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aiming to persuade men to a holy life, shall exhibit a fellow-feeling with those whom he addresses, and win their confidence in his personal regard for them. The winds may blow, the lightning may strike, the tempest may beat upon an ice-mountain, but it remains a mountain of ice. Only the heat of the sun melts it away. It is the warmth of love that subdues the soul" which laugheth at the shaking of a spear." When the heathen poets feigned that Amphion moved the stones and raised the walls of Thebes by the sound of his lyre, and that Orpheus subdued the ferocity of beasts and attracted to him the mountains by the sweetness of his music, they meant to describe the attractiveness, the persuasiveness of a refined benevolence expressed in its own alluring way. The cross of Christ is eloquent; for it shines upon our hearts with the warm radiance of his love. It is the goodness of God that does, as well as should lead us to repentance; much more then his grace; and therefore the minister must infuse into his discourses this same element which works in the heart, as the heat of the sun operates on the plant, and gives life and beauty, the blossom and the fruit. His benevolence must flow downward to his hearers and upward to God, and thus with one hand at the hearts of his people, and the other upon the throne of the eternal, he must be the medium for the transmission of those influences which are conducted softly and silently from heaven to the bosom of the church. In a psychological view of Christian oratory it seems to be a fixed law, that although a minister have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge; though he speak with the tongue of men and of angels, and yet have no real charity toward his hearers, and manifest no affectionate interest in them, he is become as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.'

I have said that the religion of the minister should be simple. There is a kind of piety which is exercised in agreement with human standards; it conforms to the practical rules of commentaries, and is governed by the example of certain good men. It always appears respectable, because it has the authority of churchworthies in its favor; but it is not so graceful nor winning as it is correct and safe. There is another kind of piety which is not harbored because other men have done the same, but is indulged because it will rise in view of its appropriate objects. It is the simple-hearted love which comes forth at the fresh opening of one's own heart to the influences of one's own meditations. It does not learn from books whether and how it ought to be exer

cised, but it springs up without a calculating process and without a tasking of the imitative faculty. It is like the music of the Æolian harp, not hampered by rules, but sweeter than all the artificial symphonies of human contrivance. The religion of our Saviour is a winning specimen of that simplicity with which the feelings of a minister ought to flow out into a spontaneous expression. It was original, artless, unforced, ever new, always becoming. He did not borrow from the men whom he respected, but felt, as well as thought, for himself. He did not wait for a set formula of devotion before he could adore the Providence of God, but it was enough for him to see a field-flower, and that was a rich expression of a biblical truth. He did not enquire for the example of his predecessors, or for the probable opinion of the world, before he gave vent to his feelings in regard to the beloved city; but he looked upon it from the opposite hill, and wept over it, and cried, "Oh Jerusalem, how often would I,-even as a hen her chickens, but you would not." He never consulted his own dignity by allying his kingdom with venerable priests, or the sacredness of local scenes; but he took little children in his arms, and ate with publicans, and extended his feet to be wiped by the hair of the head of a woman that was a sinner, and all not because he calculated that such things would work well, but because his simple piety was gratified by such unostentatious be nevolence. Hence came his power. What he says we feel, because we know that he felt it. His tones were rich with earnest conviction, and were all his own, and therefore they linger and linger still and ever linger in our ears, making a strange melody. When we turn from his melting yet stimulating, his softened yet authoritative words, to the pages of his ministers, we feel that they are unlike him; they speak for effect, they speak so as to be esteemed, they are punctilious about rules of Rhetoric and of Logic, they copy after great men, they are faithful to a party, they are like each other, and therefore monotonous, they are constrained, frigid, inept, formal, we soon tire of reading them, there is little of nature in them, they are ashamed to be simple, they wish to have everything manly, and are afraid to be childlike, they are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable, in the comparison with him who spake as never man spake, because he felt as never man felt.

And as the preacher's piety should be simple, so, as I have said, should it be humble. He must feel his dependence on the sanctifying Spirit of God, or he is powerless. If he rely upon his

