WHY OUR PREACHERS SHOULD BE ELOQUENT, AND WHY SO FEW OF THEM ARE SO. THE minister's great function is to preach-to proclaim from the pulpit the grand tidings contained in the Holy Volume. The congregation convened around him depend largely upon the force of his public ministry for their increase in all good and holy gifts of moral duty and spiritual grace; and, as the great Creator has decreed, proclaimed, as it were, with the voice of an all-convincing reason, that the brain of man is the medium of reaching, touching, moving the human soul; and as that brain, generally speaking, can be made sensitively alive to the most elevating impressions through a certain sympathy which subsists between it and earnestness-eloquence of speech-how strong an inducement is here presented to the Pastor to cultivate unremittingly, through the fervour of impassioned conception, that voice which has the power to sway and lead his hearers! How deep, how pregnant a significance and responsibility is there attached to the proper cultivation of the powers of the tongue! How highly should they that serve God's altar prize that which contributes so much to the rousing of hearers to the contemplation of inspired truth! Consider the clergyman's duties on the Sabbath; he reads the Sacred Volume-he speaks out-what? THE WORD, THE VOICE of GOD. He is presumed to have drunk largely at the fountainhead of all inspiration-to have prepared himself, as it were, in the very presence of his Maker-and ere he takes His Holy Word upon his lips, to have weighed well the awful responsibility involved in the service of feeding the Great Shepherd's lambs. How feeding them? With words of life, or more emphatically, with the Wordthe Divine Word, which thoughtfully, impressively, fervently uttered, and addressed from the soul to the soul, awakens the heart to receive, in full simplicity, tenderness, and glory, ideas of the Divine mercy and beneficence. The Creator has bestowed no gift in vain; and He has pre-eminently distinguished man by the faculty of speech-placing the organ only a little lower than the brain, the temple of the soul, thereby to indicate, if we may so presume, the importance of the gift. Now if, as we believe, there be buckled to every gift an accountability for its right use and exercise, how deeply culpable are the great majority of our clergy in neglecting the improvement of this gift, blindly leaving to chance, or to a few hap-hazard lessons or attempts, this great power of speech, which they, above all others, are called upon to use to the best, the noblest, the highest ends? The parable of "The Talents" will illustrate our meaning. All are not equally gifted, but it is expected, or rather it is commanded, enforced as a duty, that we improve the talent with which we have been endowed; and he who hides it, or improves it not, lays himself open to the rebuke of his Master. Surely he is but imperfectly fitted to become "the messenger of grace to guilty men" who has not, in some degree, this leading and persuasive gift. He may be a very learned or a very deep-thinking E man, a very wise or a very good man; but if he lacks this gift or has left the talent unimproved, the efficacy of his learning, of his wisdom, of his thinking, even of his goodness, in the public sense of his ministry, is lost, or at least suffers a grievous abatement. Still there are to be found among the numerous students in training for the ministry, a few (or shall we open wider the jealous eye of our belief, and say a goodly number?) who, thinking that there is really something in the art, notwithstanding that they hear it so universally decried, apply themselves to it. But how meagre, how wretchedly meagre the allowance of time which even these bestow upon the study of this art which is to become to them the art of arts in making their public ministry as persuasive and effective as it ought to be. The power feelingly to persuade or deeply to impress is a fair and mighty power, and must be long and fervently solicited ere it will smile fully or even approvingly upon us. Again, such students expend considerable sums in acquiring all the other branches of learning deemed necessary for their sacred calling and they do rightly; but how miserably poor the pittance which the majority expend on the acquisition of this, to them, so vital and distinguishing an art! A few months, and a few shillings are spent with some popular elocutionist, who initiates them into the traditionary modes, or points as they are called, of a few stock pieces-pieces abundantly declamatory and sentimental; such pieces, in sooth, which is all that the majority want, as will strike at small tea-parties, winning the smiles of approving ladies, and stirring up the envy of the less capable but ambitious aspirants-and this they call learning the art. They have studied elocution under So-and-so-who dares find fault with them? Who dares to tell them that they have learned nothing but a whine or rant for the art, and have only fitted themselves for becoming showy mountebanks-which in these days is something-or thirdrate players? Who tells them this, let him beware of the poisoned darts which wounded Conceit covertly and malignantly shoots at the castigator. The seemingly tedious process of thinking out their pieces is never thought of; for where is the use of doing such a troublesome thing? "I have got the modes, the points, the very same as So-and-so, acknowledged to be great in the art-and my voice, tone, gesture, pronunciation, everything, they say "They say -who say? "All my friends say-and my master too says-that I am a perfect copy of him." Copy of him? Yes!-Ay, very like! By your own confession you prove yourself to be but a mere smatterer in the art-you have been mouthing the sound without thinking of the sense-you have grasped at the imposing shadow and lost the golden substance! And thus, too frequently, students of finer spirit and larger heart fret away a certain portion of their time, and find themselves at last coming to close, shrewd questionings as to there being anything meritorious or useful at all in what they have learned of the art. They are at a loss to comprehend, on reflection, by what process of a refin ing ingenuity this grandiloquent style of speaking can be carried into the pulpit with meekness and decorum. They find it so drugged with affectation, or bounciness to their own ear, that in the modest misgivings of their better judgment, through dreading to offend or seek for applause in the vanity of display, they sink into tameness, or perhaps a monotonous whine, ill-becoming the dignity of their office or the sacred glory of their mission. Vain, very vain, are all such sudden and forced attempts to bring forth the golden fruit of a ripe and enduring eloquence! No; a knowledge of the principles which govern the