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to be also an instructive lecture, imparting new information, reviewing that which is already known, starting new trains of thought, and inducing new habits of reflection. Preaching, to be useful, on the largest scale and with a permanent influence, must excite and satisfy the intellect, not after a vulgar and fashionable sort, by setting the crowd agape, by affectations and caprice, but by stirring the mind with earnest argument, and enriching it with new principles and new applications of principles. We have shown how the Scriptures are fitted to be the food of the intellect, and what means of interest they present to the preacher who will draw them out for the use of his hearers. He then who will bring out their various wealth and accompany this wealth by the earnest and quickening action of his own excited intellect, cannot but benefit his hearers. His preaching will be a constant and generous education of their minds as well as a discipline of their hearts. His preaching will be regarded with a constantly increasing interest, and the effect will be seen in a people eager for information and enlightened in respect to all those great questions, concerning which man most needs to be well instructed.

Expository preaching is demanded by the errors peculiar to our times. These errors are summed up in a prevailing disesteem for the value and the authority of the Scriptures. By a large and increasing class of men of eager and active minds, the reality of a supernatural revelation is rejected. Industrious and insidious efforts are made to extend these opinions. They are boldly avowed, as if the whole contest was to be carried by the very force of audacity. They are insinuated by the most subtle and fascinating devices of ingenious craft. They are diffused through attractive books and more attractive lectures. Not only is the supernatural authority of the Scriptures rejected or thrust aside, but those who profess to receive it treat this authority with little practical deference; on the one hand, breaking down the Scriptures by loads of meaning which they will not bear, or on the other, weakening them to utter inanition, by taking from them all positive import, and even the possibility of possessing any import at all. Objections against their historic truth and consistency are confidently asserted and rarely answered. It is taken for granted that their truths, if they declare any, are at war with the intellect and science of the day, and that the cultivated intellect of the times has far outrun their teachings, in respect both to the sciences of nature, and the science of morals, so that the Scriptures are now in a fair way to be voted down at scientific conventions and in political cabals. There is no use in disguising this state of things. Every preacher who will conde

scend to acquaint himself with the actual judgments of many in the community in which he lives, and even of many in his own flock, will find that this indefinite or completed infidelity in respect to the authority or the import of the Bible, prevails more widely than he has been aware. There is but one way to stem this current of evil. The Scriptures must be vindicated from the pulpit and in the pulpit, by using them freely and expounding them intelligently, with reference too, to the subtle or open unbelief which we have described. Doctrinal preaching will not meet this difficulty, for what hold can the most convincing array of proof texts have upon that person who rejects, or half believes the authority of the book from whence they are drawn. Fine preaching, as it is called, gratifies the taste, amuses the fancy, and confirms the unbeliever in the conviction that the preacher regards the Bible with as little respect as he does himself. For, he reasons shortly but surely, if he reverenced the book, he would preach it more, and himself less, frequently. The mystic vein is respected for its good intentions, its amicable spirit and its cultivation of the religious nature, but it cannot command the respect, nor control the conscience, that needs to be warned and overawed by the awful facts which it cannot deny, and by the stern realism of an angry God who has spoken to sinning man. Nothing will so effectually vindicate the Bible, as the intelligent use of the Bible by the preacher, who shows that he understands its import and the relations of its import to the history of the past, as well as to the doubts of the present time. We shall not be understood to say, that questions of learned interpretation, or questions of scientific exegesis, are to be brought into the pulpit, that the mythic theory and the various schemes of inspiration are to be learnedly discussed. We intend no such thing. Rather should the truth of the Scriptures as history, science and revelation be so justified that error should be excluded as impossible, and the arguments of error should be powerless to the well instructed mind. Rather should a respect for the Scriptures be so deeply inwrought by their manifested truthfulness and worth, that neither open denial, nor insidious unbelief should be able to gain a hearing with the mind.

But the most important service, which the practice of expository preaching would render both to preachers and their hearers, would be to change the prevalent style of preaching, so far as it is at fault, and to correct the popular taste. It is not in good taste, we know, to complain of preaching or of preachers. Sometimes it is done from no good motives and in no good temper. We believe, however, if the opinion of very many discerning and candid men, both of the clergy and laity, could be distinctly ut

tered, they would earnestly condemn certain prevailing tendencies in preaching, as degrading to the clerical profession, and likely to vitiate both the taste and the piety of the churches. We care not to discuss the question who is most at fault in this matter, nor how and whence these tendencies originated. We are most concerned to know, how they may be arrested. The ambitious and affected cast of discussion in the pulpit which seems designed to startle and surprise, rather than to instruct, to invigorate and to warm, is no harmless nor trivial evil. Whether it be the ambition of style or the ambition of thought, whether the affectation be that of paradox or of oddity, of conceits or of piety, so far as it is designed to make the people stare and to constitute the preacher a marked man, it is hostile both to the dignity and the sacredness of the clerical profession and to the true growth and steadfastness of the churches.

