the Methodist been for years preaching in the same pulpit, and his rival set up a field-preaching in his vicinity, he would have drawn many away, and perhaps reclaimed not a few upon whom the remonstrances and advice to which they had been so long habituated had produced no effect. In fact, the church has been obliged, for the sake of the greater good, to forego the less. The residence of the clergy, on the whole, secures for the congregation far greater advantages than can result from the most impassioned, the purest, most majestic eloquence. And we trust that we shall incur no suspicion of profaneness, when we add that the saying ⚫ that no man is a prophet in his own country,' is an axiom which may be carried to a great extent. Great as is the influence of a zealous and affectionate pastor in a parish, from his well-known character, we doubt whether it is gained so much by his preaching as by his conscientious discharge of his other duties. Indeed, we suspect that the increase of Methodisin itself will furnish us with an unanswerable testimony to the truth of our view. When they first appear in a new place, they usually increase with great rapidity; where they are stationary and have been long established, they not only do not always advance, but frequently retrograde.

Thus it appears, that the peculiar circumstances of the Church of England have greatly contributed to form the character of our pulpit eloquence. The history of religious opinion is the history of English preaching. Our great writers of sermous have accommodated themselves to the necessities, we will not say to the taste of their age. That manner which was most likely to be effective among their hearers, which was either wanted to stimulate indifference, or to restrain extravagance, was adopted, as far, of course, as the different genius of each individual could submit itself to the sacrifice of its own inclinations to the desire of usefulness. Whether at present they are following the same wise course, or adhering with too great pertinacity to a system, which the opinions and feelings of the age have rendered somewhat obsolete, may be matter of discussion. The impossibility of producing a perfect and unexceptionable standard of pulpit eloquence for general use from the whole course of our abundant literature, such, we mean, as may be advantageously addressed to the mingled congregations in the metropolis and our large towns, proves that our masterly writers neglected those primary rules of style and com position, without which a preacher may be eminently useful in his own day, but will scarcely secure a permanent reputation. Had many of them spoken like Cicero or Massillon, they would have won no audience' where the judgment was perverted by a fondness for a peculiar jargon, or the pedantic display of learning. Where sermons were estimated by their length, by the number of hour

glasses

glasses consumed, simplicity and compression of style might have pleased the educated few, but would have been loathed and shunned by the many as meagre and unprofitable doctrine. In fact, at every period of our religious history, we shall find some writers of sermons, the representatives as it were of their age, who have caught its peculiar spirit, and have written precisely in the manner best adapted to correct its errors, to supply its deficiencies, to improve, to elevate, or to restrain its religious feelings. To some, after what we have said, this eulogy may appear paradoxical; but if we examine the writings of our greatest preachers, with reference to their age, wę are convinced that it will prove true. From the days that old Latimer went forth, with his plain and honest good sense, his homely illustrations, the vigour and boldness with which he struck at the root of every prejudice, to combat the absurdities and falsehoods of popery, a succession of men has never been wanting, very different indeed from him, because the times required a difference, but equally earnest and effective in the cause. What Atterbury says of Luther, may be well applied to Latimer, that he was a rough wedge, fit to cleave the stubborn block of popery. But he has passages which we should confront without fear with those forcible and original, and even sublime quotations, with which Maury furnishes us from the Père Brydaine, a missionary. When, however, by his exertions, and those of his more gentle and dispassionate coadjutors, the cumbrous edifice of the ancient faith was overthrown, clear, explicit, and solid statements of the pure and genuine doctrines of Christianity were wanted. These were supplied in the Homilies, the reading of which being enjoined by authority may, perhaps, have retarded the cultivation of the native talent for preaching, and doubtless furnished a precedent for the practice of delivering written discourses. The Homilies are precisely what they pretend to be, simple expositions of doctrines, profusely illustrated by quotations from scripture, admirably suited to support the cause of reason and common sense against inveterate prejudice, fanciful superstition, and the thraldom of multifarious and unmeaning ceremonies. But the perpetual discussion of controversial points, which ensued while the Reformation was still unsettled, and during the first aggressions of puritanism, led to extreme subtilty; and the scholastic theology began again to encroach upon the simplicity of scriptural doctrine. Men were not content with apprehending clearly the general, spirit of passages in the sacred writings, but endeavoured to trace the possible bearing of every single word. Every text furnished a multitude of questions, each of which was to be followed to its most remote point; and as much as would weary the patience of a modern congregation was wasted on the supposed, mystery contained in some particle.

Into this style the genius of his pedantic age betrayed Andrewes, who nevertheless preserved the fund of good sense, which he inherited from Jewel and Hooker, although perplexed by innumerable quaintnesses, and overlaid and incumbered, though perhaps not in so great a degree, with the metaphysical niceties, which ensured the admiration of his day to the prose as well as the poetry of Donne, Assured as we are from history of the extraordinary influence possessed by the preachers during all the succeeding turbu lent and disastrous period, when we first examine the remains of pulpit eloquence of that day, we are filled with wonder. Nothing appears so ill-calculated to excite the passions of the multitude as the prolix, elaborate, and cumbrous style then in use. Popular eloquence is in general rapid, lively, vehement; it strikes, inflames, and leaves no time for the mind to cool, or for the excited passions to subside. We perceive without difficulty the additional authority and importance which was obtained by the joint appeal to political and religious feelings, but we scarcely apprehend how these combined motives were incited to action by the long and learned harangues which form the huge folios of Owen and others. We are to bear in mind, however, in the first place, that of course the laboured discourses are those which have survived, through the medium of the press; the extemporaneous harangues, which kindled and directed the flame, have almost entirely perished; nothing of the light and flying artillery remains, and we are not to judge of the activity of the warfare by the ponderous culverins which are laid up in our ecclesiastical armories. But revert to the spirit of the times, and our wonder entirely ceases.-Religion, at least reli gion moulded up with politics, so entirely engrossed the public mind, that the unwearied and inexhaustible attention was not satisfied without discourses of many hours-learning was imperatively demanded by the uneducated as well as the educated. A miserable village in Berkshire formally complained of their pastor, the great orientalist Pocock, that he was no Latiner. Under these circumstances, which excuse or at least explain all that is repugnant to real taste and the great rules of writing, we take into account the real excellence of these preachers, and have as it were a key to the manner in which they obtained their authority.-There is a lofty, serious, earnest and even impassioned tone throughout their lengthy periods, which even now impresses the mind with a conviction that they were entirely devoted to their cause. There is a force and copiousness of language, and above all a sustained and uniform precision of argument, from the beginning to the end of their uncouth and unwieldy volumes, perfectly extraordinary. However erroneous the doctrine, the process of reasoning is almost invariably correct; even where the forms of the scholastic logic are not pre

