For the space of one hundred and twenty years, the Wesleyans have never swerved from the essentials of apostolic teaching-in doctrines, experience, and practice. They are found now, precisely where they first took their stand; holding with tenacious grasp the leading verities of the Christian faith. Even the offshoots are found uniform here. The disruptions, as is often the case, have originated chiefly, if not solely, in disciplinary matters; and as these have had most of man in them, there has been less of God about them. Still, the offshoots have taken away with them the genuine sap of the parent stock, a sufficient portion, to change the allusion, of the olden leaven, to produce fermentation, and to work with effect. The New Connexion lives, the Primitives live; and so on, with others-each rigidly adhering to first principles, to first faith, experience, and practice: differing only in non-essentials, yet these sufficiently important in the esteem of each, to preserve them distinct, glorying in essential identity with circumstantial difference.

The character of the ministry has been stated, in tracking the footsteps of the Allens; plain, unadorned, yet effective; not elevated, but powerful; "the right man in the right place;" ploughers, hedgers, ditchers; the masses uncultivated; briars, thorns, weeds, rank and wild. What would rings, fine fingers, and silken hose, have done among the colliers of Kingswood and Newcastle, and others equally untamed? Jeremiah must be heard in the midst of them, mingling with his wailings the message of God: "The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully: What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord. Is not my word like as a fire, saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?" Things go in

pairs

The hammer and the fire, The chaff and the wheat, The pulpit and the pew.

Like

The hammer will break-the fire will melt -the chaff will fly before the breath of heaven -the wheat will be gathered into the garner -the pulpit will act upon the pew. priest like people." So goes the proverb. Arthur's "Tongue of Fire" was in the Wesleyan pulpit before he was born; and now that it has appeared in type, it is hoped, it will continue, as it has done, to run like fire among the priests, till every pulpit and every pew is in a blaze-each individual exclaiming, “Thy zeal hath eaten me up." Buy it; read it.

while professing to be a member of the Church of England, transferred himself, body, soul, and spirit, to Methodism, and lived in its midst, as much apart in its discipline, and places of worship, from the church of England, as are the Dissenters. And much as he owed to the Moravians, he showed what was in the "hidden man of the heart," in the veneration in which the Puritans and Nonconformists were held, by the re-issue of so many detached portions of their works, at a heavy cost, in fifty volumes, under the title of the Christian Library." From this fountain John himself drank; and from it as it was his intention they should his preachers quenched their thirst for Puritanic lore. Here the Puritanic spirit was imperceptibly working its way from the printed works of the writers into the Wesleyan pulpit, and from the pulpit to the pew; and that spirit brought down upon preachers and people the same obloquy and the same opposition, so far as the "carnal mind" was allowed to show itself, as in earlier times, in the days of the Jameses and Charleses, only more rampant in the days of the latter.

It is somewhat remarkable, that John Wesley's biographers have not attempted to show how much of the Puritan was embodied in his character, and its direct influence on his thinkings and his habits, as received through the medium of his excellent mother, from his grandfather Dr. Annesley. His father had made a transfer of himself from Nonconformity to Episcopalianism, and did battle with Mr. Palmer in a "Reply" to his "Vindication of the Learning, Loyalty, Morals, and most Christian Behaviour of the Dissenters towards the Church of England." As John's father had gone over to Episcopalianism, carrying with him the stern, devout spirit that inspired the breasts of the Nonconformists, so John,

