תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub

the glittering light of a diamond, or moonbeams flashing across an iceberg. You are filled with admiration unbounded, as thoughts, beautiful as ever greeted a poet's vision, are placed before you. But beautiful though they be, they chill your heart. It is an eloquence of the intellect. And some eloquent men there are whose simple appeals come home to your heart in spite of yourself, and kindle deep emotion and drive you to duty. But when you examine what they have said, it would require an intellectual microscope to detect much real substance. The intellect finds but little to gaze on with complacence, and yet it is eloquent, it springs from the heart. Dr. B. in a high degree combines the two; his eloquence is from the intellect and the heart.

In one respect he differs from most others. In the midst of remarks, from such a source seeming common-place, he will fling out some thought, meteor-like, sparkling in all the brilliancy of its own original lustre, and then, as if nothing uncommon had occurred, he will move on in the path of " common-places." We well remember an instance. It was on a Sabbath afternoon that he was addressing Christians who were desponding, telling them it would not always be so. The day had been cloudy, but just at this moment the clouds were lifted up, and the setting sun streamed brightly into the church. In an instant the Doctor appropriated the incident. "Behold it, desponding Christian. Clouds obscure your heavens during the long day, death begins to draw his sable curtains around you. You despair of seeing light. But those clouds will be lifted up, and the light of God's countenance, like that rich sunlight, be poured over your soul, before you go hence to be here no more." Nothing can be richer or more appropriate, and such occurrences are common. Indeed, in this very thing consists a marked feature of his eloquence, a seizing upon passing events and pressing them into immediate service. It is this which gives many of his speeches the freshness of newly coined gold. He was once reading a lecture to his class on the differences of minds. The particular thought occupying his attention was the difference between

embodied and disembodied spirits. Disembodied spirits were represented as looking in astonishment upon us, wondering how it is possible for us to act at all in these clay prisons. And how the mind is fettered by the feebleness of the body! How often has the student, careering on to conquest, been checked by a jaded or diseased body, and the mind, chafing like an eager war-horse, been compelled to cease its labors! The Doctor suddenly closed his book, drew off his spectacles, and pronounced the following extemporaneous thoughts. Excepting freedom from sin, intense, vigorous, untiring action is the mind's highest pleasure. I would not wish to go to heaven, did I believe that its inhabitants were to sit inactive by purling streams, to be fanned into indolent slumbers by balmy breezes! Heaven, to be a place of happiness, must be a place of activity. Has the far-reaching mind of Newton rested from its profound investigations? Have David and Isaiah hung up their harps, useless as the dusty arms in Westminster Abbey? Has Paul, glowing with godlike enthusiasm, ceased itinerating the universe of God? Are Peter, and Cyprian, and Luther, and Edwards, idling away eternity in mere psalm-singing? Heaven is a place of activity, of never-tiring thought. David and Isaiah will sweep noble and loftier strains in eternity, and the minds of saints, unclogged by cumbersome clay, for ever feast on a banquet of thought, rich, glorious thought. Young gentlemen, press on, you will never get through. An eternity of untiring activity is before you, and the universe of thought your field."

Dr. B.'s mind is a laboratory teeming with every variety of figure. He never deals in comparisons unless compelled to. Comparisons are too tame. Condensed, vivid metaphors start up before you, the living embodiments of great thoughts. This is a favorite peculiarity to be noticed both in his sermons and prayers. When laboring under intense excitement, terse exclamations, rocket-like metaphors, are crowded upon you with astonishing rapidity. They constitute the mere stepping-stones for the hearer's use, whilst the orator, with fiery impetuosity, rushes to his conclusion. One might

