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same family, who are without the light and means of Christianity; but we would have far greater exertions made to overtake the rapid increase of our home Heathenism. We therefore rejoice in the re-awakened regard for those institutions and efforts by which our own country is to be more perfectly evangelized, and without which our home Churches will not be able to sustain their immense foreign operations. We cannot, indeed, expect their spiritual condition to be improved, until the loud cali of this country shall be responded to. Next to providing for his own household, the Christian ought certainly to provide for his own neighbourhood.

It is a painful fact, that earnest, spiritual men are mourning over the general state of their respective Churches; not so much over the want of congregations,-although crowded churches and chapels are a great rarity,-or of general attention in hearing, as over a prevailing apathy, a deadness and inaction, dispiriting to Ministers and those who work with them; and over a want of direct and evident spiritual fruit. Some Churches have been agitated by various controversies; and the collapse is always greatly detrimental to the welfare of religion. Divisions in Churches give a shock and inflict a damage from which they often do not recover for a generation. But whatever special causes may exist, there are at all times within reach general influences that will meet the case; and attention will ever be first turned to the Christian Ministry, as being, under God, the great renovating power of the Church.

The history of the pulpit is the history of Christianity. It has always, since the Reformation especially, been the most powerful engine for promoting the religious and social welfare of the nation. It furnishes the key-note of religious opinion, and is the prompter and guide of religious action. We do not pretend to be able to form a proper estimate of the Ministry of this country, so numerous as to be almost beyond count, and so scattered and diversified as it is; nor would we willingly drop a word tending to depreciate Ministers; but they are ever before the world, and the Christian public is able to see what its condition requires. Undoubtedly, the crying demand of these times, as of former times in which" a great work" has been required to be done, is for earnest men,-men like the leaders of the First and Second Reformation, who, by reason of their earnestness, stood out in bold relief from other men of their times, who felt the truths they preached, and therefore spoke like men who felt them. This was their mighty advantage,-an element of which all could judge; and it prepared the way for the reception of their message; for it awakened the deepest sympathies of human nature.

The truths they dwelt upon were the grand fundamental truths of the Gospel,-old as revelation, but new to nearly all their hearers; and they had the force of newly revealed truth. In a country like ours, filled with the reflected light of Christianity, as it is found in our literature and in public opinion, and especially in congregations which are perfectly familiarized with the Christian revelation, it requires a mode of announcement that will impress the heart, to gain full attention and regard. Clearness and force of statement, and attractiveness of illustration, must be the substitute for novelty in the substantial matter of the things delivered. The old truths are wanted, and they are sufficient. That which constituted the power of Christianity in other days, under the divine blessing, is effectual now. The phases of society change; but the moral character and spiritual wants of the individual are the same in every age and country; and the process of regeneration is identical in all cases. Zeal and courage, alike the product of Divine Love, will suggest the topics, and urge truth upon the conscience.

A change is needed in the character of our pulpit ministrations. We have escaped, except in a few obscure parish-churches, from the dry moral essay; and, among the Nonconformists, from the tiresome, never-ending divisions and "uses" of the Puritans, -like the valley in Ezekiel's vision, full of bones, very many, and very dry; but still our pulpit addresses appear to be too technical, too artistic, too much upon a model and scale. The art of making sermons is reduced to a mechanical training,-the Italian gardening, with its ornate artifices, and pruned and trimmed vegetation, instead of the bold and free English style of nature moderately cultivated by art. The art of preaching has spoiled multitudes of preachers. Forms, and not thoughts, are chiefly sought and rested in. If the fountain be full, it will gush forth; and all that is needed is to make a natural channel to convey the thoughts, as an Eastern garden is watered by the foot; stay the stream here, and it will flow there. Men should speak because they have thought, and not merely think in order to speak. If a man thoroughly masters and digests a subject, he needs not, generally, to write down more than the course of his thinking; and if his thoughts are arranged naturally and logically, they will suggest their own form, "apt words in apt places;" and much fitter words will offer themselves in the warmth of delivery, than in the coolness of the closet.

The great error, in our apprehension, is the pervading influence of professional mannerism. All professions have class opinions and stereotyped forms; and this is perhaps unavoidable; at least, he is a very bold man who dares to break through the restrictions of professional rubrics. The Clergy are not free from this mental slavery; and, with the noblest themes, and the highest advantages, as a class, they make but little impression

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upon the public mind. Few preachers are thoroughly attractive and interesting: the exceptions prove how much is in the power of the pulpit. But why a proverbial dulness in sermons? Why less interest in a sermon in the church, than a lecture in the hall? We readily grant that there is greater solemnity in the place, and in the occasion; that both properly restrain those sallies of imagination and wit which may enliven secular subjects; and that churches and chapels are often so stupidly constructed, that instead of proper ventilation, you have either draughts which distress and incommode, or a stagnant and vitiated atmosphere which deadens all physical power, and only disposes to sleep. But, all such disadvantages apart, the bulk of pulpit efforts, notwithstanding the grandeur of the theme, are not interesting and delightful, but only tolerable. There is wanted in the pulpit more of nature, more of individuality where we cannot have true originality, more of earnest talk, that shall rise with the argument and with the growth of feeling into forceful appeal, leading captive the whole man; more unction; that in the whole body of Ministers, which renders the few justly popular, impressive, and irresistible. Eloquence subdues free men; and the pulpit wants the eloquence which springs from energy and earnestness. These may make a rough style; but the knots of a club are its strength. We need, not the preaching which only whitens the sepulchres, but that which opens them and calls the dead to life.

