have since fallen into horrid crimes; but they have never since this period lapsed into idolatry, Hosea, 2d and 3d chap. Ezekiel, 2d, 3d, 34th chap. There were not wanting, however multitudes

whose characters are strikingly delineated by the true prophets, and which the reader may see in the 13th chapter of Ezekiel, 56th Isaiah, 23d Jeremiah. When the seventy years of the captivity were expired, the good prophets and preachers, Zerubbabel, Joshua, Haggai, and others, having confidence in the word of God, and aspiring after their natural, civil, and religious rights, endeavoured by all means to extricate themselves and their countrymen from that mortifying state into which the crimes of their ancestors had brought them. They wept, fasted,

coolness, at other times with ve- || remains to this day. The Jews hement action and rapturous energy; sometimes in a plain blunt style; at other times in all the magnificent pomp of Eastern allegory. On some occasions, the preachers appeared in public with visible signs, with imple-of false prophets among them, ments of war, yokes of slavery, or something adapted to their subject. They gave lectures on these, held them up to view, girded them on, broke them in pieces,|| rent their garments, rolled in the dust; and endeavoured, by all the methods they could devise agreeably to the customs of their country, to impress the minds of their auditors with the nature and importance of their doctrines. These men were highly esteemed by the pious part of the nation; and princes thought proper to keep seers and others, who were scribes, who read and expounded the law, 2d Chro. xxxiv, 29, 30. 2d Chro.prayed, preached, prophesied, and xxxv, 15. Hence false prophets, at length prevailed. The chief inbad men who found it worth while struments were Nehemiah and to affect to be good, crowded the Ezra : the first was governor, and courts of princes. Jezebel, an reformed their civil state; the last idolatress, had four hundred pro-was a scribe of the law of the God phets of Baal; and Ahab, a pre-of heaven, and addressed himtended worshipper of Jehovah, had as many pretended prophets of his own profession, 2d Chron.

xviii, 5.

self to ecclesiastical matters, in which he rendered the noblest service to his country, and to all posterity. He collected and collated manuscripts of the sacred

When the Jews were carried captive into Babylon, the pro-writings, and arranged and pubphets who were with them inculcated the principles of religion, and endeavoured to possess their minds with an aversion to idolatry; and to the success of preaching we may attribute the re-conversion of the Jews to the belief and worship of one God; a conversion that

||lished the holy canon in its present form. To this he added a second work as necessary as the former; he revived and new modelled public preaching, and exemplified his plan in his own person. The Jews had almost lost in the seventy years' captivity their

up from their seats, and stood. Then he offered up prayer and praise to God, the people bowing their heads, and worshipping the Lord with their faces to the

solemnly pronounced

original language: that was now become dead; and they spoke a jargon made up of their own language and that of the Chaldeans and other nations with whom they had been confounded. For-ground; and, at the close of the merly preachers had only ex-prayer, with uplifted hands, they plained subjects: now they were Amen, obliged to explain words; words Amen. Then, all standing, Ezra, which, in the sacred code, were assisted at times by the Levites, become obsolete, equivocal, or read the law distinctly, gave the dead. Houses were now opened, sense, and caused them to undernot for ceremonial worship, as sa- stand the reading. The sermons crificing, for this was confined to delivered so affected the hearers, the temple; but for moral obedi-that they wept excessively; and ence, as praying, preaching, read-about noon the sorrow became so ing the law, divine worship, and exuberant and immeasurable, that social duties. These houses were it was thought necessary by the called synagogues: the people re-governor, the preacher, and the paired thither morning and even-Levites, to restrain it. Go your ing for prayer; and on sabbaths way, said they; eat the fat, drink and festivals the law was read and the sweet, send portions unto them expounded to them. We have a for whom nothing is prepared. The short but beautiful description of wise and benevolent sentiments of the manner of Ezra's first preach-these noble souls were imbibed by ing, Nehem. viii. Upwards of fifty thousand people assembled in a street, or large square, near the Watergate. It was early in the morning of a sabbath day. A pulpit of wood, in the fashion of a small tower, was placed there on purpose for the preacher; and this turret was supported by a scaffold, or temporary gallery, where, in a wing on the right hand of the pulpit, sat six of the principal preachers; and in another, on the left, seven. Thirteen other principal teachers, and many Levites, were present, also, on scaffolds erected for the purpose, alternately to officiate. When Ezra ascended the pulpit, he produced and open-rulers were appointed for the ed the book of the law, and the purpose of preserving order and whole congregation instantly rose giving instruction.

