 
 for that thou hast not hitherto thrown me out of thy hand, as a 
 dark star, or a vessel in which thou hadst no delight ; and per- 
 mit not my life to survive my usefulness. Amen. C. E. — I 
 thank thee for not abandoning me as a prey to any foe. Blessed 
 be thy name. 
 
 11. " For the sake of thine infinite merits, subject not thy ser- 
 vant under the tramplings of pride and injustice, riches, and 
 
Tlie Last Sermon. 273 
 
 (worldly) greatness ; or tlie selfish oppression of any man ; but 
 conceal me in the secret place of thy countenance from the strife 
 of tongues. Amen. C. E. 
 
 12. "Help me to wait patiently for the fulfilment of these 
 things, that I may not lose self-possession, yield to anger, and 
 speak unadvisedly with my lips, as Moses. Preserve my heart 
 from sinking, that I may look for new strength from Zion. 
 Amen. C. E. 
 
 13. "Assist me to look unto thee for the necessaries of life; 
 let thy goodness and mercy follow me all the days of my life. 
 And as it hath pleased thee to put great honor upon me, in the 
 great success with which my ministry was blessed at Caerphilly, 
 after the pelting of the storm upon me in Anglesea, grant that 
 this honor may continue to follow me to the end of my days, 
 even as thou didst to thy servant Job. 
 
 14. " Let this covenant continue as a covenant of salt, until I 
 come unto thee to eternity. I beseech thy help to resign myself 
 entirely unto thee and thy will. I beseech thee to take my heart, 
 and write upon it a reverence to thee with thine own hand, 
 whose inscription neither time nor eternity can obliterate. Oh, 
 that the remainder of my sermons may be taken by thyself out of 
 my lips ! and those that I am engaged in writing (out), may 
 they bring glory to thee, and not to me. To thee I dedicate 
 them. If anjrthing be to thy glory, and the service of thy king- 
 dom, take charge of it and make it known to men, otherwise 
 let it perish even as the " drop of a bucket " in the heat of 
 Africa. O grant that a drop of that water, which thou alone 
 canst impart, and " which springeth up into everlasting life," 
 may run through all my sermons. In this my last covenant with 
 thee upon earth, I put myself, my wife and the churches to 
 which I have been administering. I commit all to the protec- 
 tion of thy grace. 
 
 15. " Let this covenant continue when I am ill, as well as when 
 I am in health, and in all (possible) circumstances ; for thou hast 
 conquered the world ; and fulfilled the law^ ; hast brought in the 
 justifying righteousness ; hast swallowed up death in victory ; 
 and hast now in thy hands all authority in heaven and on the 
 earth. For the sake of thy most precious blood, and perfect 
 
274 Pid'pit Monograj^lm : CTiristmas JEvans. 
 
 rigliteousness, register this covenant in tlie court of tlie remem- 
 brance of thy pardoning mercy ; put to it thy name in which I 
 belieye, and I put my unworthy name to it to-day, with my 
 mortal hand. Amen. Christmas Evams." 
 
 " April, 1829. 
 
 "We musl} draw our sketcli to a close. Mr Evans almost 
 died in the pulpit, coming down the pulpit stairs in Swansea, 
 on Monday, July 14th, 1838 ; he said in English loud 
 enough to be heard by some present, " This is my last ser- 
 mon" and it was so. He died in the triuinphant manner 
 which some are so glad to regard as the highest evidence 
 of the divine life in the soul. " Preach Christ to the people, 
 brethren," he said to the ministers standing round his bed ; 
 " look at me in myseK, I am nothing but ruin, but look at 
 me in Chiist, I am heaven and salvation." He added in a 
 joyous strain four lines of a Welsh hymn, then waving his • 
 hand, he said in English, '^ Good-by, drive on !" Was it 
 another instance of the labor of life pervading by its master- 
 idea the hour of death ? For upwards of twenty years the 
 one-eyed man " of Anglesea " (" an eye, sir," said Eobert 
 Hall of that one eye, " that might Hght an army through a 
 wilderness ") — ^for upwards of twenty years, as he had gone 
 to and fro, his friends had given him a gig that he might go 
 at his ease in his own way, with a horse which became very 
 old in his master's service called Jack. He knew from a 
 distance the very tones of his voice ; with him Christmas 
 Evans in long solitary journeys held many a long conversa- 
 tion ; the horse opened his ears the moment his master be- 
 gan to speak, made a kind of neighing reply ; then the 
 rider said, as he often did, " Jack bach, we have only to 
 cross one low mountain again, and there will be capital 
 oats, excellent water, and a warm stable." Thus, while he 
 was dying, old mountain days came over his memory. 
 "Good-bye," said he, "drive on!" — they were his last 
 words, he sank into a calm sleep and woke no more. 
 
IX. 
 
 On the Formation of Style for 
 Pulpit Composition. 
 
 HAVE hitherto kept your attention with re- 
 marks upon the pulpit in general, and its vari- 
 ous forms, with some illustrations of its power — 
 ^ all tending to show that the pulpit has been a 
 force in most ages. I would now remark upon the style 
 best adapted for usefulness in the pulpit. If it is a power ; 
 how shall we use the power ? 
 
 And first, we must remember that the efficacy of aU 
 education and hint must depend on the man within, 
 
 I have already said something on words ; no doubt a 
 soul on fire is likely to command the words as most likely 
 to be the fuel to its intensity. But, first of all, accus- 
 tom your mind to the mental association of words most 
 suited to express your meaning, furnish your memoiy with 
 words — forcible words, sonorous words, and magnetic 
 words — words which shall be a key to the mind and to the 
 heart, to throw open the flood gates and let the tides roll in 
 on the thought-gates, and to obtain entrance for ideas. 
 Accustom yourselves to the study of words, take them to 
 pieces and hold them up to the light. The preacher must 
 do more than use words ; as a painter he must do far more 
 
376 On the Formation of Style^ etc. 
 
 than paint. I have already said he deals with words ; 
 painting may be the language fitting to employ when we 
 only seek to convey images — conceptions ; but this would 
 very feebly represent the work of the minister ; it is to 
 touch souls — it is to awaken souls, that they may be con- 
 soled, that they may be enhghtened ; and oratory is the 
 power of words. If you believe in the power of words, 
 " they are the great and wide sea in which are things in- 
 numerable, both small and great beasfcs, on which also go 
 the ships " — great ideas, but especially gran-d emotions — 
 which enter and bear their freightage into human souls. I 
 have always beheved in the might of words ; by them, in 
 all ages, God has effected His most wonderful things ; 
 through them prophets and apostles, through them poets 
 and seers, have sjpoken, and through them God speaks now. 
 They have wonderful power ; through them the thunders of 
 judgment have rolled ; through them conviction has darted 
 its hghtnings ; through them the genial rays of consola- 
 tion have fallen. The minister is a man who holds up a 
 form of sound words as a glass in which the multitude 
 may see ; who uses cunning, studied, and interpretating 
 words that the people may feel. He holds and chains his 
 passing emotions, and binds them in chains of speech to 
 effect power over souls. For this I am a minister ; for 
 this you are to be ministers. We must have a sovereign 
 behef in our work, and in the power of using words, so 
 that they become reahties. If it is not this, what is the 
 ministry? "Of the man," says Dr. Guthrie, "who has 
 adopted the Church as a profession, as other men adopt 
 the law, the army, or the navy, and goes through the 
 routine of its duties with the coldness of a mere official ; 
 filled by him, the pulpit seems filled with the ghastly form 
 of a skeleton, that in its cold and bony fingers holds a burn- 
 ing lamp." 
 
 And here let me condemn a maxim which underlies the 
 
Look High that you may Aim High, yj^ 
 
 whole Pagan pliilosopliy, ancient and modem — '^Nil ad- 
 miran " — " Admire nothing ! " Here is the spirit of the 
 sneerer, as Horace says again — " Gum risu miror " — " I 
 never admire, but I sneer." Wonder at nothing ! Never 
 be excited to tones or thoughts of rapture, or of reverence; 
 it is worthy of a Pagan that sentiment. He who never ad- 
 mires, can never adore. That expression is like that of a 
 stern distracted worldling, to whom life and time brought 
 no relief, and no rest. I should say exactly the reverse. 
 I should say keep the pores of your spirit perpetually open 
 to receive the health, the strength, and the excitement of 
 aU things ; they are all shadows cast b}^ invisible presences. 
 Therefore, go forth; and as you receive and retain, rise 
 rather to the divine heights of that amazement which com- 
 pelled bards and philosophers to kindle with amazement, 
 as they were able to say — " Great and marvellous are thy 
 works. Lord God Almighty." 
 
 First then, look above, have high models of mediocrity. 
 " Neither men, nor gods, nor columns have allowed indiffer- 
 ent poets to exist." Surely, this must especially be said of 
 the preacher. Is not this in the spirit of Him who cast 
 himself into His work, exclaiming " One thing I do " ? It 
 is assuredly true that in the great divine work of preaching, 
 not less than in any more human work, art must combine 
 with nature. "It has been," says Horace, "a question 
 whether the noble work was produced by nature, or by 
 art." And he says, " I neither see what study without a 
 rich natural voice, nor what an uncultivated genius can 
 avail ; so much does one thing require the aid of the other, 
 and so mutually do they conspire together." You know 
 when a brisk student said to Mr. Opie, the painter, " May 
 I ask you what you mix your colors with ? " " With brains, 
 sir," was the gruff reply of the painter ; and we are to ex- 
 pect that the soul, without enthusiasm, will, in the sacred 
 walk of the ministry, as in all else, be but a sorry and a 
 
378 On the Formation of Style^ etc. 
 
 poor thing. I must not be indifferent. Here is the foun- 
 dation of success — the spring and fount of all enthusiasm." 
 
 There was a character Horace ridiculed almost in the 
 same sentence — in the well-known paragraph — " Qui nescU, 
 versics tamen audetji7igere" — "He knows nothing, and yet 
 he dares to make verses." How much more may it excite 
 one's contempt when he who knows nothing dai'es to 
 preach. He who knows not the use of arms, does not 
 enter the field. He who does not know chess never chal- 
 lenges the players^ the unskilful does not offer himself for 
 a combat or a game, lest he raise a laugh; yet many offer 
 themselves to the pulpit who know nothing- — ignorant of 
 everything, they yet dare to preach. As the bishop, al- 
 ready quoted, said to the young ecclesiastic who sought 
 ordination, " I do not forbid you to preach, but Nature 
 does." 
 
 We will conceive the young man then settled.* Yes, he 
 has now to begin to preach indeed; he has delivered the 
 two or three successful discourses, and he looks with a 
 somewhat awe-stricken eye at the diminishing number of 
 notes of old discourses. He has to begin to preach in 
 earnest; the pulse of excitement is subdued; his people 
 are now preparing to hsten more quietly, some critically, 
 many hungrily, some requiring the strong hand that in 
 ministering to thought shall brush away their doubts, and 
 many yearning for the bread of life, longing for refresh- 
 ment, and for food. It is a state demanding all our sym- 
 pathy. How will our young fi'iend fulfil their demands ? 
 Farmers wHl tell you there are three methods of sowing: 
 there is the drilling, dibbling, and hroadcast ; so there are 
 three kinds of preaching; there is drilling, that is the siu^e 
 method, that is the finished, and even the ornate style, 
 
 * Not an uninstructive book for a young minister is the Manse 
 of MasUand, it has received the wai-m commendation of Dr. Thirl- 
 wall. Bishop of St. David's. 
 
Watts^s Pulpit Portraits of Tyro^ etc. 379 
 
 which regulates the quantity of seed sown, and sows 
 equally over the whole field; there is dibbling, in this you 
 get very close to your soil, and if your soil is heavy, it is 
 advisedly apphed to their wants; but, then, there is the 
 broadcast, it is quick, it is not so dependent on the 
 weather, it does not want either a very pui^e or clear 
 land. 
 
 Dr. Watts sketches the hkeness of Tyro, who flourishes 
 his introduction, after announcing his text, tells you how 
 many senses the chief word in the text has, first among the 
 Greek heathen writers, and then in the New Testament, 
 citing chapters and texts exactly, and making you under- 
 stand them all before he says a word about his own; he 
 consults all the critics, and goes through grammatical exer- 
 cises; he spends so much time in this exercise, that he has 
 to finish his work, and to do nothing; like. a general who 
 draws his lines of circumvallation in such form, and so 
 nicely, according to the rules of art, that the season was 
 spent, and he is obhged to retke without any execution 
 done on the town.* 
 
 Polyramus, is another kind of preacher, one of those 
 who mince their subject too small; he is, no doubt, one of 
 a race of men almost gone; their firstlies, and secondlies, 
 and thirdlies, trod on one another's heels. Such sermons 
 are like a hedge of thorns — all stick, no bud, no leaf, no 
 foHage; you can scarcely call it a branching sermon, there 
 is not vitality enough to branch. Divisions, by all means; 
 it is almost a moral duty for a minister to have divisions, 
 but divisions making the order of the subject in the 
 preacher's mind, not exhibitiag its dryness and its confu- 
 sion. 
 
 There is another style into which many fall, which is 
 
 * See the admirable chapters on " Instruction by Preaching/' in 
 that forgotten and neglected but invaluable book, TUe Impromment 
 of the Mind. 
 
380 On the Formation of Style ^ etc, 
 
 even a very popular, and by many regarded as quite a 
 desirable style. It is that of the Harangue — the long 
 declamation. Fluvio was said, by Dr. Watts, to preach 
 thus: His language flows smoothly in a long connection of 
 periods, and glides over the ear like a rivulet of oil over 
 pohshed marble, leaving no trace behind it. The hearer 
 has a faint idea of the sweetness of what it has heard; but 
 he has quite forgotten the sense. A gentle flovring stream 
 of words will not caU up souls from their dangerous and 
 fatal lethargy, as if a purling stream could arouse a sleep- 
 ing conscience. 
 
 These are considerations which will compel you to 
 inquire what style should be adopted, to seize, to inform, 
 and to impress the mind; the loose harangue must espe- 
 cially injure the pulpit. There is a method which carries 
 darkness with it rather than light, which is more an opiate 
 than food. It is well said that you must break the bread 
 of life into pieces to feed children. Very wisely Dr. Watts 
 says: — 
 
 Ask old Wheatfield the rich farmer, ask Plowdown your 
 neighbour, or any of his family, who have sat all their lives 
 under your ministry, what they know of the common truths of 
 religion, or of the special articles of Christianity ? Desire them 
 to tell you what the Gospel is, or what is salvation ; what are 
 their duties towards God, or what they mean by religion; who 
 is Jesus Christ, or what is the meaning of His atonement or 
 redemption by His blood. Perhaps you will tell me yourself, 
 that you have very seldom entertained them with these subjects. 
 Well, inquire of them then, what is heaven ; which is the way 
 to obtain it ; or what hope they have of dwelling there. In treat 
 them to tell you wherein they have profited as to holiness of 
 heart and life, or fitness for death. They will soon make it ap- 
 pear, by their awkward answers, that they understood very Httle 
 of all your fine discourses, and those of your predecessor ; and 
 have made but wretched improvement of forty years' attendance 
 at church. They have now and then been pleased perhaps with 
 
Di\ M^All and the Primitive Methodist. 381 
 
 the music of your voice, as with the sound of a sweet instrument, 
 and they mistook that for devotion ; but their heads are dark 
 still, and their hearts earthly ; they are mere heathens with a 
 Christian name, and know little more of God than their yokes 
 of oxen. In short, Polyramus's auditors have some confusion 
 in their knowledge ; but Fluvio's hearers have scarce any knowl- 
 edge at all. 
 
 It is of this pompous verbosity that Archbishop Whately 
 remarks of some whom he has known, and of whom he 
 has heard it said they had a fine command of language, 
 that "it might, with more correctness, be said, language 
 had command of them, they only have the same command 
 of language that a man has of a horse that runs away with 
 him." 
 
 There is the oil-upon-marble style of preaching, and that 
 which may be called the sling-and-the-stone style. Hence 
 comes all the misplaced feeling often seen. " But what is 
 he crying for ?" asked an intelligent hearer, once, of one of 
 these preachers. "And you'd cry, too, if you were up there 
 before all those people and nothing to say." A fastidious 
 precision often emasculates sentences the most vigorous and 
 searching as they fall from the tongue. Dr. M'All frequently 
 heard, and always delighted to hear, so we have been told, 
 a weU-known Primitive-Methodist preacher. The Primitive- 
 Methodist, was to be sure, not only a mighty Boanerges, but 
 one of the most accomphshed masters of the Enghsh Ian 
 
 guage on its Saxon side. " Mr. ^," said the Doctor, in 
 
 one of his frequent gracious fits of amiable and beautiful hu- 
 mihty, " I wish I could preach like you, sir ; but I can't ; God 
 does not honor my preaching ; somehow, I preach, and 
 preach, and the people admire, sir ; they are all very good, 
 and patient, and affected, and attentive ; but I don't hear 
 of souls saved ; don't hear of souls converted, sir ; it is 
 hard, but God does not honor my ministry. Now you have 
 your crowns of rejoicings everywhere. God honors you. 
 
382 On the Formation of Style ^ etc. 
 
 sir, I wish I could preach Hke you." " I'll tell you what 
 it is, Doctor," said the Primitive, " you see it is just like 
 this, you and I are determined to hit somebody, so we 
 must get our stones ; you look about, and you find the 
 most carefully-smoothed and most perfectly polished stone, 
 even then, perhaps, not smooth enough, and, being a very- 
 considerable lapidary youi'self, you polish it and polish it, 
 and put a most exquisite and beautiful finish upon ifc ; well, 
 you see, when you throw your stone, at most, it will only 
 hit one person, and the probability is, that it may fly off 
 and hit nobody, from the very fineness of the poHshing. 
 Now I have no eye for that kind of thing, and I can do 
 nothing of that sort ; I can only go down to the seaside 
 and catch up a good handful of stones, and throw them, 
 with what force I can, right amongst the crowd, quite 
 sure, that by God's help, every stone has its mark and hits 
 somebody." The Primitive-Methodist very aptly discrimi- 
 nated two extreme styles of pulpit speech ; but we should 
 place many and valuable styles between the two. There is 
 nothing rushing, reckless, or careless — ^nothing wild, im- 
 passioned or overflo^ving — on the contrary there is nothing 
 of the force of the rapid rolling torrent of smooth and 
 finished elegant eloquence. "We have invented a term and 
 spoken of it as the sling-and-stone-style : "Moreover, the 
 preacher sought out acceptable words." The stone is 
 selected, and carefully and thoughtfully fitted to the sling. 
 "That stone," says the shnger, "is intended for that body," 
 and the stone hits. The elder John Clayton used to say, 
 illustrating the necessity of personal appeal to the con- 
 science, " A letter put into the post office without a direc- 
 tion is sure to reach nobody." 
 
 The following, from Mr. Maclaren's sermons, are some of 
 these sharper words and sentences — very admirable — ^but 
 they are i)recious stones which might be still more sharply 
 cut: 
 
Disorimmation of Diction and Style. 383 
 
 THE MODERN PHABISEE. 
 
 There is no more contemptible and impotent thing on the face 
 of the earth than morality divorced from love, and religious 
 thoughts divorced from a heart full of the love of God. Quick 
 corruption or long decay, and in either case death and putrefac- 
 tion are the end of it ! You and I need that lesson, my friends ; 
 it is of no use for us to condemn Pharisees that have been dead 
 and in their graves for eighteen hundred years ; the same thing 
 besets us all; we all of us try to get away from the centre, and 
 dwell contentedly on the surface. We are satisfied to take the 
 flowers and stick them into our little gardens, without the roots 
 to them ; when of course they all die out ! 
 
 THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 Do not think that it cannot be genuine because it is change- 
 ful. There is a sun in the heavens, but there are heavenly lights 
 too that wax and wane ; they are lights, they are in the heavens, 
 though they change. You have no reason. Christian man, to be 
 discouraged, cast down, still less despondent, because you find 
 that the witness of the Spirit changes and varies in your heart. 
 Do not despond because it does. Watch it and guard it lest it 
 do. Live in the contemplation of the Person and the fact that 
 calls it forth, that it may not. You never will " brighten your evi- 
 dences " by polishing at them. To polish the mirror ever so as- 
 siduously does not secure the image of the sun on its surface. 
 The only way to do that is to carry the j)oor bit of glass out 
 into the sunshine. It will shine then, never fear. It is weary 
 work to labor at self-improvement with the hope of drawing 
 from our own characters evidences that we are the sons of God. 
 To have-the heart filled with the light of Christ's love to us is 
 the only way to have the whole being full of light. 
 
 And this may remind us that a distinction has been drawn 
 between Diction and Style ; diction respects the grammatical 
 qualities of the discourse ; style is the soul, that which marks 
 and distinguishes the genius and the talent of the preacher ; 
 and here the first thing universally connnendcdis clearness, 
 
384 ^^ ^^^ Formation of Style ^ etc. 
 
 perspicuity. Quintilian has said, " Care is to be taken, not 
 that the hearer may understand it if he will, but that he 
 must understand whether he will or no." " I had rather," 
 says Dr. Edwards, "be fully understood by ten, than ad- 
 mired by ten thousand." Without a doubt, clearness and 
 precision are not altogether an affair of grammar and dic- 
 tion, a clear mind will express itself clearly, the faith within, 
 the wish without will shine through the words and make 
 them a living spirit I believe there is no other so sure a 
 cause of a most dark diction, or a pointless, powerless style, 
 as the having nothing to say upon a subject, and no sub- 
 ject to say anything upon ; and yet being obHged to begin, 
 and go on, and talk for an hour — hunting after a text ; 
 when found, seeing it, not bright and clear, but like the 
 hull of a vessel faintly discerned through a fog. What can 
 be expected from this, when a poor unfortunate minister 
 can only say, " Oh me, oh me, what is it — where is it T when 
 he puffs and puffs, and tries, in his way, to inflate a text, 
 and makes a figure of himseK ; all this, instead of the real 
 feeling that the text has got him, and gives wings and res- 
 piration to him, and is really handling him in a very divine 
 manner. In the first instance, you will have a graceless 
 and misty fog-bank of a performance, and in the last the 
 chain of the delectable mountams, sharp and clear against 
 the morning Hght of the New Jerusalem — mother of us all. 
 
 It has also been truly remarked, that "Style may be 
 too good as well as too bad, too refined and poHshed as 
 well as too rough and homely," too Latinized, too Ger- 
 manized, too highly elaborated ; and that diction, it has 
 been truly said, " Is the best when transparent as water or 
 as glass." You do not think of the medium through 
 which you perceive, but only of that which you perceive. 
 
 And therefore the masters of the laws of rhetoric have 
 insisted on //rt^cision in style, as the grand element of trans- 
 parency. And do you know what precision is ? It is the 
 
Ud, Irving — ^\ He Kens about Leather!" 385 
 
 poioer of the scissors, it is the art of cutting down and cut- 
 ting round. I do not say concision — that is, perhaps, the 
 definition of the mere lawyer's style, the matter-of-fact 
 tyle — but precision. Sometimes you can be concise, you 
 should always be precise ; and this concerns not the barely 
 making yourself understood, but the using of words, the best 
 words — this will be felicity and strength. Make yourself 
 respected, attended to. "Ti-ue success," says M. Guizot, 
 "is only gained by sympathy, or by its counterfeit." 
 
