in this our day, predominates in many of the continental writers, and which some are basely endeavouring to introduce into our own happy land. But since we are under the hands of a wise and merciful, though inscrutable Providence, let us hope that these evils will be only partial. The Christian world at large will not surely be seduced by the audacious sophistries of those, who, under the mask of religion, are subverting its foundation. Widely as the Rationalizing error is spread, there are many favourable and counteracting circumstances. There is abroad a zeal, not without knowledge, in support of religious truth; in our native land works have lately issued from the press, and others are in course of publication designed to furnish the student with all that is valuable in continental literature, without its debasing admixtures; and even that country which has produced in greatest abundance these anti-Christian theologists, can boast of a Knapp, a Storr, a Titmann, and other orthodox associates, whose efforts in the good cause are already followed with certain indications of a happier era. Too much sound judgment, solid learning, and ardent piety exist, to leave room for apprehending that the Evangelic light will suffer a total eclipse. Though it may partially and for a while be obscured by German Rationalists, or only glimmer through the intervening mists of Socinianism, its rays will at length pierce the gloom, and both hemispheres will finally be illuminated with its bright effulgence. The time will arrive when the whole earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord;-when the grain of mustard-seed, so small at first, sown, shall spring up into a luxuriant tree, whose branches shall expand far and wide ;—and when the Author and Finisher of our faith "shall send forth judgment unto victory,"-shall render the doctrines of the Gospel universally triumphant *.

• Habak. ii. 14. Matt. xiii. 31, 32-xii. 20.

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NO. VI. VOL. III,

Occasional Sermons, by the REV. R. MOREHEAD, A. M., of Baliol College, and junior Minister of St. Paul's Chapel, York Place, Edinburgh, and domestic Chaplain to their Royal Highnesses the late Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold of Saxe Cobourg. 8vo. Pp. 482. Price 10s. 6d. Constable. Edinburgh. 1825.

Ar no time, since the establishment of Christianity in these realms, has there existed a greater necessity for diligence, acuteness, learning, eloquence, and piety amongst its Ministers, than at the present. So strongly is the age marked by improvement in arts, in science, in literature, in political and social institutions, in the spirit as well as in the objects of research, that the preacher who shall fail to keep pace with this improvement, will proportionally lose that efficacy which it is his great object to preserve. Men's ideas have not only taken a higher flight, but, in spite of all the ill-boding prophets of evil, there exists a much more serious and determined con cern for the great interests of mankind than any previous generations have experienced. This character of the age is very observable in all professions, and is stamped upon a great portion of our literary productions: in the excitement thus produced, the most zealous and persevering efforts are demanded from those who would engage attention. It is not sufficient to say that Christianity is so attractive in its native purity and truth as to need no aid of adventitious ornament, or the allurements of human eloquence and wisdom. The fact is, that truth itself receives a colour and form from the medium through which it passes, and that in some hands the most sublime doctrines lose a great portion of their grandeur and attraction. Religious systems, like many others, depend much, for their diffusion, upon the manner of their arrangement, the consistency of their views, the analogies with which they are illustrated, the sentiments by which they are enforced, and the language in which they are delivered. The evidences of Christianity are not alone to be promulgated, its history elucidated, and its difficulties removed, but its correspondence with our highest capacities, its connection with our purest hopes, its adaptation to our greatest necessities, and its power of satisfying the cravings of an immortal soul, these are to be enforced in terms the most energetic possible, and to be presented at once to the intellect, the imagination, and the heart. If this statement be admitted it will be seen that the character of an accomplished

and efficient preacher is not one of easy attainment; yet we cannot help feeling some surprise that pulpit eloquence has been so long, and still is comparatively at a low ebb in this country, especially since we feel assured that our countrymen are deficient in none of those qualities which are essential to the attainment of excellence. But, that we may not point out a defect without proposing a remedy, we shall not hesitate in declaring our opinion from whence this inferiority arises.

In the first place then we conceive that far too little attention is paid, at our public seminaries, to composition in our native language. Boys are drilled with excessive diligence into all the niceties of Attic Greek, and the splendid periods of Ciceronian Latinity, whilst rewards of the most stimulating kind are constantly proposed for exercises constructed in the languages and after the model of antiquity. We blame not the practice, except it be carried to excess; but we own that in general the end appears sacrificed to the means. Whilst we pursue the study, we are too apt to neglect the example of the ancients, who invariably gave their principal attention to their native tongue; by which means they had not the irksome task of employing many years of manhood, years which are peculiarly adapted to the acquisition of sentiments, in attaining to the powers of language and the graces of a style. This however we know to be the case at present in too many instances, and the deficiency arising thence, extends itself not only to the pulpit, though perhaps it is there most evident, but to the bar and the senate, and to every branch of literature and science.

