clearest light his characteristic excellencies, and have done full justice to his defects and mistakes; among which they name a somewhat deficient action, excess in quotation both of Scripture and poetry, and a tendency to quaintness, particularly noticeable in his declining years, and not perfectly reconcileable with good taste. Two paragraphs from the conclusion are all that our space will permit us to copy.

It will be seen, by this description, that we do not claim for this eminent preacher any dazzling brilliancy of genius, any profound originality, any power of philosophical analysis, any logical acumen, or even great theological research. To those who can only be pleased with such things, or to others who resolve all pulpit excellence into abstract generalizations, or lofty speculations, or subtle argumentation, Mr. Jay's sermons presented few attractions. His sound evangelism, his practical wisdom, his rich experience, his strong sense, his melting tenderness, his touching pathos, his beautiful illustrations, his sweet antitheses, his poetic fancy, which procured him, while a living preacher, such wide and continued popularity, and which in his published works will never cease to delight the readers who can be pleased with strong intelligence and true piety-were held in light esteem by those who love to soar in the clouds, or delve in the dark mines of German mysticism.

To be a useful preacher was his aim; and it was thus, by constant and unwearied effort, he became one. And if this were the habitual study of all who are called to occupy the pulpit; if with an intense longing after the salvation of immortal souls, and an unwavering determination to know nothing among men, but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified; if with a truly philosophical view of the adaptation of preaching to awaken attention and produce impression; if with a recollection of what has been done by the great masters in the art of preaching, all ministers were to study the best models of evangelical pulpit eloquence, and were to take extraordinary pains to acquire, by the aid of Divine grace, a commanding and interesting style of pulpit address; and, while cherishing a sense of absolute dependence for efficiency upon the work of the Holy Spirit, they were to recollect the

Mr. James, as a great master of the diffuse and declamatory style, could not be expected to sympathize fully with Mr. Jay, who excelled in the compact and sententious. And as to the taste which condemns quaintness of manner and expression, we are reminded of Jay's own words, 'We cannot gather flowers in a balloon. They are on the ground, and we must bend to view them, and stoop to gather them.' We hold, as he did with Cowper, that to court a grin' is 'pitiful but many of his pithy sayings will be remembered for years, when, if they had been conformed to what is sometimes called 'good taste,' they would, indeed, have been listened to without a smile; but they would have been forgotten before his hearers got home. The same may be said of his introductions, ex abrupto, of which his editors justly say, they are dangerous experiments for a preacher to make. Yet who could forget this?—You have often heard of persons dying of a broken heart. I will show you to-day how to live with one,' The text that followed was Psalm li. 17,

Jay's Preaching, and its Lessons.

251

Spirit works by appropriate means; and took half the pains to make their speaking in the pulpit as impressive as the actor does to make his successful upon the stage; if, concerning the powerful preaching of the Gospel, they said "This one thing I do," and called and called in all collateral aids to do it in the best manner, we should not hear, as we sometimes do, of the declining power of the outbit the pulpit. It is for a wonder, a lamentation, and a reproach, that they who have to do the most momentous work under the sun, give themselves the least pains to do it effectually, Mankind are wrought upon by manner as well as matter. It is an interesting, earnest style of address, that engages attention, reaches the heart, and accomplishes the end of preaching; in the absence of which learning the most profound, and theology the most scriptural, will fail to secure popularity, or to obtain success. It will not do to say, We are so engrossed with the matter of our discourses as to be indifferent to the manner of them. The more important to men's interests is the matter, the more anxious should we be that in our manner there should be nothing to hinder, but, on the contrary, everything to aid, the success of the matter! That minister who feels called by the Holy Ghost to be a preacher of Christ's blessed Ought to feel himself no less called to take all possible pains to do it in the best possible mannern litw addtow bodail

The critic and the subject of his critique have long since met in the great home of the good. Lovely and pleasant in their lives,' the esteem in which they were held by the public constitutes an encouraging sign of the times: and though, when we remember them individually, the old question, Quando ullum inveniet parem? almost involuntarily arises, it is better to exclaim with David than with Horace, and, when the godly man ceaseth,' to invoke His 'help' Who made each of them what he was, and Who, out of His fulness, can kindle many such burning and shining lights as those whom we have endeavoured in these pages, however inadequately, to com

memorate.