 But educate sympathy. You will have, some of you, op- 
 portunities of visiting the farm-house when the Httle one is 
 dead ; or when several little ones are ill, and is prepar- 
 ing to go to the Father's house ; or the old woman in the 
 lane, removed from the village street, whose children are in 
 the village churchyard, whose husband has just gone there 
 too, her only surviving son in Australia, &c., &c. ; in short, 
 anything that adds to the Imowledge of Hfe and of the 
 homes of those whom the minister has to touch and lead 
 along in the pathway of life must be good. In the life of 
 Edward Irving there is to be found a well-known illustrative 
 incident, which tends to show the value the poor set upon 
 the man who has a knowledge of their homes and their 
 ways : 
 
 A certain shoemaker, radical and infidel, was among the num- 
 ber of those under Irving's sj)ecial care ; a home workman of 
 course, always present, silent, with his back turned upon the 
 visitors, and refusing any communication except a sullen humph 
 of implied criticism, while his trembling wife made her depre- 
 cating curtesy in the foreground. The way in which this in- 
 tractable individual was finally won over is attributed, by some 
 tellers of the story, to a sudden happy inspiration on Irving's 
 part ; but, by others, to plot and intention. Approaching the 
 bench one day, the visitor took up a piece of patent leather, then 
 a recent invention, and remarked upon it in somewhat skilled 
 terms. The shoemaker went on with redoubled industry at his 
 work , but at last, roused and exasperated by the speech and 
 17 
 
386 On tJie Formation of Style^ etc, 
 
 pretence of knowledge, demanded, in great contempt, but with- 
 out raising his eyes, " What do ye ken about leather ? " This 
 was just the opportunity his assailant wanted ; for Irving, though 
 a minister and a scholar, was a tanner's son, and could discom'se 
 learnedly upon that material. Gradually interested and molli- 
 fied, the cobbler slackened work, and listened while his visitor 
 described some process of making shoes by machinery, which 
 he had carefully got up for the purpose. At last, the shoemaker 
 so far forgot his caution as to suspend his work altogether, and 
 lift his eyes to the great figure stooping over his bench. The 
 conversation went on with increased vigor after this, till finally 
 the recusant threw down his arms : " Od, you're a decent kind 
 o' fellow ! do you preach ? " said the vanquished, curious to 
 know more of his victor. The advantage was discreetly, but not 
 too hotly pursued ; and on the following Sunday the rebel made 
 a defiant, shy appearance at church. Next day Irving encoun- 
 tered him in the savory Gallowgate, and hailed him as a friend. 
 Walking beside him in natural talk, the tall probationer laid his 
 hand upon the shirt-sleeve of the shrunken sedentary workman, 
 and marched by his side along the well-frequented street. By 
 the time they had reached the end of their mutual way not a 
 spark of resistance was left in the shoemaker. His children 
 henceforward went to school ; his dex^recating wife went to the 
 kirk in peace. He himself acquired that suit of Sunday 
 " blacks" so dear to the heart of the poor Scotchman, and be- 
 came a churchgoer and respectable member of society ; while 
 his acknowledgment of his conqueror was conveyed with char- 
 acteristic reticence, and concealment of all deeper feeling, in the 
 self-excusing pretence — "He's a sensible man, yon; he kens 
 about leather ! " 
 
 These remarks will then, perhaps, sufficiently declare my 
 conviction that the most useful style for the pulpit — if there 
 be any debate between the colloquial and the rhetorical — is 
 the colloquial ; not that I do not think even in this aU the 
 graces, and the forces, and the arts of rhetoric, may be em- 
 ployed ; they assuredly may, but the colloquial style is suit- 
 able and more hapi)y in its higher moods for the very large 
 
Back Luther against Bossuet. 387 
 
 congregation, while it is eminently natural and suitable for 
 the small congregation. In large assemblies, no doubt, it 
 may be, and is, natural to pitch the voice high, and to give 
 a loftier stretch to language and ideas ; but even then, it 
 seems to me, the colloquial is the natural style ; and force 
 perhaps, is reaUy at home in either. Demosthenes is re- 
 garded as the greatest orator — ^he was a master of force ; 
 some have said, Give your days and nights to studying 
 him. Well, remember what you are to expect ; he was a 
 highly accomphshed Athenian blackguard, it is not to be 
 wondered at that some have admired him so much ; the 
 admiration of Brougham for him has always been extreme. 
 Or, suppose I were to say, Study Bolingbroke, study Chat- 
 ham, would you not remind me that we have a spirit to 
 cultivate as well as a style, and that the sjoirit will be the 
 very essential part of the style ? Study force, but always 
 remember that you must not aim to talk like a Grecian, or 
 like a lawyer, or even hke a French pi-eacher of the reign 
 of Louis XrV. Genius is, indeed, the true divining rod, 
 and it knows the depths of human souls. Sanctified genius 
 will find the way. 
 
 In the contrasted value of styles, I am amazed that so 
 calm and sound a judge as Henry Hallam should give the 
 preference to Bossuet over Luther. Bossuet was false, ar- 
 tificial — the eagle of Meaux had the wing, and the cold 
 crest, eye, and beak, and talon, of the eagle ; his pulpit 
 style is my abomination, as the man is. How different the 
 warm, noble, rugged heart, and, I will say, the encompass- 
 ing and majestic homehness of Luther ; there is not a pas- 
 sage hke the following so noble and so sustaining in aU the 
 showy verbiage of Bossuet. You will remember the pas- 
 sage, although not from a sermon, it is Luther's style. 
 Why, there is not such a glorious and glowing passage in 
 all the pages of Bossuet : 
 
 I saw lately two miracles. First, as I looked out at the win- 
 
388 On the Formation of Style^ etc, 
 
 dow, I saw tlie stars in the heavens and the whole fair dome of 
 God ; yet did I see no pillars on which the Master had placed 
 this dome. Nevertheless, the heavens fell not, and the dome 
 stands yet fast. Now there are some that seek for such pillars. 
 They would fain lay hold of and feel them. And because they 
 cannot do this, they struggle and tremble as though the heaven 
 must certainly fall, for no other reason than because they cannot 
 seize or see the pillars. Could they but lay hold of these, the 
 heavens would stand firm. 
 
 Next, I saw also great thick clouds hover over us with such 
 weight that they might be likened to a great sea. Yet saw I no 
 floor upon which they rested or found footing, nor any vessels in 
 which they were contained. Still they fell not down upon us, 
 but greeted us with a sour face and flew away. When they were 
 gone, then shone forth both the floor and our roof which had 
 held them, — the rainbow. That was a weak, thin, small floor 
 and roof; and it vanished in the clouds ; and, in appearance, 
 was more like an image such as is seen through a painted glass, 
 than a strong floor. So that one might despair on account of 
 the floor as well as on account of the great weight of water. 
 Nevertheless, it was found in truth, that this almighty image 
 (such it seemed) bore the burden of the waters and protected 
 us. Yet there be some who consider, regard and fear the water 
 and the thickness of the clouds and the heavy burden of them, 
 more than this thin, narrow, and light image. For they would 
 fain feel the strength of the image, and because they cannot do 
 this, they fear that the clouds will occasion an everlasting flood. 
 
 He often seems to have an offensive way of speech, a pu- 
 gilistic attitude of expression, as when he says : 
 
 How many devils were there, thinkest thou, last year, at the 
 Diet at Augsburg ? Every bishop brought as many devils there 
 as a dog hath fleas at St. John's time. But God sent thither 
 also more numerous and more powerful angels, so that their evil 
 purpose was defeated. And howbeit the devils stood in our 
 way, and we were forced to separate ere peace were made, yet 
 were our enemies unable to accomplish aught that they medita- 
 ted and desired. 
 
TTie Style of Liitlier, 389 
 
 Or, as when we find him saying : 
 
 We tell our Lord God plainly : If He will have His cliurch, 
 then He must look how to maintain and defend it ; for we can 
 neither uphold or protect, and well for us that it is so ! For in 
 case we could, or were able to defend it, we should be the proud- 
 est asses under heaven. Who is the church's protector, that hath 
 promised to be with her to the end, and the gates of hell shall 
 not prevail against her ? Kings, Diets, Parliament, Lawyers ? 
 Marry ! no such cattle. 
 
 I often think that I shotdd like to preach as Luther wrote 
 to little Johnny Luther : 
 
 Grace and peace in Christ, my dear little son. I see with 
 pleasure that thou learnest well and prayest diligently. Do so, 
 my son, and continue. When I come home I will bring thee a 
 pretty fairing. 
 
 I know a pretty, merry garden wherein there are many chil- 
 dren. They have little golden coats, and they gather beautiful 
 apples under the trees, and pears, cherries, plums and wheat- 
 plums ; they sing, and jump, and are merry. They have beauti- 
 ful little horses, too, with gold bits and silver saddles. And I 
 asked the man to whom the garden belongs, whose children 
 they were ? And he said, They are the children that love to 
 pray, and to learn, and are good. Then I said, Dear man, I 
 have a son too, his name is Johnny Luther. May he not also 
 come into this garden and eat these beautiful apples and pears, 
 and ride these fine horses ? Then the man said. If he loves to 
 pray, and to learn, and is good, he shall come into this garden, 
 and Lippus and Jost too, and when they all come together they 
 shall have fifes and trumpets, lutes, and all sorts of music, and 
 they shall dance, and shoot with little cross-bows. 
 
 And he showed me a fine meadow there in the garden, made 
 for dancing. There hung nothing but golden fifes, trumpets, 
 and fine silver cross-bows. But it was early, and the children 
 had not yet eaten ; therefore I could not wait the dance, and I 
 said to the man : Ah ! dear sir ! I will immediately go and write 
 all this to my little son Johnny, and tell him to pray diligently, 
 and to learn well, and to be good, so that he may also come to 
 
390 On the Formation of Style ^ etc. 
 
 this garden. But he has an aunt Lehne, he must bring her with 
 him. Then the man said, It shall be so ; go and write him so. 
 
 Therefore, my dear little son Johnny, learn and pray away ! 
 and tell Lippus and Jost too, that they must learn and pray. 
 And then you shall come to the garden together. Herewith I 
 commend thee to Almighty God. . And greet aunt Lehne, and 
 give her a a kiss for my sake. Thy dear Father, 
 
 Anno, 1530. Martinus Luthek. 
 
 So I would rather speak thus, than with tlie most sonor- 
 ous dithyrambic sweU, for we should desire a deep and 
 tender, rather than a tempestous expression of feeling. 
 
 Discussions upon pulpit eloquence have recently been, 
 \ve beheve, more than ever numerous. This is, perhaps, no 
 proof that our eloquence is either of a higher order than 
 in other times, or that it really commands more attention. 
 The facilities for publication of all kinds are greater, and 
 the number of those who devote themselves to the tasks of 
 the pulpit are constantly increasing. Of several works 
 which have recently passed before our eyes, that of the 
 Abbe Mullois is certainly one of the very best.* It says 
 something for the Emperor Napoleon that his chaplain is a 
 man of such fresh, large, and wide sympathies ; it is the 
 work of a Cathohc, but ministers of any denomination wiU 
 find httle upon the score of faith to condemn, and much to 
 suggest and instruct. If we took exception to it, it would 
 be rather that it contains many features of what we under- 
 stand by the French style — much that is sentimental and 
 exaggerated ; but it abounds in real practical wisdom, and 
 
 * 1. " The Clergy and the Pulpit in their Relations to the People." 
 By M. L*Abhe Isidore Mullois, Chaplain to the Emperor Napoleon 
 III., and Missionary Apostolic. Translated by George Percy Badger. 
 Smith, Elder, and Co. 
 
 2. " Sacred Eloquence, or the Theory and Practice of Preaching." 
 By the Rev. Thomas J. Potter, Professor of Sacred Eloquence in 
 the Foreign Military College of All Hallows. James Duffy. 
 
A Motto for a Sneer er " Cmn Risu Mir or V 391 
 
 that which represents a nationality can only be relatively a 
 fault. The chapters of M. Mullois are brief, and in their 
 very titles they have a pith and a meaning very likely to 
 move a student of pulpit eloquence to hear or read what 
 further the writer has to say, who has summed up his im- 
 pressions in such a title. He discusses, in a very sympa- 
 thetic manner, in a more lengthy chapter, the relation the 
 peoj)le should bear to the pulpit of our age : it is a very 
 difficult and vexed question. A very large number of peo- 
 ple in our country seem j)retty much determined that it is 
 desirable the pulpit should come to an end. I have been 
 interested, within these few weeks past, in some papers, in 
 that most racy and admirably conducted of weekly news- 
 papers, The Spectator, referring to church and chapel-going ; 
 one entitled, " Why I go to church," another, " Why I 
 don't," &c., &c. One of these amiable writers, to quote 
 some of his aphorisms, says, " I dislike good sermons just 
 as much as bad." Concerning the preacher, he says, "I do 
 not want his theology — in nine cases out of ten, I know 
 three times, or thirty times as much theology as he does." 
 Another writer says, " I admit for myself, that the one great 
 take-off in going to church, is the sermon." He continues, 
 " the parson so enrages my wife, that she says that she is 
 always wrestling all sermon-time with a morbid desire to 
 throw a prayer-book at his head."* Now these things and 
 many others Hke them, said in such a paper as the Spectator 
 and from many other similar homiletical chairs — The Times, 
 Daily Telegraph, Saturday llemeiv, &c,, show that the pulpit 
 has really come to a very bad pass amongst us. We be- 
 lieve that while ministers of all denominations receive as 
 large or larger an amount of really honest respect than 
 
 * This is pretty strong in tlie *' Gum risit miror " vein, but Dean 
 Alford speaks of " the pitiful * Oh dear, dear,' kind of look of almost 
 every congregation listening to an ordinary sermon in the Church 
 of England." — Contemporary Hemew. 
 
392 On the Formation of Style ^ etc, 
 
 they ever received, respect for tlie preacher — the mere man 
 of the pulpit — ^was scarcely ever so low as in this day, with 
 some notable and admirable exceptions, serving to show 
 how the pulpit can maintain its mastery and power — when 
 the right man is in it. It is astonishing to think of the 
 unaccountable thousands of sermons preached every week 
 to very httle purpose, regarded merely as sermons. There 
 is a sense of the value of divine service, and attendance 
 upon it ; but the part of the divine service, which I am 
 afraid is often the most wearisome, is the sermon. I think 
 this is easy to be accounted for. I have often expressed 
 my sense of bitter amusement that in almost all our col- 
 leges, the preparation for the pulpit is overlooked. Young 
 men go through their studies, and become fitted for classi- 
 cal tutors, schoolmasters, or professors, but not to deal 
 with himian hearts, or to attain ease, self-possession, and 
 tact in the managing of audiences. Necessary, as it un- 
 doubtedly is, that the minister should be fuUy acquainted 
 with theology, as a science, and able to deal with the texts 
 by the lights of criticism and exegesis, this is not enough 
 for the teacher who is to hold an influence over hundreds of 
 minds at the same moment. It is astonishing what a num- 
 ber of well-furnished minds we are acquainted with, unable 
 to turn their mental furniture to good account in public. I 
 suppose that in this neglect all departments of the Church 
 are equally blame-worthy, and, according to M. Mullois, 
 although there are some recent instances to the contrary, 
 especially in the order of the Jesuits, the Church of Rome 
 is not much more exemplary in the training she furnishes 
 for her preachers. 
 
 I have often been struck with the fact I do not remem- 
 ber that in any system of pulpit rhetoric it has been dis- 
 tinctly noticed, that many of the maxims, they may be 
 called proverbs, in Horace's AH of Poetry, would form a 
 valuable code of laws for the pulpit on the secular side. 
 
Lamartine^ on the Man in the Pulpit. 3^3 
 
 Of course it is to be taken for granted that the divine side 
 anticipates, precedes, and derives its power from altogether 
 another source. I say a valuable code of laws might be 
 constructed on the art of preaching. At present ministers 
 seem to need lessons to save themselves from being des- 
 pised. As we have intimated, it seems to be felt that the 
 service of worship is desirable, and may be dehghtful. 
 The work of the pulpit is, in most of the criticism which 
 meets our eye, simply spoken of as despicable. And even 
 a good man, whose life is most admu-able and veritable, 
 moves, in most instances, the lips of his audience to a 
 curve of contempt when he assumes the office of the 
 preacher. Few preachers are Bossuets ; of course there 
 perhaps would be more Bossuets were the number of 
 preachers diminished ; we have far too many, or, what 
 amounts to the same thing, far too few of the right 
 cahbre. Churches and colleges are too reckless in shower- 
 ing young curates over the country. But the words of 
 Lamartine, in part referring to him who has been called 
 the "Eagle of Eloquence," may suggest some hints of that 
 to which all preachers should desire to attain. 
 
 Of all the eminences which a mortal may reach on earth, the 
 highest to a man of talent is incontestably the sacred pulpit. 
 If this individual happens to be Bossuet ; that is to say, if he 
 unites in his person, conviction to inspire the commanding atti- 
 tude, purity of life to enhance the power of truth, untiring zeal, 
 an air of imposing authority, celebrity which commands respect- 
 ful attention, episcopal rank which consecrates, age which gives 
 holiness of appearance, genius which constitutes the divinity 
 of speech, reflective power which marks the mastery of intelh- 
 gence, sudden bursts of eloquence which carry the minds of 
 listeners by assault, poetic imagery which adds lustre to trutli, — 
 a deep, sonorous voice, which reflects the tone of the thoughts, 
 —silvery locks, the paleness of strong emotion, the penetrating 
 glance and expressive mouth ;— in a word, all the animated and 
 17* 
 
394 ^^ ^^^^ Formation of Style^ etc. 
 
 well-yaried gestures which indicate the emotions of the soul ;— 
 if such a man issues slowly from his self-concentrated reflection, 
 as from some inward sanctuary ; if he suffers himself to be raised 
 gradually by excitement, like the eagle, the first heavy flapping 
 of whose wings can scarcely produce air enough to carry him 
 aloft ; if he at length respires freely, and takes flight ; if he 
 no longer feels the pulpit beneath his feet ; if he draws in a full 
 breath of the Divine Spirit, and pours forth unceasingly from 
 this lofty height, to his hearers, the inspiration which comes to 
 them as the word of God, — this being is no longer individual 
 man, he becomes an organ of the Divine will, a prophetic voice. 
 And what a voice ! A voice which is never hoarse, broken, 
 soured, irritated, or troubled by the worldly and passionate strug- 
 gles of interest peculiar to the time ; a voice which, like that of 
 the thunder in the clouds, or the organ in the cathedral, has 
 never been anything but the medium of power and divine per- 
 suasion to the soul; a voice which only speaks to kneeling 
 auditors ; a voice which is listened to in profound silence, to 
 which none reply save by an inclination of the head or by fall- 
 ing tears — those mute applauses of the soul ! — a voice which is 
 never refuted or contradicted, even when it astonishes or 
 wounds ; a voice, in fine, which does not speak in the name of 
 opinion, which is variable; nor in the name of philosophy, 
 which is open to discussion ; nor in the name of country, which 
 is local ; nor in the name of regal supremacy, which is tem- 
 poral, nor in the name of the speaker himself, who is an agent 
 transformed for the occasion ; but which speaks in the name of 
 God, an authority of language unequalled upon earth, and 
 against which the lowest murmur is impious and the smallest 
 opposition a blasphemy. 
 
 All this, it may be said, is genius; but it is art too — ^it is 
 study — it is knowledge. Also, it may be said, that a 
 Bossuet-like style of eloquence is not very desirable; but 
 those principles, which in the age of efflorescence and 
 foliage formed him, would, in our age, if studied and ap- 
 plied, form and fit the modern preacher to enter into and 
 carry along with him the minds of his audiences. There is 
 
^^ Every Hearer is hy Nature Su&piciousP 395 
 
 a great principle involved in the title of the first lecture of 
 M. MuUois, " Thai to address men ivell, they must he loved 
 much" We beheve there is no principle so certain; and 
 the difficulty of its application is dreadfully, painfully ob- 
 vious. That is what audiences want in. the miniBter, — 
 that, where it is a motive-power in speech, burns all before 
 it, with its tenderness and strength; but what a thing this 
 is to say ! It underhes the theory of Theremin.* Ther- 
 emin says, the " orator is an upright man who understands 
 speaking; oratory is intellectual virtue." What he m- 
 tended is, that the result of a conscious, enlightened will, 
 is moral, is the great motive-power of man. An eloquent 
 mind is a mind under motion; it is the secret of all influ- 
 ence. Where it is, it makes no mistakes, in accent, feature, 
 or expression. As M. Mullois says : " We are always elo- 
 quent when we wish to save one whom we love. We are 
 always hstened to when we are loved." 
 
 This seems really to be the beginning of pulpit success 
 and power. Where it really exists, disappointment and 
 neglect will not daunt; it will lay its account for a large 
 amount of misconception and self-sacrifice; it will know 
 that the last thing man believes in anywhere is disinter- 
 estedness, and the last person whom he beheves possible 
 to be disinterested is a priest or preacher. The earn- 
 est and real minister going into the pulpit, and looking 
 round upon a thousand or more of people, may say to 
 himself, "Nearly all these are inveterate beHevers in my 
 selfishness, and xorejudiced against those truths and prin- 
 ciples which I am to bear to them." That mistrust he 
 must overcome. A preacher must, first of all, win the 
 confidence of his hearers. No art can in the long run 
 effect this, but an affectionate nature will also, at length, 
 
 ^ Eloquence a Virtue : or, Outlines of a Systematic Rhetoric, 
 Translated from the German of Dr. Francis Theremin. By W. G. 
 T. Shedd. Andover : W. F. Draper. 
 
396 On the Formation of Style ^ etc, 
 
 conquer exactly in proportion to the deep goodness, the 
 reality and unselfislmess of those affections. Indeed, this 
 principle seems most essentially to precede and underlie 
 all mental preparation. Here a student might be met by 
 the words of Horace, " Non est scUis poemata esse pvlchra 
 surdo didda et agunto aniraum auditoris.'' — " It is not enough 
 that poems be beautiful, they must be affecting, and carry 
 the soul of the hearer " — ^therefore, a speaker should not 
 address himseK to the intellect of his audience without a 
 regard to the necessities of their moral nature. What is 
 that moral nature? What does it demand? Then we 
 recur to what I impHed above. We cannot too often re- 
 member it; as Professor Shedd says, " Every hearer is by 
 nature suspicious, especially when he perceives that the 
 right to influence his nature is claimed." All the more 
 necessity, therefore, why at all points the speaker should 
 be thoroughly furnished and equipped, and, especially at 
 rest in his own region of knowledge and affection; in which 
 case the indifference, and even the very insolence of hear- 
 ers — ^not an uncommon thing to see from the pulpit — ^wiU 
 but increase the energy of the motive power within; the 
 truth, but especially truth of the hoHest and profoundest 
 order, reaUy and tenaciously held and felt, will ahnost 
 invariably make a man eloquent. While, if a man be false 
 in himself — ^I do not mean reaUy immorally so — ^but if he 
 be speaking, it may be against time, with no very dear 
 perception of the matter in hand, especially with no pro- 
 found convictions about the truth, and above aU, with no 
 strong controlling love, and direct interest in men, their 
 interests, their souls, their affections; in this state of false- 
 ness, he will almost invariably become verbose, or, worse, 
 over-ornamented — his words will have a steely ghtter; he 
 T\ill refine and become critical, and degenerate into infla- 
 tion and bombast. The reader or hearer may have seen 
 among mountainous and Alpine heights those sHght falls 
 
" Eloquence is Mind in Motion P 397 
 
 of water, not worthy the name of cataracts, which, having 
 no body to reach the vales beneath, in their fall dissolve in 
 spray, foam, and thin vapor,— very pretty as the rays of 
 light tint them, but having no impetus nor power; and not 
 spreading by the farms and homesteads — no fertilizing 
 fniitfulness. There is a speech exactly of this order; it is 
 the eloquence of prettiness. We have sometimes called it 
 the eloquence of the finger-nails. Horace speaks of those 
 who, in some great and ambitious monument in brass, ex- 
 press the nails, and imitate the soft hairs, while the princi- 
 pal of all, the figure itself, is unstudied, unsatisfactory, 
 perhaps disgusting; there are those who are content to be 
 artists in the small — ^in the little and insignificant; their 
 great aim is to be neat, to carve giants' heads in cherry- 
 stones. You wonder and admire, but are quite unedified. 
 Such preachers peril all their usefulness in the production 
 of "innocent httle sermons;" utterly powerless for any 
 moral effect. It is the movement of the soul which will 
 enable a man to speak; as the poet has expressed it, giving 
 verse to the image before our eyes in the above sentence : 
 
 . With an eloquence, not hke those rills from a height, 
 Which sparkle, and foam, and in vapor are o'er ; 
 But a current that works out its way into light; 
 
 Through the filtering recesses of thought and of lore. 
 