The length of the modern sermon is a great disadvantage, and a growing evil; but it is not the main cause of listlessness in the hearer: for it is not the last portion which tires us; we are tired before we get that relief; and there are long sermons which never appear long. The fault is both in the matter and the style. The topics are too generally stale, and extremely limited in their range; the public mind wants variety and freshness. The mass of the truths uttered from the pulpit, need no proof; it is an idle waste of skill and patience to offer it. If all vain repetitions of thought were excluded, and the best of the remainder were alone retained, sermons would not be unreasonably long. And generally the style is too verbose; it is not close, compact, nervous. The rule might be, to see how much space the gold can be made to cover; the practice is, not to be perspicuous, convincing, brief. The wordpainter fails to exhibit his own thought, probably because it is not clearly conceived by himself; for he who thinks clearly and vigorously, will express himself with sufficient perspicuity: thought shapes the style. The one radical error, not universal, but general, is excessive verbiage: "the seven grains are hid under a bushel of chaff!" We are of opinion that it is the sin of the age; and indiscreet persons freely bestow their praises upon young Ministers,-especially if they have plenty of bold

"figures,"-in proportion to their being unable to remember any thing that has been said. The "cloud-land" style is, in our judgment, the most offensive; an accumulation of what are no better than cant terms, compound epithets, and words without definite significations; and these are often accumulated into an incongruous mass of unintelligible jargon: yet, with many, this constitutes fine writing and fine speaking. Ask a young man what he means, and he tells you plainly enough, and in the very terms that he ought to have first used. It is this want of business style that we complain of; that, whereas each part of the sermon ought to clear off something as discussed and settled, no ground is cleared, no business is done.

We are strongly of opinion that few Ministers cultivate the art of writing and speaking, beyond the point of amplification. The hackneyed plan of principal divisions, and sub-divisions, almost without end, of now rising from species to genus, and then descending from genus to species, &c., is common among young preachers especially, and has been fostered by elaborate rules for the construction of sermons. To express themselves in few words, marking the shades of meaning, to acquire force, to mark the rhythm, and to cultivate the beauties of language,-these, or we mistake, are matters much disregarded; as if it were of no moment in what dress a man appeared when mingling with strangers and friends, and with the tasteful as well as the unobservant. The pulpit style will become more impressive, when Ministers strive to make it so.

There is also an evil rising up among Ministers, even the younger of them, which ought to be frowned out of countenance, if it cannot be dealt with by authority; we refer to the growing practice of reading sermons. There are special occasions when it may be right that a Minister should avail himself of his manuscript; occasions which require great care and exactness in the very phraseology employed, or which are of such difficulty and responsibility, that few men could so thoroughly command their feelings as to express the very thing they mean. But while we quarrel not with men who, at such times, secure themselves against mishaps, we must say that we seldom hear a sermon read, even on these special occasions, which does not lose more in interest and force than is gained in safety and correctness. Few men read well, because few read naturally; and the energy and freedom-the nature-which comes forth in spontaneous utterances, is all wanting in the cribbed and cramped process of literally reading a manuscript. Is it noble and dignified in a legate of the skies, to be bound to his paper for the utterance of his own thoughts and feelings? Does it not destroy all eloquence, by freezing the noble currents of emotion? Reading is tolerated nowhere but in the pulpit. Yet how would Peter have looked, reading his sermon on the day of

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Pentecost? and would Paul have been likely "mightily to have convinced the Jews, and that publicly," if he must first have fetched his manuscript, and then slavishly followed it? The style of the oration on Mars' Hill differed widely from the exposition and appeals in the synagogue, because the Apostle wisely suited himself to his auditory. Reading sermons betrays the want of that prime requisite for the Ministry, next to the experienced power of the Gospel,-"aptness to teach." It tends to a certain and most injurious change in the quality of pulpit labours. Such Ministers will not aim principally to exhibit old truths in a new dress, and simply to render them more attractive and impressive; but recondite subjects must be chosen, topics requiring great research and accurate statement; and which may therefore bring higher credit to the preacher, as profound, original, philosophical. The Gospel testimony will soon become the occasional, instead of being the standing, topic. The truths discussed will also soon suffer. The discourse will become elaborate, and then attenuated. The audience will be educated to a fastidious implacability, and difficult to be disarmed of their critical wrath; they will be more displeased with the manner than pleased with the substance of a discourse; and the great end of preaching will be lost.

We are fully aware of the plea by which those who read defend themselves,-"they gain confidence ;" and we admit they may require it. But surely this is not the way to acquire moral courage. This plan is not adopted by speakers in other departments. Confidence will never be gained by this means; for it admits of no advance; there is no exercise of self-reliance, no practice to make perfect. If there be an unconquerable timidity, we should judge that such a man has no business in an office which requires great moral courage. But timid men have conquered that self-diffidence which was their snare, and in some degree their imbecility, by thoroughly mastering their subject, by logical arrangement, by great moral considerations, by that humility which is willing to endure failures, by a deep sense of responsibility, and, above all, by a prayerful reliance upon those divine aids which are assured to every true ambassador for Christ. That the habit of reading may be broken, many examples prove; and that it needs not to be formed, is evident from the practice in evangelical pulpits, even in the Establishment, where reading so largely obtains.

The most popular and effective Ministers of all Churches are, in the proper sense, extemporaneous Preachers; that is to say, they do not, except occasionally, write in extenso; but study out every thing, regardless, for the time, of phraseology; and, having determined and mastered their whole train of thought, they clothe those thoughts extemporaneously. They thus have room for the play of their own feelings; and, by the diversity