Take a few specimens. Piety and sin never meet but there is a "pitch-battle." Piety discharges the fire of its zeal against sin, and sin spits out the venom of its malice against piety. Waving the opprobrious epithets applied to Methodism, because of the piety found in the pulpit and the pew, Robinson observes, in his Notes on Claude, "It is fashionable to account the Puritans of the last age a gloomy generation," and then asks," was it fair to persecute and ruin people, and next to reproach them for not being merry?" not forgetting to affirm, nevertheless, and that justly, "that these gloomy men have a satirical vein of pointed wit, that runs merrily through all their writings, which electrifies their persecutors as it runs." Among these men were to be found some of the first divines of the day. And yet, what was the character they sustained from the High Church party? Puritan ministers!" says Clarendon; "factious schismatical preachers! there was not one learned man among them."-(Hist. Vol. II.) Dugdale vituperates, in the same style, "Puritan preachers! mere pulpiteers! men neither of learning nor conscience! poisoning in their schismatical lectures the people with their anti-monarchical principles." (Pref. to View of Troubles, &c.) Nelson follows in the same strain: "Puritan preachers! a spiritual militia; neither parsons, vicars, nor curates; but like the order of the friars predicants, tickling the ears of the people with legends and miracles, debauching the people with principles of disloyalty! All their pulpit harangues are nothing but the repeated echoes of the votes, orders, remonstrances, and declarations of Westminster."-(Collections.) Royalty, too, enters the list of defamers: thus, Charles I., "Preachers! men of no learning, no conscience, furious promoters of dangerous innovations, turbulent and seditious in disposition, scandalous in life, imposed upon parishes to infect and poison the minds of the people." -(Declar. Aug. 12,1642.) Dr. Walker collected a whole folio volume of articles tending to prove these charges. Yet Robinson, on good authority, charges some of the clergy with preaching the sermons of the men they abused. "Odd fate," says he, "of a puritanical sermon!

Studied in a gaol, preached under a hedge, printed in a garret, sold at a pedler's stall, bought by a priest's footman, uttered from a pulpit in a cathedral, applauded by a bishop, and ordered to press by a grave session of gentry!"-(Pp. 186-190.)

Such is a glimpse of a book which, were it known, would be in the hands of myriads, and give work to the prin ters for a long time to come.

THERE can scarcely be a greater contrast than that which exists between the ancient Greeks and the Americans of our own day. In character, as well as in geographical situation, they are almost the antipodes of one another a long sea and a broad ocean intervenes between them. As in time, so in culture, they stand at the two extremes in the history of the great European family of nations. The Greeks were pre-eminently an æsthetic and ideal people. We are proverbially practical and real. They were nicely observant of the outward form and expression. We are content with the substance. In wealth of ideas, in depth of thought, and boldness of conception, we doubtless surpass them. But we are greatly inferior to them in beauty and fitness of representation. They finished everything which they undertook. Their historians toiled all their lives on a single volume. Their orators spent a decade of years in polishing one oration. Their philosophers occupied the last days of a long life in revising and perfecting the style of their immortal works. Their artists were content to be a long time in painting pieces that were destined to last a long time. We are too much in a hurry to finish anything. With some honourable exceptions, our literature, like our agriculture, to a foreign eye bears evident marks of haste. Our style of writing and speaking, like our gait in walking, is rapid, vehement; perchance negligent and rude. We are a fast people. We talk about "Young America." Has there ever been any America that was not young? We are a nation of young men, running the race of life, to see who will despatch every part of it the quickest. In this sense we finish everything. We "finish our education" while we are boys; finish our business or profession, or are finished by it, before we reach middle life; and finish life itself just as we ought to be entering on the wisest and most useful portion of it. A model man, perhaps, would be one who should unite the understanding and wisdom of an adult with the innocence, simplicity, and joyfulness of a little child. The pattern teacher, preacher, man of business, man of power in any profession, wears an old head on young shoulders. His heart never grows old. The Greeks never grew old in their feelings and sympathies. They were as full of mirth and sport and life and joy as if they had been a nation of children. They combined the natural and simple grace of childhood with the dignity and decorum of manhood. We are just the opposite. There are no children in America. It might almost

