failure of the pulpit to reach certain classes of society is attributable to a distance between the pulpit and the pew which a more thorough knowledge of men would do away with.

Said one of these lay critics, speaking of the sermons of a certain pastor in Massachusetts, "Mr. B always seems to me to be just about to begin, to get ready, in prodigious earnest to do something; but the something never looms in sight." The criticism was true. The radical defect in that pastor's sermons was not want of culture, not want of piety, not want of power innate ; but, relatively to the character of his hearers, it was an excess of scholasticism. He commonly preached, either from or at the last book he had read, often at the last thrust of skepticism from "The Westminster Review." This he did to an audience made up chiefly of tradesmen and mechanics, and operatives in a factory, who never heard of "The Westminster Review" outside of their

pastor's sermons. To them he seemed always to begin a great way off.

LECTURE III.

STUDY OF MEN, CONTINUED.

ECCENTRIC PREACHERS.

OPPOSITE RELATIONS OF LITERATURE AND THE PULPIT TO THE MASSES. - POPULAR REVOLUTIONS AND THE EDUCATED CLASSES.

8. CONTINUING the train of thought introduced in the preceding Lectures, I venture upon another suggestion, which to some may seem questionable. Let it pass for what it is worth. It is, that we should be watchful of the ministries of certain eccentric clergymen.

In every age of religious awakening, there is a class of preachers who break away from the conventionalities of the pulpit lawlessly. They trample upon timehonored usages. They are apt to handle irreverently the opinions and the policy of the fathers. As a consequence, they originate new methods of preaching. In many respects they do evil. Whether the average of their influence is evil or good may be an open question.

Such preachers, though not safe models for imitation, are valuable subjects of homiletic study. Though they may be heretical in doctrine, they furnish instructive. hints to sounder men. Specially they are apt to preach as men coming down to and into the homes of men. They have the knack of making men believe that preaching is a reality to them. The impression they make is that of a business of real life. Better men and wiser

preachers looking on may learn things from them which shall both broaden and deepen the reach of the pulpit. Those most dissimilar to them may be roused by them to feel the inanity of some things which were invaluable when they were original, but which the world has outlived, and which are now effete. The tendencies of the clerical mind to live upon routine are sometimes checked by one such comet in the clerical firmament.

A popular critic, a few years ago, observed that not one in twenty of the newspapers of the week before had failed to make some allusion to the Rev. AB. When that can be said of any clergyman who has not committed forgery, and said after he has been in the public eye for twenty-five years, it is a sign of power in the man. Such a ministry as his is worth studying. It is an egregious folly to imitate him his sermons no other man can reproduce. But it is impossible that they should not contain elements which can be transfused into the preaching of other men with advantage. We may well give time and thought to the ministry of any man who holds together by thousands, and for years, keen, clear-headed laymen in the church, and who reaches a corresponding class of minds outside of the church. The ministry of any such preacher is a legitimate object of homiletic study, whatever we may think or suspect of the man.

On the other hand, we have reason to be anxious about any ministry which is visibly producing no impression, no evil, no good, perceptibly. I do not say that such an appearance is always real. But it should cause anxiety: it should set a preacher to searching for the facts, and to the righting of errors. That is never the normal attitude of the pulpit in which it barely

LECT. I.] PREACHING IN TIMES OF EXCITEMENT.

35

holds its own. In such a state of things it will generally be found that something new in the methods of the pulpit is practicable and wise. We should keep our minds, then, in a receptive mood towards the apparent successes of preachers unlike ourselves. Prove those successes, hold fast only that which can be proved; but study them. Be sure that you reject nothing that is proved.

An objection to the views here advocated deserves a moment's notice. We are said to be living in an age of unnatural excitements; and the pulpit, it is believed, ought not to cater to them. "Safe men" tell us that we must not be whirled out of the old orbits of the planets by cometary and centrifugal attractions.

To this it should be observed, in rejoinder, that the charge may be true, without damage to the clerical policy here commended. It may be that we are living in an abnormal current of social changes. It may be that we are passing through a period of transition in history in which one sea is pouring itself through a narrow channel into another, like Erie into Ontario. Niagara, therefore, may be the fit emblem of our modern life. We may be approaching very near to the last times. The world may be moving with a rush which is its ultimate momentum. But one of the first principles of Christianity is to take men as it finds them and where it finds them, and thus and there to adjust itself to them. Its mission is to do for men all that it can do under the disadvantages which sin or any other invincible fact creates. A Christian pulpit can not wait for men to come into a state in which they can receive its ministrations gracefully, tastefully, in a scholarly way, or even contemplatively and candidly. Least of all

has the pulpit any right to refuse to be received in any other way.

A preacher's first business is to find men, to go where they are, and then to speak to them as they are, and speak so as to be heard. We must speak to them anywhere and anyhow, so that at the least we get a hearing. That is not wisdom, it is not piety, it is not reverence for venerable things, it is stagnation, it is timidity, often it is mental indolence, sometimes it is a refined but intense selfishness, which holds a preacher still in ancient ruts of ministration through fear of ministering to unnatural excitements. We had better do some things wrong than to do nothing.

9. An educated ministry needs to consider the study of men for rhetorical culture by the side of another fact; which is, that the literature of the world is not constructed for the masses of society. This is true of the great body of literature in any language. Books for the masses are comparatively a modern idea.

(1) The old theory on which national literatures have all been founded was, that readers must inevitably be few. The chief popular forms of any classic literature are the ballad and the drama. Prose literature has not had till recently much of the popular element in any language. In the main, it has never been designed either to represent the common mind, or to be read by the common people. The ballad and the drama also have not been created for readers. They were designed, the one to be sung, and the other to be witnessed on the stage. This was for the very necessary reason that they grew up at a time when the people did not know how to read, and were not expected to become readers. It was a time when in England