 Eloquence has been well defined as truth clearly per- 
 ceived, deeply felt, and distinctly expressed. Then follows 
 that state which D'Alembert defines as eloquence. '^ It is," 
 says he, " the transfer of the orator's consciousness into the 
 auditor's consciousness." In a word, Shedd says again, 
 "Eloquence is a mind in motion." 
 
 There is another subject which has often, in connection 
 with thoughts upon pulpit work, held our almost detached 
 attention ; it is on the power and accent of conviction. This 
 grows, of course, out of the ardor of the feehng^s. This has 
 
 ^^aKI?'SRSiTY| 
 
398 On tlie Formation of Style^ etc, 
 
 been wondrously forgotten ; the vulgar impression has been, 
 that passion, or, more correctly, the rage and tempest of 
 manner, are convincing and affecting ; they may be, but not 
 when they merely beat the air. Even in those cases, the 
 accent does the real work, and the accent is the soul, and 
 the conviction. Jonathan Edwards, as you well know, was 
 short-sighted, and preached from notes often held close up 
 to his face, and in the pulpit stood perfectly motionless and 
 stiU. What then could have produced those wondrous ec- 
 stacies and terrors in his audience of which we read ? It 
 must have been the accent of conviction. Have we not 
 known men, who, with a graceless manner, a voice of no 
 melody, no glow or glory of speech, no vividness of concep- 
 tion, have yet first commanded our respect, then compelled 
 our attention, then taken us captive ? Here is hope for men 
 not possessed of that variable gift called genius — surely 
 every preacher might hope to attain to this. Attain to it ? 
 every man will have it, if he have it. What sort of a crea- 
 ture is the preacher without convictions ? and if all convic- 
 tions are sharp, clear — say incisive and tender — ^then they 
 will give tone to his words. This is the art beyond the 
 reach of art, though art may assuredly help it ; rhetoricians 
 and readers never attain to this as mere rhetoricians and 
 readers ; it is soul, feeling — that is, the accent of conviction, 
 which moves, enUghtens, and sways ; it does so because it 
 " believes, speaks, arrests, gud alarms." 
 
 And this seems to give concisely the one idea of the 
 Christian ministry — to prepare quiet resting-places for 
 weary people. I shaU not, I hope, be misunderstood, when 
 I say that a very affectionate tongue may be moved by a 
 very careful pulpit-artist : the discourses are labored and 
 thought over with the same care a painter bestows on his 
 composition, and his colors, his forms, and Hghts and 
 shades. Dr. Raleigh is a master of that which preachers 
 have so much neglected, but without which the sermon is 
 
Nervousness may he Pulpit Power, ^gg 
 
 usually nothing, — accent; for accent is the soul of elo- 
 quence, the soul of tenderness ; emphasis is the art of af- 
 fectionateness.* Dr. Kaleigh shows himself to be one of 
 the masters of pathos ; this is a power very little exercised 
 among us, and it cannot be cultivated unless there be the 
 deep inner-spring of emotion. Readers will remember some 
 words of St. Augustine, aheady quoted by us, in which he 
 exalts so much the acclamation of tears as incomparably 
 above the acclamation of applause, and counts persuasion 
 and change of life as only hkely to result from the starting 
 of the tear. 
 
 Alexander Raleigh would furnish an admirable illustra- 
 tion to the remarks made by Lord Lytton, in Caxtoniana, 
 on the power of shyness and nervousness as an element of 
 the most successful oratory. No doubt, shyness — nervous 
 susceptibility — is common enough, especially in young 
 speakers ; but that throbbing, thriUing nervousness of emo- 
 tion united to perfect command over the subject, and inter- 
 est in it, with personal self-possession, is, in the degTee in 
 which it rules in the mind of an orator, a sceptre of success 
 and power. I quote these words : 
 
 Kow, I apprehend that the ideal excellence thus admirably 
 described is always present to the contemplation of the highest 
 order of genius, and tends to quicken and perpetuate the ner- 
 vous susceptibility, which gives courage while it seems like fear. 
 
 Nervousness, to give the susceptibility I speak of its familiar 
 name, is perhaps the quality which great orators have the most 
 in common. I doubt whether there has been any public speaker 
 of the highest order of eloquence who has not felt an anxiety or 
 apprehension, more or less actually painful, before rising to ad- 
 dress an audience upon any very important subject on which he 
 has meditated beforehand. This nervousness will, indeed, prob- 
 ably be i^roportioned to the amount of previous preparation, ever 
 
 * Quiet Resting-Places, and other Sermons. By Alexander Ror 
 leigli, Canonbury. 
 
Aoo On the Formation of Style^ etc. 
 
 though the necessities of reply or the changeful temperament 
 which characterizes public assemblies may compel the orator to 
 modify, alter, perhaps wholly reject, what, in previous prepara- 
 tion, he had designed to say. The fact of preparation itself had 
 impressed him with the dignity of the subject — ^with the respon- 
 sibilities that devolve on an advocate from whom much is ex- 
 pected, on whose individual utterance results affecting the inter- 
 ests of many may depend. His imagination had been roused 
 and warmed, and there is no imagination where there is no sen- 
 sibility. Thus the orator had mentally surveyed, as it were, at 
 a distance, the loftiest height of his argument ; and now, when 
 he is about to ascend to it, the awe of the altitude is felt. 
 
 In speeches thoroughly impromptu, in which the mind of the 
 speaker has not had leisure to brood over what he is called upon 
 suddenly to say, the nervousness either does not exist or is much 
 less painfully felt ; because then the speaker has not set before 
 his imagination some ideal perfection to which he desires to 
 attain, and of which he fears to fall short. And this I take to 
 be the main reason why speakers who so value themselves on 
 readiness that they never revolve beforehand what they can 
 glibly utter, do not rise above mediocrity. To no such speaker 
 has posterity accorded the name of orator. The extempore 
 speaker is not an orator, though the orator must of necessity be, 
 whenever occasion calls for it, an extempore speaker. Extem- 
 poraneous speaking is, indeed, the groundwork of the orator's 
 art ; preparation is the last finish, and the most difficult of all 
 his accomplishments. To learn by heart as a schoolboy, or to 
 prepare as an orator, are two things not only essentially different 
 but essentially antagonistic to each other; for the work most 
 opposed to an effective oration is an elegant essay.* 
 
 Surprise has often been expressed that the timid, appa- 
 rently shrinking, and nervous speaker, seems to be the very 
 man who most subdues in the pulpit, where especially the 
 emotions have to be aroused — he is the man who uses 
 words as if brandishing a torch of flame ; or rolls liis words 
 like retiring and scarcely audible thunders, but even there- 
 
 * Caxtoniana. By Lord Lyttou. 
 
Preaching to the Conscience, 40 1 
 
 fore more impressive ; and it is remarkable that the excite- 
 ment seems to increase in proportion to the preparation be- 
 stowed. Many of the most eminent of modem preachers 
 have met their audiences with most fear. A man may ex- 
 pound, or talk untremulously, with a certain feHcity of words 
 and thoughts, but inspiration gives palpitation and trepi- 
 dation, and fear, and awe. Those who have heard the fre- 
 quent haK-broken hesitancy, which seems sometimes to 
 fracture a sentence, — a sort of haK-forgetfulness, or waiting 
 lest the right word should slip away, (usually a specially 
 happy and adjusting one,) will imderstand the relation of 
 these remarks to the orator. It is often so with descrip- 
 tive preachers ; the mind of the preacher is waiting — he 
 sees his picture ; he is adding touch to touch ; he is com- 
 pleting the picture. He is intense, and how many men 
 have earnest natures who have not intense natures. The 
 one says and does forcible thmgs ; the other says and does 
 piercing, searching things ; the first is most in the blood, 
 the last is most in the conscience. This is the faculty of 
 Peter, to whom it was given " to prick men to the heart," 
 when he spoke. 
 
 " True success is only gained," we have heard Guizot say, 
 " by sympathy, or by its counterfeit ;" but by this the 
 preacher rises to more than information, statement, or even 
 persuasion. By the education of sympathy, or experience, 
 the preacher learns the power of particular truths as 
 adaptations to particular wants. This is what should be 
 called practical preaching. A preacher may appeal in any 
 measure to the judgment, the pure reason, the recognized 
 principles of truth ; men hear, but this does not affect ; and 
 the statement of a fact, unless it be made personally 
 interesting, is not effective on the Hfe. And then the im- 
 agination, but this also may be very cold ; this charms, 
 however, and interests, still not so large a class as the 
 judgment, the reason ; but if the preacher speaks by 
 
402 On the Formation of Style ^ etc. 
 
 analogy he cannot speak too often, and analogy stands mid- 
 way between the pure reason and imagination, and some, 
 have thought it one with the argument. But the affections 
 these are a fountain of more tender interest, and it may 
 be tliought there should be some appeal to the affections in 
 every sermon, but far more sparingly than the appeal to 
 the imagination ; and the preacher who speaks to the af- 
 fections should be himseK affected. But that which is 
 most sacred is the region of the moral affections — ^the con- 
 science. Conscience, that is the skin of the whole man ; this 
 should be touched rarely — touched delicately, cunnuigly, yet 
 firmly, unhesitatingly, and touched only with the fingers of 
 the preacher's own conscience. The preacher must take 
 care lest he harden conscience by touchmg it, and must take 
 care lest he harden his own by touching it ; it is a deHcate 
 thing, the preacher should reverence it, rouse it, leave it, 
 then return to it again. This is effective preaching. For 
 effective preaching, there are, no doubt, some great helps 
 and aids, but there are some departments of power for 
 which there is little help — only reflection, the knowledge of 
 our own nature, the consciousness, nay the active conscious- 
 ness which winds its way into the secret cell of our own 
 being — this amplifies the preacher's power in dealing with 
 others. For instance, every nature is accessible to remorse, 
 and the preacher is to hold it as a canon, that every nature 
 with which he comes in contact, needs the grace of repent- 
 ance ; but in most instance, this can only result from a 
 very active state of keenly awakened and intense internal 
 sorrow ; in any audience there must be many hi whom it is 
 desirable to produce this emotion. Kemorse is the trumpet 
 calling to repentance. What a different affair this is to the 
 mere preparation of sermons — a mere arrangement of di- 
 visions a mere utterance of statements — to be so benevo- 
 lently moved by the Holy Spirit, that the preacher makes 
 it a matter of profound and affectionate study, how to 
 
The Preacher a tSacred Pathologist 403 
 
 awaken, or how to be certain that in a great ma^ay of those 
 so apparently still and cahn, who occupy a relation to the 
 universe apparently so peaceful, there is that which pro- 
 claims all not right within — the heart maybe in uproar and 
 anguish — the mind may be preying on itself. This is one 
 of the businesses of the human soul in which the preacher 
 has a very immediate and most intimate concern. 
 
 What is the true preacher ? A sacred pathologist ! — ^he 
 lances the soul, " pricking the heart," he deals with the in- 
 sanity and the lunacy and the disease of the soul. How the 
 physician studies — ^how closely the surgeon attends to the 
 duties of his profession ! How he studies the Materia 
 Iledica, the Parmacopoeia ! How he practises the use of 
 the knife, not the same medicine for every disease, not the 
 same knife for every operation ! May we not suspect that 
 congregations and churches would be in a different state, 
 had ministers as closely watched and studied the means of 
 dealing with souls ? I do not plead for the imhallowed 
 lore of the confessional ; but are souls therefore to be 
 thrown from all but the most general statement, the mere 
 textuary of truth ? Why preach, if the Word is not to be 
 medicated, appropriated and applied? If therefore re- 
 morse is awakened, it is that it may lead to repentance. 
 These are the precursors of conversion ; only it is also dis- 
 astrous when the minister has, as is often the case, a num- 
 ber of cases on his hands he knows not what to do with. He 
 has roused what he cannot queU ; and then what can he do 
 but hand again over to indifference or to despair those 
 within whom he has stirred the slumbering conscience. It 
 is quite possible, even from the pulpit, to startle devils 
 which the preacher is quite incompetent to allay or to con- 
 trol. How often, amazed, the modem preacher e:s:claims, 
 " Why could not we cast him out ?" 
 
 These remarks suggest, at once, how the pulpit provides 
 for the soul a quiet resting-place, and how it is that fre- 
 
404 ^^ ^^^ Formation of Style^ etc. 
 
 quently the soul is disappointed of the rest it might expect 
 to find there. And these remarks also grow out of the im- 
 pression that the preacher seeks to bring a lenitive to the 
 conscience. He searches it, but he soothes it. Dr. 
 Ealeigh well and most happily says : — " He knows how 
 much there is in a sermon which cannot be published. If 
 it is true it is a ' building of God ' for the time not ' made 
 with hands/ and neither hands nor pens can preserve it. 
 ' The grace of the fashion of it perisheth/ or survives only 
 in the memory and the life of the hearer. The elastic 
 obedient words seem cool and hardened on the printed 
 page." Sometimes the accent of the preacher is indeed 
 very distinct. Take the following extract as an illustra- 
 tion : — 
 
 "my grace is sufficient for thee," etc., etc. 
 
 Let us make just one more application of this text, and see 
 how the softening shadow of it will come over the soul that is in 
 trouble. 
 
 But what picture shall we take from among the children and 
 the scenes of sorrow ? In a suffering world like this where the 
 sufferers are so many and the sorrows are so various, it may seem 
 almost a species of favoritism to select one, or even one of a class, 
 for special human sympathy, or as the object of any peculiar 
 grace of God. 
 
 Shall we take the man with the sunny face, the voluble 
 tongue, the ready, helpful hand, who yet at times has a sorrow 
 like death weighing on his heart ? Or shall we take the physi- 
 cal sufferer, who in sheer pain, that has continued for long, and 
 is not Ukely to depart until the spirit does, will have suffered a 
 thousand deaths, as to pain, before death comes ? I remember 
 travelling once in a railway carriage opposite to a gentleman 
 who, at the first glance, seemed well, but who, in a deeper view, 
 showed suffering on every feature of his face ; and sometimes as 
 the carriage rounded the curves of the line and became un- 
 steady, a low moan of anguish would escape involuntarily from 
 his lips. Yet the man was going about his business. It is some 
 
The Preacher a Sacred Pathologist 405 
 
 years since I saw him, but he may be living and suffering still. 
 If so, I hope he knows and draws from the grace of Christ, 
 which is sufficient for him. Or shall we take the widow in her 
 weeds of woe, with a heart in tears all day long, hardly ceasing 
 from its grieving even in sleep ? Or the children at their even- 
 ing prayer, saddened and thrown into a child's perplexity, by 
 the thought of two fathers in heaven ? Or the widow who never 
 wore the weeds of woe, but who has gone through the bitterness 
 of death as the victim of an unfaithful love ? Or the bankrupt 
 who retains his integrity, but endures a thousand slights and 
 disadvantages because he has lost his money and his place ? Or 
 shall we take any of those sensitive, shrinking souls, which 
 seem to have been made for suffering — who, at any rate, have a 
 special faculty of making or extracting it from the whole of this 
 human life ? Or shall we enter, with silent footsteps and hushed 
 breath, one of those rooms (and there are a thousand such around 
 us in this great city, which shows us nothing but its splendours, 
 and lets us hear nothing but the roar of its life), where suffer- 
 ing is deepening and dropping into the arms of death ? 
 
 We had better not select. Let every sufferer, whether by the 
 body or by the mind, or by the circumstances, hear for himself, 
 and gauge all his trouble while he hears ; then let him apply the 
 sure word of promise to its lengths and breadths, and depths 
 and heights ; then let him carry it home to the aged, the sick, 
 the feeble, and to all whom it may concern, as the words of a 
 God who cannot lie, as the assurance of a Saviour who cannot 
 but pity and help, as a title to a legacy of which they are all 
 made heirs if they will only claim and inherit, as a shelter for 
 every path, an assuagement for every sorrow, a canopy for every 
 sufferer's bed, a sweet soul secret for life and for death to every 
 trusting soul however troubled — "My grace is sufficient for 
 iheer 
 
 " For thee." If you lose the personal application, you lose all. 
 It is for thee. I would that you would now enter into your 
 closet^ — you may do so even here in an act of faith — and that you 
 would shut to the door enclosing only the text and *' thee." 
 This text is not for a world, but for a man. . There are some 
 texts which are first for a world and then for a man. This is 
 
4o6 On the Formation of Style j etc. 
 
 first for a man and then for a world. " Sufficient for thee." For 
 thee, young pilgrim, in the first pauses of thy celestial way ! 
 For thee, strong runner, wearied now, and fainting on the mid- 
 way plain I For thee, tempted spirit, struggling in the network 
 of circumstance, and watching for the saving providence, and 
 the delivering hour ! For thee, sufferer in any way, by pain, or 
 loss, or change, or death ! And for thee, whom our voice can 
 not reach — may God, the revealer of secrets, tell it to thee, thou 
 dying one — already half away, and may thy soul, composed in 
 its deep consolations, and borne up by its immortal strength, 
 have safe passage thus, as in the very arms of the grace, into His 
 presence whose grace it is ! 
 
 " For thee." I say again for thee. Whoever thou art, " for 
 thee." It is for thee now to change the pronoun and say, with a 
 wonderful grateful heart — " For me. To-day, and every day, 
 from this time forth, and even for evermore, for me ; His grace 
 is sufficient for me." 
 
 Thus when we frequently speak of a sermon as artless, 
 we do so as knowing that the preacher was all the time 
 feeling the pulse of his congregation — in his study has his 
 eye on many a pew, and watches in spirit the effect of 
 every word. There must have been a long habituation of 
 watchfulness and skill in the moral value or sentences be- 
 fore that ease which perhaps is possessed now could be the 
 gift of the preacher. There are sudden touches of feeling 
 — there are words starting round the comers of the sermon 
 unawares that compel the tears involuntarily to the eyes. 
 The fancy is more free in the following quotation than in 
 most of Dr. Raleigh's discourses. But some of those 
 tones of feeling I have mentioned are heard aU along, and 
 deepen towards the close. It is from the sermon — 
 
 LITE A STRUCTUllE. 
 
 TJiere is a time given tofinisli the icorlc — And when the limit of 
 that time shall come, not one stone more can be laid by the 
 builder, not one touch more given to tlic edifice in any of its 
 
Alexander HaleigK 407 
 
 parts before the trial. " I must work the work of him that sent 
 me while it is day : the night cometh when no man can work." 
 And no man can tell when the night shall come in any particular 
 instance. Of course we have the general laws and probabilities 
 of life. God means us to know these laws and probabilities, and 
 He means us to guide ourselves by them as far as we can. But 
 clear above them all He holds His own sovereignty, and tell us as 
 we work to look at that. His are " the times and seasons," the 
 fountains of life, and the issues from death. He alone commands 
 and ordains the " time to be born," and the " time to die." 
 Those times are not alike in any two instances. In this, as in 
 so many other points of his moral administration in this world, 
 there is the greatest possible diversity ; and mystery as well, so 
 profound that our intelligence is utterly incompetent to solve it. 
 There is not a man out of heaven who could tell us with any 
 certainty all the reasons of an infant's death, all the reasons of 
 an old man's life on into second infancy. Philosophers, and 
 new-school Christians will make a little prattle about the natural 
 laws. But all that we can be told about the natural laws hardly 
 touches the moral mysteries ; and Avith all these mysteries hang- 
 ing over human life, and darkening into impenetrable gloom, if 
 we try to discover the exact period of its close, it is a wonderful 
 relief that every one who is working rightly can look up to the 
 great ruler and arbiter of life, and say in humble trust, " My 
 times are in thy hands." 
 
 Look at the tombstones in a grave-yard. You will see every 
 age recorded there, from the infant of days to the sinner or the 
 saint an hundred years old. Remember, as you read, that every 
 name recorded (and what myriads are mouldering in the dust 
 with no record above ground) is the name of a builder who in 
 the day given to him, began and finished a building that will be 
 tried by fire ; and then look up and be thankful for that uner- 
 ring providence which settled birth and death for each so wisely 
 and so justly that, if they were all to live again, the birth--day 
 and burial-day for each would be exactly the same. 
 
 Here is a stone that tells that an infant was born, and, after 
 wrestling with mortality for but a few days, died and was 
 buried. And it may seem as though the soul of that infant had 
 
4o8 On the Formation of Style ^ etc. 
 
 but fluttered across the atmosphere of this world without alight- 
 ing here, as, looking from your window, you sometimes see a 
 dove flash across the sky. Depend upon it, that little history 
 was the building of a temple, and when it was finished the 
 angels carried it away. 
 
 Here is a stone that marks the resting-place of one who was a 
 little worker. He had just begun to work. He had thought of God 
 as the great Father of the world. He had looked to Jesus the 
 good Shepherd. He had begun to feel a strange power in the 
 cross, which was drawing him away from sin and from little 
 selfish ways, and filling his heart with the purpose to live to 
 Christ all his days. These mere shapings and scantlings of work 
 there were — a little serious thought, a little faith, a fluttering of 
 love in the breast, some tiny steps of following after the great 
 master : nothing, as some would say, to make a finished life — 
 mere shapings and young endeavors after higher things — some- 
 what like the houses you see children building on the sand. 
 You are far mistaken. That little workman will never need to 
 be ashamed. In his simple faith he found the Rock of Ages. 
 In his wondering love he soared upwards to the fatherhood of 
 God, and, when the home-call reached him, he was ready, he had 
 finished a temple- life. 
 
 This is a maiden's name. She was young, she was fair, she 
 was looking to the altar and the bridal-day, and lo, death came 
 unbidden, but not to her unwelcome, for he led her uj) to the 
 higher espousals of heaven. Father and mother and sorrowing 
 lover think of the nipping of the flower, and they have written 
 on the stone that " her sun went down while it was yet day." 
 But there are other writings which they see not. The angels 
 have written *' eventide ;" the Saviour has written " finished." 
 
 Here lies a merchant who was in the high noon of life and in 
 the full stretch of his powers. He was not only gaining wealth, 
 but spreading it among others. His name was a synonyme for 
 truth and justice and honor — and all around these are the begin- 
 nings he had made. Nothing was finished. Yes, all is finished, 
 and he lies here. 
 