the whole congregation, and fifty thousand troubled hearts were calmed in a moment. Home they returned, to eat, to drink, to send portions, and to make mirth, because they had understood the words that were declared unto them. Plato was alive at this time, teaching dull philosophy to cold academics; but what was he, and what was Xenophon or Demosthenes, or any of the Pagan orators, in comparison with these men? From this period to that of the appearance of Jesus Christ, public preaching was universal; synagogues were multiplied, vast numbers attended, and elders and

The apostles being dead, every thing came to pass as they had foretold. The whole Christian system underwent a miserable change: preaching shared the fate of other institutions, and this glory of the primitive church was, now gradually degenerated. Those writers whom we call the Fathers, however, held up to view by some as models of imitation, do not deserve that indiscriminate praise ascribed to them. Christianity, it

The most celebrated preacher || quence of the school or the terthat arose before the appearance ror of arms, the charms of money of Jesus Christ was John the Bap-or the tricks of tradesmen, could tist. He was commissioned from afford them. heaven to be the harbinger of the Messiah. He took Elijah for his model; and as the times were very much like those in which that prophet lived, he chose a doctrine and a method very much resembling those of that venerable mán. His subjects were few, plain, and important. His style was vehement, images bold, his deportment solemn, his actions eager, and his morals strict; but this bright morning-star give way to the illustrious Sun of Righteous-is true, is found in their writings; ness, who now arose on a benighted world. Jesus Christ certainly || was the prince of preachers Who but can admire the simplicity and majesty of his style, the beauty of his images, the alternate softness and severity of his address, the choice of his subjects, the grace, fulness of his deportment, and the indefatigableness of his zeal? Let the reader charm and solace himself in the study and contemplation of the character, excellency, and dignity, of this best of preachers, as he will find them delineated by the evangelists.

The apostles exactly copied their divine master. They formed multitudes of religious societies, and were abundantly successful in their labours. They confined their attention to religion, and left the school to dispute, and politicians to intrigue. The doctrines they preached they supported entirely by evidence; and neither had nor required such assistance as human laws or worldly policy, the elo

but how sadly incorporated with Pagan philosophy and Jewish allegory! It must, indeed, be allowed, that, in general, the simplicity of Christianity was maintained, though under gradual decay, during the first three centuries. The next five centuries produced many pious and excellent preachers both in the Latin and Greek churches, though the doctrine continued to degenerate. The Greek pulpit was adorned with some eloquent orators. Basil, bishop of Cæsarea, John Chrysostom, preacher at Antioch, and afterwards patriarch (as he was called) of Constantinople, and Gregory Nazianzen, who all flourished in the fourth century, seem to have led the fashion of preaching in the Greek church: Jerom and Augustine did the same in the Latin church. For some time, preaching was common to bishops, elders, deacons, and private brethren in the primitive church: in process, it was restrained to

the bishop, and to such as he should appoint. They called the

assembly at first added "Amen:" and, in after times, they answered

appointment ordination: and at" And with thy spirit." Degene

rate, however, as these days were in comparison with those of the apostles, yet they were golden ages in comparison with the times that followed, when metaphysical reasonings, mystical divinity, yea, Aristotelian categories, and reading the lives of saints, were substi

pulpit became a stage, where ludicrous priests obtained the vulgar laugh by the lowest kind of wit,

