ostentatious in his manner. Among the Roman Catholics, the two most eminent are Bourdaloue and Massillon. It is a subject of dispute among the French critics to which of these the preference is due, and each of them has his several partizans. To Bourdaloue they attribute more solidity and close reasoning; to Massillon a more pleasing and engaging manner. Bourdaloue is indeed a great reasoner, and inculcates his doctrines with much zeal, piety, and earnestness: but his style is verbose, he is disagreeably full of quotations from the fathers, and he wants imagination. Massillon has more grace, more sentiment, and, in my opinion, every way more genius. He discovers much knowledge both of the world and of the human heart; he is pathetic and persuasive; and, upon the whole, is perhaps the most eloquent writer of sermons which modern times have produced. During the period that preceded the restoration of king Charles II, the sermons of the English divines abounded with scholastic casuistical theology. They were full of minute divisions and subdivisions, and scraps of learning in the didactic part; but to these were joined very warm pathetic addresses to the consciences of the hearers, in the applicatory part of the sermon. Upon the restoration preaching assumed a more correct and polished form. It became disencumbered from the pedantry and scholastic divisions of the sectaries; but it threw out also their warm and pathetic addresses, and established itself wholly upon the model of cool reasoning and rational instruction. As the dissenters from the church continued to preserve somewhat of the old strain of preaching, this led the established clergy to depart the farther from it. Whatever was earnest and passionate, either in the composition or delivery of sermons, was reckoned enthusiastic and fanatical; and hence that argumentative manner, bordering on the dry and unpersuasive, which is too generally the character of English sermons. Nothing can be more correct upon that model than many of them are; but the model itself upon which they are formed is a confined and imperfect one. Dr. Clark, for instance, every where abounds in good sense, and the most clear and accurate reasoning: his applications of scripture are pertinent; his style is always perspicuous, and often elegant: he instructs and he convinces; in what then is he deficient? In nothing, except in the power of interesting and seizing the heart. He shows you what you ought to do; but he excites not the desire of doing it: he treats man as if he were a being of pure intellect without imagination or passions. Archbishop Tillotson's manner is more free and warm, and he approaches nearer than most of the English divines to the character of popular speaking. Hence he is to this day one of the best models we have for preaching. We must not indeed consider him in the light of a perfect orator; his composition is too loose and remiss; his style too feeble, and frequently too flat, to deserve that high character; but there is in some of his sermons so much warmth and earnestness, and through them all there runs so much ease and perspicuity, such a vein of good sense and sincere piety, as justly entitle him to be held as eminent a preacher as England has produced. In Dr. Barrow one admires more the prodigious fecundity of his invention, and the uncommon strength and force of his conceptions, than the felicity of his execution, or his talent in composition. We see a genius far surpassing the common, peculiar indeed, almost to himself; but that genius often shooting wild and unchastised by any discipline or study of eloquence. I cannot attempt to give particular characters of that great number of writers of sermons which this, and the former age have produced, among whom we meet with a variety of the most. respectable names. We find in their composition much that deserves praise; a great display of abilities of different kinds, much good sense and piety, strong reasoning, sound divinity, and useful instruction; though in general the degree of eloquence bears not, perhaps, equal proportion to the goodness of the matter. Bishop Atterbury deserves being particularly mentioned as a model of correct and beautiful style, besides having the merit of a warmer and more eloquent strain of writing in some of his sermons, than is commonly met with. Had Bishop Butler in place of abstract philosophical essays, given us more sermons in the strain of those two excellent ones, which he has composed upon self-deceit and upon the character of Balaam, we should then have pointed him out as distinguished for that species of characteristical sermons which I before recommended. Though the writings of the English divines are very proper to be read by such as are designed for the church, I must caution them against making too much use of them, or transcribing large passages from them into the sermons they compose. Such as once indulge themselves in this practice, will never have any fund of their own. Infinitely better it is to enter into the pulpit with thoughts and expressions which have occurred to themselves, though of inferior