as a patient and persevering investigator, as a calm and profound philologist, and as a correct and severe logician. He brings from his texts, not what he would wish them to teach, nor what they might be supposed to imply, but what they most naturally and unexceptionably contain. Like all profound scholars, he gives the results, not the details of his research. The pulpit pedant is astonished that the Bible is so miserably translated, and quotes as his own the speculations of some flimsy bibliographer (?). He can trace the simplest word back through half-a-dozen languages, to its Hebrew, Greek, or Gaelic root, and, after giving a hundred and fifty meanings which it might, could, should, or would have had, during the lapse of linguistic ages, he fixes on one meaning, because it is the right meaning. To rebuke all this pedantry, Dr. Brown conceals the process, and unostentatiously states the finding.' -pp. 276, 277.

We do not much admire the style of this extract, but we do most ardently wish that its spirit might penetrate to the pulpits of those who are preachers and not critics, who make texts playthings, and treat their Bibles as if they were puzzle-maps, whose great beauty consisted in a capacity of being taken to pieces; and of that smaller class, who are critics and not preachers, disguising pages from lexicons as sermons. Another feature of Dr. Brown's preaching might be very advantageously imitated.

He is careful to show that the scriptures are not only consistent with themselves, but that their teachings are also in unison with right reason. The great mass of scripture expounders of the present day, seem to consider it necessary to shut their eyes against their own existence, and against the external universe, that they may look on the scriptures only.'

These be truths,' we fear. What wonder, that from a hundred churches we hear the cry, 'Ichabod-the glory is departed'?

A striking sketch of the manner of this eminent man appears worthy of transference to these pages.

Though he makes no approach to the fury of a Chalmers, there is often much in his manner to recall the extraordinary appearances of that mightiest of preachers. There is the same uncouth, unmodulated and earnest voice, the same hastening, pauselessly, onward, and the same breathless attention commanded. Brown is Chalmers chained. He labours as intensely, but he wants the fancy and the fury which fascinated and overwhelmed. The wings of his imagination have been shorn by the instruments he employs in his critical and analytical operations.

We are very much inclined to question the philosophy of the last sentence, but let this pass. We are more concerned with the violence done to our feelings by such sketches. There is a species of indelicacy in thus characterising living men. We

turn from these, therefore, to a brief extract from the sketch of one who has just departed, the late (alas, that we should have to say late!) Dr. Russell, of Dundee. There were many things about him that make the task of painting easy. A man, who, for forty years, was never absent from his pulpit a single Sabbath from bad health, and who during all that time, kept up an uninterrupted course of expository preaching with as few signs of flagging at the end, as at the beginning, must have been a strong man, physically and mentally. We know of few men who conveyed so thoroughly the idea of real solid thinking. Grace was out of the question. It never entered the speaker's mind, that there was such a thing as a flight of fancy, or a burst of eloquence, or a sparkle of imagination. In this he shared with many other preachers, but then it never entered the hearer's thoughts, that such things would be an improvement, and there unfortunately Dr. Russell had fewer companions. John Foster speaks of the lamentable scarcity of conclusive preaching. Dr. Russell was a conclusive speaker, and his almost only action, an emphatic, if not very elegant, motion of the head at the close of each point that was discussed -seemed to say that's settled.' But we are assuming the place of our sketcher.

'As a consecutive and profound thinker, Dr. Russell has probably no clerical rivals. He not only forms a distinct idea of the outline of his subject, but the entire filling-up is done mentally, without writing, or any of the usual helps to composition. His discourses bear innumerable indications of severe thought. In England, as well as in Scotland, he is known as the minister with the long texts, and this is particularly illustrative of his mental character. Instead of allowing his fancy to run riot on some insulated passage, he thinks according to the analogy of Scripture. p. 333.

'As his thinking is his own, so also is the order of his discourses. In their exordium, while many preachers keep a respectful distance from their subject, to avoid anticipation, Dr. Russell, in his very first sentence, plunges into the heart of his subject. To all fears of anticipating himself, or prematurely exhausting his ideas, he seems an utter stranger.'

Thus, labouring with all the earnestness of his nature, he lived. On the last Sabbath of his life, he preached, as usual, three times, went home and died, leaving behind him many more brilliant, many more nimble, but few more thoughtful, substantial scriptural teachers. Help Lord! for the godly man ceaseth.' From these extracts, our readers will see that the volume before us is more than a mere collection of loose disjointed talk. It does not abound with anecdote; perhaps there is too little of c c c 2