In the second place, we cannot but remark the neglect of professional study in those who are destined to the sacred office of the ministry. This fault has indeed of late been attended to in both our Universities, but not sufficiently so for the purpose we have in view, that of creating an English school of pulpit oratory. To effect this our young men destined to the sacred profession must be classified, or separated, more than they are at present, from others who have attached themselves to different callings, and to secular pursuits. Nor must they be contented with acquiring that slight share of theological learning which is demanded, and rightly demanded, of all candidates for University degrees. They must rather aim at an early proficiency in those sublime, and abstruse subjects, which are to be the basis of their future excellence, and which are the best correctives of that knowledge, which, in the words of the Apostle, "puffeth up.' We must take a lesson in this respect from the Jesuits, and the Sorbonne; or rather we must revert

still more to the ancient spirit, and letter, of our own academical institutions. But as it is not our intention to write a dissertation upon this subject, we shall content ourselves with throwing out these few hints, in the hope of their meeting the eye of some one with ability and inclination to enlarge upon them, and with influence enough to turn public attention to their importance. We must now advert to the work immediately before us, and which has, in some degree, given rise to the foregoing observations.

Mr. Morehead is evidently a man of talent, of acquirement, and of piety: his sermons though undistinguished by any thing like the profound theology of a Horsley, the pathos of a Sherlock, or the sublimity of a Barrow, are calculated to acquire a considerable share of popularity, and may, with a little alteration, be turned to good account by those preachers who are deficient either in the talents or in the energy requisite for composition: still though they exhibit rational and orthodox views both of Scripture and morality, recommending themselves to the reader's attention by the devotional spirit that pervades them, as well as by considerable graces of sentiment and diction, they are just so defective both in matter and style as to have elicited from us the remarks with which we commenced this article; we see enough in the author which is good, to pain us at not finding him more perfect. His precepts and doctrines are just, as far as they go, but we complain that they do not in general go far enough; his arguments are never bad, but they are not always the best that might be produced; whilst his style is frequently so ambitious and figurative as to become very affected and obscure: for instance when death comes forth "to mock the majesty of thrones," as Mr. M. expresses it, we have "the most agonizing sympathies of common nature mingled with the desolation of a chaos gathering over the brightness of a world's glory." P. 20. We have also, in reference to the death of our late amiable Princess Charlotte, "a thick darkness shrouding, in a moment that mother and that child, as they seemed to bend down to us with looks of love from that high promontory of existence, on which God had said, 'let there be light, and there was light." Upon the subject of divine superintendance we are told that without it "all we prize and love in human nature is the mere sport of a wild fatality, rising for a few hours above the waves of time, and again for ever sunk in the merciless flood;" &c. P. 53.

In P. 81., we have "a King, who, in the purity of his life walks before his people with unbleached majesty, unseduced by the flatteries and follies of the atmosphere around him.” !

In the next page we have "vigour and animation diffused through all the useful restraints and decencies of the middle stations," and "the stains of sensuality keeping pace with the guilt of irreligion." Again we are called upon " to raise our eyes above the fleeting course of time." P. 112. We are advised "not to turn from that Divine Eye, which mingles mercy with its look of reproof but to permit its searching beam to penetrate our souls, and to burn away their guilt and impurity." P. 227. And at page 98 we find "the love of God blazing most intensely" at the very moment when man is passing through "the fiercest furnace of affliction." On the subject of death we are urged" to contemplate the dread havoc which encircles it, the buds of childhood, the brightest hopes of youth, no less than the fulness or the decline of years, all indiscriminately gathered into its merciless womb"! P. 259. In page 85 we have the late Emperor Napoleon designated as "the spoiler of nations, whose ambition would have burst the globe"! and in the next sentence it is mentioned to the credit of George III., that he was "conveyed in his ships, to that speck of earth, in which he was yet to be permitted to breathe." To give an example of continued metaphor, we are introduced at page 141 to the "fountains of good and evil in our souls: the waters which flow from them sparkle in the brilliance of the sun, and enrich and beautify the region through which they wind, or roll on in a dark and muddy torrent, and spread around them desolation and deformity." Again at page 408 we find that "it is one evil among the many advantages of an age of civilization, that its lights, of every description, are apt to be thrown upon the broken and uneven surface of society, in very unequal and often distorted masses, while many dreary corners and recesses are left to utter darkness and desolation.'

We could go on to fill pages with quotations of a similar nature, but we must have said enough to convince the author, who is evidently a man of sound sense as well as of sound principles, that such a style is not the vehicle by which the great truths of the Gospel can be most efficaciously conveyed to any class of people, much less to that class whose instruction is most important. We have now to notice a fault of a more serious nature, and one which nothing but an imperative sense of duty would have induced us to bring forward; not for the sake of inflicting pain upon Mr. Morehead, but rather, of warning others against a similar delinquency. In the first sermon, preached on the day of the funeral of the late Princess Charlotte, to whom our author was Domestic Chaplain, we find