him; that though all who hear him may not have the advantage of education, yet all of them have a heart at which the preacher should aim; that in the pulpit man should be exhibited to himself not to frighten him by the horror of the picture, but to afflict him by its resemblance; and that if it is sometimes useful to terrify and alarm him, it is oftener profitable to draw forth those exstatic tears, that are more efficacious than those of despair. Such was the plan that Massillon proposed to follow, and which he executed like a man who had conceived it, that is, like a man of genius. He excels in that property of an orator which can alone supply all the rest; in that eloquence which goes directly to the soul, which agitates without convulsing; which alarms without appalling; which penetrates without rending the heart. He searches out the hidden folds in which the passions lie enveloped, those secret sophisms, which blind and seduce. To combat and to destroy these sophisms, he has in general only to unfold them: this he does with an unction so affectionate and so tender, that he allures us rather than compels. His diction, always smooth, and elegant, and pure, is every where marked with that noble simplicity, without which there is neither good taste nor true "eloquence.-Massillon reaped another advantage from that heart-affecting eloquence which he made so happy a use of. As he spoke the language of all conditions, because he spoke to the heart, all discriptions of men flocked to his sermons; even infidels were eager to hear him; they often found instruction, when they expected only amusement, and returned sometimes convinced, when they thought they were only bestowing or withholding their praise. Massillon could decend to the language which alone they would listen to, that of a philosophy apparently human, but

which, finding every avenue to the heart laid open, allowed the orator to approach without effort, and made him conqueror even before he had engaged.-His action perfectly corresponded with the kind of eloquence he had cultivated. The moment he entered the pulpit, he seemed deeply impressed with the great truths he was about to declare; with eyes cast down, a modest and collected air, without any violent motions, with few or no gestures, but animating all by an affecting and impressive voice, he communicated to his hearers the religious sentiment which his external appearance announced. He commanded that profound silence, which is a higher compliment to eloquence than the most tumultuous plaudits."-In looking at this delineation one might, indeed very naturally doubt whether the artist had drawn more from the real subject, or from his own beau ideal of pulpit eloquence. Yet if we allow for the high French colouring which it so obviously carries, we have, I am persuaded, a true portrait of Massillon.

I intended, when I began, to of fer a few remarks of a practical nature on some topics connected with this subject; but have judged it better that they should give place to passages like these of d'Alem bert.-I only add that among the most eloquent and perfect of Massillon's sermons are ranked those 'on the Forgiveness of Enemies ;' 'on the Death of a Sinner;' 'on Confession;' on the Divinity of Jesus Christ;' on the Mixture of the Righteous and the Wicked; and his homily of the Prodigal Son.'

To the Editor of the Christian Spectator.

SUBJOINED are a few extracts from the common-place book of a deceased friend. They are, as you will perceive, unstudied thoughts,

of a practical character, written for his own perusal. They are the effusions of a heart habitually pious; and if you think them adapted to promote the piety of others, you are requested to lay them before your readers.

"Perhaps almost every man living has a particular train of thought into which his mind falls when at leisure from the impressions and ideas that occasionally excite it; perhaps also the train of thought here spoken of, more than any other thing, determines the character. . . In a moral view, I shall not be contradicted when I say, that if one train of thinking be more desirable than another, it is that which regards the phenomena of nature with a constant reference to a supreme intelligent Author."-Dr. Paley.

a

It is impossible to measure the value of the habit of mind here recommended. It is at the same time a most efficacious, I had almost said indispensable means, of advancement in piety, and a source of the purest enjoyment. It exerts also a most benign influence on our whole character.-Whereever we go, we meet with something which may remind us of the goodness of God. From the vast luminaries of heaven, down to the simplest forms of vegetable and animal life, every thing proclaims present Deity. A person who has acquired the above-mentioned habit, perceives ten thousand evidences of the Deity, which others pass over without any notice, and with out feeling any sentiment rise in the bosom. To such a person not a rivulet winds its way amid the twisted roots of a thicket, nor a gleam of sunshine spreads over the field, nor a bird pours forth its melody in the grove, without raising his thoughts to God. Nay if he has reflected much on the ways ofthis busy world, and learned the scope and

tendency of both moral and political arrangements; he will recognise the hand of God, also, even in the hum of business, and in the complicated machinery of civilized life. A state of civilization is a state of nature-in other words Providence designed man should advance to a civilized state, and there are laws of nature, according to which this advancement is most successfully to take place, which are as much ordinances of heaven, as the laws that obtain in the material world. When therefore a person has acquired the devotional frame of mind, mentioned above, he can find something to nourish his piety, and lift his soul in silent musings to heaven, in the busiest scenes of human life; and to him the man who honestly and industriously labours for his daily bread, exhibits as unequivocal a mark of divine wisdom and goodness, as the busy bee which blindly erects fabric of the most curious and exact mechanism.