But the glorious reformation. was the offspring of preaching, by which mankind were informed: there was a standard, and the re

last attached I know not what ideas of mystery and influence to the word, and of dominion to the bishop who pronounced it. When a bishop or preacher travelled, he claimed no authority to exercise the duties of his function, unless he were invited by the churches where he attended pub-tuted in the place of sermons. The lic worship. The first preachers differed much in pulpit action; the greater part used very moderate and sober gesture. They de-especially at the festivals of Christlivered their sermons all extem- mas and Easter. pore, while there were notaries who took down what they said. Sermons in those days were all in the vulgar tongue. The Greeks preached in Greek, theligion of the times was put to trial Latins in Latin. They did not by it. The avidity of the compreach by the clock (so to speak), mon people to read scripture, and but were short or long as they to hear it expounded, was wondersaw occasion, though an hour was ful, and the Papists were so fully about the usual time. Sermons convinced of the benefit of frewere generally both preached and quent public instruction, that they heard standing; but sometimes who were justly called unpreachboth speaker and auditors sat, ing prelates, and whose pulpits, to especially the aged and the infirm. use an expression of Latimer, had The fathers were fond of allegory; been bells without clappers for ma for Origen, that everlasting alle-ny a long year, were obliged for gorizer, had set them the example. shame to set up regular preaching Before preaching, the preacher again. usually went into a vestry to pray, and afterwards to speak to such as came to salute him. He prayed with his eyes shut in the pulpit. The first word the preacher uttered to the people, when he ascended the pulpit, was "Peace be with you," or "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with you all;" to which the

The church of Rome has produced some great preachers since the reformation, but not equal to the reformed preachers; and a question naturally arises here, which it would be unpardonable to pass over in silence, concerning the singular effect of the preaching of the reformed, which was general, national, universal reformation.

In the darkest times of popery || eight hundred students to quit all there had arisen now and then worldly prospects of honour, richsome famous popular preachers, es, and pleasures, and to become who had zealously inveighed penitents in divers monasteries. against the vices of their times, Some of this class were martyrs, and whose sermons had produced too. We know the fate of Savosudden and amazing effects on narola, and more might be added, their auditors: but all these ef- but all lamented the momentary fects had died away with the duration of the effects produced preachers who produced them, by their labours. Narni himself and all things had gone back into was so disgusted with his office, the old state. Law, learning, com-that he renounced preaching, and merce, society at large, had not shut himself up in his cell to been improved.-Here a scene opens; preachers arise less popular, perhaps less indefatigable and exemplary; their sermons produce less striking immediate effects; and yet their auditors go away, and agree by whole nations

to reform.

new

mourn over his irreclaimable contemporaries; for bishops went back to court, and rope-makers lay idle again.

quoted them, and referred their auditors to the holy scriptures for law. Pope Leo X did not know this when he told Prierio, who complained of Luther's, heresy, Friar Martin had a fine genius! They also taught the people what little they knew of Christian liber

Our reformers taught all the good doctrines which had been taught by these men, and they added two or three more, by Jerom Savonarola, Jerom Nar- which they laid the axe to the root ni, Capistran, Connecte, and many of apostacy, and produced geneothers, had produced by their ser- ral reformation. Instead of apmons great immediate efforts. pealing to popes, and canons, and When Connecte preached, the la-founders, and fathers, they only dies lowered their head-dresses, and committed quilled caps by hundreds to the flames. When Narni taught the populace in Lent, from the pulpits of Rome, half the city went from his sermons, crying along the streets, Lord, have mercy upon us; Christ, have mercy upon us, so that in on-ty; and so led them into a belief ly one Passion week, two thousand crowns worth of ropes were sold to make scourges with; and when he preached before the pope to cardinals and bishops, and painted the crime of non-residence in its own colours, he frightened thirty or forty bishops, who hearded with Christ, the object of their him, instantly home to their dio- faith; and thus they were led into ceses. In the pulpit of the uni- the knowledge of a character altoversity of Salamanca he induced gether different from what they

that they might follow their own ideas in religion, without the consent of a confessor, a diocesan, a pope, or a council. They went farther, and laid the stress of all religion on justifying faith. This obliged the people to get acquaint