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winds that swept around its headlands and caught our sails, thinking the bolder the coast the better, never asking whether there were a place of refuge anywhere; till at last the storm burst upon us, and then we never thought the coast so beautiful as when we saw her open an unexpected harbor, and take us into still water behind the rocks that we had been glorying in, out of the tempest's reach."

Nor is our preacher less happy in his illustrations from human life. Note how vivid as well as truthful they are. In his sermon on "The Food of Man," he thus speaks of our Lord's temptation: "If Christ had yielded, can we not picture Him as He descends the mountain? He has tasted bread. His knees are strong. His famished body has received new vigor, but what a weight is on His soul! How He loathes the bread that He has eaten! How beautiful seems the chance that He has cast away! What a terrible defeat! And so one wonders if the men who have given up their chance of usefulness and goodness, merely to live an easy life, do not ache through all their luxury with the sense of their defeat and of all that they have lost? So many of our lives come crawling down the mountain, well-fed and comfortable, despising themselves and envying the poor hungry men who still are doing some of God's work, and living the lives He gave them.' In his discourse on "The Shortness of Life," in urging careful discrimination in work, he adds: "Many men's souls are like omnibuses, stopping to take up every interest or task that holds up its finger and beckons them from the sidewalk."

Illustrations as apt and graphic as these might be cited from this volume of sermons at pleasure. Too many, perhaps, have already been given to those who have the volume at hand, but it seemed that only by a somewhat extended reference could the varied and excellent qualities of the illustrations which form so striking a characteristic of these discourses be properly set forth.

These sermons grow on you as you read them again and again. Their most marked quality is the noble Christian manliness which everywhere pervades them. Their author, though seemingly unconscious of it, presents in himself a fine example of the character in a preacher, which in his lectures he sets forth as essential to greatest success in the pulpit. His dis

tinctive personality runs through them all. There is in them nothing of cant-nothing said because it seemed proper that it should be said-but there is the man behind the sermon simply telling his hearers out of a full mind and heart what he knows and has felt of the great truths of salvation.

The theology-so far as indicated in these sermons-may be said in the main to be of the so-called broad evangelical type. The preacher shows his belief in the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; in the natural alienation of man from God; in Christ as the perfect Saviour; in the necessity of personal regeneration by the Holy Spirit; and in a life of penitence, faith, and purity as the needed preparation for eternal felicity. But he prefers to preach about life rather than doctrine, and makes all his preaching centre on Christ as the personal, loving, and all-sufficient Saviour.

Another prominent characteristic of these sermons is their originality in both matter and manner. On almost every page of them we meet with new, striking, and suggestive thought, and fresh and attractive expression. The preacher copies no one, but gives his mind and heart free play to utter themselves.

One cannot fail to note also in these discourses the remarkable life and vigor shown in the development of the thought, resulting largely, it would seem, from the vividness with which the truth is seen by the preacher. Often the thoughts of the sermon, full of life, move forward through the development with the onward sweep of a great army, of which though there are some stragglers, yet the great body, like General Sherman's army, make their way to the sea. We can readily imagine the impression which such sermons as these make when aided by the noble presence, fervid utterance, and intense earnestness of the preacher.

Such seem to us to be the chief of the many excellencies and of the few defects of Mr. Brooks's Lectures and Sermons. That they are appreciated by the public is evident from the large sale which they have had within the short time since they were first issued from the press. We regard them as valuable contributions to homiletic literature, and as worthy of careful study by him who would preach successfully the Gospel of the grace of God.

ARTICLE V.-PRINCE METTERNICH IN THE NAPOLEONIC TIMES.

Memoirs of Prince Metternich; 1773-1815. Edited by Prince Richard Metternich. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1880.

PROBABLY no memoirs have ever been published which have presented their subject in quite so new a light to the public as those of Prince Metternich. The impression they give of him is, on the whole, just about the reverse of that which the world has hitherto had. Where he has been thought bad they make him good; where he has been placed second, they put him first; where he has been esteemed small, they make him great. The niche which the public had made for him will no longer hold him.

