those times; so long as there was a pure heart and an upright life, Chrysostom did not teach that the soul would perish because sackcloth was not worn, and that it could not grow in grace unless the body was emaciated, and that it could not hold converse with its God unless amid the bleak air of a mountain top, or the burning desolation of an arid desert: self-denial he considered as an exalted virtue, but total abstemiousness from the use of allowed pleasures he did not regard as absolutely ne

cessary.

"He is a strenuous supporter of strict ecclesiastical discipline, and though a high favourer of monkish establishments, he does not represent them as entirely essential to the prosperity of Christianity: most things referring to discipline, or doctrine, or occurrences in the Church, are in some places noticed, from the decrees of Councils and words of an established Liturgy, to the oft-repeated interruptions occasioned by the noisy plaudits of a delighted audience.

"As a Commentator, Chrysostom is peculiarly valuable; he has no allegorical flights, nor petty conceits, but he confines himself to literal interpretation, and practical advice; important passages are proved to have a full signification by strong reasoning enforced by powerful eloquence, and portions of apparently less moment are made advisers of high and holy things; a word will sometimes be shown to add unspeakable force, and a common event will evidently contain matter for astonishing and deep consideration. Intricacy is entirely avoided, and curious questions of unprofitable speculation are not so seductive to Chrysostom, as to lead him from plain interpretation, puzzling the head when the faith should be built up, and the heart should be pierced with conviction or excited by the pleadings of love. Everywhere does he show that the only bound of God's mercy is man's unwillingness to be blessed; and the passages in some of the Epistles, &c. which have been twisted and tortured by the crooked reasonings of bigoted men, and the gloomy misconceptions of an exclusive theology, are interpreted consistently with the nature of the God of Love, and the Redemption wrought out by the universal Saviour: God's mercy is declared, the necessity of his help proved, and the proofs for assertions follow quickly from Scripture. Critical questions he seldom meddles with, nor much with mere doctrinal points, excepting the grand essential doctrine of the Trinity: with reference to the works of the hands and thoughts of the heart he chiefly writes, so explaining Scripture as to make men in love with holiness and its Author, and willing followers of that which is good.

"The style of this Father is exactly characteristic of his manner of thinking,—clear, and full, and ornate: the diction never shocks the ear by rugged progress, nor by abrupt nor harsh conclusions of sentences; it is flowingly majestic, and singularly

suited to the majesty of his thoughts; the sentences do not fatigue the ear by length, nor puzzle the mind by involution, and great vividness and interest are given to the subject in discussion by frequent and unexpected interrogatories, which some of his clumsy imitators affecting, they have discovered themselves by their overloaded disguise: the chief imperfection may perhaps be a sameness of language upon all subjects; the torrent still sweeps along, whether a mountain or a mole-hill have opposed its course. The fertility of his imagination is one of the commanding excellencies of Chrysostom's writings; he abounds in imagery, and none of it too powerful for the control of the summoning enchanter; nor does it overstep the circle which should keep it from breaking in upon the knowledge that is to guide it. His pathos is too much expanded to be effective; nor is there the forcible simplicity of unstudied language which nature acknowledges as her own, by involuntary approbation and heart-felt pleasure. The orator is apt to appear where art should be entirely shrouded; hence the secret source of tears seems to have been hidden from Chrysostom; nor is he frequently successful in exciting the gentle, or pleasing, or mournful emotions of the soul; his march is that of a victorious monarch, splendid in retinue and gorgeous in attire, but amid the whole of the pomp are to be discovered the instruments of power and conquest; under the gold and purple of the robe are seen the panoply of polished proof; and his dominion is the result of force, and not of persuasion."

