displayed in the words he speaks, while the highest graces of manner pass for nothing. But are not the peculiar tones, looks, and gestures with which a sentence is accompanied, as truly a part of the speaker and as characteristic of him, as his style of writing or mode of thought? Of course I speak of a genuine manner, one which a man acquires without the aid of artificial rules. In truth this is often a better index of the soul than any thing else. The history of years of trial and temptation is revealed by the tone in which a sincere man will read one of David's Psalms; the whole distance between skepticism and faith. may be indicated by the expression of the face while reading the Scripture account of the Resurrection. The inner life speaks through every limb and feature of him who is earnestly pleading for Christianity, and no one sensitive to the effects of true eloquence will be disposed to resist its influences. There are men to whom almost every other form of expression is denied; who cannot convince the intellect, awaken the emotions or inspire the imagination by words alone, but who are full of spiritual life, which illumines the face, and imparts a sanctity to their presence in the house of God. Such men give a new force to common ideas. The moral precepts we have heard every day of our lives seem more worthy of reverence when repeated by them. We cannot say that we have received any new truth at their hands, but we never felt the beauty and power of that which is familiar, until they presented it. These men are true ministers. They preach by gestures, looks, and a thousand indescribable personal influences. We will not claim for them the highest rank; but they certainly do not deserve that half contempt with which they are often regarded by men gifted with higher mental powers. They may possess an amount of life and love infinitely exceeding their contemptuous neighbors, although the same way of utterance has been denied.

I have now briefly noticed four methods of preaching. I have already remarked that they are never found entirely separated from each other; but as one predominates, it gives the tone to a man's instruction. No one will deny that it were desirable to unite all gifts and graces in one minister, but this is demanding too much of human nature. Therefore, it is well to accept what a man can

[Jan. give us of his own, yielding to his manner all the credit it deserves, while we assert the value of different methods. Genius and religious life will choose their own ways of expression, in spite of us, and if we place ourselves before them in the attitude of critics, we shall cheat ourselves of the benefits we might have received as scholars.

My subject in its last analysis resolves itself into one precept, which should be the golden rule of the preacher: Do that for which you have the power, and which you have verified in your own life, and attempt nothing beyond. That which a man has thought, and felt, and seen, and lived through himself, he may preach. It is the part of Christianity which he understands, and which he may teach authoritively. To conceal any thing of it is treason to humanity; to say any thing more is a pretence, and an insult to his hearer. He who faithfully labors in thought and life will be furnished with truth enough by his Maker, to sustain him through the reasonable demands of his profession. If he have chosen a situation above his ability, let him change it before the retribution come. If the community around him is not prepared for his way of communicating the spiritual life, let him go where it is, and not dare, for the love of applause, or the weak desire of doing what he cannot, to leave his own talent useless while he makes himself foolish by imitation of the faculties of other men. If he is not satisfied with the gift he has, let him do any thing rather than abuse it, for it is sacred and peculiar. Our churches will never be filled with the grace of God and the knowledge of God, while poets preach metaphysics, and philosophers write appeals to the affections, and saints employ themselves in stitching together systems of theology. They will be full of power and love when every preacher honestly and fearlessly tells the people what he knows, in the manner which the Creator has appointed as the expression of his knowledge of life. For then will every word spoken from the pulpit be sincere, and the elements of Christianity, thus put into the world, will, by their own living energy, gravitate towards each other, until upon earth shall be found, by God directing and overruling the work of man, the true church of Jesus Christ.

ART. V.

Whipple's Lectures.

Lectures on Subjects connected with Literature and Life. By Edwin P. Whipple, Author of "Essays and Reviews." Boston. Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1850.

CRITICISM, it is often said, is the bane of our latest literature. Quite frequently we hear the lamentation that the intellect of the age is broken up into eddies and whirlpools, and manifests its greatest energy by sucking the products of more creative times and of positive minds into the vortex of analysis, devouring that it may understand. It is easy to see that there are aspects of the age which provoke this judgement, and which explain, though they hardly justify, such fear. It might be shown without much difficulty that, even now, there is no frightful lack of original or constructive thought, and that criticism need not starve on the charities of the modern press.

But, not to dwell on the last point, however deplorable may be the excess of criticism, no one will imagine that literature is endangered by an excess of good critics. Many of the gentlemen who assume the title, men distinguished by no sympathies and no breadth of taste, and who endeavor to revenge themselves for conscious poverty of invention by flippant smartness in the tone both of their patronage of the genius which they dare not challenge, and of their contempt for the mediocrity which they think it safe to spear, might be spared without detriment to the dignity or the interests of letters. Neither are those who work well after their kind in detecting the defects and flaws, the false quantities and inharmonious lines which often soil the finest works of genius, entitled to much respect, either for the nobility of their work, or for the powers of mind that are requisite to its performance. We know that opposition to evil, and absorbing love of goodness, suggest widely different spiritual states, and so a man may be a capital connoisseur of trivial blemishes, without possessing a large measure of appreciative taste. A liter

VOL. VII.

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ary weasel, on however large a scale of developeme who has the surest instinct and the sharpest teeth for mi although a useful, is by no means a venerable, persona

But a true critic is as rare and as serviceable as a gr writer. We but feebly symbolize his office when we s that he is as necessary as the assayer who tests, purifi and coins the gold. If we do not have some men who taste and judgement may be trusted as a true scale a accurate weights, genuine genius cannot receive the p per stamp, nor be honored for what it is. Most perso who assume the critical function, are unfitted for their wo because they have the bad scale of sectarian or conve tional taste, and the false weights of caprice, partialiti friendship and prejudice. When, therefore, a man who a born critic appears, and assumes, as by instinct, t judicial robe, a man whose eye is sharp and health and whose brain is capable of receiving deep and cle impressions from various quarters of the literary worl let him be welcomed with joy, and installed upon th bench. I respect the man-said Plato-who knows ho to distinguish accurately, and tell the differences in thing

And we repeat, that whatever be the perils which at pr sent beset literature, an excess of such minds is not one them. Not only are such men more needed now tha they have ever been, owing to the contempt of rules, th innovations in taste, and the Babel babble of dialects tha characterize the world of letters, but their office harmonize with what is most prominent and praiseworthy in th spirit and mission of the age. We respect science now The intellect of the world is fired with an ambition fo discovery, which is harnessed and curbed by severe rule: To study physical facts until the mind can discover th relations that band them, and the laws upon which the are strung, is the aim to which the most powerful intellect pledge their efforts and time. By common consent, it i far more profitable to be occupied in analyzing a gas o cross-questioning a pebble, than in constructing from the imagination the most comprehensive and consistent hy pothesis of creation. Great intellectual philosophers, toothose who have displayed acuteness of vision and patience of research in sounding the depths of consciousness, untwisting the beam of thought, and disclosing the warp of