be said there are no men. We are a nation of boys, wearing often at a very early age the wrinkles and furrows of age, but transacting private and public affairs with too much of the hurry and restlessness, not to say recklessness, of boys not yet out of their teens. Previous to the commencement of the war, we had not passed beyond the sophomore year in our education. The nation is notorious, all over the world, for sophomorical bragging and bluster. And as the prevailing style always reflects the spirit of the age and the manners of the nation, our best authors, particularly our orators, show a prevailing tendency to a sophomorical style of writing and speaking. That serene repose which is so characteristic of Greek and Latin authors that it is called classical, is wanting in a large part of our popular literature, especially in our popular eloquence, while the public taste inclines to that pomp and passion and extravagance to which the Greeks were so averse. The war has done much to make the people more manly, thoughtful, serious, earnest. The last year has wrought changes sufficient to be the work of an ordinary century. And it is to be hoped that henceforth we shall enter on a new eraan era of literary as well as social and political regeneration.

As in the complex nature of man, so in all the productions of human intellect, there are two parts: soul and body, substance and form, idea and expression. When either of these two elements is neglected, there cannot be a normal, symmetrical, healthy development. The ancient Greeks were, doubtless, excessively devoted to the culture of form, manner, style; and this was, negatively, to say the least, one cause of their moral degeneracy. The moderns are too exclusively absorbed in the substantial and the material. And among the moderns, none are so negligent of everything pertaining to mere form and outward expression, as Americans. Compare the eloquence of the American Congress with that of the British Parliament: not more earnest and impassioned, perhaps not more thoughtful and profound, but certainly, as a whole, more manly, more elevated, more cultivated and refined, even as the manners of Westminster are more dignified and decorous than those of Washington,--more classical even, as British statesmen have almost all received a university education, while too many American statesmen are selfeducated; which, in the sense in which it is commonly used, is another name for no education, though in another, and better sense, every man who is educated at all is self-educated.

Compare the English quarterlies with our own. How much more elaborate, complete, finished, are the articles! The same comparison might be extended to the English encyclopædias, to the English and French dailies, to English, French, and German works in literature and science. The British pulpit, in general, is inferior to ours in learning, in earnestness, in depth, and power. But there is a breadth of culture, a savour of accurate and thorough scholarship, a classic repose, an unaffected ease and tranquil grace of manner in the brightest lights of the British pulpit,-such, for instance, as Robertson and Trench and the Bishop of Oxford,-which is rarely, if ever, seen in America. The New England clergy as a body, in intellectual discipline, in theological training, in moral and spiritual culture, in all the substantial qualifications for their work, were never surpassed, probably never equalled, by the clergy of any other country or any other age. At the same time there is not now-it may be doubted if there ever was -so large a number of clergymen so indifferent to all the graces of style and elocution. There is no part of the world where there is such a prodigious loss of power in the delivery of sermons as in New England. In this respect, we are behind our brethren in the Middle States, at the West, and even at the South. Indeed, where is there a pulpit or a learned profession, from which the Congregational clergymen of New England-the most learned and pious, and in many respects the most able, ministry in the world-might not learn a useful lesson in regard to delivery? Soon after the great Athenian orator failed in his first attempt to speak before the assembled people, he was met by a distinguished actor, who pronounced after him some passages from the Greek poets, and thus explained to him the cause of his failure. Would that some better Satyrus might meet our preachers after their miserable failures to move or interest their people on the Sabbath, and teach them 3 the same lesson. They would soon come to the conclusion of Demosthenes, that actionthat is, correct representation, answering exactly to the truths and emotions to be represented, is the first, second, and third qualification of an orator. And if, by years of retirement, study, and practice, they could work in themselves, in any considerable measure, the change which that orator wrought in himself, their people would be startled, at their next appearance before them, as by a new creation. Delivery is by no means all that belongs to correct representation; but proper delivery alone, without any other improvement, would effect a revolution in the American pulpit, and, through the pulpit, in the people. If the very same sermons which were read (and mangled and murdered in the reading) in the pulpits of the country last Sabbath, could be delivered in the same pulpits next Sabbath by such speakers as we have all sometimes heard, the audience would not recognise them; and the very same hearers who then went away unmoved or disgusted, would go away next week charmed, instructed, perhaps converted.