beauty, than to disfigure their compositions by borrowed and ill-sorted ornaments, which to a judicious eye will be always in hazard of discovering their own poverty. When a preacher sits down to write on any subject, never let him begin with seeking to consult all who have written on the same text or subject. This, if he consult many, will throw perplexity and confusion into his ideas; and, if he consult only one, will often warp him insensibly into his method, whether it be right or not. But let him begin with pondering the subject in his own thoughts; let him endeavour to fetch materials from within; to collect and arrange his ideas; and form some sort of a plan to himself; which it is always proper to put down in writing. Then, and not till then, he may inquire how others have treated the same subject. By this means the method and the leading thoughts in the sermon are likely to be his own. These thoughts he may improve by comparing them with the track of sentiments which others have pursued; some of their sense he may, without blame, incorporate into his compositions; retaining always his own words and style. This is fair assistance: all beyond is plagiarism. On the whole, never let the principle with which we set out at first be forgotten, to keep close in view the great end for which a preacher mounts the pulpit; even to infuse good dispositions into his hearers, to persuade them to serve God, and to become better men. Let this always dwell on his mind when he is composing, and it will diffuse through his compositions that spirit which will render them at once esteemed and useful. The most useful preacher is always the best, and will not fail of being esteemed so. Embellish truth only, with a view to gain it the more full and free admission into your hearers' minds, and your ornaments will, in that case, be simple, masculine, natural. The best applause, by far, which a preacher can receive, arises from the serious and deep impressions which his discourse leaves on those who hear it. The finest encomium, perhaps, ever bestowed on a preacher, was given by Louis XIV, to the eloquent bishop of Clermont, father Massillon, whom I before mentioned with so much praise. After hearing him preach at Versailles, he said to him, "Father, I have heard many great orators in this chapel; I have been highly pleased with them; but for you, whenever I hear you, I go away displeased with myself; for I see more of my own character." REVIEW. The Life of the Rev. JOHN WESLEY, A. M., Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford; in which are included the Life of his Brother, the Rev. CHARLES WESLEY, A. M., Student of Christ Church, and Memoirs of their Family: comprehending an account of the Great Revival of Religion, in which they were the first and chief instruments. the Rev. HENRY MOORE, only surviving Trustee of Mr. Wesley's MSS. Svo. Vol. I. London, 1824, pp. 571. BIOGRAPHY is made a difficult task, equally by the superabundance and by the poverty of incidents; by the greatness which raises the subject much above the level of his fellows, or the littleness which sinks him below them; by the total absence of public interest in an obscure character, By and when that interest diffuses itself through large masses of men of different and even opposing views, prejudices, and feelings. The many lives which have been written of Mr. Wesley, and the many failures of which they are the monuments, are in proof, that a character of the utmost simpli city in itself, may be difficult to develop; and that the incidents of a clear and active life, spent in the full view of a nation, and subject to continual observation, though easy to narrate, may become very entangling to biographers, whose duty it is to trace the course of action to its principles, and to display its immediate and probable remote effects. That at this period a new life of the venerable founder of Methodism should be considered necessary, not by the author himself, but by serious people in general; that the readers of all former performances should still feel that what has been done well has not been done fully and that much has been done which it is desirable to undo; is a sufficient comment upon the mass of biography which has, at unequal intervals, been accumulated upon the memory of that extraordinary man, who has been the subject of so much, and such various criticism. Hitherto, we may say without hesitation, Mr. Wesley has been unfortunate in these records of his labours and his character. His respectable co-biographers, the late Dr. Coke, and the writer of the present volume, were dishonourably deprived of a large portion of valuable papers, essential to the completeness of their undertaking; while the prospect of a rival and unfriendly work, hastened a publication which more time would have improved. Dr. Whitehead's attempt commenced under the influence of a weakened principle of honour, which in no small degree desecrated the writer for the work he had undertaken; whilst private pique led him in his account of the two illustrious brothers, unawed by the charity which had inseparably linked their