assembly of an alarmed, incensed and factious populace, met to adopt measures that are to decide the destiny of the state. Follow him with your eye, as he ascends, trembling yet decided, the bema. The eye glistens, the lips move, and, as if by the power of Him who "spake and it was done," who turns the hearts of men as the rivers of water are turned, the tumult is hushed; the strife is appeased; the alarm is dispelled; perplexity has fled; confidence returns, and Athens rends the air with its united, determined cry,-" to arms! to arms!" and rushes to the conflict. Witness this, and can you conceive of a scene where man can appear more exalted, more godlike? Yes-there is one, and but one. It is that in which the ambassador of God, with the truths of inspiration on his tongue, and the love of Christ burning on his lips, and speaking from his eye, breaks up the lethargy of sin, convinces the unbelieving, enlightens the ignorant, melts the insensible, subdues the perverse and obstinate, comforts and cheers the troubled and desponding, and transfuses all hearts with the power and blessedness of the love of Christ. There is a scene in which man appears superhuman, nay, super-angelic; for even Gabriel might aspire to be the mover and actor in a scene like that.

I am well aware that the art whose province it is to fit man: for this high function has been decried, resisted and despised. But when I question experience, and hear her declare that the noblest fruits of eloquence are the products of rhetorical art; that in all ages the orators who have risen to the highest eminence at the bar, in the forum or the pulpit, are the men who have subjected themselves most entirely to its forming hand when she tells me of Demosthenes devoting years, and thousands of gold, upon a single branch, and that almost the least, that of vocal expression; of Cicero, applying himself under the direction of the most eminent masters of the art, year after year, with untiring assiduity; of Chatham, contending, like those ancient orators, with the difficulties of an infirm bodily constitution, and consenting to the most puerile tricks of the art, as they have been sneeringly called, practising, hour after hour, before a mirror, that he might acquire a free, graceful and forcible action-when she takes me into the church of God, and points me to a Chrysostom-him of the golden mouth, so styled, from the surpassing richness of his eloquence, the devoted pupil of

the art; and, in modern times to a Reinhard, the untiring student of the ancient rhetoric, as well as of the ancient orators; to a Robert Hall, remarkable in early life, as much for his attention to the culture of oratory, as for his philosophical investigations, I am content to pass by, unnoticed, the sneers of ignorance and the detractions of envious sloth and weakness.

But rhetoric has received her deepest wound from her own votaries. She has been conceived of, even by professed teachers of the art, only as a stern, morose, capricious, critic, with chisel and mallet in hand, hewing off this angle, or chipping out that excrescence, but as incapable of adding a beauty as of infusing original life. The rhetorician, it is said, necessarily succeeds the orator. He can, therefore, only analyze, classify, enumerate. He may detect deformities, and smoothe an outline, but with that terminates his power.

The logic is false; and the conception low and unworthy. Rhetoric, in the true notion of its office, is developing and formative, as well as corrective. It cannot, indeed, give original life; but it can do something more than prune off an unproductive or injurious limb. Its province is to take the plant living, indeed, but undeveloped, unformed, and weak, and by the judicious and assiduous application of water, light, and air, by the timely direction of every shoot, and the removal of every needless stem and stalk, develope its infant energies, its generous juices, and its beauteous foilage, and thus make that the noble, majestic tree or vine yielding its rich and beautiful and plenteous fruits in their season, which otherwise had been choked with weeds, withered in the drought, or wasting all its life in a rank luxuriance of leaves, alike shapeless, cumbersome, and destitute of fruit.

It has here a great, a noble task to perform, worthy of the most gifted and most richly furnished intellect. Receiving the mind, thoroughly disciplined in all its intellectual faculties, and stored with the richest fruits of knowledge, with its sensibilities and capabilities of feeling, also, expanded, trained, and pliant, taking in short intellect and soul in the highest degrees of their cultivation, it has, first, to set forth a standard of eloquence and fix it firmly in the mind, by the judicious and forcible exhibition of the finest models. It has, next, to inspire a generous enthusiasm for its attainment, which will

mock difficulties, and turn toil to pleasure, by opening the eye upon the peculiar charms and delights of the study, and by presenting the rich rewards that attend success. It has, then, to direct and superintend the severe course of training, which shall elevate the enthusiastic aspirant to the standard and aim he desires ;-a course of training which shall bring into perfect control all the attainments of learning, and make all subsidiary to the designs of eloquence; which shall also give him command over all the powers of feeling, and enable him to transfuse the life and energy of passion into the coldest, driest, most lifeless forms of thought; which shall make easy a ready arrangement, rendering every process of reasoning clear and convincing; every description and narrative simple, consecutive, and symmetrical; and every passionate appeal timely, unerring and effective which shall, moreover, put at service all the powers of expression, so that thought can be. made to appear, not in cold and inanimate forms of language, but in its own living body, in distinct and graceful outlines, plump, fresh, and vigorous and which shall, still more, superadd a graceful, appropriate and energetic action, that will seem but the outward covering, the skin, if you please, of the verbal body of the thought, partaking its life and picturing, in its changing hues, the stirrings of the soul within.