that which is usually the staple of books of the same class, but it contains many correct likenesses, and what is better, a great deal of sound discussion of the principles of pulpit teaching. Our readers will agree with us, that such sketches, in each case, as we have seen, accompanied with one, and sometimes with two outlines of a sermon, appearing weekly in a provincial newspaper,* not professedly a religious periodical, present a somewhat noticeable phenomenon, and are an inlet into the religious state of the country, where they are popular. They indicate a church-going population, one that has an interest in the machinery of religious movements, to an extent beyond what is common in other parts of the empire, but people who go to church, and like to talk about theology, are not necessarily a religious people. Where they are not, they are, of all men, the hardest to reach. Their hearts are encrusted with a thick coat of dry divinity, and every appeal to conscience is first of all deprived of vital power, that they may dissect it, and decide whether it be sound doctrine or not. Such, however, is the characteristic of a great mass of our Scottish countrymen. It comes to be an important question, what share in this state of things have our Scottish Clergy? Are they as a whole, fit to cope with it? Are they altering it? This volume has an interest, as affording material for answering such questions, which have importance, not only for the north, but for the south. Taking, then, the fifty names here mentioned as on the whole above the average of the occupants of Scottish pulpits, which we are clearly warranted to do, we find, on glancing over the published sketches of their pulpit discourses, many signs of intellectual power, of sound judgment, of extensive scriptural knowledge; but we miss what we should like to have seen, traces of their being men, who had loved, and wept, and suffered, and lived-men of like passions with their auditors. There is less than we could wish of an attempt to make preaching what it ought to be, the vehicle of communicating impulse to all the sympathies of the heart, as well as food for the brain. And after all that has been said about an earnest ministry, and an educated ministry, we think that here will be found the great want of our churches of the present day. We need men who shall find in their Bibles something more than theology, who shall see in their congregations something more than so many reservoirs, to be filled with doctrinal teaching; men who will trust to their own hearts, at least as much as to their knowledge

*The Glasgow Examiner, a paper of considerable ability and popular politics.

of systematic divinity; men who will carry to the pulpit, the common speech of every day life, refined and elevated, and utter the divine message, not as a thing to be anatomised, but to be lived by. We often hear good men praying that their minister would preach as dying unto dying men. We wish, that while that is remembered, they would more often preach as living men unto living men. We are not pleading for a secularizing of pulpit teaching, nor for a vulgarizing of the mode of address; but we do think it of no small importance, that both matter and mode should be less moulded in the forms of two centuries ago.

It is a fact that deserves notice, that the men who have been most useful preachers, who are wielding the greatest influence on the present generation, and have especially laid hold of the young men of the day, are those who, differing widely in every thing else, have agreed in this, to let the old traditional stereotypes of firstly, secondly, thirdly, and the still more wearisome stereotypes of thought, of which these forms were but the outward sign, go to the wall,-and have spoken as men who believed that christianity should be carried into all the corners of daily life, and believing that, were not afraid to reverse the process, and bring all the incidents of daily life to the pulpit. We find in this volume the following sketch of Mr. Guthrie, a minister of the Free Church.

'He never almost treats his hearers to weary syllogisms, to dry argumentative expositions of particular doctrines, over which your eyes get dull, and your faculties numb. These he disposes of, when they come in his way, very shortly, as important, but as secondary matters. His preaching resembles more a conversation addressed to each individual hearer than a sermon: each feels as if the pastor were speaking to him alone. Were we to describe it in other words, we might make use of a Scottish phrase, and say it has a strong resemblance to a homely crack.' -p. 344.

This description will remind many of a minister in this metropolis, one of the finest illustrations we know of the possibility of adopting such a tone of preaching, as shall neither freeze into cold abstraction, nor evaporate into mere sound and fury; a gentleman whose sermons may be taken as showing that familiar preaching need not be either poor in thought or bald in language, but may glow with heart and be instinct with intellect. No one who has been in the Weigh House Chapel, and looked at its minister, and the manly intelligent heads he has in his pews, will doubt what is the kind of preaching that the present day requires.

Now we find little of this in these published sermons of

the Scotch ministry. The 'genius loci' has been too strong for them. They naturally yield to the current, and supply their hearers with sound truth undoubtedly, with most unexceptionable divinity, full measure, pressed down, and running over; but does it live? We wish to be understood as speaking generally. There are brilliant exceptions, but these are not the rule.

We believe that many of these gentlemen follow the course they have adopted systematically, from an estimate of the intention of preaching, which we cannot but think a mistaken

one.

What

We have no space to enter into the discussion here, but we should gladly know that some abler pen had undertaken to settle,What is the true idea of the aim of pulpit addresses?' We think we can see what it is not. It is not surely the case, as Mr. Martineau maintains, that preaching is essentially a lyric expression of the soul; but that is nearer the truth than the popular notion, that the aim of preaching should be didactic. This is a very common notion. It is the one most usually acted on, whether consciously or unconsciously, both by preachers in their preparations, and by hearers in their criticisms. Even if it had been true once, the peculiar features of the present day should modify that. It was natural that, when the pulpit was the only means of intellectual impression, its occupant should have been a popular lecturer, and a teacher, and a politician, and an instructor in theology. But now-a-days, every one of these functions is better discharged by the press. then is left for the pulpit to do? We would that its occupants would weigh the question, and come to some definite conclusion, as to what should be the answer. There is a large part of it in Göethe's saying, 'Give them not loaves of bread, but seed-corn.' We believe that, until this question be answered by each minister for himself, we shall continue to hear the complaints that have been so common lately. These Jeremiads have, however, we think, been too universally prevalent. There is no doubt that the pulpit does not possess the influence it might be expected to have. We quite admit that; but when we are told that it does not even possess what it once had, we altogether dissent. What period shall we find where it had more weight? Shall we choose the Catholic times, when there were no sermons but on holy days? Shall we choose the Reformation period? It had influence then; but that was owing to extraneous causes. A pulpit whose occupant could compel attention, by arguments drawn from Smithfield and Tower Hill, was not likely to stand without hearers about it. Shall we take Charles's time? Were there not at work, then, causes, political and such like, which gave it factitious importance? and do