true powers of the mind should teach students who may have the hardihood to discriminate for themselves, that only according to the measure in which the principles of this art-or any other art-are grafted upon the mind, will they ever permeate or enrich with that subtle and all-sufficient virtue, which avails to produce the fair and mellow fruit of true eloquence. "TRUST TO NATURE" is their motto, and the best of mottos too, if rightly interpreted and understood. But if this their cry of Trust to Nature means, as we often find, to remain heedless of all aids from systematic instruction-scornful of all rule or method having for its object the cultivation of the oratorical powers, then we ask,-Is there anything soundly rational in this plea? The power to think as well as the power to speak is the gift of nature-and we might, with as cogent a show of reason, "trust to nature" and leave the mind unaided by the rule, the method, the discipline of a liberal education. But who that has the advantage, and is possessed of a true spirit, trusts to this force of nature? No one, but a fool. The truth seems to be that they of whom we speak become so engrossed with their contemplative and acquisitive studies, taxing chiefly the brain, and their powers of expression in written language, that the tongue is utterly neglected and even despised; but after a series of years, when the time comes that they must issue from their closets and speak their thoughts in public, their feeble, whining, uncouth, stammering speech proclaims the guilt and self-abasement which lay in that neglect; their pride of intellect is humiliated, the disparaged tongue is avenged. Many see their folly, in this respect, when it is too late, but how few confess it! How many with a strange perversity excuse themselves by turning round upon Nature and blaming her as stinting this popular gift! O yes, she has been a hard stepmother to them of the stirring eloquence of the tongue; but not so-she has, almost universally, given her endowment liberally, and they can only blame their own remissness or obstinacy against her dictates, in not deigning to inquire into the laws which regulate the tongue's development-as they assiduously did with those of the mind-and zealously carry them out in practice. Nature never deserts a willing heart and head, but rushes rejoicingly to cast her fruits and treasures at her votary's feet, and bears him on to some high splendid triumph. Trust to Nature, say we too, but after a different sense:-She has endowed us with faculties which, rightly exercised and directed, lead to good and great results—she has gathered, she has compressed into that little round, the human head-(a more wonderful sphere than the great globe itself)-powers, infinite in their capacity for progression, and destined, in the soul, to immortal life. Trust to Nature, then, again we cry, but neglect not, as you value an honourable progress or the fame of a high excellence, neglect not to toil perseveringly, hopefully, aspiringly: looking out for the best models-not to be slavishly imitated in the manner-but be you self-prepared to be touched by any kindling from their spirit. Be emulous of them in the power of perceiving thought and the power of producing thought, the realisation of expressed feeling, and the utterance of emotion. Above all, be emulous with them in conceiving, through the operation of your own minds, the true, the good, the great, the beautiful, as you read and handle the book-records of the world's greatest minds, or the still greater book of Nature herself. "SADLY O'ER MY SPIRIT STEALING." SADLY o'er my spirit stealing, Like yon holy moon of eve, O'er the heaven of thought and feeling Beauty in her mien is smiling, All my gloomy thoughts to bright. But those lustrous eyes are beaming And the mental ray is streaming From their spheres too bright and fast. Death has come-not in his terrors, SKETCHES OF GREAT EDUCATORS-PESTALOZZI. How brave a soul is that which puts forth the innate power of self-formation, and, by the might of its conception, bursts the bonds of inveterate custom or bigotted convention! What a glorious morn is the dawning of the broad truth of life to such a soul, when the purpose of things stands forth before it, and its own purpose is no longer a mystery! Set a plant in the dark, and it will instinctively grope its way to the light. Let a vitally growing soul be born in the humblest sphere of life, and it will rise to the capabilities of its possible destiny. The records of every age are full of examples. They are often, too, men not much differing in quality of genius from others, but who acted up to the full development of what Nature gives to all-power of some kind or other, general or particular-Newton, for instance, who himself asserted that his advantage over others lay almost entirely in the power he possessed of continuous attention. A true man having found truth, feels that he cannot, dare not withhold it from others; for having with God's help made himself free-free in the sense of the term "He is a freeman whom the truth makes free," and feeling therefrom a godlike elasticity, he is conscious of a duty which to him necessitates the propagation of his discovery. Doubtless, though comparatively few of these men have been made known to us by history or tradition, many such have livedmen who cared more for the approving voice of their own conscience than for the fitful applause of their fellows. Many, too, have been constrained by prudence to limit their communications to such as were sufficiently enlightened to receive them; for the emancipation of those in hereditary bondage is as much the work of time and accustoming habit, as the enslavement of those who have once been thoroughly free. Some, also, with a feeling heart, as well as a strong head, have felt compassion for their degenerate brethren, and have addressed themselves to the work of redemption, but the buffets of ignorance and malice bred resentment and disgust, or they qualified their principles so as to attain the best possible results under the circumstances. But how few, who daringly and unhesitatingly asserted unqualified truth and the practice of what it enforces without bending to the opposition of conventional custom! And yet the great type of those great men is the model of Christendom, whom millions profess to imitate. There are a few, however, and there might be more. Pestalozzi was one of these men. JOHN HENRY PESTALOZZI was born at Zurich in Switzerland, on the 12th January, 1745. When yet a child, his father died, leaving him to the care of his mother and a devoted nurse attached to the fortunes of the family. Much of the future character of the man depends on his home training. In the earlier years of childhood the sweet will of a mother makes a more persuasive impression than the |