in affirming of them that they are so competent, in point of facility, to the exercise of extemporary prayer, and so perfectly and experimentally satisfied of it, that our authors might as reasonably, for any probability of success, have recommended their emigration, in a body, to a distant part of the globe, as their adoption of the mode proposed in the New Directory.-We will notice, in as few words as we can, some of the causes, quite obvious ones indeed, from which this prevailing facility very naturally arises.

It is almost unnecessary to observe that the persons who become ministers among the Dissenters, are not destined by their relatives to the employment from their earliest years; if we partly except just here and there an individual, to whose juvenile inclinations it has been the systematic, though perhaps unavowed, endeavour of parents to give that direction. They are brought into the service, therefore, by what may be called a law of selection, an adjudgment of fitness, in that portion of religious society to which they are the best known, sanctioning their own wishes, and sometimes preceding and prompting them. This fitness is recognized in a very decidedly and therefore unusually religious character of the mind and deportment, combined with a somewhat more than quite ordinary ability of producing and conveying thoughts on religious topics.*

The way in which this piety and this faculty have almost always been first brought out into formal exercise, is social prayer. In some dissenting congregations a few serious young people agree to hold a weekly meeting for prayer, in a rather retired manner, with an exclusion, in favour of the diffidence of their first essays, of their elder friends and of strangers. Whatever may be thought of the discretion of such meetings, there can be no question respecting their effect on whatever portion of talent may happen to be there. The serious youth is sometimes persuaded to take the leading part in family worship, when the master of the family is absent. In his visits to religious relatives at a distance, if his religious disposition be decidedly known, he is invited, perhaps even too importunately pressed, to perform the same service, which is quite, of course, an extemporary one. Among the dissenters there are a great number of prayer meetings, so far public that any one may attend

Our dissenting readers will excuse the very measured and moderate terms in which we speak of their demand of the proofs of talent in the young men whose inclination to the ministry they countenance or incite, as it is notorious that they have too often been fully as moderate in this part of their requisition. LI

VOL. XI.

them, some of them having in view merely the general cultivation of piety, and some of them, (as, for instance, the monthly meetings, denominated missionary prayer meetings, so very extensively in use of late years,) instituted for more special objects of religious interest. At these, any serious young man who has given indications of ability for extemporary prayer is sure to be invited to the exercise; and if he should, from diffidence, decline it, it is very possible he shall be rebuked in private by some of his zealous friends for his want of zeal or courage. Probably he is sometimes induced, or directly requested, to visit a poor sick neighbour, and seldom thinks of coming away without first praying with the sufferer, some of whose family also are likely to be present at the exercise. We might have mentioned earlier in the series that among the dissenters it is not unusual, when two or three families meet merely to pass a social evening, for their separating to be preceded by a prayer, which will sometimes be the amicable contribution required from such a young man, if there be such a one among them.-There may happen to be a very particular want for some one to relieve occasionally the labours of the minister, by going, perhaps, on a Sunday evening, to deliver a short discourse to a company of the inhabitants of some neighbouring village, assembled in one of those licensed rooms of which the dissenters have so vast and encreasing a number: a considerable part of his employment on such an occasion is still extemporary prayer.-If at length he goes to an academy, he has there sometimes to pray in a more imposing company, that of his tutors and fellow-students. When he begins to be sent out in the full avowed capacity of preacher, this same duty pertinaciously adheres to him, in the public assembly, and probably in the private house in which he may be hospitably detained till next day.

Thus during the early years of his life, and previously to his taking his fixed station, he has, very possibly, performed the exereise in question the greater part of a thousand times, and in innumerable varieties of circumstance and situation. And after he enters fully on the destined field of his labours, the occasions on which the office recurs upon him, besides his regular pulpit service, are, if he is of an active temperament, numerous and diversified beyond calculation.

Now if it be allowed only that the average native faculty of the dissenting ministers amounts to a decent mediocrity, it would be most marvellous if the discipline through all this unlimited exercise did not bring them to a high degree of self-possession and readiness. Nor is any such exception to the

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general law of cause and effect found in the matter do in point of fact realize the natural result of the unindulgent process of their training. And when we consider what value men are always disposed to set on accomplishments that have been laboriously acquired; what real and definable advantages are actually afforded by the talent in question in the diversified ministry of religion; and, (to advert again to the infirm side of human nature,) what sentiments may arise, at less devout and humble seasons, in glancing at the contrast between this talent and the qualifications of persons who reputedly or certainly do not possess it, though engaged in substantially the same vocation;-when we reflect on all this, we are again seized with amazement at the stubborn gravity with which this new self-constituted council insists on the partial abandonment of such a vantage ground. If any further advice or injunctions of the same nature are in preparation to be issued, they will do wisely to bend all the force of their charitable effort on youths who are quite in the early and timorous stage of the preparatory progress; for they may rest assured they can do nothing with either the veterans or the youthful proficients of the self-willed tribe which they have been so unluckily beguiled into a notion of reforming.