This is no trifling matter. Here is a loss of moral power which ministers ought never to have allowed, and have no right to perpetuate.

Here are several thousand talents laid up in a napkin. Herein they wrong at once themselves and their profession. Herein they rob God and man, and violate the proper law and order of the universe. Grace is the proper dress of truth; and it is a shame to leave her naked, or clothe her in rags or ill-fitted garments. Beauty is the native form and expression of goodness; and to mar that form is to commit high treason against the majesty of goodness herself. God arrays truth and goodness in forms of exquisite beauty, both in His works and in His word, and His ministers should go and do likewise. "Consider the lilies of the field. Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." This is the language of the Son of God to His ministers. Listen to the harmony of nature. Behold the beauty, variety, fitness of the Scriptures. God hath joined truth and grace, goodness and beauty, as matter and form, as thought and expression, throughout His universe; and what God hath joined, let not man put asunder. Nay, God hath joined them together as body and soul; and to separate them is not only robbery and sacrilege, but murder. The connexion between thought and style, ideas and their expression, is properly organic and vital, and anything which tends to sunder them, or to cherish one at the expense of the other, strikes at the health and life of both. Not only does thought necessarily act upon language: language reacts upon thought, speech upon reason, as the manners react upon the character and the body upon the soul. "Men believe," says Lord Bacon, "that their reason is lord over their words. But it happens, too, that words exert a reciprocal and reactionary power over our intellects. Words, as a Tartar's bow, shoot back upon the understanding of the wisest, and mightily entangle and pervert the judgment." And so expression reacts upon emotion, the delivery upon the heart and the character. He, therefore, who allows himself to write and speak in a cold or careless or slovenly or otherwise unseemly manner, is deranging, dividing, distracting his own nature, doing violence to his own physical, mental, and moral constitution, and thus greatly wronging himself as well as his hearers.

It is much easier, of course, to point out a defect of this kind than it is to apply the remedy. But it is not difficult to see at least the direction in which the remedy must be sought.

In the first place, our professional men, particularly our clergymen, should apply themselves more diligently, not only in the preparatory school and college, but in the study and practice of their profession, to the language and literature of the Greeks. There is the supply of the very article we demand. The Greeks had in its perfection the aesthetic culture in which we are deficient. They were masters of the art of expression, in which we are as yet but rude boys. They are the world's teachers in this art; and other nations excel in it just in proportion as they learn of them. The superiority which we have been constrained to acknowledge in the best English writers and speakers, is the result of their almost exclusively classical education in the English universities. The writers of the

golden age of English literature, and especially the preachers of the golden age of the English pulpit, were nurtured almost entirely on the Bible and on Greek literature. Read Homer. "To be Homeric," as Coleridge remarks in the singularly graceful conclusion of his study of the Greek poets, "is to be natural, lively, rapid, energetic, harmonious." Study Plato. He is the divine writer as well as the divine philosopher, as affluent, flexible, and inimitably graceful in his style, as he is subtile, lofty, and profound in his speculations. Sit at the feet of the Attic orators. To be Attic, as we have before remarked, is to be simple, graceful, clear, transparent, as the air of Attica, pure and beautiful as the waters that wash her marble shores. In a word, go to Athens. Adopt as your own the motto of all in ancient times who sought after the most finished culture: eis 'Anvas.

Were there time, we should be glad to dwell on several incidental advantages which would result from this familiar converse with the great lights of antiquity, especially of Athens, -advantages which, extending beyond æsthetic culture, penetrating deeper than style and manner, or anything merely external, might, peradventure, reach the moral and political philosophy of the age, and help to correct some of the most dangerous tendencies of modern civilization. The philosophy of Compte and Buckle, wholly materialistic and intellectual as it is, to the exclusion alike of moral and emotional culture, is at the antipodes of the best Athenian philosophy; and it is just as unclassical and unhistorical as it is unchristian. That stupendous monument of genius and industry, but no less stupendous monument of pride, vanity, and ambition, the History of Civilization" never could have been written by a profound classical scholar. It could have been written only by a man who had broken loose from all veneration for the past, all reverence for authority, human and divine. And we know of no better antidote to its false teachings and corrupting tendencies, than the study together of the Bible and the classics.