I need not say that here is no slight task to be performed, both by him who superintends and by him who undergoes this process of training. I need not say that it is by no means strange, so few have been willing to take the requisite pains, and submit to the necessary toil-that so few, therefore, have attained the enviable power of swaying, by the force of truth enlivened by feeling, the minds and hearts of

men.

Indeed, it is a most rare occurrence that we find any one ready to admit, that eloquence is an attainment at all; that it is any thing else than a gift conferred. Into such neglect has the art fallen in modern times, that the maxim once so current, orator fit, is now received with almost universal skepticism. Men witness the prodigies of oratory, they are themselves the victims of its power, and suppose it wholly a boon of heaven. They have no idea of the midnight study and the toil by day; the severe discipline, the long and patient training which the fruits of eloquence have cost in their production: and were they told of a Chatham coming into par

liament to awe a virulent faction into silence, and speechless dread, by the force of a word or a gesture, in which the whole energy of his giant mind went out, from a dressing room-from practising before a mirror; of a Brougham, to catch a proper power of expression, first locking himself up for three weeks to the study, night and day, of the single oration "on the crown," and then writing over fifteen different times his peroration before bringing it to its final shape, they would stare with wonder and incredulity.

In the church, particularly, all such labor of preparation is but too generally regarded as trifling puerility, vain and criminal sacrifice to the love of applause, or at least, sad and unjustifiable waste of time. The Christian minister who should study the art of expression, who should spend every week some hours in the culture of his taste, the acquisition of words, the discipline of his voice, and the improvement of his manner, would be charged with criminally squandering that time on trifles, which should be devoted directly to the care of souls. They, who would think no pains too great, no expense too heavy, which should secure in time of religious interest, the instrumentality of a man of God who can speak with a resistless force of truth and overwhelming vehemence of holy passion, yet, in the inconsistency of their ignorance and thoughtlessness, will blame the man who employs the innocent means that are made necessary by God himself to the attainment of this power. Even the lawful culture of God's noblest gifts, the acquisition of a power to which he has chiefly confided the great work of spreading his gospel on earth, is with them sin and folly. If they meet with a modern Apollos, "an eloquent man," mighty in handling the truth of God, capable of moving, and with the aid of God's grace, of subduing the hearts of men, they esteem him a man directly gifted of heaven, receiving from lavish but capricious nature, his whole powers of persuasion, and never imagine that he must have gone through the low drudgery of a rhetorician's mill.

Perhaps such stolid simplicity might be passed by with only a smile of pity, did not such views infect, also, the expectant ministers of religion. But they too, to a lamentable extent, are carried away by the same delusion. They think of nothing more nor higher than storing their minds with all theological lore, and are content with the old adage, “a good

textuary is a good divine." Especially if an elevated piety be added to extensive knowledge, they deem themselves thoroughly furnished to their work; and taste at last the sad fruits of their folly when too late to retrieve it. Insensible of the importance of skill in the use of their armor, they wonder that at the very appearance of it, the enemies of truth do not fall prostrate. Utterly ignorant of the power of expressing thought and feeling, the most moving truths of the gospel fall powerless from their lips. Sabbath after Sabbath, they enter the pulpit and deliver from lips that at least express no feeling, discourses as destitute of force and passion to hearers that are equally motionless and dead. Years gradually wear away the little enthusiasm that the ardor of youth forced, insensibly to themselves, into their preaching, and then all is cold and repulsive. The house of God, of consequence, is neglected. The congregation are wearied and disgusted. They demand more effective preachers. And those men of God, who might have become able ministers of the word, sought out and esteemed by all, are dispirited and sad, leave the field which they find they cannot till successfully; and the church of God mourns over the loss of their piety, talents, and acquirements-all rendered ineffective by their neglect to cultivate one important gift.. Oh! would that the children of this world were not here so much wiser in their generation than the children of light. Surely, his six months diligent culture of his voice, with half-shorn head in a cave, was not misjudged policy, wasted time and sacrifice, for the Grecian orator, by which he was to attain the empire of factious Athens, the sway of all their furious passions by a word, to procure for himself an immortality of glory, such as no other mortal ever attained. Is it unwise, is it wrong for the servant of God to devote time and labor to acquire a similar power over the minds and hearts of men-not that he may gain glory to himself-not that he may preserve to them their rights and civil liberties, but that he may save their souls and bring additional glory to the God of their salvation?

I repeat, then, here is a great, a most important duty laid before him who aspires to the elevation of a successful Christian minister. It is not enough to possess the power of thinking, to be thoroughly imbued with all theological lore, -to have a heart of warm Christian sensibilities, of strong, fervent zeal and passion. These are essential-entirely indispensable. But they are not all. The power of expressing