THE

BIBLIOTHECA SACRA,

NO. LIII.

AND

AMERICAN BIBLICAL REPOSITORY,

NO. CV.

JANUARY, 1857.

ARTICLE I.

CHARACTER IN THE PREACHER.1

By Richard S. Storrs, Jr., D. D., Brooklyn, N. Y.

MR. PRESIDENT, AND GENTLEMEN, OF THE PORTER RHETORICAL SOCIETY:- As I stand here to-day many thoughts press upon me, inducing an unusual but a natural diffidence, in the performance of this your honorable service. I stand before some to whom I have long been accustomed to look as teachers and exemplars in each power or art that goes to make up the finished whole of pulpit eloquence I stand as one, and among the humblest, in a series of orators, some of whose clear and venerable names have been consecrated by Death, while others are still borne, more bright and eminent as the years go forward, on the standards of the church.

The theme to which the occasion invites me, is at best a difficult one to treat; since we naturally demand of him who exhibits the principles of the eloquence which takes the pulpit for its throne, that he illustrate in himself the rules which he proposes, and show their successful application to

1 An Address delivered before the Porter Rhetorical Society of the Theological Seminary, Andover, Aug. 5th, 1856.

us. And where this, in years past, has been nobly done, where each main principle, and each special ornament, of the function of the preacher has been set forth and exemplified, it is hardly possible for a younger and less accomplished student, coming up for a day to these calm retreats from the year-long roar and strife of the metropolis, to hope to do more than demonstrate by contrast the importance and the dignity of the art which he admires, but which he vainly attempts to realize.

And yet every man, if he be true to himself, and faithful to the impulses which stir most deeply within his breast, may have something to say to his fellow-men which shall not be all unworthy of their attention. And so it is with no sense of hesitation and disquiet,-rather, it is with a cheerful sense of gladness and gratitude, that the opportunity has been given me that I appeal to you to-day to hear me on the theme which has assembled us; a theme which hath its own proper dignity, its inward beauty, hardly to be marred by any exhibition.

We stand, at this point, at the head-spring of influences which shall stream forth hereafter across all lands. We meet to confer concerning efforts and methods which have for their object the renewal of the world, by God's truth, and by his Spirit; the allying of the world to him, in love. Deeper than all the forces of politics, wider than the range of commercial relations, more vital and renovating than the influence which breathes through literature and art, go the precepts and inspirations that emanate from each centre of ministerial training. They build no special monuments and trophies, of palace or capital, of epic or of code; but it is because the whole living Future, with its peace and its liberty, its light and its progress, is to be their memorial. They look for no verdicts of human applause, such as await and greet the soldier, or celebrate the statesman in the evening of life; but it is because their honors await them amid the assemblies of seraphim and of saints, beneath the sapphire throne above! And not one State only, revolutionized or confirmed; not one institution only, founded or enlarged; not one branch of

knowledge, enriched or eclaircised; not one interest of man, made nobler and more firm; but every State, renewed by the truth, and filled with peace, and grouped with others in kindly fellowship; and every institution, made a shrine of God's presence; and every science, and every art, advanced to completeness, and clothed upon with celestial meanings; and every possession and interest of man, perfected and redeemed; is to be the fruit, as it now is the aim, of the influence exerted by the preacher of the cross.

The Eloquence of the Pulpit takes the largest importance. from its relation to these results. And to cultivate this is the object of this Society; to gain and to use this, is the effort and the hope of those who have taken the ministry for their work. I invite you to look a little while to-day, then, not at the special rules of this Eloquence, the particular studies or the particular practices that may help us attain it, the particular results that may be reckoned to flow from it; but at that which lies back of it, indispensable to it, and which, wherever it exists and is manifested, begets such Eloquence, as suns beget light, or as flowers beget perfume; at

THE CHARACTER IN THE PREACHER, which shall make his words eloquent.