 And now we come to the grave of the old pilgrim who re- 
 mained lingering here long after those who loved him dearly, 
 
Alexander Haleigh. 409 
 
 and venerated every hair of bis grey head, would have been glad 
 for his own sake to see him go home. The shock of corn 
 seemed more than ripe— the grain was dropping on the ground. 
 He was blind, he was deaf, he was in pain, he was as helpless as 
 a child. Would it not have been better that he had gone some 
 years sooner ? No, no. It was the right time. It was his even- 
 tide. He needed all his days to finish the temple, and all his ex 
 periences — the blindness, and the deafness, and the pain, and 
 the sweet simplicities of the second childhood — he needed all. 
 And even the infirmities of temper, it may be, as well as of body, 
 which mingled with his last experiences, were in some way 
 used by Him who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in work- 
 ing, for the completing of His own gracious work. I say, we 
 cannot be too thankful that amid all the diversities and uncer- 
 tainties and mysteries of this life, afiecting its beginning, its 
 progress, and its close, we can look up while we build to that 
 wise and loving Providence which presides over all. And we 
 cannot too often or too seriously remember that the great Master 
 of that providence holds our life fully, constantly in His hands, 
 and will never give it into ours. He will never tell us when our 
 work is to end ; and its recompense is to come. But he tells us 
 this, that we are building day by day. He tells us that, while 
 recognizing the uncertainty which to us hangs around the times 
 and the seasons, we ought even more earnestly to recognize the 
 great certainty of a continuous and accumulating moral life. 
 Bay by day, hour by hour the work goes on — well or ill — to His 
 praise or to His shame. We must build. We are building. 
 We are very apt sometimes to think that we have done nothing, 
 and that is the worst of it. That is not the worst of it. The 
 worst of it is that we have done something very poor or very 
 ill. I come home at night, and say, with sad relenting, as the 
 shadows of reflection deepen around me, " I have done nothing 
 at the great building to-day !" O yes, but I have. I have been 
 putting in "the wood, the hay, the stubble," where "the silver 
 and the gold, and the precious stones " should have been. I 
 have been piling up fuel for the last fires in my own life. I can- 
 not be a cipher even for one day. I must be a man. Nay, I 
 must be a Christian man, faithful or unfaithful. I must grow, 
 18 
 
4 1 o On the Formation of Style^ etc, 
 
 and build, and work, and live in some way. Oh, then, let me 
 see that I live for Christ, that I grow into His image, and that I 
 work a work in the moral construction of my own life which 
 angels will crown and God will bless. 
 
 One of the first things essential to sermons is natural 
 symmetry. The architecture of the Congregational ser- 
 mon has undergone, during the last half century, as much 
 change as have the buildings in which they were delivered. 
 The sermons of the Church of England, for the .most part, 
 hold on the same routine, but the sermons of the Congre- 
 gational pulpit have undergone a change, and the change 
 has been improvement; the method of these sermons is not 
 textual; the symmetry is not always of the order of the 
 scaffold, we do not see it; it is like the symmetry of a 
 tree, it is hidden by the fohage, but then we know that the 
 symmetry is there by the foliage. We always desire, in 
 criticism, to admire the excellence of the method present, 
 rather than to utter depreciations because of the method 
 absent. The able preacher is not always merely logical in 
 his method; he does not throw out from his text the coil 
 of thought; his purpose may be emotional, and thought is 
 calm and quiet with him. The great and good preacher 
 labors at no prolonged illustrations, never overwhelms his 
 hearers with the dazzling brilliancy of rhetorical color; by- 
 touch on touch he achieves his end; by sustained and 
 coherent, but yet rapid movements, and throws open the 
 doors of many hearts and accompHshes all. Dr. Ealeigh's 
 genius is reflective and meditative, and the symmetry 
 therefore in harmony with this; it suggests a. recurrence of 
 A. K. H. B's weU-known paper "Concerning the art of 
 putting things; " certainly an art much needing study in the 
 study of sermon-making. We have met with no sermons 
 lately in our own language, so reminding us of those touch- 
 ing and beautiful ones of Herman Hooker, of Boston, in 
 the United States. A very happy illustration of this sym- 
 
Alexander Raleigh. — Natural Sijmmetry. 411 
 
 metry of which I have spoken, organic symmetry, we have 
 in the sermon on the Kingdom and the Keys, "Fear not; I 
 am he that Hveth and was dead; " &c., &c. The quotation 
 is lengthly, but it shall be given: — 
 
 " Fear not " for thyself. I will wash thee thoroughly from 
 thine iniquities, and cleanse thee from thy sins, create in thee a 
 clean heart, and renew a right spirit within thee, give thee the 
 joys of my salvation, and uphold thee with my free spirit. I 
 will console thee in trouble, strengthen thee for duty, open a 
 way for thee amid life's perplexities, jDitcli thy tent in safe 
 places, and be around thy tabernacle with my sheltering pres- 
 ence until it is taken down, and thou art called to the house not 
 made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Thy path may seem 
 rugged and cheerless ; but it is open and onward ; and I will 
 pass with thee Myself along all its length, nor leave thee in the 
 shades which hang over its close. I will be with thee in the 
 dark valley to support thy trembling steps with My rod and 
 staff; I will softly unlock the awful door, and usher thee into 
 Hades, where a thousand sights of beauty will fill thy delighted 
 eyes, and a thousand voices of welcome will hail thy coming. 
 
 "Fear not" for any among thy kindred and acquaintance of 
 the same family of God. There is a shield over the head of 
 each, a providence as watchful of every one as if that one alone 
 were a dweller on the earth. When they pass through the 
 waters they shall not overflow them, through the flame it shall 
 not kindle upon them. While they hve they are Mine; "they 
 live unto the Lord." When they die they are Mine ; " they die 
 unto the Lord " — living and dying, they are the Lord's. Fear 
 not with a slavish unfilial fear, for any whom thou lovest. They 
 are dear to you, are they less dear to Me ? Thy brother is dead, 
 but he will be alive again. Thy sister is lost, but she shall be 
 found. 
 
 " Fear not," amid changes however startling, circumstances 
 however unexpected ; for I am not a mere watcher over a broken 
 and lawless world, mending, and checking, and trying to save 
 something from the wreck ! I am the perfect ruler of a perfect 
 providence, setting kings on their thrones, and watching spar- 
 
412 On the Formation of Style^ etc. 
 
 rows in their fall ; preserving your mightiest interests, and num- 
 bering the hairs of your head ! 
 
 Brethren, it is this " fear not," which often we most need to 
 hear ; we do not exercise ourselves in great matters — we can 
 trust these to Him, for we feel they are too high for us ; but we 
 do painfully exercise ourselves in lesser things as if we had the 
 sole charge of them. We should not for a moment presume to 
 grasp the keys ; but we do presume, in our thoughts, to dictate 
 when and where, and how they shall be used. We strive, often- 
 times almost unconsciously perhaps, to re-arrange and re-ordain 
 particular circumstances, and even whole scenes in our life and 
 in the lives of others. And with a still more importunate and 
 sorrowful eagerness do we seek to have some power in arrang- 
 ing for life's close. We W'Ould not dare to take the key of death 
 into our own hand, but we would touch it while it lies in His. 
 Not noWj or Not therCj or Not thus^ we are always saying. 
 
 Not now, we say, when the father is called to leave the family 
 of which he is the whole stay. " Let him live, let a few weeks 
 elapse, let his family be provided for, let his work be done ! " 
 It is done, is the answer. His fatherless children are provided 
 for ; I have taught him to leave them with Me. '' The Father 
 of the fatherless, the Husband of the widow, is God in His holy 
 habitation." 
 
 Not now^ we say, when the mother has heard the home-call, 
 and with a calmness and courage greater than those of the sol- 
 dier in battle, is rising above all her cares, and becoming a child 
 again, at the threshold of the heavenly home. Oh, not now ! 
 Who will check the waywardness, encourage the virtues, receive 
 the confidences, soothe the little sorrows, and train the loves of 
 those infant hearts ? Who will teach the evening prayer, and 
 listen to the Sabbath hymn ? Who can give a mother's care 
 and feel a mother's love ? I, said the Shepherd, I will gather 
 the lambs with Mine aim, and carry them in 3fy bosom. I will 
 forget no prayer of the d3dng mother's heart. I will treasure in 
 My heart the yearnings of her life over her children, and the un- 
 utterable compassions of her dying hour ; and when many years 
 have sped, and she has been long in heaven, these children will 
 remember her in their holiest and happiest moments, and by 
 
Natural Symmetry in Sermons, 413 
 
 their walk and their work will be proving that she did not live 
 in vain, that she ^^Jinished the work that was given her to do." 
 
 Or, we say, " N'ot tliere^''^ oh, not there ! Away on the sea — a 
 thousand mijes from land — let him not die there, and be drop- 
 ped into the unfathomed grave, where the unstable waves must 
 be his only monument, and the winds the sole mom'ners of the 
 place ! Or not in some distant city or far-oflf land — strangers 
 around his bed, strangers closing his eyes, and then carrying 
 him to a stranger's grave. Let him come home and die amid 
 the whisperings and breathings of the old unquenchable love. 
 " He is going home," is the answer, and going by the best and 
 only way. " I can open the gate beautiful in any part of the 
 earth or sea. I can set up the mystic ladder, the top of which 
 reaches to heaven, in the loneliest island, at the furthest ends 
 of the earth, and your friends will flee to the shelter of My 
 presence all the more fully because yours is far away." 
 
 Or, we say. " JVot thus,^'' not through such agonies of body, 
 or faintings of spirit, or tremblings of faith — not in unconscious- 
 ness — not without dying testimonies. Let there be outward as 
 well as inward peace. Let mention be made of Thy goodness. 
 Let there be foretellings and forcshewings of the glory to which, 
 as we trust, they are going. Oh, shed down the light, the fra- 
 grancy of heaven, upon their djdng bed ! The answer is, " They 
 are there, and you are so dull of sense that you perceive them 
 not. Your friend is filled with the * peace that passeth under- 
 standing,' and safe in the everlasting arms." 
 
 Thus, brethren, the tiine, and the place^ and the circumstances^ 
 are all arranged by the wisdom and the will of him who holds 
 the keys, and we could not, even if we had our own will and 
 way, make any thing better than it is in the perfect plan. Bet- 
 ter ! everything would be worse — inconceivably worse if ice had 
 the keys. Let us trust them, with a loyal loving trust, with Him 
 who graciously says to us " Fear not ; " one who, in this as in 
 all other things, will treat us and give to us according to our 
 faith. 
 
 " Fear not." " The sinners in Zion are afraid ; fearfulness 
 surprises the hypocrites." It is in vain to say '' Fear not" to 
 one who has in his nature all the elements on which fear feeds 
 
414 ^^ ^^^ Formation of Style, etc. 
 
 and lives, a sinful conscience, an unloving heart. And the 
 Saviour does not say " fear not " to any such. He says, " Enter 
 into the rock, and hide thee in the dust,/<9r/^^r of the Lord, 
 and for the glory of his majesty."" " Tremble, ye that are at 
 ease ; be troubled, ye careless ones." He says in effect, " Let 
 your heart be troubled, also let it be afraid ; ye do not believe 
 in God, ye do not believe in me ! " 
 
 I may refer to another master of this art of natural 
 symmetry — ^master at the same time of this accent of con- 
 viction, to which I have already referred, in James Pab- 
 soNs; we have indeed but few of his sermons which have 
 the stamp of his own finished approval. Many of those, 
 however, which have been published, without his approba- 
 tion, from the reports of short-hand writers, are among 
 the best, and hearers can attest their faithfulness; perhaps 
 they give evidence too clearly of the labor of the artist, 
 and seem to testify to the possession of a nature never 
 likely to be betrayed, by passion or impulse, but they also, 
 without any efforts at recondite thought or brilhancy of 
 imagination, group effectively together images, sometimes 
 in crowds, hurrying rapidly upon each other, yet each 
 preserved clear, incisive, and distinct; and no preacher bet- 
 ter illustrates the art and order of a sermon, and few have 
 made simphcity of statement more effective and sometimes 
 overwhelming. But no sermons remind us more distinctly 
 that the sermon printed can never be the sermon we 
 heard preached. And this is as it should be. The ser- 
 mon must have a style of its own, it is not intended for 
 reading; it is not for a book; in the printed page its diffase- 
 ness, even its commonplace is as intolerable as in the pul- 
 pit it was even delightful while the man was speaking; it 
 was his business to be in possession of his hearers, to hold 
 their attention entirely possessed. The argument in a 
 sermon should not be a mere topical statement, but a series 
 of obvious inferences; how many preachers err hi prcjoar 
 
James Parsons Illustrated. 415 
 
 ing as they would prepare a thesis for a college, or a paper 
 for a philosophical society, forgetting that* a congrega- 
 tion is no more a literary society, than the Bible is a 
 " Kritic of Kant; " our sermons partake too much the air 
 of a special pleading; it is a fine saying of Claude that the 
 pulpit is the seat of good natural sense, of the good sense 
 of good men. Every sermon, indeed, should contaia an 
 argument, for all persuasion is an argument, but the ulti- 
 mate purpose wiU be best served if you do not allow this 
 design too obviously to appear. But I refer especially to 
 aU this as illustrated iu some forms of the accent of con- 
 viction, and statement, enunciated thus clearly, scriptu- 
 rally, simply, perhaps too affluently in fancy, in reading — 
 but you may beHeve how effective in the dehvery — the fol- 
 lowiag passage from James Parsons on 
 
 SIN AS THE CAUSE OF THE DIFFUSION AND UNIVERSALITY OF 
 DEATH. 
 
 " Death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." 
 And so it follows in a subsequent verse, " Nevertheless, death 
 reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not 
 sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the 
 figure of him that was to come. By the ofience of one, judgment 
 came upon all men to condemnation." In Adam all die ; all men 
 are sinners, and therefore against all men the penalty is still 
 standing. Corporeal death, that event which separates the soul 
 fi-om the body, and which then dismisses the body as the victim 
 of putrefaction, to moulder back to primeval dust, is a penalty 
 which has been exacted and must be exacted from all the sons 
 and daughters of Adam. What man is he that liveth and that 
 shall not see death ? " We must all die, and be like water spilt 
 on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again." Rich and 
 poor shall go down to the grave, and worms alike shall cover 
 them." It is appointed unto all men once to die. The ages at 
 which the allotment is suffered vary. There is the child at the 
 mother's breast, or in the nurse's arms ; there is the youth in the 
 
 *^* Manse of Mastland. 
 
41 6 On the Formation of Style, etc, 
 
 spring-tide of gaiety and buoyant spirits; there is ^^ full-grown 
 manvQ. the maturity of v/isdom and of power; there are the agedi 
 bending under the decrepitude and infirmity of long protracted 
 years. The method in which the allotment is suffered varies. 
 The convulsions of nature ; war ; famine ; accident ; disease, 
 slow and sudden. And yet, my brethren, amid the variety of 
 modes, and the variety of seasons, the path is but one and the 
 same. All these things are but so many avenues leading down 
 to the one narrow house, which has been appointed for all liv- 
 ing ; and never should the subject of death be reviewed by our- 
 selves, and never should the subject of death be pondered by 
 ourselves, without viewing it and pondering it in connexion 
 with sin. Sin,, the invariable antecedent ; death, the invariable 
 consequence! Sin the cause; death the effect ! The demerit of 
 the one producing the desolation of the other ! Ye children of 
 mortality, forget it not — approve it and apply it. Sin formed 
 the volcano, the earthquake, the hurricane, the pestilence which 
 mows down the population of cities and empires ! Sbi inflicts 
 every pang ! Sin nerves every death-throe ! Sin stains and 
 blanches every corpse ! Sin weaves every shroud ! Sin shapes 
 every coffin ! Sin digs every grave ! Siri writes every ej)itaph ! 
 Sin paints every hatchment ! Sin sculptures every monument I 
 Sin feeds every worm ! The waste and the havoc of centuries 
 that are gone, and the waste and the havoc of centuries yet to 
 come, all reverberate in one awful voice, " Death has passed upon 
 all men, for that all have sinned ! " 
 
 Spiritual death, my brethren, which consists, as we have ob- 
 served, in the alienation of the human heart from God, and 
 which the apostle has emphatically described in the second chap- 
 ter of the epistle to the Ephesians, as being " dead in trespasses 
 and sins," constitutes the state of every man by nature. Every 
 man in consequence of that state of spiritual death, is also in 
 peril of proceeding to receive the recompense of it in the agonies 
 of death eternal. It will be observed upon this important sub- 
 ject that there cannot be the least question or doubt ; " For 
 (says the apostle) as many as have sinned without law," — that 
 is to say, without being placed within the external domination 
 of the written law of the Almighty — " as many as have sinned 
 
The Style of James Parsons. 417 
 
 without law shall also perish without law : and as many as have 
 sinned in the law" — that is, with the knowledge of the written 
 revelation of God — " shall be judged by the law. For not the 
 hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law 
 shall be justified. For when the Gentiles, which have not the 
 law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having 
 not the law, are a law unto themselves: w^hich show the works 
 of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing 
 witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing, or else 
 excusing one another ; in the day when God shall judge the se- 
 crets of men, by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel." My 
 hearers attend : " By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be 
 justified ;" then they must be condemned. " All have sinned, 
 and come short of the glory of God." If then you have come 
 short of the glory of God, you must be lost; it cannot be denied, 
 nor be disputed. / tell to every man now present^ that he is guilty 
 of sinning against the Almighty — that if there be no intervention 
 of mercy so mighty and so majestic as to satisfy the demands of 
 justice, to quench her fire, and sheathe her sword — if there be 
 not mercy, free, boundless, omnipotent, and eternal, every human 
 being will stand before the judgment-bar of God to receive the 
 sentence of his condemnation. He must be banished for ever 
 from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power ; 
 and he must go down to those abodes of torment where there 
 are agonies unspeakable and inconceivable ; where the smoke 
 of torment ascendeth up for ever and for ever. Go, my hearers^ 
 to the brink of eternity, contemplate in imagination the scenes, 
 of that horrible pit which the word of revelation has presented 
 to your view — contemplate the worm that dieth not — contem- 
 plate the fire that has been prepared for the devil and his an- 
 gels — contemplate the blackness of darkness — contemplate 
 the smoke of torment that ascendeth up for ever and ever ! 
 What was it that gave to that worm its fang but sin? 
 AVhat was it that gave to that fire its intensity but sin f What 
 was it that gave to that blackness its shadows but sin ? What 
 was it that gave to that torment its woe but sin ? The voice is 
 from the abyss uttering one wild cry, " It was sin ; it was sin ; 
 IT WAS sin! Man t^(?wZ(Z sin, and therefore man must suffer?" 
 There is a rigid equity between the one and the other. 
 18* 
 
41 8 On the Formation of Style^ etc. 
 
 " Non fiimum, sed lucem" — " Not smoke but light." This 
 is a motto to take into the pulpit. If I cannot give light 
 there, I had far better keep away ; or, if there, I had far 
 better read a chapter or a text and then be silent ; there 
 may be a hope that this will make its way. When we go 
 into a Papist place of worship we are often steeped in a 
 stench of musk and aloes; "Oh!" we say, "would that 
 there were only real human words here, real human feehngs 
 here ; these stenches are not the prayers of the saints." 
 "We sit stiU, and presently rises the long, almost inarticu- 
 late, and inaudible mumbhng and muttering of the Latin. 
 " Oh !" we say, " this is but an unknown tongue," and what 
 is that better which is but a smoke of speech ? It is so of 
 many preachers, that aU they have contrived to do by their 
 words is to reverse the canon of Horace, and to obtain "fumo 
 est lucem" — *^ smoke from Hght." They have turned the 
 very New Testament itself into darkness. Thus, often either 
 with wild, fanciful, mystical interpretations, or with misty 
 metaphysics, with long and complicated words, with a ve- 
 hement and noisy manner — the subject was plain enough 
 when the preacher began, but dark enough at the close, 
 because he did not remember the maxim : " Nonfumum sed 
 lucem" A rare volume might be filled, and the materials 
 are close at our hand, with illustrations of nonsense ser- 
 mons. 
 
 M. Mullois quotes the well-known anecdote of Louis XTV. 
 in the chapel at Versailles, when some preacher took the 
 occasion boldly to inveigh against the vices and the pecu- 
 liar dangers of the great, and at length exclaimed, " Woe 
 to the rich ! Woe to the great !" The courtiers murmured, 
 although the king had lowered his eyes ; after the sermon, 
 they gathered round the monarch, and talked of the imper- 
 tinence of the preacher, and of reprimanding him for his 
 temerity. The king quietly said, " Gentlemen, the preacher 
 has done his duty, now let us do oiu^s." It is one of the 
 
Disappointment in Printed Sermons. 419 
 
 most natural and simple sayings recorded of Louis XIV. 
 Not to shine on pages should be the ambition of the 
 preacher, he Hves in a voice, and the voice expires. The 
 mighty masters and mistresses of song know this, and are 
 content to act upon it. Malibrans, Brahams, Jenny Linds, 
 and Sims Keeves can have no posthumous fame, The mu- 
 sic they hold in their hands is just the same as we have in 
 our di-awing-rooms. They live in the moment, but then in 
 their world it is a very great moment. The soul interprets, 
 and fills out, and gives the rest and the movement to each 
 bar, this is their business. We have no doubt that the pul- 
 pit has suffered greatly by short-hand writers ; the taking 
 down of sermons ; the incessant publication of sermons ; 
 the fastidiousness that waits on nicely-balanced images and 
 harmoniously-constructed sentences. All this interferes 
 with, and robs the address of its accent of conviction ; the 
 orator can no more survive than the singer. Our book- 
 shelves groan beneath the weight of voluminous tomes, 
 which originally found their expression in sermons; and 
 during the last few years the pubHcation of sermons has 
 broken out with astonishing vigor. There is a simple rea- 
 son for this. If an edition of sermons be, on the average, 
 of all books least hkely to be read, it is also, on the aver- 
 age, of all books most certain to be sold. Any preacher in 
 tolerable favor can command an audience not only for his 
 tongue but for his pen. It must be admitted, and most 
 readers very well know it, that there is an amazing differ- 
 ence between the successful and impressive word in the 
 pulpit, and success and impression in the arm-chair by the 
 fireside. It is quite amusing to hear how stoutly peoj)le 
 wiU insist upon it that a sermon is not all printed, and give 
 vent to their disappointment in reading that to which they 
 had listened with so much pleasure. Of course, as I have 
 said before, all is not printed ; manner cannot be printed, 
 nor accent, nor a thousand little particulars which go to 
 
420 On the Formation of Style ^ etc. 
 
 make up the undefinable cliarm. Words in their delivery 
 seem so much more full, so much more copious and com- 
 prehensive ; and audiences yearn to receive a sermon, un- 
 der the impression that it will be as much to them in coldly 
 reading as when it leaped red-hot from the sympathetic fur- 
 nace of the speaker's soul. They yearn to read it and yawn 
 over it. Printed sermons in general can be little better 
 than decanted soda-water a day old. ' 
 
 Great sermons which have moved us to aU the deeps, we 
 have desired to see thdin in print ; perhaps they were very 
 well, probably very poor indeed ; in any case, how different 
 to that ineffable flight of soul, the searching, penetrating 
 words we heard. This is exactly as it ought to be, no 
 stronger proof to those who did not hear, that the man was 
 really at home in his work. "Whitefield's sermons are very- 
 poor things to read compared with their overwhelming 
 power. Oratory is neither in writing, acting, nor even 
 speaking. Where is the fragrance of a flower ? Where are 
 the tones of a harp ? They were there, here, they are 
 gone, you cannot catch them — ^it is so with the accent of 
 conviction. This is the fragrance and the music of a sermon 
 good for anything ; and although I have taken high illus- 
 trations, I again say that this sacred fire may burn on the 
 altar of any soul, itself persuaded and impressed. Of 
 course, when it is really a great soul as well as a sanctified 
 one — a David, a St. Bernard, or an Edward Irving — the 
 conviction accumulated, and on fire through all the facul- 
 ties of a great nature, proportionately compels the audi- 
 ence to tremble and thrill. 
 