It is not surprising, indeed, that a misconception of Metternich should have arisen. He is best known at this day as a bureaucrat. It was his delicate but powerful and sure hand that was stretched over all Austria, and was instrumental outside of Austria, to repress every liberal political tendency of his time, to check the movements toward nationalization, and to keep constitutional government out of Europe. Whether he was a statesman or a great patriot, people did not stop to inquire; it was granted that he was a fine diplomatist; but that had no relation to the greatness or goodness of the man, if, indeed, according to the popular notion, it did not show his moral obliquity; he was great, too, as a conservative; but that did not give him general greatness. What was plain about him. was that he was a bureaucrat; and perhaps it was only natural that people should stop there in thinking about him. For it was the latter part of his life with which they were most familiar, and it was the latter part of his life which mostly exhibited his bureaucratic tendency. The events of 1848 are fresh in people's minds and belong to our period of political thought. Those of 1814 are not only more remote in point of time, but they belong to a period of political thought which is

strange to us, which closed in 1815, and with which we cannot become familiar except by an effort. What Metternich was to the revolutions of 1848 is clear to us; what he was to that of 1815, is not so clear; and we have been apt to judge him by that part of his career which we know best. Moreover, the revolutions of 1848 and 1849 passed in the broad light of day. But much of what Metternich did before 1815 was done in the quiet of the cabinet, and only now is brought to light. All this has been unfortunate for Prince Metternich's fame. Conservatism has been out of vogue, little of Metternich has been known but his conservatism, and people have become prejudiced against him; there has been nobody to clear up his career, and no means of doing it if any one had wished to. Metternich directed that his memoirs should not be published until twenty years after his death. They are now brought out and the world will have an opportunity to judge him truly.

Beyond doubt, Metternich has been underrated. As to his statesmanship, there can be no question. The documents which comprise the second volume, place it in the first rank. They quite upset the notion that he was clever rather than wise. The most startling revelation, however, is that which the autobiography, contained in the first volume, makes as to the character of the writer. Metternich, the mere schemer, the Machiavellian diplomatist, the ambitious courtier, is not to be found there. On the contrary, there appears a person who constantly makes reference to "duty," to a "sense of duty," to "conscience," to standing on "principles" and that frankly, to a predominant love of the arts and sciences, and of a quiet life. Already having been Ambassador at the Hague, he says of himself, when at the age of twenty-two, "I have already said that the public service presented no attractions for me. I had determined to remain in private life and to devote my time to the cultivation of learning and science. must also acquaint my readers with other causes which kept me aloof from public affairs. Still young, and placed in a position which allowed me to observe, from the highest point of view, the course of the greatest events, I found that they were not conducted as they ought to have been. Les affaires

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ce sont les hommes; affairs are only the expression of the faculties or the weaknesses of men, of their inclinations and their errors, their virtues and their vices. Inaccessible to prejudice, and seeking only the truth in everything, my modesty did not allow me to find fault with persons in power if I was not satisfied with what I saw; on the contrary, I ascribed to the weakness of my own understanding and to my inexperience the feeling which forced me to disapprove of the course they had taken. But neither inclination nor duty led me to acquire the necessary experience. My particular vocation seemed to me to be the cultivation of knowledge, especially of the exact and physical sciences, which suited my taste particularly. I loved the fine arts, too, so that nothing aroused in me any desire to put my freedom into fetters. The diplomatic career might certainly flatter my ambition, but during all my life I have never been accessible to this feeling.'

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Again, "The Congress of Rastadt drew me out of my retirement. The Counts of the Westphalian 'Collegium' entrusted me with the care of their interests. I undertook the charge more from a feeling of duty than in the hope of being able to serve a body whose existence was threatened as was that of the German Empire. My stay in Rastadt only strengthened me in my opposition to a career which in no wise satisfied my mind and disposition. Was there anything

to summon me to exchange my peaceful life for a life of activity, constrained to move within limits conflicting with my spirit of independence and cramping my conscience?"

When Metternich was appointed (then twenty-eight years old) Ambassador to Dresden, he professed to the Emperor his diffidence as to his ability to perform the trust and expressed his unwillingness to undertake it. "The Emperor received my professions," he says, "with his accustomed kindness; but when he appealed to my patriotism I yielded to his will."

In 1806 Metternich received his appointment as Ambassador to Paris. Speaking of it he says, "The task of representing Austria in France, immediately after the Peace of Presburg, presented so many difficulties that I feared I should not be adequate to them." He waited on the Emperor and expressed

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