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ly sacrifice the true interests of his client to the glory of a splendid oratorical performance. The Parliamentary debater often forgets the success of the measure he supports, in the acquirement of fame as an orator or place as a politician. The minister has an immortal soul for his client, and the attainment of salvation is the measure he supports. Either of the three may forget his cause and remember only himself. Yet it may be affirmed as a general truth that in all these departments, a literature, a critique, and models are the highest means of the most complete success. In rude times and in extraordinary emergencies, the natural orator of the backwoods may entrance the border jury, congregation or legislature, with a magic eloquence. But it is not in view of extraordinaries that we must make our ordinary provisions. Ordinarily, the entire arrangements of professional training. are productive of the highest powers of performance. And with the cautions we have stated if our positions are correct, we may apply the principles of criticism as honestly and as purely, as keenly and as coolly, to the performances of the pulpit, as to those of the bar, or the senate-to the productions of the pencil or the chisel. We may analyze a sermon as we would a symmetrical piece of architecture or a finished poem. We may discuss what powers of mind are brought to bear in the performance; what faults are committed and excellencies attained; and especially what effective adaptations it has for its purposes; how well it is calculated to win attention, to fasten conviction, to stir up the deeper feelings of our nature.

Why should the children of light be less wise in their generation than the children of this world? Against what an intellectual competition must the pulpit of the present day contend! What a vivid polished spirit-stirring literature is starting up on every side, around us! Almost every class of people are, now, readers; and every class of readers are met, at every step, by the fascinating, stimulating, intoxicating aliment just suited to their tastes and appetites. From the yellow-covered twenty-five-cent pirate tale, engendered by the satanic press and hawked by the devil's colporteurs, through an incessant succession of periodicals,-newspaper, magazine and quarterly,-up to the sleek-coated novel, poem, history or travels; there is a most formidable power of literature, all-alive and active, fresh from the perusal of which our congregations come to the presence of the pulpit. This literature is a rival with which the preacher is forced to compete. Nor has it any scruple or any difficulty to unite the most elaborate power of language to the most intense development of passion. It has, too, a class of most excitable passions, to which it can appeal, for which the pulpit can show no quarter. Yet, undismayed by this formidable array, let the preacher take on his armor of celestial proof, burnished with all the appliances of human diligence and skill. Knowing that from this war he has no retreat, let him learn, even from his foe, the policy of success; and appropriate to a holy

purpose that equipment, and those tactics, which may be as effective for good as for evil. Let him clothe himself with every possible accomplishment; let him not hesitate to avail himself of all the precepts and all the models of the great masters; let him appropriate all the advantages of natural and acquired elocution; let him task the powers of language wherewith to clothe his conceptions; and let him be assured that if his heart be warm, and his genius susceptible of a kindle, there are within his reach themes of beauty, sublimity and power, to fascinate, to thrill, tơ excite the deepest emotions of the heart, to arouse the utmost profound of the human soul.

And if mastery in any department is to be learned from the masters, to few masters of pulpit style in our language, can our ministry resort, superior to Logan. He possesses the power of so analyzing the topic he selects, as to present, with a natural, and even inartificial division, the varied phases of which it is susceptible, constructed into a symmetrical whole. He exhibits, in a rare degree, that imagination, which, under the law of truth, shapes powerful conceptions of eternal realities; or unfolds in vivid colorings, the varied events, characters and sceneries so richly abounding in the volume of revelation. Though loving not the rugged paths of controversy, he firmly and faithfully expounds and applies to the conscience, heart, and life the great practical doctrines of our common Christianity. In the richness and range of his language, in the graceful swell of his ever varying periods, in the animated expansion of his climactic paragraphs, he satisfies the fancy: while in the chasteness and manliness of his style, in the purity of its diction, and the burnish of its texture, he may challenge the severest taste, and assert himself a place among the English classics. And the whole is so warmed and liying with a deep devotional feeling, a rich and fervid zeal, as, coming most manifestly from the heart of the preacher, searches, pervades, and fills the heart of the hearer.