In the above paragraphs we have performed, we confess with much less compression than we hoped, the substance of what we conceived to be our task with respect to this publication. There cannot well be a great deal more to be said of a book, after it is convicted of the folly of an utter impracticability in its main design. It is but fair, nevertheless, to notice briefly some of the matters brought in evidence of the wisdom and necessity of the project; and also to quote the passages which express the precise nature of the proposed reform. Indeed, it should have been sooner stated how much less it is than a formal liturgy that they wish to introduce. They express themselves rather strongly against the entire preclusion of extemporary prayer; and but little approve of forms of the minister's own composition, whether committed to memory to be recited, or simply read. They say,

The plan we recommend is simply this: To continue the use of Extemporary Prayer in a certain degree, and so far as all the valuable ends of it will be secured; but with it to make use of those Forms of devotion with which we are amply supplied in the Holy Scriptures.-This expedient, we are apprehensive, would effectually secure the principal advantages of all the different modes of prayer which have been specified, without the disadvantages of any of them. To recommend this mixed kind of worship is the object of the present publication.'

Having thus enounced their plan, they leave it a while, to exert its own unassisted attractions on the one side, as it were, of the reader's mind, while they proceed to ply him most stoutly on the other, with whatever of the evils incident to exclusive extemporary prayer admit of the inost repulsive representation. And this is managed in a way that merits commendation, in the same sense in which our Lord 'commended' the cunning steward. The quiet fair-speech profession of the title of the section is to state- the Disadvantages of an invariable use of extemporary prayer;' and the reader, in his simplicity, naturally expects a statement, a strong one of course, of the disadvantages inseparable from this mode of prayer, by its very nature, and therefore impossible to be avoided or remedied. But the little synod, truly artful for once, and perhaps desirous, by a stimulant and inspiriting regale, to give the reader an impetus that should insure his being carried quite to the end of the book, have fallen on the more efficient expedient of enumerating and exposing the actual faults and follies of their weaker brethren. And this they have done, not, certainly, in terms importing literally that those faults and follies, in a gross degree, are general among dissenting ministers; each allegation is introduced by such expressions as some of them,' 'instances have occurred,' and the like: but still there is not sufficient care taken to prevent the imputation from falling v "y extensively; the representation is so made that a knowing only just enough of the dissenters to be prejudiced against them, would be very likely to take it as descriptive of the prevailing character of the nonconformist public worship. And if he did, what might he reasonably think of the taste, and anticipate of the religious cultivation, of what, according to Lord Harrowby's statements and documents, either is or is likely soon to become a majority of the people attending public worship in the land,-when he reads such passages as the following?

• Some of our ministers contract an unnatural and disagreeabl tone, which ought to be carefully avoided, as it tends to excite ridicule in some hearers and pain in most.'

It is matter of notoriety that some worthy ministers among us sometimes appear, at least, to be so much embarrassed, as to occasion their hearers to be in pain for them, lest they should be obliged to stop.'

It has frequently been remarked, that, for want of a due attention to method, some good men, when they seem to be drawing towards the conclusion of their general prayer, begin again, and introduce petitions relating to the present act of worship, which have no propriety but at the first entrance upon it

The general prayers of some worthy men have so much

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sameness that they may not improperly be denominated Forms, though they have not been precomposed. The very same timents perpetually occur, in nearly the same language and order; so that many of their people have them by rote, or at least could, from their memory, finish every sentence as soon as they hear it begun. It is also observable that the prayers of many different ministers are so much alike that they seem as if they had been borrowed from some common Form. The same common-place phrases (and some of them very quaint ones) perpetually occur; as likewise certan peculiar scripture allusions, not of the most proper or intelligible kind*.

Some persons, who have a greater variety, both of thought and language, run into the opposite extreme. Fearful of too great a sameness in their devotional services, they are perpetually studying novelty. On this principle, we have known some of our brethren to fix upon one sacred topic; sometimes a text of scripture (perhaps even a metaphor) and to pursue a train of thought grounded upon it through almost the whole of a prayer; so that theirs have not improperly been denominated "preaching prayers."

Persons of inferior ability to these, who adopt the same mistaken notion about variety in prayer, are sometimes chargeable with yet greater improprieties. From a settled aversion to any thing like a form of prayer, or to the shortest premeditation, they bring out whatever comes uppermost; and too frequently with the appearance of such irreverence and familiarity as they would scarcely allow themselves in, and as certainly would not be tolerated, when addressing any earthly superior, much less in petitioning a sovereign...... Even some learned and respectable preachers, who take laudable pains in the study of their Sermons, seem to think any thing good enough for prayer.

The petitions of some are too much confined to the immediate service in which they are engaging; the time of which is often unnecessarily specified...Instead of imploring such general blessings as all men need, and all good men desire, or should be directed to supplicate for future life, the principal object of their request is, that such immediate communications may be made to the whole assembly, as there is no scriptural warrant tional ground to expect at any time; and particularly that the discourse about to be delivered (which is represented as the chief object of the meeting) may be productive of such instantaneous effects, as would be scarcely less than miraculous.

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• Much indiscretion is observabie ... in taking too particular a notice, not only of national affairs, but of local trivial occurrences, thus making their prayers a vehicle for the news of the day.

We have also witnessed a too circumstantial mention of affairs relating to the congregation, and particularly of such as were

Among various other such allusions, very common with a certain class of Dissenters, we have been struck with the follow. ing, in praying for ministers: "Let their bow abide in strength.Let them hear the sound of their master's feet behind them.Give them many souls for their hire."'