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served,

served, the spirit predominates, and the fallacy is rarely to be detected in the method of obtaining the conclusion, but in the premises and preliminary assumptions. Two of the greatest men of the period, though by no means equal in ability or similar in genius, Hall and Taylor, exemplify the character of the time by their faults as well as their excellencies. The age required copiousness; and Taylor poured forth a redundance and exuberance of imagery and illustration, which, splendid as it is, and usually appropriate, often bewilders and confounds the reader. The age required fervour; and Taylor soared to the height of the most lofty subjects, with a majesty, and force, and flow of expression perfectly unrivalled, till at times he swelled into extravagance, and was lost in vague and visionary raptures. The feelings were to be moved; and Hall indulged himself in his appeals to the more tender emotions, till his pathos degenerated into maudlin, and his beautiful thoughts were refined into conceits. The age was impatient without erudition; and both, but Taylor especially, threw his multifarious reading into his sermons, with a profusion which would baffle the most learned scholar of our day to trace to its varied sources. Lastly, strong reasoning could by no means be dispensed with, and in the quicker and more lively style of Hall, and, clothed in the embroidery of Taylor's exuberant and figurative language, we mark the severest logic, and arguments conducted with the utmost precision. Take the Passion Sermon of Hall, and Taylor's Advent to Judgment, the former, if not the latter, the masterpiece of its author, and you will not only be able to judge of the peculiar genius of each, but the character of eloquence peculiar to the times. From the first, full as it is of the most simple, striking and pathetic thoughts, it would be difficult to select a passage not disfigured by some quaintness, or marred by some conceit; and we observe that peculiarity of Hall's style, in which he was followed by Lightfoot and others of that day, which called forth the disdainful satire of Milton: our great poet found Hall a formidable antagonist on the subject of episcopacy, and instead of imitating his gentle and Christian spirit, condescended to that which, in default of argument, even great men are sometimes reduced to, abuse of the manner and character of their adversary. To be girded-by one who makes sentences by the statute, as if all above three inches long were confiscate.' But in the great work of Taylor, awful, pathetic, sublime as is the whole, impregnated and pervaded by a solemn, exalted, devotional spirit, there is still much which even this powerful impression can scarcely carry us through without regret, repugnance and disap pointment.

At the Restoration, men's minds were weary of religious as well as civil turbulence; the country had been so long distracted by the multiplicity

multiplicity of sects, all equally fierce and intolerant, that repose was the prevailing wish of almost all parties. There was wanted therefore a writer, who, as it were once for all, should search every question to the bottom with laborious impartiality who should lay it in all its possible bearings before the understanding; who should not merely confute every error but trace it to its origin, and detect its secret operation on the mind; who should, in short, exhaust, as it were, theology. Such a preacher was Barrow. Endowed with an acuteness which could penetrate every subject, with a nicety and precision of distinction and definition more nearly approaching than any other modern, except perhaps Bacon, to Aristotle; with a copiousness and variety of language, which enabled him to convey to the mind with the utmost perspicuity the most minute differences; Barrow added to all this some of the yet unextinguished warmth, which had animated his predecessors, and is occasionally glowing, vehement, impassioned. To us, we allow that he appears needlessly prolix, his minuteness even seems trifling, his abilities perplex, and his hair-splitting distinctions, though they astonish, distract us from the main scope of the argument. But take his age again into the account, and we acknowledge at once the necessity to which he submitted, and cannot but allow that, had he been a more perfect, he would probably have been a less useful teacher.

Both our prose and our poetry after this period began to assume a new form. Instead of pouring forth in indiscriminate profusion every thought and every illustration; instead of one rich but redundant flow of language, we began to select with fastidiousness, to compress with jealous strictness, to reject not merely useless excrescences, but every luxuriance which did not contribute to the perspicuous expression of our subject. Our aim was to be brief, vivid, brilliant, till our brevity became sententious and epigrammatic, our masculine energy sparkling and almost effeminate precision. Both in prose and verse the transition from one style to the other is evident in Dryden, who is the intermediate link between the writers of the Commonwealth and Pope and Addison. In our pulpit eloquence the progress was somewhat more tardy, and passed through both Tillotson and Sherlock before it arrived at the perfection of the later style of Atterbury. It is unquestionable, that the high character of Tillotson was not founded solely on the solid good sense of his theology, the real and judicious liberality of his opinions, or his simple and unostentatious virtues. The warm praise of Addison, and the general respect with which he is named by the fastidious critics of that day, prove that his style was held in the highest estimation. To us, we confess, he appears to unite almost all that is objectionable in the elder and the later school. He has the diffuseness and prolixity of the former, without their strength x 2 and