with the daughters of Salem! Linger until you hear that loud lament, until you hear him say, 'It is finished!' and see him bow his meek, pale face all bloody, and bearing upon it the mysterious shadow of death; but it will do you little good to see Christ crucified before you, as you do this day, unless Christ crucified becomes your hope and your salvation." The sermon then ended with a brief exposition of the objects of Christ's death, and a pathetic exhortation to sinners to accept of salvation through him, and to Christians to come forward. and commemorate his death.

We have given this specimen of his preaching to illustrate, as well as we could, that particular point in which as a preacher he excelled. No orator perhaps ever equalled him in this kind of pulpit eloquence except Whitefield, and we doubt whether even Whitefield himself, in this particular, surpassed him. One specimen we have given, we could give many more. A gentleman told us that he heard him preaching one day from John iii. 14. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so shall the Son of Man be lifted up;" and that after he had spoken of one and another being stung by the serpents, and of the terror of the camp, and when every one was in a state of intense excitement, occasioned by the picture which he had drawn, and which they seemed to see; suddenly starting back, "There!" said he, pointing in a given direction, "see that woman! One of the serpents has just struck her and she is fainting!" In a moment every eye was actually turned in the direction toward which he pointed. The Rev. Mr. Calvert, formerly of Bowling Green, Ky. (himself a noble specimen of a Christian minister,) mentioned that he heard him speak one evening of the torments of the lost, for half an hour, and so entirely was his imagination occupied with the doctor's pictures of the place of torments, that he could only remember the words of a single sentence in the whole address. "It did not appear to me," said he, "that I had been hearing, but that I had been seeing." It was in this power of painting chiefly, that he excelled the mass of his, cotemporaries as a preacher. In other respects there were several to whom he was not superior. In the use of pure English he was surpassed by Dr. Allen of Huntsville, Alabama; in argument and logic, VOL. I.-36

by Dr. Anderson of Maryville, East Tennessee; in pathos, by Dr. Nelson, the author of "The Cause and Cure of Infidelity;" and in fire and occasional flights of terrible grandeur, by his theological preceptor, Dr. Henderson of Murfreesborough; but in person, voice, gesture, and in the peculiar power of which we have spoken, he had no compeer in his day. The truth is, such was his commanding presence, the elegance of his figure, the sweetness of his silvery voice, the gracefulness of his gestures, his powers of description, the total abandon and unction of his manner in his finest moods, that his hearers forgot everything else forgot to criticise as they listened, and surrendered themselves to the mastery, we might say, witchery of his sermons; as the lovers of music delight to surrender themselves to the spell of a master. Mr. M. of C ** ville, himself no mean orator, mentioned that he came to Columbia one day on business, was in haste, heard that Blackburn was preaching at the court house-thought he would step in a moment and hear him; the house was crowded; he took his position in the door, leaning against the door-cheek; there, as if enchanted, he stood an hour or more without altering his position, and when he attempted to move he was so cramped that he could scarcely walk. Time, his errand, his fatiguing posture, had all been forgotten in the spell the orator had thrown over him.

Mr. B. of Rutherford, Tennessee, used to tell a good anecdote of an attempt which he made to criticise Blackburn, the first time he heard him. Mr. B. was a fine classical scholar, a finished orthoepist and grammarian, and withal of a very fastidious taste, being as sensitive to a false quantity or a blunder in grammar, as the most delicate spirit-thermometer to the temperature of the atmosphere. Mr. B. was returned to the legislature. It met at Knoxville, and Blackburn was to preach a sermon to the members at the opening of the session. B. had never heard him, but had formed his theory of him from seattered reports. He had heard it said that he pronounced many words contrary to all analogy, polite use, or authority; that, for instance, he said poolse for pulse, impoolse for impulse, impétus for impetus, sometimes decreptitude for decrepitude; that sometimes he used the participle for the preterite in the irregu lar verbs, saying, for instance, "he done" for "he did," besides