hear him preach a year, and yet hear no effort commensurate with his great powers. To hear a sermon or a speech, when the full energies of his mind are wrought up to intensest excitement, is an era to the person capable of appreciating true eloquence. By merest accident we saw him once when his excitement was almost frenzy, and we hardly expect to hear such another effort. His audience was made up promiscuously from all denominations, the occasion being an anniversary of the Bible Society. The influence of false religions to debase men, and of the religion of the Bible to elevate them, was his theme. Long before he arose, his face and movements gave evidence of high excitement, and so absorbed was he in his own thoughts, that he did not hear the announcement of his name by the president. A brother clergyman laid his hand upon his shoulder, and he started up. In an instant he leaped into the heart of his subject, and for almost an hour he poured out burning words. He scarcely looked at the scrap of paper in his hand. The effort was purely extemporaneous. He was a giant in a truth-quarry. He grasped his instrument and hurled vast, unbroken masses down the mountain's side. The mightiest truths were rolled down upon us in his terse metaphors, and Whitefieldian exclamations, and onward he hastened, without stopping to expand. He seemed to see deluded men struggling on a bottomless ocean, and false religions, mountain-sized, bound about their necks, and sinking them deep to hopeless ruin. On the other hand, the Bible with its doctrines, so pure, so sanctifying, so mighty, was a magnificent orb, a sun, with omnipotent attractions, drawing man upward from his degradation, as the sun moves the bosom of the ocean. The truths were so noble, the metaphors so condensed yet clear, flashing conviction upon the mind, the excitement was so great, as burst of the most brilliant eloquence succeeded burst, in rapid sequence, during the whole time, that when he ceased, one long-drawn breath of relief was heard throughout the auditory.

But we must stop. Our partialities to the West are per

ceptible, and we trust, pardonable. We do love to fill our minds with the conceptions of that grandeur to which the West shall finally attain. At such moments we tremble. This battle-field, grander than a thousand Waterloos, these hosts, which Milton's pen could not describe, that consummation in victory, more joyful or woful, than ever perched on a conqueror's standard-these invest the West with solemn sublimity. And the wise man will not close his eyes against the mute yet striking lessons, which these foreshadowed events teach. But be this destiny joyful or woful, ELOQUENCE, a mighty spirit from heaven or from hell, according as she is subsidized, sweeping sensitive cords in a million hearts, eliciting notes which might charm an angel or delight a demon, binding those million hearts with the sweet, yet omnipotent chains of fraternal love, or driving them fiercely asunder to contend as friends, for supremacy-Eloquence, the mighty Incantator of all this, shall lead the great West up the pathway of life, or force it down the steeps of death.

ARTICLE IV.

PROFESSOR BUSH'S ANASTASIS REVIEWED.

By Rev. D. D. TOMPKINS McLaughlin, New-York.

IN the Divine administration nothing, perhaps, is more adapted to strike us with surprise, than the methods adopted by Infinite Wisdom in the accomplishment of its glorious purposes. Agencies, which human penetration would have marked as wholly destitute of efficiency, or as directly and powerfully tending to the subversion of truth and virtue, have been chosen by God, as the best adapted of any within the range of his universal observation and summons, to the illustration and final establishment of the grand principles of faith and duty. From the hour when, in Eden, the Prince of

Darkness arrayed himself in opposition to the testimony of the Father of Lights, what has the history of our world presented but the constant antagonism of virtue and vice, of truth and falsehood; and however error and sin may have triumphed for a season, the issue will abundantly prove that "the foolishness of God is wiser than man, and the weakness of God is stronger than man." The assaults of enemies, and the mistakes of friends, by which the ark of the covenant has apparently been endangered, have all been made contributory to the settlement of Zion on an immovable foundation.

We have been led to these reflections by the interest awakened in the churches in favor of the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, from the recent attempt made by Professor Bush to undermine the popular belief. Never, except on a single occasion, had we listened to an argument from the pulpit on this important topic. We had often noticed with astonishment, the rigid silence maintained on this point by the Christian ministry, when in the first ages of the Church, such prominence was given to the doctrine. It was necessary that something should transpire to break up this lethargic state, and excite the believer to a thorough examination of the nature of his faith, and of the evidence on which it rests. The belief in the resurrection of the body might otherwise become a dead letter in the creed of Christianity. But, thanks to Professor Bush, or rather to that Providence which brings good out of evil, an impulse has been given to the public mind, which will not soon spend itself; and we may thus indulge the hope, that the doctrine will hereafter be better understood, and more highly prized than it has been since the apostolic days.

In the latest work of our author, entitled, "Bush on the Resurrection of Christ," an attempt is made to invalidate the argument drawn from the resurrection of the material body of our Lord, against the theory of a spiritual resurrection, as developed in the Anastasis. We are not surprised that he has felt the necessity of guarding more thoroughly a point, where his theory is, if not the most indefensible, at least the

« הקודםהמשך »