66

The study of the classics might conspire, with the study of the Bible, to correct, also, that extravagant estimate of the intellect above the heart, that worship of the intellect and neglect and contempt of the heart, which is the besetting sin of our age; might contribute to restore the virtues of the heart to that place in the esteem of men which they hold in the divine estimation; and so teach us to honour, instead of despising, individuals and races which may perhaps be inferior to ourselves in intellectual capacity, but are certainly superior to us in wealth of emotions and the virtues of the heart. The Ethiopians, though deriving their name from their dark complexion, were the favourites of the gods in the Homeric age. And in the sight of Him who looketh not on the outward appearance, but on the heart, their modern representatives may still be looked upon with more favour than their haters and oppressors, and may yet have a grand history, when confederacies founded on the principle of their inferiority have become extinct, and when proud states which refuse to own them as brethren, or even to admit them within their

territory, have been humbled beneath the mighty hand of Him whom Greek poetry, as well as the Hebrew Scriptures, recognize as emphatically the God of the poor and the stranger.

But to return to our subject. In the next place, appropriate and assiduous culture is required in the art of expression. The objects of mental education are usually said to be two, the discipline of the mind and the acquisition of knowledge. A third must be added, or these two will be of very little practical use to a public speaker, and that is the art of expression, or the power of communicating thought. It will not do to say, "Make sure of the matter, and the manner will take care of itself." This is not true in good breeding, much less can it be true in good writing and speaking. Every faculty of the mind, like every organ of the body, must have its appropriate culture. The cultivation of the memory and the reasoning powers cannot take the place, or supersede the necessity, of cultivating the taste and the imagination. The exercise of the hands and the feet is no substitute for the training of the voice. Still less can the discipline of the mind supersede the training of the body, and of itself secure bodily health, beauty of person, or grace in action. Good writing, like everything else in our world, has a body as well as a soul; and the body as well as the soul must have its specific care and culture. Good speaking is doubly external, requiring not only a good style, but also a good elocution. Oratory is the most complex of all the branches of literature, the most difficult and at the same time the most useful of the arts, and therefore, perhaps, the highest attainment of human genius. It is the whole man speaking to the whole man; the whole spirit and soul and body of the orator speaking to the whole body, soul, and spirit of his hearers. Grecian eloquence was the culmination of Greek literature-the result of the whole physical, mental, and, to use their word, musical culture of the Greeks; and such eloquence will never be formed by the mere study of the sciences in college, or of theology in the seminary.

We shall not be suspected of an intention to depreciate literature or theology. Mental discipline, accurate scholarship, a thorough acquaintance with all the departments of human knowledge, as well as with that greatest of sciences, the science of God, must, of course, be the foundation of eminence in the clerical profession. But it is only the foundation, and, so far as any practical use is concerned, might about as well not have been laid, unless the superstructure can be added. Alas! how many of us who preach the Gospel give our hearers occasion to say: "This man began to build, and was not able to finish." If we could acquire a good delivery in no other way than by the sacrifice of half our knowledge (though we do not know any too much), those who are so unfortunate as to be obliged to hear us, would be great gainers by the exchange.

of

The practical difficulties in the way reform, we are well aware, are very great. Our climate, our organs of speech and nasal pronunciation, our intellectual, rather than emotional constitution, our undemonstrative

natures and unsocial manners, our partial and one-sided education,-all these are against us. And though we have the grandest themes, the most inspiring objects and occasions for eloquence, yet there are circumstances not a few in our profession which tend to produce a hasty, formal canting,and artificial style of writing and speaking. Still, all these difficulties have been overcome; and what has been done can be done.

