structure the assembled Athenians. It effectually conceals the action of one half the body, and gives to the audience little more than that of the head and the arms of the speaker. But since the whole body was designed to aid in uttering the emotions of the soul, the whole should be given to the audience. Behind such a structure it is difficult to be eloquent.

Yet the ordinary form of the pulpit is not a greater impediment to the action of the preacher, than is the reading of the discourse. It is an altogether unnatural way of attempting to move an audience. Its proper place is the lecture room, where men are to be instructed only, and not also to be moved to action. And yet it were better that the preacher should confine himself to his notes, than that he should bring crude thoughts into the sacred desk. Edwards, who was a close reader of his sermons, was wont, in the last part of his life, to regret that he had used notes at all. He regarded preaching wholly without them as both the primitive and natural method, and the most effective; and he advised young ministers to write their sermons in full, and commit them to memory.* To this course, however, there are two prime objections,the pastor's want of time for such extra labor, and his conviction-if he has any just conception of what a sermon should be-that his sermon is not worth committing to memory. The day, we hope, may come when the young men who aspire to the high office of the Christian ministry, shall have such ample training for their work, and shall enter upon it with such fullness of preparation and self-discipline, that they will be able, partially at least, to dispense with notes in the ministrations of the pulpit. But the reading of a discourse by the preacher need not prevent a suitable expression of his emotion, if he has made himself familiar both with his course of thought and his manuscript.

In what has thus far been said of action in the pulpit, we have taken for granted the existence of emotion, without which action as defined cannot be. There can evidently be no real expression of emotion where there is no emotion to ex

* Edwards's Works, Worcester Ed., Vol. I, p. 57.

press. Action-if such it can be called-which is seen not to spring out of emotion in the preacher, is not only forceless, but contemptible. If there can be an object of disgust in the pulpit, it is he whose intonations and gesticulations have no feeling behind them from which they spring. Action becomes a

force only when it comes forth from the acting of the soul. Let us, then, go back of the action to its source, and say that the preacher must himself be moved by the truth which he presents, if he would have it profoundly move his hearers. But if the preacher would be moved by the truth which he utters, he must have a heart in full communion with it. He must love divine truth. His affections must turn toward it, as the needle to the pole. The truth must take full possession of him. It must "live and move and have its being " within him. And when the sacred orator is thus moved by his theme, his action, though it be imperfect, becomes a great force. Edwards, in delivering his discourses, rarely made a gesture, yet the deep emotion which poured itself through his voice, caused his words to fall with great weight on the minds of his hearBut when the expression of such deep feeling is fuller and more perfect, its power, through the Divine Spirit, is surprising. When Whitefield preached thousands were moved and melted. In his preaching at Northampton, Edwards and his people wept like children.†

ers.*

Now such a full expression of deep emotion in the delivery of a well-developed discourse, which has grown up out of Divine truth, is, in the truest and best sense of the term, eloquence. And so, to gather into a single word the results of this necessarily brief and imperfect review of the forces of the pulpit, we may say, that as a divinely appointed instrument, the conditions of its power are in the fullest degree met, when the pulpit is in the highest degree eloquent.

To become thus eloquent, in this noblest sense, should be the highest aspiration of the preacher, not indeed as an end, but as the means by which he may most successfully win souls to Christ. And what mighty motives urge him to the attain

Edwards's Works, Vol. I, p. 57.

"The Great Awakening," p. 99.

ment of such eloquence! Compared with them, how impotent are the incitements to attain to eloquence for worldly ends! If love of country and friends, an earthly crown, and the plaudits of a Grecian audience, could so move the great Athenian orator as to make him surpass himself and all posterity, to what hights of eloquence ought love to God and to souls, an immortal crown, and a "great cloud" of surrounding witnesses, to lift the sacred orator! And what material has he for eloquence-a body of truths the richest, deepest, and sublimest the world has ever seen,-truths of which Aristotle never dreamed, truths which, when they have, through the Divine Spirit, wrought themselves into and taken possession of such men as Whitefield, and Hall, and Chalmers, and Edwards, and Davies, and Mason, have made them what they were as preachers of the Gospel.

