their own characters will recommend to many minds the statements which they make, and that to many other minds, their statements, if correct, will recommend themselves. There is a beauty in the doctrines of the Gospel, a simplicity and harmony like that of the planetary system. These qualities constitute internal evidence of the truth of the doctrines, and cause, in the popular mind, an intuitive confidence in their truth. When the preacher's simple enunciation of his proposition secures the assent of his audience, why shall he, we do not say introduce, but prolong an argument upon it? Why shall he "explain upon a thing till all men doubt it," and dilate upon objections previously unknown, and, without his suggestion, remaining unknown forever? Often does the preacher, bidding farewell to good judgement, direct his people's attention more strongly to the difficulties with which learned sinners have incumbered a truth, than he does to the truth itself; and thus he generates distrust or open disbelief, where before there had been implicit faith.

We stated that the application of divine truth to the heart is a different thing from the application of arguments for this truth. Is there no difference between preparing a medicine by chemical admixtures, and actually administering it when prepared? Argumentation, however, in its proper place, as means to an end, is indispensably important for the preacher, and it is only the excessive and inappropriate use of it which we condemn. How can truth be applied to the heart, unless it be believed by the intellect? Although an audience may be convinced that a doctrine is correct without being affected by the doctrine, they cannot be properly affected by it without being previously convinced. Argument, used as subsidiary to the practical application of doctrine, is necessary, not only for those independent, inquisitive minds, which love to doubt or to deny their teacher's assertions, but also for those who are accustomed to believe on authority. If men be encouraged to yield their opinions to the guidance of others, they will be the prey of cunning imposters, and will be liable to be seduced into ruinous error. Those churches are the most firmly barricadoed against heresy, which unite with appropriate feelings a thorough understanding of the reasons for their faith.

Among a large proportion of our clergy the danger is, not that there will be too much, but too little argument. To preach truth plainly, is, in the estimation of many, to advance the most familiar ideas in the most familiar manner; to sink the thoughts and expressions of a discourse to a levil with the cus tomary thoughts and expressions of its hearers. It is deemed

necessary that addresses to children embody none but children's thoughts, and be clothed in none but children's style. The application of truth to the heart, however, does not require such a degradation of the pulpit. To retail common-places from the preacher's throne, or to deliver as grave discourses a collection of anecdotes, is any thing, rather than "feeding the flock" over which the Holy Ghost has made ministers overseers—rather than giving "to every one his portion in due season." It is any thing, rather than a proper presentation of the majesty and spirituality of truth. There is in the doctrines of the Bible something that is commanding and elevating; something that rebukes sensuality, and mortifies the uninquisitive, indolent soul. If those who are daily occupied with the labor of their hands, and whose minds are engrossed in the tempting and sordid interests of time and flesh, find that the Sabbath presents to them nothing intellectual, that the sacred desk accommodates itself to their drowsiness, and that the Bible is treated by the minister as a book of trite sayings, will they feel a becoming reverence for the institutions of religion, an appropriate awe in view of the dignity and authority of religious doctrine? The attempt to make truth plain, by leanness of thought and tameness of style, gives a sad misrepresentation of the very nature of divine truth, and converts that which properly is the "wisdom and power of God" into the ignorance and weakness of men. We often hear it said, 'A preacher should be one among his people-how then, we ask, is he to go before, and lead the way? Whatever he may be, as the man, he should, as the preacher, be above his people, so that they may look up to him, and respect the "gracious words which come from his lips." He should not indeed overtop the comprehension of his auditors; for if a man is out of sight, he can no more be the leader of the throng, than if he were standing in the midst of it; but he should store the popular mind with new ideas, enforce doctrine with new arguments, and array his instructions in language, which, while perfectly transparent, shall give the pulpit an elevation above the shop. Hearers will be better pleased with an instructive discourse, enriched with felicitous illustration, than with a meagre harangue, so adapted to their capacities that any man or woman among them might give the same. They deem it a reflection on their understanding, for a minister to address them, as if they were incapable of continuous thought and enlarged ideas. Some men-Dr. Payson for one-have preached to seamen in the seamen's own style; but their sermons have never been so acceptable to members of the nautical profession as to landsmen, who were interested with the novelty

of the nautical phrases. Sailors love to be considered men, and to be addressed as if they were capable of understanding the language of men. And with regard to the intelligibleness of pure and chaste style, it is notorious, that although the provincialisms of one province are obscure to its neighbors, and the technical terms of one profession are jargon to other professions, yet all who speak English can understand the pure and standard English better than that which is corrupt; and even those who use a low and barbarous phraseology are better pleased with their preacher when he uses, if he does it skillfully, the elevated and refined.