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All his power is lost, if

He takes the attitude

own strength, if he aim to convert men by his learning or eloquence, if he stand up as one who can reason well, or write well, or speak well, and can thereby vanquish the enemies of the cross, there is more hope of a fool than of him. he confide in it for subduing his hearers. of a man hoping to overcome a host of his fellow men, while they are behind the barricade of an habitual, a natural, a total selfishness, impervious to his spear, impregnable to his battle-axe; and they laugh him to scorn. They are fully set to do evil, and he is but partially inclined to do well; their name is legion, and he is but one man, possibly in some respects an inferior man, and he comes out single-handed, breathing defiance sometimes against the intellect and always against the will of a multitude, an exceeding great army, who have never yet for one moment succumbed, either to their own consciences or to God. Such an attempt is chargeable, on the Christian system, with the same fault which Cicero so often condemns on the Pagan system, with immodesty, inconsiderateness, presumption. It must therefore be powerless, for such qualities are at war with all the principles of persuasion. These principles, while they recognize an effectiveness in the pulpit, require that it be secondary to the special operation of divine grace. The power of the minister presupposes the feeling of his dependence on God, and the felt doctrine of this dependence is the chief element of his power. There is a wheel rolling within a wheel; and he who thinks himself able to transform the hearts of his people, is disabled by that very thought, while he who confesses his inability derives from that confession, if an honest and devout one, the true force of the gospel. When a preacher is weak then is he strong; for then he sues for aid from heaven, and associates his words with the omnipotence of Jehovah. If he saves his power he will lose it, but if he lose his power he will save it; for when he banishes from the heart all pride and self-confidence then and then only "he is filled with all the fulness of God." Fearing to put himself forward he lets the Deity speak for him, and men listen to him not as to an independent declaimer, but as to one who has a commission, who stands as a vicegerent, the acknowledged representative of the Head of the Church. Hiding his own effort in the effectual working of the divine Spirit, he is above the reach of criticism. Men will be disarmed of their opposition to one who is so unassuming, but will be awed down by the presence of that dread Being who dwelleth in the humble and contrite preach

er. Feeling his dependence, he "does all things through Christ that strengtheneth him," and he speaks eloquently because "it is not he that speaks, but the grace of God which is with him." It is this felt and manifested reliance on the life-giving Spirit which transforms a bodily presence that is comparatively weak, and a speech that is relatively contemptible, and a preaching that is in one sense foolishness, "into the wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation." It is no paradox, but the soberness of experience to say, that he who fulfils his ministry "in weakness and fear and in much trembling," clothes himself thereby " with the exceeding greatness of that power which worketh mightily" both in and by its ministers, and he who glories as a wise man will "glory in infirmity." A self-sufficient bearing in a speaker, makes his hearers jealous and pugnacious, and so much the more stubborn in their resistance to him as he urges them in his own strength to a good life. But when he feels that he is inadequate of himself to convert them, they feel that they are wrestling with another being than himself, that his sufficiency is of God, and thus having his resources in heaven, he speaks "with the demonstration of the Spirit and with power." So soon as a revival of religion seems to be the work of men, it loses its dignity and becomes a mere fanatical excitement, and in a few weeks dies away like a crackling of thorns upon a cold hearth. And so soon as a sermon either appears to be, or in reality is, the unaided effort of a man, that moment it ceases to be a sermon, and degenerates into any essay or an harangue. It is the truth which exhibits power, and the truth is that we are dependent on the special interposition of the Holy One for every wise use of that power. This part of truth, this doctrine of dependence must be believed, must be felt, must be manifested by the preacher, or he will not be a preacher of the whole truth; he will keep back one essential agency, and so doing he must expect that like Ananias, who held back part of the price, he will fall down spiritually dead before the elders.

If in these particulars and in others which might be specified, a minister would be like Apollos, that " eloquent man who might. ily convinced the Jews that Jesus was the Christ," then also like Apollos must he be "mighty in the Scriptures," having an intellect well disciplined to understand them, not merely in their letter, but in their general scope and their connection with the principles of science. He must be a laborious and self-denying man, immersing himself in a toil from which he will rest in heaven only. It is not enough for him that he be acquainted with religious

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doctrine; he must be familiar with it; familiar not simply with its general principles but also with its details, with its arguments, its controversies, its remote relations. He must have such a mastery over its recondite problems as will give him a power of writing down upon them, instead of making an ever confused and confusing effort to write up to them. He must live in the truth as Uriel stood in the sun, and must diffuse its radiance around him in ever diverging lines. He must draw the gospel out into his life, and be an impersonation of the duties which he abstractly commends. He must be fascinated with his work, must watch with eagerness and patient hope for the right times and the right modes of influence, must live as a stranger in the world from which he is to keep himself unspotted and for which he is to give himself up to prayer and fasting. He must not forbear to enrich his mind, through fear that his heart will be impoverished, but he should aim to make his intellectual wealth a mere tributary to his spirit of devotion. Above all he should never so misapprehend his nature as to neglect the cultivation of his piety through fear of weakening his mental powers, but should know that bene orasse est bene studuisse, that "greater is he who ruleth his spirit than he who taketh a city," and that a sound and healthy moral growth, as it may be a consequent, should also be and will and must be an antecedent of the most vigorous intellectual development. As the body without the spirit is dead, so the intellect without the heart is destitute of its highest life.

ARTICLE VI.

COLERIDGE AND HIS AMERICAN DISCIPLES.

By Rev. Noah Porter, Jr. Professor in Yale College.

THE name of Coleridge is already splendid and world-renowned. Wherever English Literature is known, there Coleridge is known as a poet, critic, scholar, philosopher, and theologian. As a poet, he has not merely attained the highest fame among those with whom he has measured himself in the accustomed orbs of the poet's flight; but he has created for himself new