Lord Chatham, in his letters to his son, remarks, that "politeness is a species of benevolence, or something to that amount.' Undoubtedly it is, since it consists in a constant endeavour to render those in our company, and others who have a claim, happy-whether it is done. by the acts, the language, and the look of kindness, or by abstaining from whatever would tend to displease them. If this is so, is not true politeness a humble sort of virtue; and are we not under a moral obligation, as well as under the obligation imposed upon us by the rules of decorum and propriety, to imbibe its spirit, and practice according to its requisitions. We may, it is true, be polite from other motives than a desire to make others happy; and so may we relieve the distressed, and instruct the ignorant, from other motives than such as are sanctioned by the spirit of true religion; nevertheless our mo

tives may be good. It often requires no small degree of self-denial, and no small effort of kindness, to conform to all the rules of politeness, in every variety of company, and in every situation into which we may be thrown. Hence the propriety and force of the appellation Christian gentlemen.

"The armour which the Christtian puts on in solitude, he will not lay aside in the field of battle.". Mrs. More.

Such, and so permanent, is the effect of first impressions on the character, that although the philosopher may succeed in freeing his reason from prejudices with which he was entangled, they will still retain some hold of his imagination and his affections: and therefore, however enlarged his understanding may be in his hours of speculation, his philosophical opinions will frequently lose their influence over his mind in the very situations in which their practical assistance is most required;-when his temper is soured by misfortune; or when he engages in the pursuits of life, and exposes himself to the contagion of popular errors.". Stewart.

Every one who has made any advancement in virtue, knows by painful experience, how easily we are overcome by temptation. He forms his virtuous resolutions at home-he goes abroad, falls into temptation, and returns with bitter reflections on his want of moral vigilance and firmness. His good resolutions may not have occurred to him when they were needed, if they did, they did not present themselves in that light in which they formerly did. They may appear to have been adopted in too scrupulous a frame of mind--or from a narrow view of the circumstances in which it was supposed they might be needed. Whatever may

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be the cause, the fact is remarkable, and deserves the serious attention of every one who imagines himself far advanced in moral excellence, so that while he "thinketh he standeth he may take heed lest he fall." The magnanimous and virtuous resolutions on which you rely for safety, and the strength of moral principle which may seem to you to elevate you above the snares of an alluring world, may be dissipated when the heart grows warm with the feelings of some rare occasion; and an opportunity will be given for the enemy in the rear to advance--an enemy who are ever ready to volunteer their services, nay, who push themselves into the battle, and take you captive ere you are aware of it. The erroneous im. pressions of an early education, conspiring with the suggested feelings of the moment, may, in a moment, gain predominance in your soul, and wake themselves into action, while reason, and conscience, and religion, are turning their eyes another way, or suffering them to grow drowsy, amid the din of a worldly scene. It is the part of true wisdom and of true religion, then, before we leave our quiet homes for extraordinary occasions, to pass in review the scenes which will present themselves, and having ascertained, as nearly as may be, the predominant temptations likely to prevail and beset the soul, when other things will engross its attention and feelings, to fix the steady eye upon them to sink them deep in the memory, and at the same time to look about for a monitor who will accompany us, and, as we lift the poisoned bowl, will dash it from our hands, and save us from the "sins which," on such occasions, "most easily beset us." Some passage of scripture, or some weighty remark of a pious moralist, dwelt upon before hand, and hummed over, as it were, in the mind,

and made to adhere to our familiar thoughts, may be useful on such occasions, by rising spontaneously to view, and staring us in the face.

ENGLISH ADVERTISEMENTS.

MUCH may be known of the manners of a people from their advertisements, and I sometimes amuse myself with looking over these articles on the crowded covers of the English Magazines.--In our country, we sometimes hear of a political aspirant, at the south or west, publicly proposing himself for of fice, but we never hear, I believe, of an American clergyman advertising for a parish. This is common in England. Among all sorts of "situations wanted," applications like the following, are as conspicuous as any.