It is character which makes eloquence, and from which that flows, in a natural radiation. It is character which impresses it, with a power of appeal above its own. "The orator," said even the great Roman master in this department, "must needs be a good man." The solid force, the personal verity and pressure of character, interpenetrating one's words, and giving them all a higher meaning and a more urgent impulse, surpass the tricks and ornaments of speech, the rhetorical fervors adding vehemence to phrase, the felicities of fancy weaving silk-work upon it, as the weight of the cannon-ball surpasses and outruns the weight of the football. They make the eloquence mightier and more true. They send it upon the hearer with a grander appeal. Then, only, indeed, is oratory Eloquence, when it utters the great and sincere force of character; when speech becomes what the poet describes it:

The airy vibration must have a spirit within, and then it is transfigured. The rhetorical form, the argumentative structure, require a personal energy to enforce them. This is the life, that moves the wheels; the fire, that makes the statue step; the power above all fairy dreams, which touches the terms, and transmutes them into values. And he who seeks to be eminent as an orator, in the absence of the qualities which give this thoroughness, personality to speech, becomes a gymnast, not a soldier; an artist in rhetorical flowers and figures, not an eloquent teacher, shedding forces on the soul which shall receive and reproduce them. It is a difference of quality only, between the carbon and the diamond. It is a difference of spirit alone, between literary mechanism and the speech which is living, and therefore life-giving.

What is the Character, then, which the preacher of the truth should aim to realize, that he may make his Eloquence the noblest? that he may make it effective upon others? The question is pertinent to this occasion. It is, in fact, the fundamental question, for which all others may properly wait.

I answer, in general, as the one proposition which underlies, limits, and invigorates all others, in my present train of thought: It must be A LIBERAL, ABLE, AND MANLY CHARACTER; comprehensive, not partial; vigorous and self-reliant, not dependent on others; masculine without severity, not effeminate or weak. "The object," says Ritter, "which Socrates and his disciples kept constantly in view, in their instructions to the young, was the formation of a liberal and able character, fitted for all the duties of life; and not merely scholars and adepts in any single art." And such fulness of character, such a vigorous, accomplished, and well-developed manhood, is especially needed and appropriate in the minister; who has to treat the noblest themes, who has to do the most difficult work, upon whom civilization, as well as Christianity, rests its primary hope. He ought to be the fore

most man, in all that concerns pure personal quality, in any community in which he is placed. He ought to incorporate all noble traits, and to count no real grace a stranger to him. "Quit you like men," said the apostle to the Corinthians; "quit you like men; BE STRONG." And the preacher, preeminently, should seek to make his character so finished that all great utterance, and all high action, shall be its familiar and natural expression.

In developing such a character, then, in some of its chief particulars, it must be said at the outset, that Faith in the character, the word, and the government of God, and personal faith in Jesus, his Son, are presupposed in it. They are its prime and formative principles; from which must proceed the living force that builds up, governs, and beautifies the whole. If a man wants these, he wants the first element of a symmetrical excellence. He wants authority to enter the ministry. According to the instinct of Christendom and of History, he wants the fit introduction to his office. He takes the Divine fire into tubes and vials of a mere earthly mechanism, which will either destroy it, or be melted beneath it. He must step, with Christ, into the waters of that stream which separates Canaan from the lands beyond it; a light from above, as the sun-burst of God's favor, must smite his soul; the dove and the voice, floating downward upon the spirit, must attest his acceptance; or he cannot attain the highest excellence, appropriate to his office, appropriate to his truth. It were better that the hands which are laid upon his head shed idiocy from them, and not benedictions, than that he aspire to lead men to Christ, and to set before them the God who is manifested through him, without himself knowing and embracing the Master.

But the question which I have now before me, is this: Having this organizing element of character, this prime condition to his entrance on his ministry, what shall the preacher seek to add to it, or rather, in what forms shall he seek to develop it,-to make himself most eloquent for the truth? As a workman, a soldier, an apostle for God, what qualities should he aim to combine in his spirit?