To become such mighty men as these, let those especially who are in a course of training for the Christian ministry, aspire. Distant be the day when our young men of piety and talent shall seek the ministry as a theater for vaulting ambition; yet, on the other hand, we would desire to remove the impression which is, to some extent, abroad among them, that the clerical profession is unfavorable to the full sweep and play of all the gifts with which God has endowed them. If a Paul could find in the great truths of the gospel full scope for his mighty intellect, and for those deep and gushing emotions in presenting them, which made him even regarded by some as the god of eloquence, then let no young man fear that the profession will dwarf any of his powers. Nay, rather, if he enters on the sacred office with anything like a just sense of its demands both upon his intellect and his heart, he will, with humble dependence on Divine aid, strive with unconquerable energy to become what it demands of him," an eloquent man, mighty in the Scriptures."

But let it never be forgotten that these forces, whose sum is eloquence, are, at best, only the conditions of the power of the pulpit, and not the power itself,-that back of them there is a Divine Power which must energize them, or they will be impotent. As the bodies which lay about the prophet in the

valley of vision, though covered with "sinews and flesh," yet had "no breath in them," so will these forces of the pulpit be powerless, until the "breath of the Almighty" shall come into them; then shall "they live, and stand up upon their feet, an exceeding great army," mighty in God. But though the power of the pulpit has its source in God, yet by his own appointment, the conditions of the exertion of the power are to be fulfilled by man. And the preacher who most clearly perceives the relation of Divine power to human agency in the preaching of the Word, will be most solicitous to perform his part of the great work aright. Looking up for the Divine blessing, he will address himself to his appointed work as if success hung on himself alone. And yet he will begin and end every effort in God. Preparing each discourse in the Divine presence, and bathing it in prayer, he will go from his closet to the pulpit, and from the pulpit to the closet, and his preaching will be full of power.

Such is the type both of preaching and of preacher that the world needs. Such may this Theological Institution ever give to it. Let there ever go forth from this school of sacred culture, men of disciplined intellects and renovated hearts,-men who shall both know the whole truth of God, and how to wield it, men who shall be eloquent in the truth, and shall fear nothing but to speak error,-men, who with faith in God, and in the power of the preached Word through Him, shall carry to their work a holy enthusiasm, which no difficulties can quench. Let such men as these go hence from year to year, in ever-increasing numbers, into these empires opening to a Christian civilization, and become, through the Divine blessing, centers of light and saving power.

Looking at the magnitude of the work of which I have been called to bear a part, I feel, beyond power of expression, my absolute need of Divine grace and strength to enable me to perform, in any suitable manner, the duties of the chair assigned to me. Upon that grace and strength I do humbly cast myself.

ARTICLE V.-THORNDALE; OR THE CONFLICT OF OPINIONS.

Thorndale; or the Conflict of Opinions. By WILLiam Smith, author of "Athelwold, a Drama," "A Discourse of Ethics," &c. William Blackwood & Sons. Edinburgh and London. 1858. Re-printed Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1859. pp. 544.

"THE Conflict of opinions," considered in this volume, concerns the most important of all questions, What are the ends of man's being in the present and future life, and how can these ends best be fulfilled? It is no secret that the opinions of thinking men, concerning these questions, are at the present time involved in a real and earnest conflict.

This conflict is surveyed by Mr. Charles Thorndale, who views the scene of strife as a quiet observer, and pointing out the prominent hosts and interests in the field, instructs us as to the claims and prospects of the contending parties. He is an invalid, doomed to die by the slow but certain advances of consumption, who has withdrawn himself to a beautiful villa overlooking the bay of Naples-where unmolested by society, withdrawn from the disturbing solicitude of friends, yet provided with every appliance for his comfort, he looks out upon the world with the chastened eye of one who has done with the violence of its struggles, the heat of its passions, and the treachery of its disappointments. To while away his hours, he records in a manuscript volume which is ever lying open on his table, the thoughts which are suggested by the landscape before him, and the objects which move here and there across it. All the while his mind is bringing back his past life-the scenes, the hopes of his childhood, the reflections and aspirations of his manhood-till there is woven together a fragmentary but connected picture of his inner life, through which gleam out the strongly marked features of an individual and living man.

We are also introduced to his friends, whose character and history are indicated with sufficient distinctness to awaken