many other like blunders of grammar and pronunciation; and in addition to all this, that at times he was very extravagant in the pitch of his voice, and in the number of his gestures. Still he was very popular. B.'s theory was that he owed his popularity to his person, his musical voice, still more to the want of judgment and taste in the ignorant and uncultivated masses that flocked to hear him. Yet there was a great stir, expectation was on tiptoe, and every body was going to hear him. Mr. B. would go too, would hear for himself, without prejudice, but still as a critic, and ascertain where his great strength as a speaker with the people lay. Pencil and notebook in hand, he would set down his blunders, and make memoranda of the discourse. Taking his seat in an obscure corner, he prepared for his task, expecting to make a rare collection of blunders for his own amusement, and for the confusion of the doctor's foolish and extravagant admirers. The doctor commenced in his usual dignified, but entirely unassuming and unpretending manner, hesitating occasionally, now as if waiting for a thought to become clear to his own mind, now, as if for a fit word in which to embody it; presently, as an illustration, he drops into the classical story admirably told by Xenophon, concerning the generosity of Cyrus towards a captive prince, the admiration and gratitude of the prince towards the Medo-Persian general, and the devotion of the princess to her husband, who had offered his life to rescue her from captivity and slavery; having cleared his way by this illustration, he is into his subject, his countenance is lit up, words follow, not in sentences, but in chains-whole paragraphs without a pause; on, on he dashes, now like a courser toward the goal; now beautifully like a ship with all its sails set to the breeze, careering over the curling waves; now like an eagle soaring away towards the sun over lofty mountains; now presenting picture after picture, as in some magnificent dioramic exhibition. The spell had come down upon our critical friend as over all others; that fine allusion to Xenophon had something to do in disarming him perhaps, at all events, when it is over, he finds he has but one criticism on his paper, which he remembers to have made somewhere about the beginning of the discourse, and that is "brung" for "brought." "Why," said

Mr. B. in telling the writer this anecdote himself, "I could not criticise him, not that he was not vulnerable enough, but a man must be a cold-hearted, mean, contemptible creature, even in his own eyes, to criticise such a man and such preaching. He that would do it, or could do it, would criticise anything—the Falls of Niagara, the bend of the rainbow, the manner of the sun's rising in the morning, or his glorious setting in the west, or even Homer's Iliad!" Our classical friend said that he never failed to hear the doctor after that, when he could, but "that he never carried his ink-horn or his pencil to church afterwards."

Blackburn was not only an eloquent, but a laborious and successful preacher. Like Whitefield, he "loved to range," and besides many extensive tours of preaching through various portions of the United States, his vacations in the academy and college were uniformly spent in travelling from place to place, often preaching night and day, and every where followed “by weeping, wondering, admiring audiences wherever he went;" and even during the sessions of the academy and college, often have we known him, mounted on horseback on Friday afternoon, to dash off ten, twenty, and even thirty miles, preach four or five times, administer the communion on Sabbath, and return on Monday morning in time to be in his chair in the lecture room at nine o'clock; and notwithstanding such labor, he never seemed fatigued, but fresh and vigorous as ever, for he had an iron constitution, indomitable energy, and an inexhaustible flow of animal spirits. Laborious and zealous, he was a successful preacher. Many, very many, were converted under his ministry, and many churches planted and watered by his indefatigable labors.

6. As a Christian Dr. Blackburn's piety was of the active, rather than the contemplative type. In religious experience, in the peculiar joys and sorrows of a Christian, he fully believed, and often spoke of them as one who knew whereof he spoke; but he put more confidence in obedience to the commandments, as a test of Christian character, than in "frames and feelings." In the reality of God's providential government, as well as moral, he was a firm believer, and to it he was ever ready to resign himself without a murmur. Indeed, this cheerful and habitual

resignation, as well as his reference of every thing to the will of Providence, was one of the marked traits of his Christian character. Perhaps the many sufferings through which he was called to pass, as well as perils, gave this special cast and color to his piety. For like Job he might have said, "I am the man who hath seen affliction." By a fall from a horse, when a young man, which broke his thigh, and by bad surgery, he was laid up for months; this was followed by a white swelling which added other months of suffering, yet during all this time, carried to his pulpit, he would sit and preach to admiring and delighted audiences every Sabbath, never even alluding to his sufferings.

In his family he endured repeated bereavements. Father of nine children, six sons and three daughters, he lived to bury them all but his oldest daughter and two of his youngest sons. One of these bereavements deserves to be particularly noticed, as the manner in which he bore it, will serve to throw light upon his character as a Christian.

His second son, Joseph Hervey, was the most promising of all his children. He was a young man of fine genius, of varied and extensive acquirements, and of elegant and fascinating manners; the only member of the family who seemed to inherit the doctor's talents, physical constitution, and fine personal appearance. It was Dr. Anderson's opinion that nature had cast him in a finer mould than even his father. This son had been a skeptic until he was eighteen or nineteen years of age, but through his father's influence and prayers, had become a Christian,-a zealous, earnest Christian,—and had determined to prepare for the Christian ministry. Having concluded his classical and scientific studies, he wished a knowledge of the Hebrew. His father sent him to Maryville, in East Tennessee, to study the language with his old friend Dr. Anderson. He had been there about six months, endearing himself to every one, when he was attacked with erysipelas, and in a few days died. The sad intelligence of his death Dr. Anderson communicated to his father, with a request on the back of the letter, that the postmaster would hand it to him immediately. The letter arrived on Sunday morning. The postmaster went to church, and when the doctor arrived, handed it to him. He retired aside and read it, folded it up, put