 And it comes out of this that the sermon will be plain. 
 M. Mullois has several chapters with such headings as the 
 following : " The Sermon should be popular ; " " The Ser- 
 mon should be plain ; " " The Sermon should be short." 
 Another chapter follows on " Fact and kindliness," and on 
 " Interest, emotion, and animation." Now, in reality, while 
 
^^Fill np the CashJ^ 421 
 
 all these topics are worthy of separate thought and enf(5rce- 
 rnent, they all are related to those two canons on which we 
 have dwelt already ; that to address men well, they must 
 be loved much ; and that to persuade them, there must be 
 on the speaker's tongue the accent of conviction. All this 
 results, in fact, we beheve, from the over-full soul — aU su- 
 perfluity flows from a fuU heart. There is a twofold sense 
 in which it is true that " out of the abundance of the heart 
 the mouth speaketh." The heart not only constrains, it 
 restrains ; artificial speech always lacks the real flavor and 
 force which the heart gives to words — and certainly it is not 
 to be supposed that words — words — mere words alone, 
 either indicate the full heart, or the ability to reach the 
 heart. This fulness, of divine xjleroma, is not indicated by 
 the organ of language. The late Dr. James Alexander 
 says : "I Hstened yesterday to a sermon, and I am glad I 
 do not know the preacher's name — it was twenty-five min- 
 utes long — all the matter might have been uttered in five ; 
 it was like what the ladies call * trifle ' — all sweetness and 
 froth, except a modicum of cake at the bottom — it was, 
 doubtless, written extempore." When a young clergyman 
 once inquired of Dr. Bellamy " what he should do to have 
 matter for his discourses," the shrewd old gentleman re- 
 plied, " Fill up the cask— ^ZZ up the cask — fill up the cask ; 
 then, if you tap it anywhere, you get up a good stream ; if 
 you put in but Httle, it will dribble, dribble, dribble, and 
 you must tap, tap, tap, and then get but little after all." 
 But this does not represent all — this will not give that 
 piquancy and plainness, that instantaneous power of touch 
 which is, in fact, the fuU mind flavored and spiced by an 
 intense soul. We think it very likely that the influence and 
 power of sermons have been impaired and impeded by their 
 length. All men, whatever their attainment, or capacity, 
 or experience, in Protestant churches, have been expected 
 to fill out their sermons to a certain length — and that 
 
422 On tlie Formation of Style ^ etc, 
 
 length, perhaps, quite sufficient for human patience, even 
 if the preacher be a man of eloquence and conviction. 
 How, then, when he is neither one nor the other, or, at 
 best, a Lilliputian in either? It is true, " Omne supei^- 
 vacuum manat de pleno pectore." All overflowing flows from 
 a full heart. Sometimes the danger Hes on the other side ; 
 Horace, indeed, says : " Esto brevis " — " Be short." He 
 also says : Brevis esse laboro, dbscurus fio " — " I strive to be 
 short, I become obscure ; " and preachers should use and 
 give to their hearers whatever adds really to the apprehen- 
 sion of the subject in their own mind ; there is an unwise 
 conciseness, as there is a tedious diffuseness ; aU that brings 
 nearer is useful ; aU that tends more to unveil the subject 
 to the mind helps ; there are among our modem preachers 
 many whose words suffer thus, and their people suffer in 
 them, while it is quite possible to drown the sense in a be- 
 wildering world of sounds ; it is also possible to fail through 
 want of application ; few audiences will beat a nugget of 
 gold into gold leaf for themselves — very few are disposed 
 to be at any trouble. We heard a criticism upon a minis- 
 ter only a day or two since : " It is so nice to hear our min- 
 ister ; you hear the same thing from month to month over 
 again — dear man — ^it's always the same — Ah ! you always 
 know where to find him." Therefore, we say, encourage a 
 flow— not a flood. Karely can it be wise to imitate the cat- 
 aract in force or speed, but the river you may imitate. Dr. 
 Johnson says, " It is so much easier to acquire correctness 
 than flow that I would say to every young preacher, ' Write 
 as fast as you can.' " Whitefield's rule was ** never to take 
 back anything unless it were wicked." "This," says Dr. 
 Alexander, " is very different from rapid utterance or pre- 
 cipitancy. Deliberate speech is, on the whole, most favor- 
 able." Pastor Harms was wont to comprehend his idea of 
 delivery to students in three L's — " Langsam — Laut — lAeb- 
 lich" poorly rendered by lengthened — that is, deliberate — 
 
M, Mullois pleads f 07' Brevity. 423 
 
 — ^loud and lovely ; and Luther's maxim is still more un- 
 translatable " Tritt friscli auf—thu's maul auf—hoor hold 
 auf — "Stand up cheerily — speak up manfully — leave off 
 speedily,'^'* 
 
 M. Mullois insists, with great earnestness, on the neces- 
 sity of brevity. He quotes St. Francois de Sales : 
 
 The good Saint Francois, in his rules to the preachers of his 
 Order, directs that their sermons should be short. 
 
 " BeUeve me, and I speak from experience, the more you say, 
 the less will the hearers retain ; the less you say, the more they 
 will profit. By dint of burdening their memory, you will over- 
 whelm it ; just as a lamp is extinguished by feeding it with too 
 much oil, and plants are choked by immoderate irrigation. 
 
 " When a sermon is too long, the end erases the middle from 
 the memory, and the middle the beginning. 
 
 "Even mediocre preachers are acceptable, provided their dis- 
 courses are short ; whereas even the best preachers are a burden 
 when they speak too long." 
 
 Is not long jDreaching very much like an attempt to surpass 
 these men, who were so highly imbued with the spirit of Chris- 
 tianity ? 
 
 He continues : 
 
 But it will be objected ; What can be said in ten or seven 
 minutes ? Much, much more than is generally thought, when due 
 preparation is made, when we have a good knowledge of man- 
 kind, and are well versed in religious matters. . . . Have 
 not a few words often sufficed to revolutionize multitudes, and 
 to produce an immense impression ? 
 
 The harangues of Napoleon only lasted a few minutes, yet 
 they electrified whole armies. The speech at Bordeaux did not 
 exceed a quarter of an hour, and yet it resounded throughout 
 the world. Had it been longer, it would have been less effective. 
 In fifteen weeks, with a sermon of seven minutes every Sunday, 
 one might give a complete course of religious instruction, if the 
 sermons were well digested beforehand. 
 
424 ^^^ ^^^^ Formation of Style ^ etc. 
 
 If, then, you wish to be successful, in the first place fix the 
 length of your sermon, and never go beyond the time ! be in- 
 flexible on that score. Should you exceed it, apologize to your 
 audience for so doing, and prove in the pulpit of truth that you 
 can be faithful to your word. 
 
 Hs * * * * * 
 
 " But do speak more at length. . . . you are wrong in 
 being so brief . . . you only tantalize your audience . . . 
 you deprive them of a real pleasure." Expostulations like these 
 will pour in upon you ; but don't listen to them : be inflexible, 
 for those who urge them are enemies without knowing it. Be 
 more rigid than ever in observing the rule which you have pre- 
 scribed for yourself. Then your sermon will be talked of — ^it 
 will be a phenomenon — everybody will come to see a seimon of 
 seven minutes' duration. The people will come ; the rich will 
 follow. Faith will bring the one, and curiosity will attract the 
 other, and thus the Divine word will have freer course and be 
 glorified. . . . 
 
 This is certainly, to speak in paradox, carrying brevity to 
 its utmost extent. Preachers of the Church of Eome have 
 usually designed brevity. We believe they have no in- 
 stances, like those tremendous trials of patience in the great 
 Puritan and Church of England preachers, in the seven- 
 teenth and eighteenth centuries, who did hold their audi- 
 ences for hours. It is noteworthy, although we do not 
 speak of exceptional occasions, nor do we forget instances 
 to the contrary, that some of the greatest and most useful 
 preachers of our day never pass beyond half an hour, 
 while others are scarcely ever so long. Perhaps if preach- 
 ers remembered more frequently that words wiU not come 
 back, " Nescii vox missa reverti " — " A word sent abroad can 
 never return," it would check in all a too impulsive flow ; 
 surely it might make us all tremble to think of the immor- 
 tahty of our words, and especially if they are uttered, who 
 can Hmit their destination? Who can tell the soil into 
 which they may fall, and in what manner they shall bring 
 
TTie Sermon should he Plain. 
 
 425 
 
 forth fruit ? Certain it is, tliey shall never return, therefore 
 should the conscience dictate the word, should rule the in- 
 fluence, shape the sentence, and give accent to the tone. 
 This would be the true study of the passions ; of that dif- 
 ficult and yet so deskable j)art of pulpit power, the pathetic. 
 It is to be supposed we have, in our turn, all been compelled 
 to laugh where the orator intended we should cry ; he had 
 learned his lesson so badly. He knew nothing of what he 
 was speaking, simulating a tone ; as when an auditor spoke 
 of a rather celebrated French preacher, and said, " In your 
 preaching just now, jou pronounced, ' Depart ye cursed,' 
 exactly as if you had been saying, ' Come, ye blessed of My 
 Father.' " We do not imply from this that, beside the 
 preparation of the heart, there is not necessary a human 
 artist-side to preparation for the pulpit, in the first place, 
 as the whole result will depend on the true humanity, and 
 fine texture of the human instrument itself. This is a 
 human side, and then, beyond this, what right has any man 
 to suppose himself exempted from the old law of labor ? 
 "By the file, and by the whetstone," to quote again from 
 Horace, the work proceeds ^^ Silabor et mora liiiice," — "By 
 the labor and by the tediousness of the file." To aU suc- 
 cess goes patience, plodding, and perseverance, and the 
 great masters of speech, however free, full, and flashing 
 their words might be, were no real exceptions to this great 
 law ; on the contrary, they illustrated it. *•' Fungar vwe 
 cotis." " I will do the office of a whetstone," and this refers 
 to external helps and aids. The whetstone cannot cut it- 
 self, but it can sharpen the steel and enable it to cut ; and 
 so with all studies. AU the stores and accumulations of 
 mental wealth and discipline, every study is a whetstone to 
 sharpen the wits. Moreover, if the iron be blunt, then to 
 the file or the whetstone must be put more strength. What 
 can any science, language, or book, do for a teacher? 
 Mathematics, criticism, they are valuable, but they are only 
 
426 On the Formation of Style^ etc. 
 
 valuable as they are proved by the labor of the file, not in 
 themselves ; they are a kind of whetstone on which to 
 sharpen the intelligence. They are hke a hone, dead and 
 lifeless in itself, yet calling forth the edige and sharpness 
 in the steel. All people must in their time have been 
 amazed at the Httle that study and reading in many depart- 
 ments seem to have effected for many men. 
 
 And if w^e seem to step from these considerations to some 
 apparently not so closely, at first sight, connected with 
 them, it is for the purpose of asking what, in the whole 
 range of culture, can go beyond the enabling a man to speak 
 plainly upon the matters he takes in hand ? From some 
 cause or other, we believe, if auditors were polled, their ver- 
 dict would be that in general preaching is obscure. M. 
 Mullois well, and not needlessly says, " the sermon should 
 be plain." A spirit thoroughly in earnest, when it attempts 
 to enter regions where perhaps the multitude may be un- 
 able to follow, will usually convey a feehng, an impression 
 of an elevated and healthful character ; but no sermon, 
 even if it have passages of this character should be wanting 
 in strokes and general delineations and impressions which 
 should entitle it to the character of a plain sermon ; great 
 statements, great enforcements, and great influences dis- 
 tinctly felt. This has been the mark of all great oratory. 
 Demosthenes has ever been held as a mark and a model in 
 this particular. "What we know of the neglected, and al- 
 most forgotten, but splendid orations of Bohngbroke, one of 
 the greatest of English masters, was of this type ; and the 
 invectives and orations of Chatham, Brougham, and Fox. 
 When we look at the great masters of pulpit eloquence, 
 MassUlon, Bourdaloue, Saurin, Hall and even Irving, it is 
 the same, — ^plainness, so far from being an impediment, is 
 an element of it. Surely the question is natural enough — 
 how can that be really eloquent which is not obvious? 
 Neither a flow of speech, nor fertility of illustration can 
 
A Preacher'^ s Object Creates Earnestness, 427 
 
 constitute it, but the fitness of both to impress, and carry 
 along the feehngs of an audience ; and the end of all 
 homiletics should be twofold, namely, to furnish the mind 
 with method, and to give it freedom, freshness, and clear- 
 ness in the use of it. Dr. Newman, in his lecture on Uni- 
 versity preaching says : 
 
 But, not to go to the consideration of divine influences, which 
 is beyond my subject, the very presence of simple earnestness is 
 even in itself a powerful natural instrument to effect that toward 
 which it is directed. Earnestness creates earnestness in others 
 by sympathy ; and the more a preacher loses and is lost to him- 
 self, the more does he gain his brethren. Nor is it without some 
 logical force also ; for what is powerful enough to absorb and 
 possess a preacher, has at least a prima facie claim of attention 
 on the part of his hearer. On the other hand, anything which 
 interferes with this earnestness, or which argues its absence, is 
 still more certain to blunt the force of the most cogent argu- 
 ment conveyed in the most eloquent language. Hence it is that 
 the great philosopher of antiquity, in speaking in his " Treatise 
 on Khetoric," of the various kinds of persuasives, which are 
 available in the Art, considers the most authoritative of these to 
 be that which is drawn from personal traits of a moral nature 
 evident in the orator ; for such matters are cognizable by all 
 men, and the common sense of the world decides that it is safer, 
 where it is possible, to commit oneself to the judgment of men 
 of character, than to any considerations addressed merely to the 
 feelings or the reason. 
 
 On these grounds I would go on to lay down a precept, which 
 I trust is not extravagant, when allowance is made for the pre- 
 ciseness and the point which are unavoidable in all categorical 
 statements upon matters of conduct. It is, that preachers should 
 neglect everything whatever besides devotion to their one object, 
 and earnestness in enforcing it, till they in some good measure 
 attain to these requisites. Talent, logic, learning, words, man- 
 ner, voice, action, all are required for the perfection of a 
 preacher ; but " one thing is necessary," — an intense perception 
 and appreciation of the end for which he preaches, and that is, 
 
428 On the Formation of Style^ etc. 
 
 to be the ministering of some definite spiritual good to those 
 who hear him. Who could wish to be more eloquent, more pow- 
 erful, more successful than the Teacher of the Nations ? yet who 
 more earnest, who more natural, w^ho more unstudied, who more 
 self-forgetting than He ? 
 
 And here, in order to prevent misconception, two remarks 
 must be made, which will lead us further into the subject we are 
 engaged upon. The first is, that, in what I have been saying, I 
 do not mean that a preacher must aim at earnestness, but that 
 he must aim at his object, which is to do some spiritual good to 
 his hearers, and which will at once make him earnest. It is said 
 that, when a man has to cross an abyss by a narrow plank 
 thrown over it, it is his wisdom not to look at the plank along 
 which lies his path, but to fix his eyes steadily on the point in 
 the opposite precipice, at which the plank ends. It is by gazing 
 at the object which he must reach, and ruling himself by it, that 
 he secures to himself the powder of walking to it straight and 
 steadily. The case is the same in moral matters ; no one will 
 become really earnest by aiming directly at earnestness ; any one 
 may become earnest by meditating on the motives, and by 
 drinking at the sources of earnestness. We may of course work 
 ourselves up into a pretence, nay into a paroxysm of earnestness ; 
 as we may chafe our cold hands until they are warm. But when 
 we cease chafing we lose the warmth again ; on the contrary, 
 let the sun come out and strike us with his beams, and we need 
 no artificial chafing to be warm. The hot words, then, and 
 energetic gestures of a preacher, taken by themselves, are just as 
 much signs of earnestness, as rubbing the hands, or flapping the 
 arms together are signs of warmth ; though they are natural 
 where earnestness already exists, and pleasing as being its spon- 
 taneous concomitants. To sit down to compose for the pulpit, 
 with a resolution to be eloquent, is one impediment to persua- 
 sion ; but to be determined to be earnest is absolutely fatal to it. 
 
 He who had before his mental eye the Four Last Things, will 
 have the true earnestness, the horror or the rapture, of one who 
 witnessed a great conflagration, or discerned some rich or sub- 
 lime prospect of natural scenery. His countenance, his manner, 
 his voice, speak for him, in proportion as his view has been 
 
" Veritas Pateat, Placeat^ Moveaty 429 
 
 yivid or minute. The great English poet has described this sort 
 of eloquence, when a calamity has befallen : 
 
 Yea, this man's brow, like to a title page, 
 
 Foretells the nature of a tragic volume. 
 
 Thou tremblest, and the whiteness in thy cheek 
 
 Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand. 
 
 It is this earnestness, in the supernatural order, which is the 
 eloquence of saints ; and not of saints only, but of all Christian 
 preachers, according to the measure of their faith and love. As 
 the case would be with one who has actually seen what he re- 
 lates, the herald of tidings of the invisible world also will be, 
 from the nature of the case, whether vehement or calm, sad or 
 exulting, always simple, grave, emphatic, and peremptory ; and 
 all this, not because he has proposed to himself to be so, but be- 
 cause certain intellectual convictions involve certain external 
 manifestations. 
 
 Three things have been mentioned as constitutiii^g the 
 virtue of the orator, " Veritas pateat, Veritas placeat, Veritas 
 moveat" — "To instruct, to please, and to move." But 
 neither one or the other can be reached, nor can any be ef- 
 fective imless the meaning of the speaker be distinctly seen. 
 Therefore, all teachers of rhetoric have insisted upon perspi- 
 cuity, while we have already said that obscurity character- 
 izes, to a considerable degree we fear, most of the exercises 
 of the pulpit ; lacking that earnestness which Dr. Newman 
 demands as the chief qualification for perspicuity. Nor 
 must it be forgotten that w^eakness and obscurity are com- 
 panions. We may speak of this as arising from a bad 
 grammatical construction of sentences ; a faulty collocation 
 of adverbs and pronouns ; affected phrases, and unmeaning 
 phrases ; harsh and turgid words, resulting in long-winded 
 sentences ; or the Sesquipedalia verba, which St. Frangois de 
 Sales denounced as the pest of preaching ; but beneath all, 
 the true reason is to be found in the absence of a soul ' 
 thoroughly informed and inflamed. Mr. Potter, in his 
 " Sacred Eloquence," says : 
 
430 On the Formation of Style^ etc. 
 
 In conclusion, we will only remark that, whilst the preacher, 
 in his instructions to his flock, will aim at correctness and purity 
 of language, he will also remember that for him, as a preacher 
 of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and in view of the special end 
 which he must necessarily propose to himself, there is some- 
 thing infinitely more important than any mere correctness or 
 elegance of language. Hence, whenever it may be necessary 
 in order to render himself better understood, he will not hesi- 
 tate to sacrifice the graces, and, in one sense, even the purity 
 of language. Following the council of St. Augustine, he will 
 study the most intelligible, rather than the most elegant, man- 
 ner of expressing what he has to say. Emdentice^ appetitus 
 aliquando negligit verba cultiora^ nee curat quid bene sonet, sed 
 quid bene indicet quod ostendere intendit. For, as asks this holy 
 doctor, what is the use of expressing our ideas in the most 
 polished manner, of what use is the purity and elegance of our 
 style, if om* hearers do not comprehend our meaning ? Quid 
 prodest locutionis integritas quam non sequitur intellectus audi- 
 entis ? And he further illustrates his meaning by a very ingeni- 
 ous comparison. Quid prodest he inquires, clavis aurea si aperire 
 quod volumiis non proest, aut quid obest lignea si hoc protest? 
 But let the preacher bear in mind, whilst he strives to follow 
 these wise precepts in his practice, that this style of speaking 
 requires both intellect and skill. Let him not delude himself 
 by supposing that in order to speak with this perfect simplicity 
 of language and of style, he must therefore descend to what is 
 low or undignified. I{(jbc sic ornatum detraliit ut sordes non con- 
 traliat. Let him rather remember that in this, as in many other 
 cases, the perfection of art consists in concealing art. Ars artis 
 celare artem. It is of such simple instruction as this that Cicero 
 is speaking when he says, Negligentia est diligens ; and he says 
 what is most true, since this simple, and, at first sight, apparent- 
 ly negligent manner of preaching, indicates the man who is 
 more solicitous about the solid instruction which he is to impart 
 to his flock than about the mere words in which he is to express 
 it ; the man who is much more anxious about the interests of 
 his Master, and the welfare of his people, than his own gratifi- 
 cation as a scholar, or his reputation as a preacher. 
 
">&* cepit Amphora cur exit Urceusr 431 
 
 Why, in that art of poetry to vrhich we have referred at 
 the commencement of this pa^oer, Horace bids us beware 
 of ^mwz sjyecies, confused ideas. We have seen, and who 
 has not heard, sentences which seem, Hke the pig-faced 
 lady, or the talking-fish, incongruous. The preacher should 
 paint his ideas; should see what he means. It is the 
 absence of this which attempts the sublime, but swells only 
 into bombast, " Hence it is," says Horace, " as if you find 
 introduced a dolphin m a forest, or a wild boar in a flood." 
 Correct thinking will not always, while attempting to right 
 itself, be clear thinking; but thought ought not to dare 
 to become pubhc speech until it is cleared from all sedi- 
 ment and darkness and confusion. Rowland Hill spoke 
 of a preacher of this kind. 
 
 The attempt to drift too many matters into a discourse, 
 leading to the confusion of all the subjects belonging to it, 
 is a fruitful source of obscurity. 
 
 Hence, " Si cepit Amphora cur exit Urceus" and what is 
 it ? Is it a frying-pan, or a tea-kettle ? do you mean it for 
 a finger-glass, or a saucepan? a flower-pot, or a butter- 
 tub ? or, to adhere more closely to Horace; " If he began 
 a vase why turns it out to be a pitcher?" the pitcher 
 should understand what he can do — what his powers are 
 equal to; the coarsest pitcher that holds water is a good 
 vessel, but it is not good for the table of a prince. What 
 do you design ? In a great house there are many vessels, 
 and some to honor and some (in comparison) to dishonor, 
 iron may be the key which locks the house — gold may be 
 the vessel on the table, the ewer on the toilet; all will be 
 well if iron does not claim to be gold, or common earthen- 
 ware to be porcelain. 
 

 INDEX. 
 