It may well excite a natural feeling of astonishment and regret, that amidst all the restless and inquiring industry of modern learning, the eloquence of the altar should have been neglected or forgotten. POETRY has found its Warton, and ART its Winckelman; the one, in the metaphorical terms of Ben Jonson, to lead her forth from the thorny and entangled recesses of antiquity into the pure and glowing light of day; the other, to repair the mouldering structures of classic ingenuity; the first, to revive the faded colours of the rich allegory, whether in the page of Sackville, or of Spenser; the second, to restore the mutilated beauty of the Parian marble, whether in the Jupiter of Phidias, or the Venus of Praxiteles. The GRACES, indeed, after wandering over the world in search of a home, might be said to have found it in the bosom of English Criticism. Since the glow of Sir Philip Sidney's defence of poetry shone out anew in the commentaries of Addison, zealous and devoted spirits have never been wanting to protect the ashes and proclaim the glory of departed Genius. To every poet an altar has been erected; to every poet the sacred rites of love and veneration have been paid, whether we turn to Milton and Shakspeare, Spenser and Jonson, or to the humbler names, though scarcely less endeared, of Thomson, of Collins, and of Gray. Nor have the MUSES of

History, Philosophy, or Science, been left without a temple.Why has the Oratory of the Pulpit been alone abandoned? Certainly the subject itself cannot be destitute of interest, even to the understanding of the mere philosophical or literary inquirer; it abounds in pictorial effects of startling beauty, and in groupings which might challenge the utmost skill of the pencil. Whether we go back to contemplate the Divine Founder of our religion upon the Mount of Olives, or the great Apostle of the Gentiles upon the Athenian hill in that attitude of majestic dignity in which he inspired the genius of Raphael; or penetrate into the glimmering caves and the moon-lit thickets, where the orisons of the persecuted Christians ascended to heaven; or listen to the thunder of the swarming circus; or plunge into the solitary dungeon; or catch the note of praise through the "long-drawn aisle and fretted vault;" or muse in the "dim religious light" of the solemn cathedral; or hang upon the lips of Latimer at Paul's Cross; or, finally, repose with tranquil and delighted eye upon an English landscape, with its cottages embowered in trees, its verdant villages remote, its teams slow-moving, and the white steeple of the hamlet church shining in the distance ;-under all these aspects the Eloquence of the Pulpit presents itself to the imagination. But the history of sacred oratory is properly an episode in the history of Christianity, and that history remains to be written. The chapter in Gibbon is the weakest in that splendid monument of human prejudice and learning. The spirit of Christianity seems to have oppressed and crushed the philosopher of Lausanne. Other and better hearts have, indeed, laboured at the great enterprise; but their labours are only fragmentary; they possess neither the epic unity nor the embellished action which the narrative demands. The history of Christianity, we repeat, remains to be written. But every year fresh stores of curious illustration are accumulating under the hands of acute and anxious investigation; the crumbling record is being unrolled, the dark places brightened, the rough places made smooth. Prophecy, too, which Bishop Newton called a growing testimony, continues to grow and to put forth fresh verdure. The pilgrimage of the lonely traveller brings additional evidence and confirmation of our faith; and even the very stones may thus be said to declare the omnipotence of God.

These materials cannot continue to be unemployed: some one, in the lapse of time, may arise to bless and to ennoble his country and his race-one, who to the quick sagacity, the vivid perception, and the unbounded erudition of Gibbon, shall unite the apostolic fervour, the meek enthusiasm, and the mild humility of Heber; together with the accurate revision, the transparent style, and the illuminating fancy of Southey. Even now, when the horizon is overcast, and the thunder rolls in the distance, we do not despair of beholding such a history, lofty and opposite as the qualifications may be. It may be nurtured into beauty and

strength in the retirement of a country parsonage, like the Polity of the venerable Hooker; or fostered in the shade of those antique cloisters-the high and lettered retreats of a noble hierarchy-from whence so many champions, in full equipment, have already descended, to fight the battles of the Cross.* Who would not be content, with Milton, to "live laborious days" for the completion of such a task? Who would not count every thing dross that he might rear so resplendent a temple for the Genius of Christianity? There is something majestic and inspiring in the thought of this sequesterment from the tumult, the pleasures, the honours of life, this journey into a far country, this transmigration, so to speak, into an earlier century, only to return into our own, to purify and adorn it.