We must begin at the beginning. And that is, physical education. Here, fortunately, the current of popular feeling and of educational effort is now setting in the right direction. The majority of clergymen have not the bodily health, the arms and sides, the lungs and organs of speech, to make good speakers. They want also the animal spirits, the physical courage, the strong and hearty tone which can come only from a hearty and healthy body. A good gymnasium in every college and theological seminary, with systematic and well-directed gymnastic and calisthenic exercises, continued as a part of the course, through the seven years' curriculum, would do much to remedy this defect, and to give the next generation of ministers more ease and grace, as well as y power of action and utterance. With this, ministers and candidates for the ministry should connect as much as possible of that living in the open air,-not moping, but real living, walking, running, leaping, and laughing in the open air,-that communion with external nature, and that observation of men and things, which, more than anything else, has given the most popular preacher in the United States his powerful frame and his commanding eloquence.

In order to be really successful, the practice should begin earlier and take a wider range. It should begin in the family, in the very nursery, with the formation of the person and the manners, with the expression, in the common relations of life, of all right feelings by all right words and actions. It should be continued in the common schools by the cultivation of good breeding, good reading, and good speaking, step by step, along with

the branches of elementary education. Good reading is the foundation of good speaking; and good reading, like good spelling, must ordinarily be acquired in childhood. Good reading is as rare in the pulpit as good speaking; and good reading in the pulpit-good reading anywhere-is a higher accomplishment than all the ologies. Instead of being crammed with a smattering of all the sciences, let children, in their earlier years, be taught, by competent teachers, who can teach by example as well as by precept, to cultivate music in the wide sense of the Greeks, and to sacrifice to the Graces. And so throughout the preparatory school, the college, and the professional school, instruction in rhetoric and oratory should keep pace with instruction in literature and science. As fast as our young men discipline their minds and acquire useful knowledge they should cultivate, by persevering practice, the power of expressing their ideas in appropriate forms, and thus impressing them on others; remembering that in this world every living thing has a body as well as a soul, and that even the truth of God loses half its vital power if it is not clothed in "the beauty of holiness."

After such an education, in which æsthetic culture has held its normal place, it will not be difficult to maintain the habit of expressing fit thoughts in fit words, and by appropriate actions. Still it behoves the preacher to remember through life, that the idea is only one element in preparation for the pulpit; the power of the pulpit will depend quite as much upon the representation. "Representation in accordance with the laws of the beautiful" was the element of immortal life and power in the literature of the Greeks. Expression was the life-long study of Greek orators, authors, and artists. Plato spent the last days of his life in revising the style of his "Republic." Is not the art of expression worthy of assiduous study by those whose sacred office it is to communicate to men the true wisdom?

Familiar Colloquies between a Father and his Children. By JOHN MIDDLETON HARE. Ward and Co.

WE have gone through this volume with a satisfaction at once great and unqualified. In every view it is admirable, in sentiment sound, in expression elegant, and pervaded by a charming vivacity which never for a moment flags. This is a species of composition to which all think themselves equal; and so they are, after a fashion. But to execute it as it ought to be-and as it is done in the volume before us-is far from an easy task. The numbers who succeed in it are small. No man or woman can do so without a strong vein of the dramatic,

a gift largely enjoyed by the brilliant

author.

Mr. Truefather appears to great advantage amid his children, who perform their minor parts with exquisite tact and propriety, while he himself pours out gushes of well digested and most valuable matter. His part often extends itself to a brief, bright, and highly instructive essay. Here is a fine sample :—

Thomas. Well, then, to begin at the beginning, as you sometimes say, papa, what of Bethany? I have a notion that it was a pretty village not far from Jerusalem; but no doubt you can tell us all about it.

Mr. T. Yes, as we have just read, "nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off."