hearts amidst all their differences of opinion, to attempt to exalt the one at the expense of the other; and to abstract virtues from the elder to pile upon the younger; in order to make the disproportion striking, and to give a sanction to those prejudices of his hero which he thought proper to turn to his own account in avenging his quarrel with a part of the preachers. The spirit of party kept this work alive for the time; but it may be considered as long since dead. Mr. Hampson's life of Wesley has for many years been rarely seen, except in public libraries, where it has been consulted by all those writers who thought it proper to break a lance with Methodism, and to develop its origin by tracing it to the cunning and ambition of its founder. He was one of those who, as Mr. Southey has justly observed, "wanted the heart" to do justice to Mr. Wesley's worth; and seems to have written principally to clear himself of the suspicion of any remaining taint of Methodism. Mr. Southey's life of Wesley differs from all its predecessors. To him Mr. Wesley was a distant object, and his acquaintance with him accidental, or, as we may more properly term it, literary. He had been always out of the reach of the influence of those party currents, which every great system must produce in its efforts to throw off the waves with which it is assailed, when, like an island forming in a surrounding ocean, it is grounding its foundations, and spreading its surface for the production of the plant and the forest. From direct party feeling therefore his work is free. He found Mr. Wesley as he found the heroes and heroines of his epics, his Madoc, his Joan of Arc, and his Roderic, in his solitary reading; and pounced upon him as fair literary game. We do Mr. Southey the justice to say, that the faults in his life of Wesley are not generally those which arise from the want of fairness and candour; and there is this obvious contrast between him and Dr. Whitehead and Mr. Hampson, that they erred not for want of principle, but for want of temper; Mr. Southey, not from deficiency of temper, but of principles. His mistakes are neither to be traced to ecclesiastical prejudice nor sectarian partizanship; they are the mistakes of a man who had still to be inducted into the first principles of the doctrine of Christ; of a man "not spiritual," sitting in judgment upon spiritual things and a spiritual man. It is, indeed, in some views, amusing, to notice the alleged faults, for which Mr. Wesley is vituperated by former biographers, converted into splendid qualities in the pages of Mr. Southey. The wisdom of his "plans" is a display of gigantic intellect; his "ambition" is the moral force of a great character. The phenomena presented by the character, and labours, and successes of Mr. Wesley, appeared indeed so extraordinary to Mr. Southey, as to thow his philosophy into her deepest musings, to frame a theory by which they might be accounted for; and, that discovered, the tale is adduced in illustration of the principles, with evident general admiration of his hero, with great sprightliness of style, and with perfect good temper. Mr. Southey went to philosophy, when he ought to have gone to theology. There was the source of his failure as the biographer of Mr. Wesley he sins less against him personally, than against all the principles of evangelical truth, acknowledged by enlightened Chris : tians of every name. His book is, on this account, dangerous to the young and the incautious. By others the narrative may still be safely read, and will always be read with interest; and even the philosophy will to them afford another instructive proof, that, as to the wise of this world, "the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he," in the solution of all religious and moral problems: and that there are things which God "hath hidden from the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes."" Mr. Southey had not even the elements of theological science; and he attempted to write the life of the most eminent preacher of repentance, faith, and regeneration, who has appeared in modern times, without ever seeming to have thought it necessary to attain distinct notions of any of those essential parts of practical religion, either from the Holy Scriptures, or from the church of which he now professes himself a member. It was an enterprise, therefore, as hopeless as it was absurd; and could only be equalled by an attempt to write the philosophic life, and to estimate the discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, by a person wholly ignorant of the mathematics; or to propose a digest of the discoveries of modern chemistry, by one who never made an experiment, and could attach no definite idea to the very elementary terms of chemical science. A life of Mr. Wesley was still a desideratum after all that had been done, and after all the lights under which his character had been viewed; and we know of no one so well fitted for this task, as the venerable and aged minister who has undertaken it. Enough had surely been achieved by enemies and partial friends in this service; |