To such a genius the History of Christianity, involving, as it does, the decline and fall of a gorgeous superstition, and the overthrow of all that costly apparatus of mythology which shed a lustre over the Greek and Latin literature, will present a theme of absorbing interest; nor will its splendour be diminished by approaching it through the mysterious glories of the Hebrew Polity. "I have often thought," observes a very ingenious writer, "that the beautiful passage in which our Saviour compares himself to a hen gathering her chickens under her wings, and the sublime one in Deuteronomy, where Jehovah's care and guardianship of the Jewish nation is likened to an eagle stirring up her nest, fluttering over her young, spreading abroad her plumes, bearing them on her wings, and making them ride on the high places of the earth, may be regarded as symbolical of the peculiar character of the two dispensations. The earlier was the manifestation of the power of God, and shows him forth in his kingly majesty; the latter is the revelation of the love of God, full of all gentleness and household tenderness, and more than fatherly or motherly kindness." The calm benignity of the Christian Dispensation will beam with a peculiar beauty through the awful clouds and gloom of the Apocalypse; and the voice of the beloved Disciple fall with delightful melody upon the soul after the denouncing trumpet of Ezekiel.

If there be a strange and delightful charm in treading upon ground consecrated by Piety or Learning; in meditating over the memorials of the philosophers, who have increased the fund of human enjoyment; or the scholars, who have traced the footsteps of Providence in his works,-the Newtons, the Bacons, and the Boyles; or in keeping green the poetic graves of those who, in early days, conducted our minds "through nature up to nature's God;" if such be our sensations, surely they will deepen into an intenser interest and a more solemn delight, when the ashes by which we linger belong to the Nurses of our spiritual

* Chalmers.

life, when the tombs we dress are those of a Donne, a Taylor, a Hall, and a Hammond. The memories of Spenser, of Shakspeare, and of Milton, have been enshrined in the most precious and enduring Criticism: but in wandering through the Burial Ground, if we may so speak, of the great masters of Sacred Eloquence, the thought involuntarily forces itself upon us, how few of their sepulchres are beautified with the offerings of love and veneration; how many are overgrown and hidden by the rank fertility of successive ages; how many want even a pillar of remembrance-even a siste viator! to arrest the footstep of the passer-by; but we may expect, at least, the sympathy of our readers in taking upon ourselves, for a season, the office of Old Mortality. Nor is this labour one of love only; it is also one of gratitude and of duty. What Goldsmith said of poets is true in every particular of the preachers of the Gospel-living to the public only in their works, they glide away unregarded; and when their fame is enlarged by distance and by time, we seek in vain to investigate the peculiarities of their dispositions. We have, indeed, as he said of the poets, a meridian splendour to guide us, but the traces of their footsteps have vanished with the dews of the morning. Who does not regret our absolute ignorance of the private life, the manners, the feelings, the conversation of Shakspeare and of Spenser? How many treasures of beautiful thoughts might we unlock with that key!

a

It will be our endeavour to show that while the composition of sermon demands the utmost plenitude of intellectual endowments, it presents at the same time the widest channel for their employment and transmission. "Undoubtedly," writes the eloquent South, "God does not only give the power, but also vouchsafes an active influence and concurrence to the production of every particular action, so far as it has either a natural or a moral goodness in it; and, therefore, in all acquired gifts or habits, such as are those of philosophy, oratory, or divinity, we are properly ovvεpyoì, co-workers with God;' and God ordinarily gives them to none but such as labour hard for them. They are so far his gifts that they are also our own acquisitions: his assistance and our own study are the joint and adequate causes of these perfections; and to imagine the contrary is all one as if a man should think to be a scholar barely by his master's teaching, without his own learning." A highly-educated clergy, Dr. Chalmers declared, in his concluding Lecture at Hanover Square, to be, in his opinion, the most insurmountable, impregnable bulwark of orthodoxy. And here we may mention an anecdote related by Burnet, in "the History of his own Time," of Archbishop Sharpe. Dr. Mangey, who married his daughter, informed the Speaker Onslow that he advised all young divines to combine the reading of Shakspeare with the study of the Scriptures; and Dr. Lisle, bishop of Norwich, who had been