 
 Page 
 
 
 Pa|e 
 
 Abelard's influence on his 
 
 
 Adams when alive - 
 
 age 
 
 193 
 
 books when publish- 
 
 
 and St. Bernard 
 
 193 
 
 ed - - - - 
 
 230 
 
 Abraham, tlie Palace of 
 
 132 
 
 — — a popular preacher — 
 
 230 
 
 and tlie stranger 
 
 314 
 
 style rugged - 
 
 230 
 
 Abundant heart, the 
 
 421 
 
 sermon on manners — 
 
 
 Acids, crystallization of 
 
 24 
 
 unstable man, the - 
 
 231 
 
 Accommodating hearers ca- 
 
 
 characteristics of style 
 
 232 
 
 pacities 
 
 307 
 
 — aphorisms 
 
 233 
 
 Afflictions - - - 
 
 239 
 
 such a voice 
 
 234 
 
 of the righteous 
 
 56 
 
 changes on a word 
 
 235 
 
 Age of miracles, an 
 
 173 
 
 division of a sermon — 
 
 236 
 
 Aim at spiritual culture 
 
 71 
 
 tongue, on the - 
 
 237 
 
 A Kempis, Thomas, sur- 
 
 
 compared with Her- 
 
 
 name of - - - 
 
 152 
 
 bert 
 
 237 
 
 Allegory, an improper use 
 
 
 be thankful 
 
 238 
 
 of - - - - 
 
 321 
 
 on mountains 
 
 238 
 
 On truth, an 
 
 330 
 
 literary characteristics 
 
 
 Illustration of ancient 
 
 331 
 
 of age 
 
 240 
 
 Sin of - - 
 
 332 
 
 quaint preaching, — 
 
 
 Does, help 
 
 336 
 
 " Take thy son " 
 
 241 
 
 Almost a Christian - 
 
 58 
 
 a transition age . 
 
 241 
 
 Amazing power of sound - 
 
 10 
 
 birth of Christ— glori- 
 
 
 American Backwood preach- 
 
 
 ous song . 
 
 242 
 
 ers - 
 
 - 29 
 
 compared with An- 
 
 
 Methodism 
 
 30 
 
 drewes and Donne . 
 
 245 
 
 Analogies, unite Nature 
 
 
 " clouds," — God in a 
 
 
 and Scripture 
 
 302 
 
 circle 
 
 245 
 
 Analogy, elucidates Divine 
 
 
 and Henry Smith, un 
 
 
 truths 
 
 296 
 
 known 
 
 247 
 
 Adams, Puritan — 
 
 
 friendship with Donne 247 
 
 ignorance of life, etc. 
 
 229 
 
 glorious age of, the . 
 
 247 
 
 (433) 
 
 
 
 
434 Lamps^ Pitchers, and Trumpets. 
 
 Page 
 
 Adams lost in oblivion ; 
 
 
 Anecdotes continued. 
 
 
 character of works 
 
 248 
 
 Crow's nest, a 
 
 278 
 
 Analogy : — 
 
 
 Franklin and the Quaker 293 
 
 An instinct of thought . 
 
 301 
 
 Fate of a sermon . 
 
 213 
 
 An inestimable weapon . 
 
 303 
 
 " Fill up the cask " 
 
 421 
 
 Argument from the 
 
 298 
 
 Good swimmer wanted, a 
 
 28 
 
 
 299 
 
 " He kens about leather " 
 
 385 
 
 what mind is needed 
 
 
 Hill, Rowland, preaching 
 
 281 
 
 for .... 
 
 300 
 
 Horrors of war 
 
 290 
 
 A method of argam.ent 
 
 
 How preachers are made . 
 
 31 
 
 against Pantheism 
 
 303 
 
 James I., of 
 
 264 
 
 A most hopeful torch 
 
 303 
 
 Jesuit's horse, the 
 
 30 
 
 Employed by Scripture . 
 
 302 
 
 Jacobites 
 
 210 
 
 Experience a name for 
 
 
 Jay, William, of . 
 
 72 
 
 moral 
 
 301 
 
 Juxtaposition of ideas . 
 
 287 
 
 From science 
 
 307 
 
 Kneeling order, the 
 
 31 
 
 God proved by 
 
 302 
 
 Lighthouse-keeper, the . 
 
 72 
 
 Great discoveries, reason- 
 
 
 Louis XIV, of . 
 
 418 
 
 ings from * 
 
 300 
 
 Methodist horse, the 
 
 31 
 
 Prompter and guide of life, 
 
 
 Nelson, John, of . 
 
 27 
 
 a . . 
 
 300 
 
 No Doctors of divinity 
 
 30 
 
 Poet and metaphysician 
 
 
 Of a most amiable char- 
 
 
 meet in . . 
 
 301 
 
 acter 
 
 288 
 
 What, may do 
 
 305 
 
 Old Jemmy 
 
 253 
 
 Whately (Archbishop), on 
 
 300 
 
 Ostentatious 
 
 34 
 
 Used by Christian teach- 
 
 
 Philosophic warmer, the . 
 
 289 
 
 ers . . 
 
 301 
 
 Polite preacher the 
 
 34 
 
 Andersen, Hans C, in the 
 
 
 Power of the crucifix 
 
 143 
 
 pulpit 
 
 147 
 
 Preaching to the elect 
 
 282 
 
 Andrewes, Launcelot :— 
 
 
 Preacher's wardrobe, a . 
 
 29 
 
 a pitcher 
 
 13 
 
 Religion an umbrella 
 
 282 
 
 characteristics of, 14-243 
 
 Running from i)reachers . 
 
 29 
 
 illustrations of his 
 
 
 Sammy Breeze 
 
 255 
 
 style 
 
 14 
 
 Son of Amram 
 
 145 
 
 Anecdote— 
 
 
 Stepping in the way 
 
 31 
 
 " And Bartholomew " 
 
 209 
 
 Strange prayers . 
 
 30 
 
 An ill-mannered parson . 
 
 60 
 
 • Test of penitence 
 
 153 
 
 Applicant for ordination, 
 
 
 Throwing stones . 
 
 381 
 
 an . . . 
 
 32 
 
 Well is deep, the . 
 
 71 
 
 Aquinas and Bonaventura 143 
 
 Ancient Mariner , quotation 
 
 
 A set-off to conversation . 
 
 283 
 
 from 
 
 33 
 
 Bernard, St., and the Vir- 
 
 
 Anthony, St., and the cob- 
 
 
 gin . 
 
 212 
 
 bler 
 
 313 
 
 Billy Hibbard 
 
 31 
 
 of Vieyra's preaching . 
 
 143 
 
 Bishop's reproof, a 
 
 73 
 
 quoted • 
 
 144 
 
 Bishop and his Chaplain, 
 
 
 " Pulpit satirist, a . 
 
 268 
 
 the 
 
 299 
 
 " Characteristics and 
 
 
 Bold French preacher, a 
 
 21 
 
 wit 
 
 268 
 
 "But" 
 
 209 
 
 Sermon to fishes 
 
 268 
 
 Commending to the con- 
 
 
 Apes in the temple . 
 
 250 
 
 science . 
 
 42 
 
 Aphorisms . 
 
 233 
 
 Page 
 
Index. 
 
 435 
 
 
 Page 
 
 
 Page 
 
 Apt to teach 
 
 47 
 
 Bernard St., spiritual viva- 
 
 
 Arminianisni and rational- 
 
 
 city of . 
 
 163 
 
 ism . . , 
 
 112 
 
 birth and parentage . 
 
 163 
 
 Aretinus and St. Jerome 
 
 153 
 
 character of parents . 
 
 163 
 
 Artist faculty in preaching . 
 
 9 
 
 's stirring times of boy- 
 
 164 
 
 Art and Carlyle 
 
 176 
 
 hood 
 
 164 
 
 and Ruskin 
 
 176 
 
 two instincts of age . 
 
 105 
 
 needed for the pulpit . 
 
 424 
 
 conversion of . 
 
 106 
 
 of public speaking 
 
 140 
 
 ]30wer over others 
 
 166 
 
 of feebleness . 
 
 318 
 
 enters Citeaux — mon- 
 
 
 perfectness 
 
 430 
 
 astic reformer ; severe au- 
 
 
 Athanasius and Calvin 
 
 107 
 
 sterities 
 
 107 
 
 of Judea. the . 
 
 76 
 
 love of nature — be- 
 
 
 Audiences, two 
 
 47 
 
 comes abbot 
 
 108 
 
 Augustine, St. 
 
 
 in the Valley of 
 
 
 style characterized 
 
 109 
 
 Wormwood — builds the 
 
 
 the life made the 
 
 
 Abbey of Clairvaux ; des- 
 
 
 preacher . 
 
 110 
 
 cription of 
 
 169 
 
 passionate love of 
 
 
 and William of Cham- 
 
 
 beauty 
 
 110 
 
 peaux 
 
 170 
 
 confessions quoted 
 
 110 
 
 literary labors . 
 
 172 
 
 source of wealth to 
 
 
 —. — an age of miracles 
 
 173 
 
 the Puritans 
 
 110 
 
 travels ; visits Paris, . 
 
 
 the Mote in the sun- 
 
 
 impeaches the monks ; 
 
 
 beam 
 
 111 
 
 splendor of the church . 
 
 174 
 
 Moule's estimate, of . 
 
 111 
 
 exhortation to the 
 
 
 depth and clearness of 
 
 
 Knight Templars 
 
 177 
 
 vision 
 
 112 
 
 arbiter between popes 
 
 179 
 
 c St Paul, and compared 
 
 94 
 
 Songs of Solomon, illustra- 
 
 
 Author's method of using 
 
 • 
 
 tions of . 
 
 182 
 
 sacred images, the 
 
 322 
 
 death of brother, sor- 
 
 
 Awfulness of preaching, the 
 
 290 
 
 row for Gerard 
 funeral sermon for 
 
 190 
 
 Backwood preachers 
 
 30 
 
 Gerard 
 
 191 
 
 bishops 
 
 28 
 
 Abelard, and . 
 
 193 
 
 Basil, first orator of the 
 
 
 preaches a crusade 
 
 194 
 
 Church 
 
 108 
 
 death . 
 
 195 
 
 St., legend of . 
 
 128 
 
 Berridge, John : — 
 
 
 Bartholomew, and . 
 
 208 
 
 characteristics . 
 
 275 
 
 Bathos reproved 
 
 145 
 
 epitaph 
 
 276 
 
 Beauty of morning, the 
 
 64 
 
 Sergeant If 
 
 276 
 
 Beautiful garden, the 
 
 389 
 
 Be thankful 
 
 238 
 
 Believe in Christ 
 
 73 
 
 Boiling water 
 
 43 
 
 Begetting, a new 
 
 244 
 
 Book of Leviticus, the 
 
 291 
 
 Beginning of a sermon, the 152 
 
 Books, use of 
 
 294 
 
 Beelzebub and his Hogs 
 
 257 
 
 Bold French preacher, a 
 
 21 
 
 Bernard, St., mediaeval 
 
 
 Boundless loving kindness 119 
 
 preacher . 162 
 
 -195 
 
 Bossuet, preaching of 
 
 208 
 
 Foremost man of his 
 
 
 Luther contrasted, and 
 
 387 
 
 age ... 
 
 162 
 
 Bow in the clouds, the 
 
 258 
 
 Elijah of Europe, the 102 
 
 Burden of Babylon, the 
 
 83 
 
436 Lamps ^ Pitchers^ and Trumpets. 
 
 
 Page 
 
 
 Pago 
 223 
 
 Burden of Egypt, the 
 
 84 
 
 Christianity and Paganism. 
 
 Tyre . . 
 
 85 
 
 success of 
 
 104 
 
 Burial rites . 
 
 131 
 
 Church and State . 
 
 113 
 
 Bathos, specimens of 
 
 315 
 
 a power in dark ages . 
 
 114 
 
 of Bellew, J. C. 
 
 316 
 
 Legends 
 
 
 Bradbury (Bold Tom) 
 
 283 
 
 Council of Nice . 
 
 72 
 
 wit and humor of 
 
 283 
 
 St. Basil . 
 
 12b 
 
 sins ; sermon on Queen 
 
 
 Devil and Saint . 
 
 74 
 
 Anne ; dislike of Watt's 
 
 
 Frater Diabolus 
 
 149 
 
 hymns 
 
 284 
 
 Holy Child Jesus 
 
 147 
 
 Bright poker, the . 
 
 311 
 
 Spiridion, the shep- 
 
 
 Butler's Analogy. 
 
 
 herd 
 
 73 
 
 does it satisfy ? 
 
 297 
 
 Chrysostom. St. 
 
 
 Martineau, James, on . 
 
 297 
 
 birth and parentage . 
 
 115 
 
 Macintosh, Sir J., on . 
 
 298 
 
 Mother's character 
 
 115 
 
 Pitt, William . 
 
 298 
 
 studies rhetoric 
 
 115 
 
 Schedel on 
 
 298 
 
 Master's regret 
 
 115 
 
 Hennell, Miss . 
 
 298 
 
 Augustine's conversion 
 
 116 
 
 starting point . 
 
 300 
 
 determines to abandon 
 
 
 character of 
 
 299 
 
 the world 
 
 116 
 
 Byron, and Lake Leman . 
 
 336 
 
 Mother's entreaties, her 
 
 
 
 
 death 
 
 116 
 
 Calais Lighthouse . 
 
 72 
 
 becomes a monk, a her- 
 
 
 Calvin and Athanasius 
 
 107 
 
 mit 
 
 117 
 
 Carlyle and the fine arts . 
 
 176 
 
 ordination, an orator . 
 
 117 
 
 Cartwright, Peter, charac 
 
 
 revolt of Antioch, des- 
 
 
 t eristics of 
 
 263 
 
 ecration of the statues, 
 
 
 compared with South 263 
 
 fear in the city 
 
 118 
 
 Caturce, Master, Story of 
 
 22 
 
 an appeal to the Em- 
 
 
 and the Dominican 
 
 22 
 
 ^ peror 
 
 118 
 
 conduct before judges 
 
 
 orations on the statues 119 
 
 death 
 
 23 
 
 quotations from 
 
 119 
 
 Caxtoniana, quotation from 399 
 
 Bishop of Constantino- 
 
 
 Characteristics, Andrewe's 
 
 
 ple 
 
 120 
 
 and style . 
 
 243 
 
 's secret departure, a 
 
 
 Donne's, Dr., and style 
 
 245 
 
 social reformer 
 
 121 
 
 Herbert, George, of . 
 
 14 
 
 's enemies ; Synod of 
 
 
 Keble, William 
 
 14 
 
 the oak ; 43 charges 
 
 122 
 
 Puritan, Adams 
 
 230 
 
 heroism, " What can I 
 
 
 " works 
 
 248 
 
 fear" . . 
 
 123 
 
 Some old sermons 
 
 252 
 
 banishment ; tumult 
 
 
 Hebrew poetry 
 
 . 51 
 
 of the people 
 
 124 
 
 Chapel and theatre 
 
 208 
 
 return. Gibbon's des- 
 
 
 Christ, birth of 
 
 242 
 
 cription 
 
 124 
 
 conqueror, the . 
 
 243 
 
 offends the Empress . 
 
 125 
 
 His own evidence 
 
 92 
 
 second banishment ; 
 
 
 how will come 
 
 92 
 
 destruction of the Cathe- 
 
 
 in the lonely cell 
 
 143 
 
 dral 
 
 126 
 
 Christians, cold 
 
 322 
 
 a wanderer, etc. 
 
 127 
 
 — must fly 
 
 323 
 
 Legend of St. Basil; 
 
 
 — r- liufus, a 
 
 /163 
 
 death 
 
 128 
 
Index, 
 
 437 
 
 Page 
 Clirysostom's St., body tak- 
 en to Constantinople, char- 
 acter of his worivs . 129 
 illustrations of 129-135 
 his eloquence . . 131 
 power of his genius . 134 
 faithfulness in preach- 
 ing ... 135 
 personal appearance . 136 
 compared with St. 
 Paul . . .137 
 Cinque ports of Mansoul . 40 
 Clement's style, illustration 
 
 of . . . .105 
 
 Clouds . . .245 
 
 Cluster of worthies, a . 220 
 
 Commentator Trapp . 220 
 
 Course sermons . . 259 
 
 Complex, ideas . . Gl 
 
 Consciousness . . 42 
 
 Conscience, peace with . 205 
 Copiousness of fancy . 203 
 
 Conviction, power of . 397 
 
 Council of Troyes . . 177 
 
 Crisis of life . . 50 
 
 Critical audience, the . 47 • 
 
 Crosses, crosses . .194 
 
 Crusades, enthusiasm for . 164 
 Strange army for . 178 
 
 Culture, culture . . 45 
 
 Dante of Judaea, the . 77 
 
 David's service . . 267 
 Dawson, William— 
 
 's method and power 12 
 
 Punch in the pulpit . 283 
 
 power over vast audi- 
 ences . . . 284 
 Darning-needle, the . 311 
 Dark-lantern, the . . 334 
 Death consequent on sin . 413 
 
 cruelty of . . 190 
 
 spiritual . .416 
 
 universal . . 417 
 
 Deborah, song of . .76 
 Decoration of the pitcher . 33 
 Definition of a man . 71 
 of a sermon . . 227 
 De la Croix, Alexander . 18 
 a Friar, leaves Roman- 
 ism . . . .18 
 
 to 
 
 Page 
 
 18 
 18 
 18 
 19 
 20 
 20 
 106 
 
 302 
 
 De la Croix condemned 
 death, preaching 
 
 passion of the cross . 
 
 at Lyons 
 
 taken to Paris, torture 
 
 preaching at the stake 
 
 martyrdom 
 
 Dt^lights of life 
 
 Design, no proof of God's 
 
 wisdom 
 
 Desecration of the Statues 118 
 Demosthenes . . 387 
 
 Despise not youth . . 71 
 
 Devils at Augsburg - - 388 
 Development of Isaiahan 
 
 ideas - - .87 
 
 Diction and style - . 383 
 
 Disappointment in printed 
 
 sermons - - . 419 
 
 Division of a sermon . 236 
 
 Dust - - .235 
 
 Earnestness, power of . 73 
 
 how to gain . . 427 
 
 Earthen vessel, the . . 16 
 Eagle, image of the . . 321 
 Education dependent on the 
 man . . . 375 
 
 Back wood preachers, of 32 
 
 Educate sympathy . . 385 
 Effects of a verse . . 293 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan . . 35 
 
 s' theology and preaching 36 
 
 wonderful sermon . 377 
 
 Eloquence — 
 
 Dawson's, William . 12 
 
 Chrysostom, St. . .129 
 
 Defined . . .397 
 
 Is mind in motion . 397 
 
 Not without culture . 46 
 
 Of Prettiness . . 396 
 
 Shopkeeping, style of . 209 
 Test of tears, proof of . 45 
 Emotion translated by sce- 
 nery . . .336 
 Entering the port . . 365 
 Eudoxia, Empress . . 125 
 Evangelical prophet, the . 77 
 Evans, Christmas — 
 
 birth and parentage ; 
 
 early years ; poverty and 
 toil ; surrounded by de- 
 
438 Lamps ^ Pitcliers, and Tritmjyets. 
 
 Page 
 praving influences; sub- 
 ject to religions impres- 
 sions . . . 341 
 
 Evans, Christmas, learns to 
 read ; goes to school ; cru- 
 elty of his companions . 342 
 
 remarkable dream; tena- 
 cious memory ; first efforts 
 at preaching . . 343 
 
 painful Christian expe- 
 rience ; marriage ; charac- 
 ter of Mrs. Evans . . 344 
 
 removal to Anglesea ; 
 
 salary . . . 345 
 
 journey to South Wales 
 
 change in preaching; won- 
 derful results . . 346 
 
 deep spiritual life . 347 
 
 solemn covenant with 
 
 God . . . 340 
 
 character of his ser- 
 mons . . . 351 
 
 Bunyan of Wales ; 
 
 master of personification . 352 
 
 remarkable dreams . 353 
 
 illustration of me- 
 thod . . . 348-36G 
 
 characteristics of preach- 
 ing ... 367 
 
 another covenant with 
 
 God . . . 371 
 
 last sermon — drive on . 373 
 
 Excellences of the Puritans. 227 
 
 Exile, return from . .134 
 
 Fable of the cukoo and 
 
 nightingale . . 260 
 
 Faults and beauties of Mul- 
 
 lois • • • ^90 
 
 Fancy, copiousness of . 203 
 
 Fashionable preacher, the . 279 
 Fathers of the Early Church 113 
 Fear not . . .411 
 
 Fellows of Swamp Uni versi ty 30 
 Feet of God, the . .184 
 
 Fiction beneficial for teach 
 
 ers . . . . 309 
 
 Fill uj) the cask . .421 
 
 Filthy sermons . . 259 
 
 Five gates of Mansoul . 40 
 
 Fluvio . . .380 
 
 Pa2:e 
 Foundation of success, the . 378 
 
 varieties of preaching . 364 
 
 Fox, George . . .10 
 
 Frater Diabolus . . 149 
 
 Francois de Sales, quotation 
 
 from . . .423 
 Free Speech in the Church . 197 
 French Refugee, the . 320 
 Friar preachers, great . 151 
 results of their preach- 
 ing ... 20 
 Functions of humour . 251 
 Fueral sermon, a . . 191 
 Gideon, history of . .7 
 Glorious song, a . . 242 
 Goads and nails . . 45 
 God, all in all . . 123 
 
 arranger of all things . 407 
 
 boundless loving-kind- 
 ness of . . . 119 
 
 Divine power of . 105 
 
 dethroned by modern 
 
 Pantheists . . 303 
 
 in a circle . . 246 
 
 judgments of . . 266 
 
 paints in oil . . 293 
 
 providence in history . 86 
 
 our protector . .411 
 
 righteousness of . 326 
 
 Good swimmer needed, a . 28 
 Gospel mould, the . . 353 
 
 Milch cow, a . .280 
 
 Gousset's method with texts- 320 
 Graduates of Brush College 30 
 Great Friar Preachers . 151 
 
 their aim . .152 
 
 Gratitude among friends . 264 
 Guizot quoted . . 301 
 
 Hanging the devil . . 289 
 
 Harangues of Napoleon . 423 
 Harms' three L's . . 422 
 
 Hearer and reader . . 293 
 
 Hearers' suspicions . . 395 
 
 Must understand . . 384 
 
 Heaven, written in . . 241 
 
 Hebrews, a nation of i^ro- 
 phets, the . . .75 
 
 Isaiah sublimest of . 77 
 
 prophet's mission, the , 76 
 
 poetry . . .51 
 
 '* He kens about leather" . 385 
 
Index. 
 