The taste of the present day is peculiarly unfavorable to the faithful application of religious doctrines, by its demand for high excitement. The cautions which good men have given against metaphysical preaching, instead of being applied, as they ought to have been, to the irrelevant and excessive use of abstract argument, have been by some ministers applied to all didactic. discourse, and have been perverted to justify incessant exhortation. Some have accordingly crowded their sermons with striking antitheses, bold appeals, and startling metaphors. They have aimed at effect upon the animal passions. Thunderings have been heard at the top of the mountain, lightnings have flashed, but no law has been promulgated. What has been the consequence? Giddiness and effervescence of feeling; impatient, blazing zeal among certain classes of the people; and among other classes disgust and contempt. Is the high religious excitement which this preaching produces, healthful? Is it religion? When the populace give the reins to their animal nature, and listen in a crowded house to the impassioned discourse of one whose imagination carries captive his judgement, do we see among them that humility, that meekness, that calm submission and considerate love, which are the essence of true piety? Is this inflammation of their feelings sufficiently unequivocal to compensate for the alienation of heart and loss of confidence that such preaching occasions among contemplative men? Is not the excitement as evanescent as it is high? Men may "tarry long at the wine;" but will they not at last experience the want of some solid sustenance?

It is doubtless the fact, that those preachers who devote the body of their discourses to passionate appeals, and stir up all their powers in boisterous and vehement exhortations, will soon produce satiety. The human constitution cannot be stimulated too much; it will cry for the "sincere milk," or the "strong meat." The play of the passions fatigues the soul, and unless the soul's appropriate food be administered, it becomes unable to

endure farther excitement. This style of preaching, which for a few months may please and animate a hearer, at the expiration of these months will leave him listless and stupid; his moral sensibilities worn out, his taste vitiated, his conscience blunted. It not only injures the health of the minister, for a man can sustain three hours of close study better than one hour of the fermenting and outpouring of feeling; it materially injures his influence. He is frequently betrayed into extravagancies of expression, and acquires the character of a hyperbolical writer. His hearers establish it as a principle that they must receive his remarks with deduction, and in the midst of a solemn address, where no representation can exceed the truth, there they make their allowances! and ward from their consciences many a reproof by the thought that their reprover does not mean what he says; that he is excited; and when he becomes more sober, will speak more rationally! This is indeed a degradation of pulpit oratory; a melancholy degradation. A vast amount of profitable truth is thrown away by the hearers among the rubbish of fanatical vagaries, and a vast amount of the preacher's strength is wasted through the general suspicion, honestly entertained, of his extravagance. We have listened to a man of common plain sense, of calm and collected address, and have seen his audience melted by his honest animadversions. The bare thought, that he uttered the dictates of his deliberate judgement, and did not calculate on leaving room for his hearers to limit and qualify his meaning, gave an influence to every word. We have watched this same audience when they listened to a gifted, fervid, bold declaimer. They were delighted and amused by his vehemence of gesticulation, and sonorous periods, and splendid imagery; they were amused! and they wondered at his power; but they did not feel his power; they regarded his most weighty denunciations as rhetorical; and if eloquence consists in adapting a discourse to its end, our plain man was far more eloquent than our orator. And so it is. With a soul wrought up to the highest pitch of excitement, the preacher attempts to raise his hearers to a similar height; if he will proceed calmly and gradually, he may succeed; but by violent expression and startling gesture, he breaks the thread on which his audience hang, and they fall, not to rise again, but to look up and stare, and smile at his sallies and flights. Is this the application of truth to the heart? Or is it rather a flourishing of the sword over the heart and head?

The Sermons of Mr. Jenkins we can cheerfully recommend for their freedom from the several faults to which we have advert

ed. We discover in them no fine-spun thread of metaphysics which it were irksome for his hearers to unravel; neither do we discover those common-place remarks and hackneyed phrases which so soon cloy the attention of an auditory. There is a repleteness of original thought, and a copiousness of style which interest and instruct. Few hearers would rise from his pulpit performances without an addition to their stock of practical knowledge. The introductions to his discourses are perhaps too rich, and give too much promise of valuable sequels. We discover in the volume no straining after pompous periods, nor wild chace for unusual images. A sick man can read it without weariness, and a nervous man without feverish excitement. There is an accuracy of judgement and a practical good sense pervading it, which, to an excitable community, are as necessary as the ballast to a ship.

We have great reason to fear that, under the rhapsodical style of preaching on which we have commented, there are many spurious and illusive conversions. How can it be otherwise? The mind of an unlettered hearer is highly excited. Can it long endure such excitement? It will relapse. From violent agitation it will, exhausted, sink into calmness. Here is a change; and the expression "I have experienced a change," is with many minds tantamount to the expression, "I have been converted." Was there not frequently a change in king Saul? Does not the pendulum swing to the two extremes?-The hearer, perceiving that his agitation has subsided, and imagining that the subsidence is conversion, is filled with gratitude; and what sinner would not be, when he believed that a great Governor had given him a "pearl of great price." Though ingratitude is necessarily sinful, gratitude is not necessarily holy. "What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me," is all that is said by the deluded pretender; while in order to make compensation for the grace which he dreams of having received, he performs cheerfully many duties. He begins to read the Bible, and to pray, and to impart of his substance to charitable objects, and to exhort sinners, and rebuke Christians, and obey the commands of his Deity with the scrupulosity and the spirit of the devoted Hindoo. The developements of his selfish feeling are similar to the developements of holy feeling; his Christian friends, his Pastor, are deceived; he is admitted to the visible church, and his salvation, in his own view, is made sure. But all his religion is a mere mercantile religion, so much for so much. Barter, however, has little affinity to grace. Oh how many souls have been inveigled into ruin by the plausible ap