teaching than in any of the professed books on morality. They are more truly moral than the merely technical teachers of morality. Passages even occur in their works of a tendency to which the strait-laced professors of later times might object, as free and latitudinarian; they are more compassionate than censorious. Do not these objectors forget, however, that the severest moralist in judging of himself may be, and, indeed, ought to be, the most merciful in his judgment of others? The true Christian is not he who finds most errors in other sects or individuals. Rebuke is not religion, nor captiousness Christianity. "Judge not, that ye be not judged," is a cardinal rule of Christian conduct.

Equally sound and admirable are the old divines in point of Christian doctrine. The squeamish churchman need never fear to contract any taint of heresy, or run foul of any disputed and doubtful dogmas in their writings. As writers and thinkers, they are above all praise. In the language of a fine writer, also a judicious admirer of these old worthies: "It is well to moralize with Hall, and raise the fancy with the imagination of Taylor; to raise the flame of piety with Herbert, or to be jested into seriousness by the points of Fuller."

The defects of contemporary preaching are two-fold : literary and religious. We must premise two considerations before entering upon these points of criticism. Preaching is too general to have any special efficacy. It is directed against vice and sin in the abstract: it enforces virtue and goodness in the general. It recognizes passions and sentiments, rather than a separate act or an individual feeling. It wants particularity. The preacher addresses his congregation, rather than any single member of it.

Perhaps there is no speciality in his ideas; he may himself entertain only general impressions of the beauty of holiness or the heinousness of crime. His own soul may not be truly alive to the convictions of his reason; his own spirit may not be wholly imbued with his own doctrines. As a matter of course, he can produce no impression, who feels no strong motives for exciting any.

Preaching is also too frequent. It is made too common. In the early history of the Church, priests, or at least one class of them, were allowed to preach only at stated times; some, if we are not mistaken, not oftener than once a month. This, too, at a time when preaching, as a means of making proselytes, was much more essential to the growth of the Church than at present.

The true intent of preaching, the object of a sermon, it seems to us, is not comprehended. We are impressed with the truth, that a preacher should teach rather than declaim; convince than speculate; persuade than exhort, and not merely amuse or entertain. His business is to teach men doctrine and duty; but, of the two, duty rather than doctrine, as practice is more important than opinion. He must be himself sincere, if he would gain influence; and of his sincerity, a good life is the only test. He must speak from experience, who would speak with authority. The mere orator in the pulpit is contemptible. What audacity to play off rhetorical tricks before High Heaven for the admiration of a gaping crowd! At the same time, severely as we repudiate hollow display, even of the finest genius, we yet hold the noblest exercise of the faculties to be the worship and adoration of the Almighty Father. To his service should the richest genius, the costliest research,

referred to the proper volume. In the Journals of the Senate for the year '89, the question is discussed, of which only a brief minute remains. The debate lasted a week or more, during which the titles of Excellency and of His Highness, the protector of our Liberties, were proposed, but objected to. The latter title was too much Cromwellian and monarchical perhaps, for even the so-called black-cockade federalist. And, finally, the simple and appropriate address was resolved on of, the President of the United States.

XV.

ESSAYES AND CHARACTERES

OF A

PRISON AND PRISONERS:

BY GEFFRAY MINSHULL, OF GRAYES-INN, GENT.

THE object of this rare treatise, which is rather a collection of several short characters and fragmentary disquisitions, is to paint Life in Prison, and from the internal evidence it affords, no less than the later accounts of Howard, Buxton and Mrs. Fry, we dare affirm it to be a very faithful picture. Though modern philanthropy has effected much for the improvement of prison discipline, and the ameliorated condition of prisoners, yet still, in certain prominent particulars, a description of a prison more than two centuries ago, must answer to a description of the same place, at the present day. Dark, gloomy walls, barred windows, guards, jailors, locks, confinement, silence, are the outward marks of the prison, now as then. To be sure, the buildings are better, may be more elegantly constructed, are much cleaner, less turbulent; still a sense of solitude, a feeling of closeness, reigns within its precincts. The mere personal condition of prisoners is, in many respects, far pre

"Whenever the pulpit is usurped by a formalist, then is the worshipper defrauded and disconsolate. We shrink as soon as the prayers begin, which do not uplift, but smite and offend us. We are fain to wrap our cloak about us, and secure as best we can, a solitude that hears not. I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me to say, I would go to church no more. Men go, thought I, where they are wont to go, else had no soul entered the temple in the afternoon. A snow-storm was falling around us. The snow-storm was real, the preacher merely spectral; and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking at him, and then out of the window behind him into the beautiful meteor of the snow. He had lived in vain. He had not one word intimating that he had laughed or wept, was married or in love, had been commended, or cheated, or chagrined. If he had ever lived and acted, we were none the wiser for it. The capital secret of his profession, namely, to convert life into truth, he had not learned. Not one fact in all his experience had he yet imparted into his doctrine. This man had ploughed, and planted, and talked, and bought, and sold; he had read books; he had eaten and drunken; his head aches; his heart throbs; he smiles and suffers; yet was there not a surmise, a hint in all the discourse that he had ever lived at all. Not a line did he draw out of real history. The true preacher can always be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life,-life passed through the fire of thought. But of the bad preacher, it could not be told from his sermon, what age of the world he fell in; whether he had a father or a child; whether he was a freeholder or a pauper; whether he was a citizen or a countryman, or any other fact of his biography."