 439 
 
 Page 
 Hell, pictures of . 149, 156 
 Henry I. and St. Bernard . 180 
 Herder's definition of a 
 
 sermon . . . 227 
 
 Hibbard, Billy . . 81 
 
 Hind let loose, the . . 204 
 
 History, study of God, the . 86 
 
 of the Church . .104 
 
 free speech, of . . 196 
 
 Hi^h models, have . . 377 
 
 Hill, Rowland . . 280 
 
 Hall's estimate of . 281 
 
 Illustration of humour 282 
 
 How to free the spirit . 45 
 
 Puritans treated the 
 
 Bible . . .213 
 
 we know men exist . 302 
 
 Horace, aphorisms from 378, 
 
 378, 418, 423, 428 
 House, an allegory, the . 296 
 Humour — 
 Functions of . . 251 
 
 Antony's of Vieyra . 268 
 
 Berridge, John . . 275 
 
 Bradbury's . . 283 
 
 Hill's, Rowland . . 280 
 
 Dawson's W. . . 274 
 
 Kruber, Jacob . . 277 
 
 Sancta Clara . . 273 
 
 Illustrations of 
 
 Beelzebub and his Hogs 257 
 Carnifex and Robinson . 288 
 God and His only Son . 283 
 Gospel, a milch cow, the 280 
 Devil's devices . . 282 
 
 Fashionable preacher . 277 
 Fine Preaching . , . 282 
 Old Jemmy's discourse . 253 
 Prodigal son . . 273 
 
 Professor and sow . 281 
 
 Sermon to fishes . 268 
 
 Before a king . 264 
 
 Way to serve misers . 281 
 "We shall be like him" 287 
 Welsh preachers . 255 
 
 Coarse . . 252 
 
 Profane , . .262 
 
 Jacob began to wrestle 262 
 " Me and my house" . 263 
 Romanist's discourse . 258 
 Simple, John . .261 
 
 Page 
 
 Ignorance and preaching . 378 
 Illustrations — 
 
 Guthrie, Dr. use of . 334 
 
 On the use of . . 335 
 
 How to use them . . 336 
 
 Worth of . . . 308 
 
 Of the dark lantern, an . 334 
 
 Fog and the Silver Sea . 834 
 
 Regalia, the . . 334 
 Illustrations of style — 
 
 Afflictions . . .239 
 
 Of the righteous . 55 
 
 Almost a Christian . 75 
 
 Beam, the . , .366 
 
 Be thankful . . 238 
 Boundless loving-kindness 119 
 
 Burial rites . . 131 
 
 Christ, birth of . . 242 
 
 Conqueror . . 243 
 
 the cedar of Lebanon 358 
 
 Clouds . . 245 
 
 Delights of life . . 106 
 
 Devils at Augsburg . 388 
 
 David's service . . 2G8 
 
 Duty of praise . .108 
 
 Dust . - . .235 
 
 Entering the port . 365 
 
 Exile's return, the . 192 
 Fashionable preacher, the 279 
 
 " Fear not" . . 411 
 
 Feet of God, the . . 184 
 
 Funeral Sermon, a . 190 
 
 God in a circle . , 246 
 
 "All in air . . 183 
 
 judgments of .263 
 
 without . .207 
 
 tf of peace . . 206 
 
 's work and means . 105 
 
 Glorious song, a . . 242 
 
 Gospel mould, the . 353 
 
 Heaven written in . 23 * 
 
 Hind let loose . . 204 
 
 of tlu) morning . 359 
 
 Jericho, fall of . . 158 
 Journey of the young 
 
 Child . - . .362 
 
 Kirjath Sephor . . 223 
 
 Life a structure . . 406 
 
 " Many called ' . . 140 
 
 Man in the steel house . 354 
 
 Mv grace sufficient . 404 
 
440 Lamps^ Pitcliers^ and Trumpets. 
 
 Page 
 Illustrations of Style, cont'd 
 Mysterious packet . 356 
 
 Modern Pharisee . . 383 
 
 New begetting . . 244 
 
 Palace of Abraham . 132 
 
 Pictures of Hell . . 156 
 
 Peace with conscience . 205 
 Prodigal Son, the . 273 
 
 Psalmody . . .108 
 
 Sermon to fishes, a . 268 
 
 Salvation of the thief . 129 
 Say well, do well . . 198 
 
 Sin the cause of death . 415 
 Skin for a skin . . 63 
 
 Such a voice . . 234 
 
 Soul's flight . . 161 
 
 " Take thou thy son" . 241 
 Tents of Kedar . . 188 
 
 Wise men of the East . 15 
 Imagination — 
 
 Use and abuse of . , 334 
 
 Real use of . . 335 
 
 What is . . . 332 
 
 Window, a . .333 
 
 Seizes the innermost . 296 
 When most powerful . 251 
 Improvement in Sermons 410 
 Instincts, the two . .165 
 
 for souls, the . . 26 
 
 Intellect and will . . 43 
 
 Invincible Armada, the . 52 
 Inutility of sermons, the . 392 
 Isaiah — 
 ~ — sublimest prophet, the 77 
 
 Dante of Judaea, the . 77 
 
 model preacher, a . 77 
 
 evangelical prophet, • 
 
 the. . . .77 
 
 centre of philosophy, 78 
 
 what the future reveal- 
 ed to . . .79 
 
 's vision in the temple . 80 
 
 's burden typical . 83 
 
 's ideas developing . 87 
 
 pathos of . .88 
 
 comprehensiveness of . 89 
 
 Jacob wrestling . . 262 
 
 Jesus flavouring mediaeval 
 
 sermons . . . 143 
 
 Jeremiadizing . . 35 
 
 Jericho, fall of 
 Jonah in the whale 
 Joseph yet alive 
 
 Page 
 . 158 
 . 14 
 . 143 
 
 Kedar, tents of . . 188 
 
 King and Harpist . . 40 
 
 Kirjath-Sepher . . 223 
 
 Kite and Mr. Caxton, the . 321 
 Knight Templars, exhorta- 
 ^ tion to . . . 177 
 
 Knowledge of mediaeval ser- 
 mons . . . 138 
 Kruber, Jacob, anecdotes of. 30 
 
 Lamartine on the pulpit . 393 
 Language, nature of . 8 
 
 Lamps, &c., of the early 
 Church . . .103 
 
 Jewish Church . 75 
 
 Last of the Fathers . . 1 95 
 
 Law of parables . . 308 
 
 Learned sermons, folly of . 285 
 Legends of the Church 72, 73, 74, 
 128, 147, 149. 
 Letter without direction, the 382 
 Let us be thankful . . 238 
 
 Limitations of trumpet 
 
 power . . .10 
 
 Little bird's sermon, a . 314 
 Live for Christ . . 408 
 
 Logic, the, harness of . 36 
 
 Logical impossibility, Di- 
 vine possibility . . 37 
 Look high and aim high . 377 
 Luther's Letter to Johnny . 389 
 
 Macaulay's Spanish Armada 52 
 Madness of preaching friars 142 
 Magnetic power of great lives 91 
 Man and God's work . 105 
 
 seeketh wisdom . 43 
 
 unstable, an . . 231 
 
 's nature determines 
 
 moral analogies , .304 
 
 soul a captive king . 42 
 
 Manshire, subjects of • 215 
 
 Mansoul, town of . 39 
 
 waking people in the . 41 
 
 " Many called, few chosen" . 140 
 Martineau on Butler's Ana- 
 
 logy . . .297 
 
Index. 
 
 441 
 
 Martyrdom of De la Croix 
 
 Caturce, Master 
 
 Maxey, Antony 
 Meanness and grossness 
 Mediate for souls 
 Mediaeval preachers 
 
 Page 
 
 . 23 
 
 . 204 
 . 274 
 
 . 74 
 . 138 
 
 ■ records, unattainable of 138 
 
 works on 
 
 bathos . 
 
 Men and their age . 
 Metaphysical sermons 
 Methodism . 
 
 romance of 
 
 heroism 
 
 American 
 
 Microcosm sermons . 
 Mind, what may awaken the 
 Minister as a ijrofessor, the . 
 
 criticism on a . 
 
 a light-house keeper, 
 
 the. 
 Modern Pharisee 
 Monastic reformer . 
 Moral analogies 
 Motto for the pulpit 
 
 for a sneerer . 
 
 Moses a prophet 
 
 Mullois, Abbe, pleas for 
 
 brevity 
 
 139 
 
 145 
 
 139 
 
 285 
 
 24 
 
 24 
 
 25 
 
 27 
 
 219 
 
 42 
 
 3V6 
 
 423 
 
 , 72 
 , 383 
 137 
 304 
 421 
 391 
 7G 
 
 426 
 
 197 
 
 Names, unknown . 
 Napoleon's intended inva- 
 sion . . .54 
 Nationality of Hebrew poet- 
 ry . . . .51 
 Natural symmetry in ser- 
 mons . . . 410 
 Nature, symbolic . . 314 
 
 how our Lord regarded 304 
 
 Neander quoted . .104 
 
 's works . .139 
 
 Nelson's, John, sublime affec- 
 tion . . .27 
 Nervousness, pulpit power . 399 
 Nil Admirari . . 377 
 Neibuhr, quoted . . 104 
 Nothing to say, and no sub- 
 ject . . .384 
 
 Object of Lecture T. . .9 
 
 Obtaining smoke from light 418 
 
 Page 
 Old Jemmy, preaching of . 252 
 Old Jemmy's discourse .253 
 Orator, virtue of the . 429 
 
 Ostentatious man, the . 34 
 
 Paint your ideas • . 309 
 
 Painter and preacher . 23 
 
 Painter's materials, the . 293 
 Parable the : — 
 
 Pagan maxim, a . . 377 
 
 Beauty and power of . 308 
 And personification . 310 
 
 A spoken picture . .311 
 
 Goethe delighted to use . 309 
 Great teachers use . 308 
 
 Law of . . .309 
 
 Power of Bunyan, the . 309 
 Popularity of Evans, the . 309 
 In the pulpit . .314 
 
 Place and power of . 312 
 
 Used by all nations . 310 
 
 (.uckoo and nightingale . 200 
 Darning-needle, of the . 311 
 Kite, the . . .313 
 
 Abraham and the strang</r, 
 
 of . . .314 
 
 Bird's sermon, the . 315 
 
 Journey of the young child 362 
 Parables, diagrams of the- 
 ology . . .309 
 
 for the pulpit . 146, 313 
 
 Parsons, James, character- 
 istics of . . . 415 
 
 art of natural symmetry 418 
 
 style . . .418 
 
 Passion of the Cross . 12 
 
 Pastor, a shepherd, the . 144 
 
 provided for . . 260 
 
 Paul, St. :— 
 
 epic hero of the Church 91 
 
 manifold powers of . 91 
 
 character of . .92 
 
 power of reasoning . 93 
 
 unaccountableness of . 93 
 
 Augustine and . 94 
 
 intense ardour . . 95 
 
 epistles, character of . 95 
 
 a man for sceptics . 96 
 
 an evidence of the 
 
 Christian system . . 96 
 St. Bernard and . 97 
 
442 Lamps J Pitchers^ and Trumpets. 
 
 Page 
 
 Christian System, contin'd 
 
 the aged 
 
 comprehensiveness of 
 
 character . 
 
 touched three civiliza- 
 
 zations 
 
 courage and tact 
 
 shipwreck 
 
 defence before Felix . 
 
 craving for personal 
 
 sympathy . 
 
 ■ various estimates of . 
 
 Jowett's, Stanley's and 
 
 Newman's 
 Personal Application 
 Perspiration for inspiration 
 Pitcher, embellishments of 
 
 the; 
 Philosophic carpenter, the . 
 Physical suffering : 
 Play fere, Thomas, character- 
 istics of . 
 Poetry, two stages of 
 
 of passion, the . 
 
 of culture, the . 
 
 Polyramus . 
 
 Potter's Sacred Eloquence . 
 
 Power of Great Mountains 
 
 the 
 
 Prayer of an ancient bishop 307 
 Praying and working in- 
 stinct . . . 1G5 
 Preacher, the, an awakener 
 of conscience . 11, 75 
 
 an instructor . . 47 
 
 a builder of life . 150 
 
 a pitcher . 8 
 
 a lamp . . .13 
 
 a trumpet . .10 
 
 bold French, a . .21 
 
 Backwood . . 30 
 
 dangers of . 25, 28 
 
 every, a Blondel . 41 
 
 feeling the pulse of his 
 
 hearers . . . 405 
 
 for the poor . . 35 
 
 no posthumous fame for 418 
 
 model, the . . 77 
 
 must say well and do 
 
 well . . .198 
 making a cold . . 323 
 
 98 
 
 99 
 100 
 100 
 100 
 
 100 
 101 
 
 102 
 253 
 
 47 
 
 33 
 
 286 
 404 
 
 198 
 
 48 
 
 49 
 
 49 
 
 379 
 
 430 
 
 326 
 
 Page 
 Preacher, the, must be an 
 
 artist . . .9 
 
 metaphysical . . 32 
 
 quotation from . . 36 
 
 preliminaries in the 
 
 vocation of . .43 
 
 respect for . . 392 
 
 sacred pathologist, a . 403 
 
 should be national . 53 
 
 true work of . . 208 
 
 souls, for . . 44 
 
 Wormwood Valley, in 183 
 
 Preacher's vocation . . 39 
 
 queer day's work, a . 66 
 
 model in the prophets . 49 
 
 Preachers, great Friar , 196 
 
 mediaeval . .138 
 
 little known . 138 
 
 versus singers . . 418 
 
 Preaching, Artist faculty in 9 
 
 Aretinus's . . 153 
 
 Art of . . .45 
 
 Berthold of Ratisbon . 151 
 
 Beruardine of Sienna . 151 
 
 Bossuet's . . 208 
 
 Caturce's master . 22 
 
 conscience to the 8, 46, 401 
 
 Corvino's, John . 151 
 
 Chalmers', Dr. . . 333 
 
 effects of unwise . 380 
 
 Evans, Christmas . 366 
 
 experience to . .8 
 
 faithfulness in . . 135 
 
 four varieties of . 364 
 
 foolish, of great men . 262 
 
 Francis, St. . . 153 
 
 Friars' madness in . 142 
 
 great social influence, a. 118 
 
 harangue, method of . 380 
 
 intellect, to the . . 8 
 
 James I. day, in . 241 
 
 Jerome's . . 153 
 
 Luther's maxims in . 423 
 
 Neri, Philip . . 152 
 
 no art necessary in . 44 
 
 painful . . .215 
 
 Paul at Athens, of . 316 
 
 Padua's, Anthony, of . 152 
 
 Robinson's, llobert . 64 
 
 — — Roco's, Fra . . 153 
 Smith's Henry . . 25 
 
Index. 
 
 443 
 
 Page 
 Preacliing, Scriptural . 140 
 
 surprise power in .11 
 
 tendency to blaspheme 
 
 in . . . .260 
 
 true methods of . 379 
 
 to people . . 46 
 
 various styles of . 379 
 
 verbose . . . 381 
 
 Whitefield's . . 37 
 
 " rule in . . 422 
 
 Precision . . . 388 
 
 Priest and layman . . 70 
 
 Principles vevsm prejudices 70 
 Prodigal Son, the . . 273 
 
 Prophet, a Divine institution, 
 
 the . . .76 
 
 Prophets, Hebrew . . 75 
 
 Protestantism, ages of the 
 
 press . . . 196 
 
 birth of Puritanism . 197 
 
 historv of Free Speech 196 
 
 Psalmody " . . .108 
 
 Pugilism vei'sus Christianity 264 
 
 Publican and Pharisee 
 
 Pulpit, the— 
 
 Andersen, Hans C, in 
 Code of law for 
 Droll of . 
 Freaks of speech in 
 Freedom needed in 
 Humanity needed in 
 Light in dark ages, a 
 Literature of 
 
 humorous 
 
 Means of education, a 
 Monographs 91, 113, 162, 
 
 289 
 
 Mottoes for 
 
 Men of St. Paul's Cross 
 Parables in 
 Protestant 
 
 twofold energies of 
 
 Punch of . 
 Reformer . 
 
 Repertory of anecdote, a 
 Romance of 
 
 Methodism . 
 
 American 
 
 " preachers 
 
 Versus Art 
 
 Times newspaper, a 
 
 120 
 392 
 273 
 290 
 292 
 293 
 139 
 292 
 292 
 293 
 229 
 339 
 418-422 
 
 17; 
 
 283 
 
 146 
 
 196 
 
 197 
 
 285 
 
 156 
 
 290 
 
 23 
 
 24 
 
 24 
 
 25 
 
 26 
 
 285 
 
 Page 
 Pulpit, the — conti7iued 
 Wit, humor, and coarse- 
 ness in . . . 249 
 
 Worthlessnesss of . 25 
 
 DifFuseness of the . .215 
 
 Modern Divines, and . 214 
 Method with the Bible 213 
 Mystics . . . 222 
 
 Queer oddities of the . 217 
 Sermons microcosms . 219 
 Treasures of mystical Di 
 
 vinity . . .223 
 
 Well-bottomed men . 218 
 
 Works, were preached . 222 
 
 Puritan worthies, defects and 
 excellencies of . . 227 
 
 Puritanical sermon, fate of a 213 
 
 Queer day's-work . . 66 
 
 Quiet resting-places quoted 404 
 Quirks and quiddities of 
 speech . . . 217 
 
 Radiation and vibration . 12 
 Raleigh, Dr. Alexander 398 
 
 Rationalism . . . 112 
 
 Reason and speech . . 8 
 
 Reader and hearer . . 293 
 
 Rhetoric, flower of . .107 
 
 Richard I. and Blondel . 40 
 
 Right spirit, the . . 50 
 
 Ringing changes on a word 235 
 Robinson, Robert : — 
 
 early life . . 59 
 
 style, 53 — satire . 60 
 
 obscurity 55, conversion 62 
 
 teaches; studies . 62 
 
 compared with Beveridge 62 
 
 thorough Dissenter . 62 
 
 -• — ridicules Church forms. 63 
 Expositions of Scrip- 
 ture . . .63 
 
 skin for a skin . . 63 
 
 Praising God in the 
 
 morning . . .64 
 
 singular day's work . 66 
 
 traits of character . 69 
 
 death 63— style . 69 
 
 Romance of the pulpit . 17 
 MctliodisTn . . 2S 
 
444 LamjpSj Piicliers^ and Trumpets. 
 
 Page 
 Romance, Methodism, Ame- 
 rican . . .30 
 Rude Clergyman, The . 60 
 Ruskin and Art . . 176 
 
 Sad reflection, a . . 413 
 Say well and do well . 198 
 Scriptures one great argu- 
 ment . . . 323 
 Schleirmacher quoted . 67 
 Secular and spiritual knight- 
 hood . . .23 
 Self-denial necessary . 291 
 Sergeant K . . .276 
 Sermons : — 
 Anthony Maxey, of . 205 
 Age for printing . . 415 
 Bede, of . . . 139 
 Before a king . . 264 
 Brevity in . . 423 
 Coarse . . . 259 
 Definition of . . 227 
 Delivered, more powerful . 26 
 Filthy . . . 259 
 Francois, St., pleas for . 423 
 Improvement in . . 410 
 Natural symmetry of . 410 
 Old John Stoughton's . 205 
 Parsons' James . . 414 
 Printed . . .419 
 Some old . . . 246 
 Should be plain . . 425 
 Should be, what • .422 
 Trifle . . .49 
 Three truths for . . 422 
 What the music is of . 424 
 Sin, punishment of . . 417 
 Segneri, Father 
 inflamed with mission- 
 ary ardor . . .155 
 
 a recluse . . 1 55 
 
 home missionary . 156 
 
 pulpit reformer . 156 
 
 earnestness . . 156 
 
 hell a reality to .156 
 
 an Italian Whitefield . 161 
 
 Shakespeare of the Puritans, 
 
 the . , , , ^20 
 Skin for a skin . . 63 
 Smith a^d Robinson com- 
 pared . . .58 
 
 Page 
 242 
 161 
 70 
 264 
 266 
 
 268 
 
 431 
 
 52 
 
 Song, glorious, a 
 Soul's flight . 
 
 how to reach 
 
 South, Robert 
 
 characteristics 
 
 estimate of the Puri 
 
 tans 
 Source of obscurity, a 
 Spanish Armada, the 
 Speech, element of successful 426 
 
 power of . .23 
 
 teaches us what . 44 
 
 Spectator, quotation from . 391 
 Speculative and practical life 186 
 Spirit, a captive, being, the 37 
 Spirit, the essential part of . 386 
 Spirit, how to fire the 
 
 of the world 
 
 of the prophets 
 
 Spiritual Joe Miller, a 
 Stanley's Jewish Church, 
 
 quotations from . 
 Strange causading army 
 Strength of stateliness 
 Style :-> 
 
 Adams', Puritan . 
 
 Andrewes', Bishop 
 
 Antony of Vieyra 
 
 Athanasius's 
 
 Augustine's, St. 
 
 Bernard's St. 
 
 Basil's, St. 
 
 Bernard's, Richard 
 
 Cause of, powerless 
 
 Clemen's . 
 
 Chrysostom's St. . 
 
 Colloquial, the 
 
 Dawson's, William 
 
 Diction and 
 
 Everard's, John 
 
 Evans', Christmas . 
 
 Every man makes his 
 
 Formation of 
 
 Kruber's, Jacob 
 
 Luther's 
 
 Maclaven's . 
 
 May be too good . 
 
 Origen's 
 
 0\\ i;poi; marble . 
 
 Playfere's. Thomas 
 
 Prepjsion ^n 
 
 55 
 
 50 
 
 51 
 
 153 
 
 50 
 178 
 226 
 
 . 231 
 14, 237 
 . 268 
 . 106 
 . Ill 
 . 183 
 . 108 
 . 215 
 . 383 
 . 105 
 . 119 
 . 383 
 . 14 
 . 382 
 . 223 
 . 351 
 . 226 
 . 375 
 . 277 
 . 387 
 . 382 
 . 384 
 . 105 
 . 381 
 . 199 
 . 883 
 
Index. 
 
 445 
 
 Page 
 Parish pump . . 288 
 Parsons, James . .417 
 Robinson's, Robert . 63 
 Soutli's, Robert . . 265 
 Sancta's, Clara . . 273 
 Slioplieeping" . . 210 
 Segneri's, Father . . 155 
 Stoughton's, John . 205 
 " Sling-and stone " . 380 
 Smitli's, Henry . . 55 
 Sterrj's, Peter . . 226 
 Tertullian's . . 106 
 Trapp's, Commentator , 221 
 Studying the Fathers, mo- 
 tives for . . .106 
 Sublime affection . . 26 
 Subjective and objective . 44 
 Such a voice . . . 234 
 Success #B gained, how . 385 
 Suffering, varieties of . 405 
 Surprise power, the . .11 
 Sursum Corda . . 21 
 Sympathy essential to suc- 
 cess . . . 401 
 
 " Take now thy son " . 241 
 
 Taste, improved, in sermons 250 
 Tears, test of . .45 
 
 Tedious preaching . * 215 
 
 Test of penitence . . 153 
 
 Theatre and chapel . . 208 
 
 Thief, salvation of the . 130 
 
 Theremin, on the orator . 395 
 Thought, modern . . 300 
 
 Times of James I., preaching 
 
 in the . . .241 
 
 Three methods of sowing . 378 
 Tongue, the . . .237 
 
 Trapp, John 
 
 characteristics of style . £20 
 
 compared with Mat- 
 thew Henry . . 220 
 
 -; how he treated, Scrip- 
 
 ' ture . . . 220 
 
 and modern Bible critics 221 
 
 languageof . , 221 
 
 Orma's criticism on . 222 
 
 Truth makes eloquence, the 395 
 Truths learned too late . 334 
 
 Page 
 
 Truths neglected . . 334 
 
 Trumpets of the Church . 10 
 
 purposes of . .11 
 
 Two audiences, the . . 47 
 
 Universality of arrange- 
 ment . . . 325 
 Unity of God — Isaiah's phi- 
 losophy . . .78 
 Unpolished audience, the . 48 
 Use of books and speech . 294 
 
 trumpets . .11 
 
 Unstable man, the . . 292 
 
 Valley of Wormwood, the . 1G9 
 
 Various agencies of death . 416 
 
 Vase and the pitcher . 17 
 
 Vibration and Radiation . 11 
 
 Vocation of the preacher . 39 
 
 to arrest souls . . 73 
 
 with souls . . 44 
 
 Voice, such a . . 234 
 
 What modern divines are 
 lacking 
 
 Where to get a suit . 
 
 Way of an eagle in the air . 
 
 What colleges fit students 
 for . 
 
 What makes mind ? . 
 
