complished hearer. Educated hearers indeed may feel no disposition to be severe in their criticisms or censures, when they listen to a preacher who delights only the vulgar; but as to their individual enjoyment it is out of the question when a man teaches them nothing or next to nothing.

No man can be taught or instructed by a preacher who is not, at least for the time and on the present subject of preaching, superior to himself. It is not necessary that the preacher, in order to be instructive, should be superior to his hearers in all mental endowments and acquisitions; but it is necessary for the present occasion of preaching that he should possess the ability to instruct. If he cannot do this, he may be popular, but he is not superior. He is not the great man the people take him to be. If he can instruct superior orders of intellect, and men of education, as well as the ignorant, he is both popular and superior. But as pulpit popularity and mental superiority are in many instances things which stand widely apart from each other, popularity should not always be identified, in our thinkings, with superiority or ministerial greatness.

Now the reasons why so few preachers are found equally delighting all classes of hearers,

are these:-vulgar hearers will not be delighted unless the preacher adapts himself to their capacities, and makes himself attractive to them by familiarities suited to their taste. Taste, or mental relish, or the power of relishing some production of the mind, written or spoken, is with many even good people most deplorably bad. They like what does them no real good yet what seems good to them because they like it. But I will suppose a popular man really doing good to hearers of this sort.-Yet how can he by familiarities, or modes of thought, arrangement and expression, suited only to children in understanding, meet the case of the learned hearer ? How can he instruct or

cannot do it at all, be

teach him? I say he cause the understanding and taste of such a hearer are far above the familiarities and littleness of such a preacher. I am not now going to debate the question, whether a learned hearer's case ought to be met on all occasions of preaching. I am merely saying that it is not met when the preacher, though superior to others, is inferior to a learned hearer on the present subject and occasion of preaching. I may explain myself thus:-a young man who is well acquainted with the highest branches of learning, studied at the university, can

not be instructed by the elements of knowledge taught in the common day-school; and the plain scholar in the day-school, can make nothing of the university. Apply this to preachers and hearers. A learned hearer cannot generally be instructed by an ignorant preacher, however popular with ignorant people. He may by a sort of accident, say a something new and clever to take the fancy of a learned person, but this is quite an exception to his ordinary efforts. An ignorant hearer, on the other hand, is put to great difficulty in understanding the discourse of a learned preacher, except the learned preacher uses such great plainness of speech as is not required for the learned hearer, and such as before a select well-judging congregation, and especially before an assembly of divines would be deemed an affront to the understanding, and a waste of time.

When the learned preacher uses his learning, and, in connexion with eloquence of the highest order, brings it to bear on a subject adapted to the highest order of intellect, he will be eminent in the estimation of the great, but not the man for the people at large, and consequently while soaring aloft in classic phraseology, or going down into the depths of science and metaphysics; though he may be admired by a

few even of the illiterate, he will not be understood and not followed by the crowd. This is evident from the long standing fact that many superior preachers in all connexions have thin congregations. And, on the other hand, the popular man, pandering to the taste of the illjudging dealing much in tales and anecdotesusing strong and rash and extravagant language-restless in his mind-boisterous and noisy in his manner, and fretting himself until he produces an audible commotion in his congregation, at the same time, giving little or no instruction—is not, and cannot in the nature of things, be the man to attract the learned hearer. He may be heard a time or two by the learned, but these will not form a part of his regular congregation. They will utterly desert him.

I am perfectly aware that superior eloquence and learning are not essential to the conversion of the ungodly, nor always necessary to the religious improvement of those that are already converted. But I am quite sure, at the same time, that the rich and the learned should have the gospel preached to them, as well as the poor and the ignorant; and that as the latter class are often allured to christianity by preachers suited to their capacities and taste, so the former should be accommodated by givin them

the same truths in a better manner. I am sure also that, as the moral purity of true religion is particularly favourable to the cultivation and embellishment of the mind, preachers should not encourage their hearers in mental indolence. They should not, in ministering to their gratification, forget their edification.

But my question now is how far some popular preachers who gratify multitudes, contribute to their edification.

It ought to be considered that the great body of the people in any nation, and more particularly in our own, are very little educated; and that their minds are not disciplined to habits of close thinking and observation. Many are not educated at all. Some learned men have asserted that out of sixteen millions of inhabitants in England and Wales, eight millions cannot write, and five millions cannot read. We may easily infer then that a preacher who delights them, and draws them after him away from other ministers of established worth and excellence, must have in him some decided peculiarity. A peculiarity simply ministering to their gratification, without producing any considerable moral effect; and at the same time filling them with error and delusion; or the happy peculiarity of con