It may by some be thought that, in accordance somewhat with the lax theology of his time, the way of faith is not sufficiently developed, in his sermons. Yet he, certainly, belonged not to the school of pulpit moralists, who borrowed their text from Paul, and their sermon from Epictetus. Christ and his cross, heaven and hell, repentance and reformation, are his momentous themes. He may, like St. James, have fused the doctrine of faith into his system, rather than brought it out with genuine Pauline pungency. At the present day, when the preacher would bring the sinner to close quarters, and elicit from his soul the immediate act by which he consigns himself to Christ for salvation, he will perhaps find some exhibition of the doctrine of faith more explicit, than was usually found in the preaching of those times, necessary to his purpose.

The sermons of Logan are eloquence, purely within the central truths of

the gospel; within the legitimate range of the pulpit; and within the comprehension of our ordinary congregations. We know not what was the style of Logan's delivery; but if the delivery was in any way commensurate with the composition, we know not how they could have failed of being most impressive. We know not how a people could well sit under such a ministry without being made better. We know not how men within reach, could fail to feel their steps attracted to such a ministry. We know not how such a ministry, spread over this and every other land, could fail of being a rich blessing, if not the saving of the world.

His is not so much that originality which startles us with the announcement of a new truth, as that more practical originality which invests established truths with new zest and freshness. Under his lucid touches, the rust of common-place disappears from that old truth, a new clearness beams upon it, a new beauty beams from it. Then a brighter lustre and a richer glow; then a more radiant glory and a blaze of splendor new and dazzling. Our attention is arrested; we are borne along on the tide of increasing interest; our feelings rise with the opening vistas; and we close the discourse, dissatisfied with its brevity, yet with hearts warmed, with views brightened, and with a grateful trust, that we are being made better Christians and better men. And, then, there is such a variety and spontaneousness as to make him seem inexhaustible. We learn to love the mind which was the ceaseless fountain of such beauty and power; and we drop a tear at the thought that his closing days were shaded with sorrow.

SERMONS.

SERMON I.

ON THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGIOUS

INSTITUTIONS.

PSAL. XXVII. 4.-"One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple."

DAVID, the author of this psalm, is much celebrated in the sacred Scriptures. As a man, he was not without faults; but as a king, he shines with uncommon lustre. He distinguished himself in early youth, as the champion of his native land; in fighting the battles of Israel he became the hero of his age; and at last he ascended the throne, on which he sat with much splendor during many years. He was the founder of the Jewish monarchy. From being separate tribes, he made the Jews a nation. Their judge in peace, as well as their leader in war, he secured by his councils what he had gained by his arms, and gave to Judea a name and a renown among the kingdoms of the East. To the bravery of a warrior, and the wisdom of a statesman, he added what in all ages has been no less admired, the accomplishments of a poet or bard. "The sweet Psalmist of Israel" consecrated his harp to the praises of the Lord, and composed to it sacred strains, that have ministered to the improvement and to the devotion of succeeding times, till this day.

Notwithstanding all his other engagements, he found time for the exercises of religion; notwithstanding all the pleasures and honors of a throne, he found his chief happiness in the house of the Lord. "One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house

of the Lord all the days of my life." Whenever his favorite subject presents itself, he takes fire, and speaks of it, not only with zeal, but with transport. "How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God."

It becomes then a subject worthy of our attention, to inquire, What there is in the public institutions of religion, to have rendered them an object of so great importance to the king of Israel? This will appear, if we consider their influence on men, with respect to their religious capacity; with respect to their moral character; with respect to their political state; and with respect to their domestic life.

In the first place, let us consider the in fluence of religious institutions upon men, with respect to their religious capacity.

There are many qualities which we share in common with the inferior animals. In the acuteness of the external senses, some of them excel our species. They have a reason of their own; they make approaches to human intelligence, and are led by an instinct of nature to associate with one another. They have also their virtues, and exhibit such examples of affection, of industry, and of courage, as give lessons to mankind. But in all their actions they discover no sense of Deity, and no traces of religion. It was reserved to be the glory of man, that he alone should be admitted into the presence of his Creator, and be rendered capable of knowing and. adoring the perfections of the Almighty. As piety is the distinguishing mark of the human race, a tendency to the exercise thereof is in some degree natural to the

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