The most effectual way to be rid of these evils is to displace them by that which is better. There is no way of doing this more effectually than by a resort to the Scriptures and the intelligent and glowing exposition of the stores of thought and feeling, of discussion and of appeal, which the Scriptures embody, and will give up under the hand of the workman. There is a manifest superiority in the manner in which truth is handled in the Bible, which will shame away all the trickery of a forced and fantastic eloquence. There is a severe simplicity of expres sion, which will correct an unhealthy taste. Above all, there is an earnest sternness and a fiery directness, that cannot tolerate nor even endure anything that is not business-like, manly and zealous. Let expository preaching be introduced into our churches, and it will form anew the style of preaching, and the popular taste, not by a sudden and marked revolution, but by a slow but certain transformation.

The charge of the late Dr. John M. Mason to his people, from his farewell sermon, is altogether pertinent to our purpose, and adds to our argument the authority of an eminent example and model of pulpit eloquence :-" Do not choose a man who always preaches upon isolated texts. I care not how powerful or eloquent he may be in handling them. The effect of his power and eloquence will be, to banish a taste for the word of God and to substitute the preacher in its place. You have been accustomed to hear that word preached to you in its connection. Never permit that practice to drop. Foreign churches call it lecturing; and when done with discretion, I can assure you, that, while it is of all exercises the most difficult for the preacher, it is, in the same proportion, the most profitable for you. It has this peculiar advantage, that in going through a book of Scrip

ture, it spreads out before you all sorts of character, and all forms of opinion; and gives the preacher an opportunity of striking every kind of evil and of error, without subjecting him to the invidious suspicion of aiming his discourses at individuals."

We are not insensible to the difficulties that the enterprise proposed would encounter. We know that labor and ingenuity must be severely tasked, that the preacher must give himself to the earnest search for truth and for illustrations, more perhaps than to the study of startling groupings of thought and of galvanic spasms of expression. We know that many prejudices must be encountered, that old and inveterate habits must be abandoned, and that patience and hope must whisper the promise of the satisfaction that is long deferred. But we believe that to him who will labor as he may, and will labor as patiently and as long as he must, the reward will come, in abundant and blessed satisfaction to himself and his hearers.

W. A. Larned.

ART. VII.-LIFE AND WRITINGS OF
CAMPBELL.

Life and Letters of Thomas Campbell. Edited by WILLIAM BEATTIE, M.D., one of his Executors. In Two Volumes. New York: Harper and Brothers, Publishers, 82 Cliff-Street. 1850. The Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell. With a Memoir of his Life, and an Essay on his Genius and Writings. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 200 Broadway. Philadelphia: Geo. S. Appleton, 148 Chestnut-Street. 1847.

We have had it in mind for some time past to give an account of the life and writings of Thomas Campbell; the publication of Dr. Beattie's work affords us a favorable opportunity for accomplishing this purpose.

Dr. Beattie's work is on the whole a good one. It is not written with any preeminent excellence of style, though well enough for his object. But the materials which he has collected, besides displaying the character of the poet in its true light and vindicating it from many aspersions, are in themselves peculiarly interesting. The letters of Campbell are the outpourings of thoughts and feelings which arose spontaneously and which were uttered just as they arose without the forethought of being published. The literary history of

several of his poems is given with sufficient particularity; and there are many anecdotes of the distinguished men of the age. The memoir prefixed to the edition of his poetical works is taken from Fraser's Magazine, but besides being erroneous in a few particulars, it was written by some one who had not entire sympathy with Campbell, and who, as a consequence, has failed to do him justice.

There were two enemies which pursued Campbell through life— Highland pride, and poverty. For the former, he was not altogether to blame; for it came down to him, we dare say, from old Sir Neil, contemporary with King Robert Bruce, through all the devious windings of the clan Campbell, undiluted and unimpaired. His poverty he might have resisted better, had it not been that with his Highland pride, nature had given him more than a Highland heart, which beat in sympathy not only for all the near and "far awa' "Campbells, but also for every human sufferer. We mention this at the outset, because his pride and poverty working against each other often involved him in difficulties, and in consequence there has been a certain style of sneer and pity in speaking about him which misrepresents his real character. Thus the writer in Fraser's Magazine exclaims, "Poor Tom Campbell! he exhausted all his sympathy on the Poles and spent all his invectives on Russia." If the writer lives and has read the present memoir, he will have seen that Campbell's sympathy, instead of being exhausted, continued to grow warmer and more expansive to the last days of life. And surely, the writer of the best lyrics in the English language, the life-long friend of Scott and Stewart and Alison and Jeffrey and others too many to be mentioned, the founder of the London University, and the constant friend and protector of the exiled patriots of every land, needs not the pity of any man.

Campbell traced his family, as we have already intimated, to a remote antiquity, even to the time of King Robert Bruce. The Campbells of Kirnan-the branch to which the poet's family belonged-had an estate in the vale of Glassary as early as the fourteenth century, and it continued in their possession for several generations, till the death of Archibald Campbell, when it passed into other hands. Archibald Campbell left three sons; Robert, who was a political writer in London, under the auspices of Walpole ; Archibald, who first went to Jamaica as a Presbyterian minister, but afterwards came to Virginia, where he continued to reside; and Alexander, the father of the poet. Alexander Campbell was a merchant. He commenced business at Falmouth, in Virginia, but afterwards returned to Scotland and settled in Glasgow, where he and a clansman, Daniel Campbell, entered into copartnership as Virginia traders. The firm continued in prosperous business for twenty years. But our Revolutionary War seriously interfered with

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