 Well -bottomed men . 
 
 Welsh preacher, story of a 
 
 Wife like a ship, a . 
 
 W^it, humor, and coarseness 248 
 
 Wisdom sought through de- 
 sire 
 
 Words, absurd use of 
 
 awakened Protestanism 
 
 of . 
 
 Words, furnish your memory 
 with 
 
 power of 
 
 prophets, of the 
 
 proper use of . 
 
 what are 
 
 study 
 
 take care of 
 
 Word painting 
 
 Worth of illustration 
 
 214 
 210 
 321 
 
 392 
 . 42 
 . 218 
 . 255 
 
 210 
 
 43 
 33 
 
 208 
 
 375 
 376 
 
 75 
 376 
 376 
 376 
 
 44 
 333 
 308 
 
INDEX OF TEXTS REFERRED TO. 
 
 Genesis, iii., 19 
 
 ix., 13 . 
 
 xxii., 2 . 
 
 xlv., 26 
 
 xlix., 21 . 
 
 xlix., 21 . 
 
 Exodus, iv., 11 
 Joshua, vi., 16 
 Judges, v., 30 
 
 v., 31 . 
 
 vii.,17,22, 
 
 2 Samuel, xxii., 16 
 2 Kings, xviii., 36 
 Esther, vii., 9 
 Job, ii., 4 
 
 xxxix., 27-29 
 Psalms, v., 3 . 
 
 xvi., 7 . 
 
 xix., 1 . 
 
 xix., 5 . 
 
 xxii., 1 . 
 
 XXX., 6 . 
 
 xxxiv., 15 
 
 xxxvi., 7 
 
 xlv., 1 . 
 
 xlv., 13 . 
 
 Iviii., 11 . 
 
 Ixxvii., 10 
 
 Ixxvii., 13 
 
 Ixxxiii., 4 
 
 Ixxxiii , 7 
 
 Ixxxvii., 1 
 
 Ixxxvii., 3 
 
 xciv., 2 . 
 
 ciii., 4 . 
 
 cxviii., 6 
 Proverbs xxxi. 14 
 
 viii., 1 
 
 ii.,8 
 
 iv., 2 
 Ecclesiastes, xii., 2 
 Songs of Solomon, i., 
 Isaiah, i., 18 . 
 
 ii., 5 
 
 xiii., 12 . 
 
 XXX., 13 . 
 
 xl., 2 . 
 
 xl., 8 . 
 
 li.,14, . 
 
 446 
 
 Page 
 . 285 
 . 258 
 . 240 
 . 143 
 . 55 
 . 204 
 . 76 
 . 160 
 . 52 
 . 55 
 . 7 
 . 329 
 . 289 
 . 288 
 . 63 
 . 324 
 . 65 
 . 131 
 . 64 
 . 185 
 . 359 
 . 326 
 . 46 
 . 131 
 . 37 
 . 206 
 . 178 
 . 328 
 . 267 
 . 54 
 . 53 
 . 330 
 . 161 
 . 151 
 . 17 
 . 130 
 . 20 
 . 43 
 . 359 
 . 223 
 . 45 
 . 188 
 . 50 
 . 79 
 . 85 
 . 160 
 . 14 
 . 88 
 . 41 
 
 Isaiah Iv., 1 . 
 Jeremiah, x., 24 
 Ezekiel, x., 14 
 
 xxxii., 32 
 Matthew, iii., 3 
 
 xi., 15 . 
 
 xiii., 34 . 
 
 xii., 43 . 
 
 xiii., 45 • 
 
 XX., 16 . 
 
 XXV., 46 
 Mark, xvi., 16 
 Luke, xxiii,, 43 
 John, St., iii., 12 
 
 iv., 11 . 
 
 viii., 31 . 
 
 Vii., 24 . 
 
 xiv., 15 . 
 
 xiv., 22 . 
 Acts, 1,7 
 
 viii., 30 . 
 
 xxvi., 8 . 
 Romans, v., 12 
 
 vi., 24 . 
 
 viii., 35 . 
 
 viii., 39 . 
 
 1 Corinthians, iii., 10 
 
 2 ii., 11 . 
 2 ii., 13 . 
 2 iv., 8 . 
 2 iv.,7 . 
 2 xii., 9 . 
 Ephesians, ii., 20 
 
 iv., 21 . 
 Philippians, i., 21 
 
 iii., 8 . 
 1 Thessalonians vi., 3 
 1 Timothy, iv., 1 
 
 1 iv.,12 . 
 
 2 ii., 15 . 
 Hebrews, iii. , 14 
 James, i., 21 . 
 
 1 Peter, iv., 7 
 
 2 iii., 8 . 
 2 i.,11 • 
 1 John, ii., 24 
 Revelation, i., 18 
 
 iv., 7: 
 
INDEX OF NAMES REFERRED TO. 
 
 Antonio (of Vieyra), 142, 144, 
 
 267, 272 
 Aquinas, Thomas, 232 
 Arcadius, Emperor, 128 
 Arkwright, Sir R., 59 
 Arius, 72 
 Arnold, Dr., 15 
 Ashbury, Bishop, 28, 29, 31 
 Athanasius, 106, 107 
 Augustine, St., 45, 90, 109, 136, 
 
 232, 308 
 Austin, William, 208 
 Adelbart, St., 151 
 Abelard, Peter, 166, 193 
 Adams, Thomas, 228, 229, 237, 
 
 245, 246, 248 
 Alderson, Baron, 305 
 Alfred, King, 97 
 Alexander, Dr. James, 421 
 Alexander, King, 98 
 Andersen, Hans C, 146 
 Andrewes, Bishop, 13, 238, 246 
 Anacletus II., Pope, 179 
 Angus, Dr., 229. 230 
 Anthony St., 143, 151 
 
 Bacon, Lord, 247, 309 
 Barrow, Isaac, 226, 228 
 Basil, St., 108, 107, 106, 128 
 Barton, Dr. 297 
 Baxter, Kichard, 91 
 Bede, 136 
 
 Beecher, Henry Ward, 294 
 Belle w, Rev. J. C. M., 316, 319 
 Bellamy, Dr., 421 
 Bernardine, St., 152, 153 
 Bernard, R, 215 
 
 Bernard, St, 145, 162, 164, 165, 
 166, 167, 168, 169, 170-195, 418 
 
 Berkeley, Bishop, 296 
 Berridge, John, 274. 275 
 Berthold, 151 
 Blake, Robert, 24 
 Blondel, 40 
 
 Bolingbroke, Lord, 387 
 Bogue, Dr., 280 
 Bonaventura, 143 
 Bossuet, 208, 387 
 Bostwick, Dr., 31 
 Boyd, A. K. H, 410 
 Boyle, Robert, 301 
 Bradbury, Thomas, 283, 284 
 Bridges, Rev. Charles, 46 
 Brooks, Thomas, 227 
 Brooks, Mr., 133 
 Brown, Bishop, 297 
 Brown, Dr. John, 333 
 Browne, Sir T., 236 
 Brougham, Lord, 387, 426 
 Browninj^, Robert, 16 
 Brummel, Beau, 248 
 Buchanan, Dr., 301 
 Burleigh, Lord, 55 
 Bunyan, John, 350, 366 
 Burgess, J., 257 
 Burgundy, Duke of, 164 
 Butler, Bishop, 297, 298, 299 
 Byron, Lord, 336 
 
 Calvin, 69, 106 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 176 
 Cartwright, Peter, 263 
 Caturce, Master, 22 
 Cervantes, 268 
 Chalmers, Dr., 333 
 Charles I, 204 
 Chatham, Earl, 387, 426 
 Charlemagne, 98 
 
 (447) 
 
448 Index of Names Hef erred to. 
 
 Chrysostora, St., 104, 105, 106, 
 109, 110, 114 116, 117, 118, 
 120, 121, 126, 129, 131, 136, 
 155 
 
 Cicero, 75 
 
 Clayton, Jobn, 382 
 
 Clemens, 105 
 
 Cobbett, W., 59 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., 33, 333 
 
 Colet, Dean, 285 
 
 Columbus, 300 
 
 Compte, 304 
 
 Constantine, Emperor, 113, 120 
 
 Corvino, John, 151 
 
 Coster, Francis, 146 
 
 Cowper, W., 220 
 
 Cromwell, O., 264 
 
 Cross, Mr., 341, 367 
 
 B'Aubigne, 22 
 
 D'Alembert, 397 
 
 Dawson, W., 12, 283, 284 
 
 Davies, Daniel, 341 
 
 Deborah, 52, 76 
 
 De Janson (Cardinal) 258 
 
 De la Croix, (Alex.) 18 
 
 Delitzsch, 213 
 
 Demosthenes, 13, 75, 98, 426 
 
 Dionysius, 93 
 
 De Sales, St. Francis. 423, 429 
 
 Dickens, (Charles), 338 
 
 Digby, Kenelm, 139 
 
 Donne, Dr., 209, 241, 245, 247 
 
 Earle, Bishop, 231 
 Ebrard, 213 
 Echard, 209 
 Edwards, Dr., 384 
 
 Jonathan, 35, 93, 309,398 
 Elton, Edward, 220 
 Eudoxia, Empress, 125, 
 Evans, Christmas, 309, 313, 338, 
 
 339-374 
 Everard, Dr., 93, 223 
 Ewald, 213 
 Ezekiel, 196 
 
 Flavianus, 118 
 Flavella, Empress, X18 
 Frederick II, 152 
 Forster, Dr., 299 
 
 Foster, John, 333 
 Fox, C. J., 70 
 
 C, 10 
 Francis of Assisse, 142 
 Franklin, Dr. B., 292 
 Fuller, Thomas, 55 
 
 Gall, St., 151 
 
 Gattv, Mrs., 146, 309 
 
 Gerund, Friar, 290 
 
 Gibbon, W., 109, 121 
 
 Gill, Dr., 62 
 
 Goethe, 309 
 
 Goodman, Godfrey, 227 
 
 Gouge, Thomas, 220 
 
 Gould, Baring, 138, 139, 140, 
 
 146 
 Gousset, Father, 321 
 Gregory, Nazianzen, 104, 108, 154 
 Grosart, 218 
 Grote, 86 
 Guthrie, Dr., 334 
 Guarric of Igniac, 143 
 Guizot, M., 385, 401 
 
 Hall, Robert, 59, 61, 374, 426 
 Hallam, H, 387 
 Hamilton, Dr. James, 307 
 Harding, Stephen, 107 
 Harvey, 300 
 Hay don, 24 
 Hegel, 35, 299, 303 
 Heloise, 193 
 Hengstenberg, 213 
 Hennel, Miss, 298, 299 
 Henry I., 180 
 
 M., 110, 220, 
 Herbert. G., 14, 91, 229, 237 
 Hibbard, W., 31 
 
 Hill, Rowland, 278, 280, 281, 431 
 Hitchcock, Pro., 302 
 Homer, 332 
 
 Honrious, II, (Pope) 178 
 Hooker, Richard, 91, 196, 226 
 
 Herman, 410 
 Hooper, H., 196 
 Horace, 48, 377, 378 391, 418, 425, 
 
 430 
 Ilowson, Dr., 96, 101 
 Hume, David, 192, 298, 299 
 Huntingdon, Lady, 27 
 
Index of Names Referred to. 449 
 
 Innocent, II, (Pope), 179, 181 
 Irving, Edward, 106, 385, 420 
 
 Jacobi, 71 
 James, I, 209 
 James John, Angell, 73 
 Jay, William, 283 
 Jermin, Michael, 220 
 Jerrold, Douglas, 311 
 Jerome, St., 153 
 Johnson, Dr., 369, 422 
 Jones, Theophilus, 282 
 Jowett, Pro., 101, 102 
 Julian, Emperor, 108 
 
 Keble, John, 14 
 Keene, Henry, 66 
 Kempis, Thomas a., 152 
 Knox, John, 91 
 Keil, 213 
 Kruber, Jacob, 30, 31 
 
 Lamartine, A., 393 
 
 Lange, 213 
 
 Latimer, Bishop, 91, 197, 313 
 
 Laud, Archbishop, 247 
 
 La Touche, Treville, Admiral, 54 
 
 Lenz, Dr., 151 
 
 Lewis, 341 
 
 Leopold, I, 273 
 
 Libanius, 115 
 
 Lightfoot, 214 
 
 Louis, VII, 194 
 
 Louis, XIII, 208 
 
 Louis, XIV, 387, 418 
 
 Luther, 91, 387, 423 
 
 Lytton, Lord, 399 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir, J., 298 
 Macaulay, Lord, 52 
 Maclaren, 381 
 Mansell, Professor, 303 
 Maitland, Dr.,140 
 Martineau, J., 297 
 Massillon, 426 
 Maxey, (Anthony), 204 
 Maurus, Rabinius, 140 
 Maximian, Emperor, 128 
 Mentz, Archbishop, 140 
 Melville, Henry, 323 
 Milburn, H., 252 
 
 Milman, Dean, 121,122, 142 
 Milton, John, 226 
 Monica, 109, 115 
 Morison, J. C, 186 
 Moule, Horace, 103, 111 
 Montague, Sir H., 230 
 Mullois, Abbe, 390, 392, 395, 
 418 
 
 Napoleon, 54, 332 
 Neale, Dr., 138, 140 
 Neander, Dr., 104, 139 
 Nelson, Admiral, 54 
 Nelson, John, 27 
 Neri, Philip 152 
 Ness, Christopher, 220 
 Newman, Dr., 102, 107 
 Nicolay, Bishop, 72 
 Newton, John, 37 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, 300 
 Niebuhr, 86 
 Notley, Richard, 34 
 
 Olshausen, 215 
 Opie, Mr., 377 
 Orme, W., 222 
 Origen, 105 
 Overbury, 231 
 
 Parr, Dr., 369 
 
 Parr, Elnathan, 220 
 
 Parsons, James, 415 
 
 Paley, W., 96, 302 
 
 Paul, St., 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97 
 
 98, 101 
 Pepys, 248 
 Pericles, 75 
 Pitt, W., 298 
 Pilo, M., 297 
 
 Playfere, Thomas, 197, 198 
 Pluche, 286 
 Plutarch, 208 
 Pocock, 214 
 Priestly, Dr., 69 
 Puis ford, John, 314 
 
 Queen Anne, 284 
 Queen Elizabeth, 208, 30 
 Quevedo, 268 
 Quintilian, 384 
 
45 o Index of Names JRef erred to. 
 
 Raleigh, Sir W., 247 
 
 Raleigh, Dr., 398, 404 
 
 Ramsay, Dean, 283 
 
 Rawlin, J., 146 
 
 Rees, Gabriel, 347 
 
 Reeves, 133 
 
 Reinhardt, 47 
 
 Ribera, 24 
 
 Richard I., 40-41 
 
 Ridley, Bishop, 197, 
 
 Robertson, F. W., 337 
 
 Robarts, G., 29 
 
 Robinson, Robert, 58, 59, 61, 67, 
 
 70, 71, 258 
 Rocco, Fra., 153 
 Rogers, Nehemiah, 227 
 Rogers, Daniel, 220 
 Romain, 62 
 Ruskin, 176, 332 
 Rutherford, (S.) 91 
 
 Sancta, Clara, Abraham, 273 
 Saurin, 62, 426 
 Savonarola, 152 
 Schedel, (Dr.), 298 
 Sedgwick, Obadiah, 227 
 Secunda, 115, 117 
 Segneri , Father, 155 
 Selle, Father, 258 
 Shakespeare, 229, 332 
 Shedd, Pro., 395, 396 
 Sikes, George, 223 
 Smith, Henry, 55, 198 
 Smith, Sidney, Rev., 265 
 Solomon, 43 
 South, R., 59, 227,264 
 Spiridion, 72 
 Spencer, Edward, 309 
 Sprague, Edward, 24, 25 
 Stanley, Dean, 49, 99 
 Strafford, Sir W., 247 
 Sterry, Peter, 223 
 
 Strickland, W. P., 249 
 Sterling, 23 
 
 Stevens, Dr. Abel, 24, 25 
 Stephen, Dr. Rhys, 341 
 Stephenson, G., 199, 300, 305 
 Stoughton, John, 292 
 Strachey, Sir E., 78, 86 
 Swift, 266 
 Sydney Edwin, 281 
 
 Taylor, Isaac, 78 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 59, 236, 314 
 Taylor, Mr., Rev., 11 
 Tavernier, 127 
 Tennyson, 10, 301 
 TertuUian, 105, 106 
 Tenterden, 59 
 Theremin, Dr., 395 
 Thomson, Archbishop, 300 
 Toplady, 292 
 
 Theodosius, Elmperor, 128 
 Torshell, S., 217 
 Trapp, John, 219, 220, 221 
 
 Uzziah, King, 80 
 
 Vasari, 23 
 Vane, Sir H., 223 
 Vincent, St. Paul, 91 
 
 Ward, Artemus, 277 
 Watts, Dr., 284, 379, 380 
 Watson, Thomas, 227 
 Watson, Richard, 13 
 Wesley, John, 27, 91, 309 
 Whately, Archbishop, 300, 403 
 Whitefield, 9, 10, 37, 38, 420, 422 
 Wilberforce, (W.), 298 
 Williams, (Edward), 259 
 Wordsworth, 332 
 
 Xavier, Francis, 155 
 
INDEX OF BOOKS REFERRED TO. 
 
 An Apology for the Pulpits, 1688, 2G1 
 Athanasius' Historical Treatises, 107 
 Augustine's Art of Preaching, 45 
 
 Confessions, 110 J 
 
 on the Psalms, 219 
 
 Burton's Analogy of Divine Wisdom, 297 
 Berkeley's (Bishop) Minute Philosopher, 297 
 Bernard's (R.), Ruth, 214 
 Bridge's Ecclesiastes, 45 
 
 (Charles, Rev.), Christian Ministry, 46 
 
 Brown's (Bishop) Divine Analogy, 297 
 
 (Dr. John), Horae Subsecivae, 333 
 
 Browning's (Robert), Christmas Eve, and Easter Day, 16 
 
 Bucchius' Golden Conformity, 151 
 
 Butler's Analogy, 297 
 
 Byron's Childe Harold, 336 
 
 Boyd's (P. K. H.) Recreations of a Country Parson, 410 
 
 Browne's (Sir T.), Urn Burial. 239 
 
 Cater's (Philip), Punch in the Pulpit, 283 
 
 Cawdray's (R.), Treasury of Similes, 1600, 335 
 
 Century of Eminent Presbyterian Ministers, 1723, 261 
 
 Ancient Mariner, 33 
 
 Friend, 332 
 
 Contemporary Review, 391 
 
 Everard's (John) Some Gospel Treasuries opened, 323 
 
 D'Aubigne's Reformation in Europe, 18 
 
 Dyer's (George) Memoir of Robert Robinson, 68 
 
 Faussett's Translation of Vinet's Homiletics, 47 
 
 Ford's Translation from (Segneri) Quaresimale, 155 
 
 Gibbon's Decline and Fall, 124 
 
 Goodman's (Godf.) Fall of Man, 227 
 
 Gould's (Baring) Post Mediaeval Preachers, 138 
 
 Grant's (James) Metropolitan Pulpit, 249 
 
 Gregory on Job, 219 
 
 Haweis' (J.W.) Sketches of the Reformation, 201 
 
 Hitchcock (Pro.), On the Law of Nature, Bibliotheca Sacra, 302 
 
 History of the Famous Preacher, Friar Gerund, 290 
 
 Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, 230 
 
 Horace's Art of Poetry, 391 
 
 Huntingdon, (Lady), Life of, 27 
 
 Hurwitz Hyman's Hebrew Tales, 331 
 
 Jerrold's (Douglas) Punch's Letters to his Son, 311 
 
 (450 
 
452 Index of Books Referred to. 
 
 Lenz's(von G. H.) Geshiclite der Christlichen Homiletick, 151 
 
 Latimer's Sermons, 313 
 
 Life of Antony of Padua, 143 
 
 Lytton's (Lord) Caxtoniana, 400 
 
 Manse of Mastland, 378, 415 
 
 Maclarens's Sermons, 382 
 
 Maurice's Rabanus, De Institutione Clericorum, 140 
 
 Max MuUer, Lectures on Language, 8 
 
 Milburn's (Henry) Rifle, Axe, and Saddle-bags, 249 
 
 Milburn's (Henry) Ten Years of a Preacher's Life, 249 
 
 Morrison's Life of St. Bernard, 165 
 
 More's Catliolici, Kenelm Digby's Compitum, 139, 154 
 
 Moule's (Horace) Christian Oratory, 103, 105, 106, 109 
 
 Murray (Rev. J.) Sermons to Asses, 289 
 
 Neale's Mediaeval Preachers, 138 
 
 Neander's Memorials of Christian Life, 139 
 
 Light Shining in Dark Places, 139 
 
 Ness (Cb.), History and Mystery of Old and New Testament, 220 
 North American Review, No. 194, 28 
 Newman's (Dr.) Lectures, 427 
 
 Sermons, 102 
 
 History of the Arians, 320 
 
 Nichol's Library of Standard Puritan Divines, 55 
 
 Orme's Bibliotheca Biblia, 222 
 
 Owen on the Hebrews, 214 
 
 Paley's Hor^e Paulinse, 92 
 
 Pluche's History of the Heavens, 286 
 
 Potter's Sacred Eloquence, 429 
 
 Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed, 260 
 
 Pulpit Sayings, 1688, 261 
 
 Pulsford's Quiet Hours, 314 
 
 Raleigh (Dr.) Quiet Resting-Places, 399 
 
 Richter's (J. P.) Titan, 332 
 
 Robinson's (R.) Miscellaneous Works, 59 
 
 Select Works, 59 
 
 History of Baptism, 62 
 
 Ecclesiastical Researches, 62 
 
 Memoirs of, 68 
 
 Village Sermons, 64 
 
 Claude, 210, 248, 258 
 
 Rogers' (Neh.) Fast Friend, 227 
 
 Figless Figtree 
 
 Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence, 249 
 Sedgwick's (Obad.)Shepherd of Israel, 227 
 
 Seventeen Arguments Proving the Danger of Private Persons Pub- 
 licly Preaching, 1651, 261 
 Sike's (George) Evangelical Essays, 223 
 
 Ecclesiastes, 222 
 
 Spenser's Storehouse of Siniiles, 331, 334 
 
 Things New and Old, 308 
 
 Sprague's Annals of the American Methodist Pulpit, 24, 28 
 
Index of Books Referred to, 453 
 
 Stanley's Eastern Churcli, 107 
 
 Jewish Church, 50 
 
 Strachey's (Sir E.) Hebrew Politics, 79, 83, 86 
 Stephen's (Dr. Rhys) Memoirs of Christmas Evans, 341 
 Sterry's (Peter) Appearance of God to Man, 223 
 
 Kingdom of Heaven in the Soul, 223 
 
 Freedom of the Will, 223 v 
 
 Stevens' History of Methodism, 24 
 Strickland's Life of Kruber, 31 
 
 Peter Cartwright, 249 
 
 Taylor's (Rev. W.) Preaching in Californfa, 11 
 
 Model Preacher, . 
 
 The Preacher, A Poem, 1700, 201 
 
 Theremin's (Dr.) Eloquence, 395 
 
 Trapp's (John) Commentary on the Whole Bible, 220 
 
 Watts (Dr.) Improvement on the Mind, 379 
 
 West's Sketches of Wesleyan Preachers, 13 
 
 Whittiers Poem's, 36 / 
 
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