"CURACY WANTED. A Married Clergyman, in Full Orders, M. A. of Oxford, wants a Curacy in Devonshire, in any neighbourhood where he can rent a good house, with garden, coach-house, and stable. The Advertiser would undertake two full services on Sunday, and the weekly duty. The most satisfactory references can be given. Address X. Y. Z. &c."

Another proposes to exchange his cure, for one which is more to his mind; and another, a recent graduate, is in want of a Curacy, that he may obtain a title to orders.

Our American clergymen, not uncommonly, read their discourses, but I am not aware that they buy them. No doubt, often, they would think it a cheap preparation for the pulpit, while they are burning their lamps til midnight, and writing their nerves into sleepless excitement, if they might purchase their sermons at two shillings sterling apiece, or in lots of ten for a pound. But their American notions forbid. This however is practised in EngVOL. I.-No. III.

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land, as the reader probably knows. That the practice is not very scandalous, might be inferred from the admission of a notice like the following to the covers of such a work as the Christian Observer; and yet that it is somewhat so, would appear from the fact, that advertisements of the kind are anonymous, and their import concealed from the million under the cloak of a learned language. What need, too, if the practice be decent and right, of a lithographic impression?"

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An

or

honest roman type is as easily read, and sounds as well to the hearers, as a sprawling imitation of manuscript. But the hearers have eyes as well as ears; and their eyes must be "6 caught with guile,' their ears will be "dull of hearing." The preacher must carry a deception "in his right hand," into the pulpit, or what were his preaching better than the reading of a chapel-clerk to a slumbering congregation.

The advertisement, referred to above, follows.

AD CLEROS. In Sets (of Ten,) price 17. each.

CONCIONES Orthodoxæ, Lithographice impressæ, ac M.S.S. fideliter imitantes, in lucem jam primum prolatæ, atque in usum publicum Clerorum,-præsertim juvenum, illorumque quibus, propter curæ suæ amplitudinem, sermonum scribendorum sæpe deest opportunitas, accommodatæ.

Quibus accedunt aliæ, ex operibus Tillotson, Stillingfleet, Seed, Rogers, Brady, cæterorumque veterum Theologorum Ecclesiæ Anglicane clarissimorum excerptæ, contractæ, et ad genus orationis hodiernum haud levi cura redacta, a quodam Presbytero.

Singulis Concionibus auctoris nomen adjungitur.

Quisque fasciculus Sermones decem, viz. tres novos, veteresque septem renovatos, in se complectitur; cui porro adduntur sententiæ,

quas de Concionibus ejusdem auctoris publicatis Critici quidem jam antea ediderunt.

To be had of Messrs. Hatchard and Son, Piccadilly, London; [and a string of others]; or, by application to the Author, (inclosing Remittance,) addressed to the Rev. M. N. (care of the Post Master,) Ferrybridge, Yorkshire.

Liberally done into English thus:

In sets of ten for a pound. UNMETHODISTICAL pulpit discourses; exactly executed like manuscript, by means of the lithographic art, and designed to be privily used in public, by those gentlemen of the clerical profession who, from the extent of their engagements, in the chase and the circles of fashion, [literally, the extent of their cures, curæ amplitudinem] cannot redeem time for the tedium of writing sermons.

To which others are added, taken from Tillotson, Stillingfleet, Rogers, &c. and so metamorphosed, and modernized, that the authors themselves should never suspect their origin. By a certain Presbyter.

Ten sermons in a parcel, three new ones and seven old ones newvamped; and [lest heretical or puritanical productions should be palmed upon the purchaser for orthodox, and also because it is not to be supposed that his professional reading has led him to an acquaintance with those old and by-gone authors mentioned above] the opinions of critics are added respecting their several merits."

The learned reader will perceive. that several passages of the above version are rather hermeneutical than literal, but they seemed necessary to the spirit of the original. A CERTAIN LAYMAN.

this history. Others were more general; which it may be useful here to place together in one general view, as they must often be referred to in the examination of particular doctrines.

The general causes of change in doctrines may be reduced to these four: (1) the nature of the human mind generally; (2) the external circumstances in which Christians lived; (3) the varying necessities of the times; (4) the different helps used by Christians in the explanation and defence of their religion.

The FIRST CAUSE lies in the character of the human mind. The mind of man, when it has not lost its tone by inaction, and is not restrained by force, has a propensity to analyze its conceptions, and to combine and systematize its ideas.