ART. IX. The Uprising of a Great People or The United States in 1861. By COUNT AGENOR DE GASPARIN 80t bas requin a.loge nob, sred norte, bloow royau bus : Wottom-ot How is slavery to come to its to come to its end? has been the everof bing bib recurring question with all who have of late years discussed the position of America, either with a friendly or a philosophic interest Those who wished that country ill might be contented that its plague should not be abated, much less cured; but all who cared either for the United States, or for mankind, longed to see the day which should throw some light on the great problem in which the happiness of so many human beings and the honour of considerable portions of Christ's Church were involved. DUTOS RIIMULTA, JEI WADDIT OTW CIT

Ransom of Slaves an ultimate Saving.

253 Very true; but how much less will be the sum spent on the war, and lost by it? Goodness is often costly to-day, but gainful to-morrow; and never would nation have done such a moneysaving act as America, had it taxed itself heavily, and said to the slaves, 'Be free.' But, the American always told you, that even if the North was willing to buy every slave by a national ransom, the South would spurn the offer, as a miserable, antichivalrous, Yankee way of dealing with a great institution. So the South said; but Americans did not mind offering to buy when they really wished to do so, even if the feelings of the holders were liable to be hurt. Spain made no secret that overtures for purchasing Cuba were insults; yet Americans could freely and openly discuss them. Had the South ever seen the fair chance of getting its money for its Negroes, and being rid of the blessings and curses of slavery on good terms, it would have had some effect on the views taken of the relative proportions of blessing and curse in that system; and many, though not all, perhaps not a majority, would have thought that a fair compensation in hand, and a final quittance of contingencies, would be, if not a chivalrous, a very comfortable, termination of slaveholding.

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But the South never had a serious proposal to ransom the slaves before it; the North never rose to the height of such a design, and even to the last showed not the faintest symptom doing so. A quarter of a century was given from the time that the example of a nation disentangling itself from slavery by an act of redemption had been set; and that period was full charged with proofs of the dangers which the system entailed. It had come to be manifest that no public question in America was unaffected by this cardinal one. It was a question of property, and therefore calculated to rouse the most passionate efforts of political men. It turned elections, formed cabinets, shaped foreign politics, decided the choice of officials, from ambassadors and judges down to postmen; provoked war; raised up schools of buccaneering politicians, whose morals, learned in the slave-market, and edged by the rich profits of the plantations, made light of national rights, as of individual liberties, and held all means happy and worthy which aimed at the golden end of extending the fields for remunerative planting, and procuring the slaves to make them pay. A worse, a baser, a more sanguinary code than these men acknowledged, and acted upon, has never been current under settled governments, nothing of civilized or Christian countries.

The danger of allowing a party dependent on such an illicit support as slavery to rule a nation, is so obvious that one cannot

but stand stupified at human folly, as displayed by the most boastful race existing, or that ever did exist. The slaveholders were a minority; yet during the quarter of a century which followed the practical appeal made to America by emancipation throughout the British Empire, they were permitted by the majority to hold the reins of power, and shape the course of foreign policy, and domestic legislature; and to-day that majority is paying, grieving, and bleeding in consequence.

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Why did the majority permit it? Because it was the interest of many to be friends with the slaveholders; the desire of others to keep things quiet; and the habit of all to make the best of a national fault. The absurdity of those who ascribe the rupture between North and South to so vague a cause as incompatibility of temper is clear enough on all grounds; but especially on this ground, that the interests of the two sections of country were so identified that the South itself firmly believed, and never made a secret of its persuasion, that the North was entirely dependent upon it for its prosperity; while, on the other hand, the merchants, bankers, and shippers of the North, and, still more, its ambitious politicians, ostentatiously acknowledged the value of their connexion with the South. This sense of identical interests is the strongest antidote to incompatibility; and nothing but a cause of difference which wounded feelings deeper even than self-interest, could have brought into hostile camps two portions of a nation so mutually helpful, and even necessary to each other's wealth and advancement.

of All the interests of the North advised close union with the South, at any sacrifice of principle; and all the men of the North who were ruled by the sense of interest, made conciliation of the South their guiding object; for which pride, conscience, consistency, the posture of their nation before others, their own place among civilized men, the right of their churches to preach the gospel of universal brotherhood, of their press to denounce tyranny, legalized or not, of their orators on any spot of American soil to speak the sentiments of free men, of their religious and benevolent societies to display the true Christian abhorrence of organized and legal injustice, all these sacred rights were by some bartered without a qualm, and by others painfully parted with, though conscience and wisdom whispered things hard to hear of days of reckoning.

It is not so hard for us to understand how Americans could be so much under the influence of the slaving interest, when we consider how far both the mercantile and landed classes in our country have been so, within our own memory, and, alas are so at this moment. Three thousand miles of sea always rolled