especially when the anxious question comes to be, What deficiencies prove a man to be no christian?

Now a hearer, left to some coolness of thought, was tempted to say to himself, What do the people think of this?-if indeed they do think, if they be not beguiled away from reflection. How does it strike the many persons in this large assembly, who, respectable perhaps as men of the world, make no pretension to what is meant by personal religion; and how those others who despise or hate it, and would hardly endure to hear any thing about it but for the sake of the eloquence which they think might have been more worthily employed? Are they carrying out, in imagination, this brilliant picture into the real world, where they have observed and descried, with no little vigilance, the culpable tempers, habits, and proceedings, the inconsistencies, weaknesses, and errors, of many whom the preacher himself would be the last man to pronounce altogether destitute of piety? But if they do make this invidious use of the description, will they not with pernicious self-complacency assume-not exactly that all are alike, but-that none are christians, or that super-emphatically they must be "few that be saved," if absolutely this alone be christianity? Why let them go off with this mischievous advantage?

And how does it strike the persons here, who stand in the recognised accepted class of the religious? Have they, while hearing this elevated strain, any such thing as reflection on themselves? Is their conscience lulled by what might seem adapted in all reason to alarm it? Have they no secret monition are the very serpents themselves that infest a corrupt and but imperfectly renovated nature, so charmed into stillness that there is no consciousness-of many things which this grand exemplar shines but to expose and condemn? What! is there no internal voice to accuse them, any of them, of such things as a proneness to an excessive love of the world, as coldness of devotion, reluctance to duty, insubordination to the divine will, lapses into a besetting sin, the indulgence of evil tempers, selfish competition with fellow-mortals, frequent forgetfulness of hereafter? If there be not; if their admiration of the

• I recollect the instance of a gentleman expressing, at the conclusion of the public service, the highest admiration of the preacher, and adding, "What pity Mr. Hall's great talents had not been destined to the Bar or the House of Commons, where he would have made so capital a figure!"

beautiful image of christian excellence in the abstract carry them away from all consciousness of what is unlike it in themselves, it is quite time to come down to a strain that shall turn their thoughts homeward, and bring them into a consideration of what they are virtually doing in admiring such a model; shall excite them to reflect, if they so admire one and another feature of it, what they should think of this and the other circumstance in their actual condition. It would be well to bring them to the questions of, What is the difference? and, Why such a difference? and, What would be the right feeling under the self-conviction of such a difference? Let them not be suffered to regard this bright model merely as the ideal representation of something so unattainable on earth, that they are absolved from any serious consideration whether, and how, they have formed a judgement of what is attainable and must be attained; what they are really wishing to attain; what they think they have attained; why it is no more; what are the conscious evils yet unsubdued; what they deem the proportion of those evils to be to the better part; how they measure that proportion, and ascertain the predominance of the good; and whether they be disposed to content themselves with that state of the case.

But if, on the contrary, this bright exhibition of the christian character, instead of playing harmlessly over them like an aurora borealis, has sent his rays deeply into their souls, and is bringing more plainly to their own view the evils lurking there, the sinful propensities, the spiritual disorders of whatever class, with the addition of the moral and practical ones resulting externally, in what manner are they adjusting that very serious contrast, so as to maintain a confidence that, nevertheless, on the whole the case is safe? No doubt it must be, by making very large allowances for the sad imperfection of our nature. But would it not be well for the christian instructor to endeavour to take that somewhat hazardous process out of the hands of their self-love, by interfering himself in the adjudication of what may be conceded to a fallen nature, on such conditions as shall not essentially invalidate the demands of religion?

As the last observation I would take the liberty to make, I may note the same prevailing inadvertence to the realities of life in Mr. Hall's manner of representing the happiness conferred by religion; premising, as a thing somewhat of a piece

with this particular, that he would sometimes indulge in language hardly consonant to either theory or experience in what, undesignedly, it seemed to imply of the facility of entering, by a transition of spirit and action, on the christian life. I will confess he did appear to me, in reference to this matter, to lose sight too much, when he surrendered himself to the animated current of his sentiments, of the desperate and obstinate alienation of the human soul from its Creator. It was not that he did not most fully believe this to be the condition of our nature, on the evidence of both Scripture and notorious fact; or that he did not hold, according to the strictest Calvinistic construction, the doctrine of the necessity of a special divine agency for men's conversion to a new spiritual state; but that, when his mind was kindled at the attractions and glories of religion, he would forget, for the time, both how lost are those attractions on a corrupt nature, and what a dreadful combination of influences there is to retain it in its aversion.

But to revert to the specified topic, the representation of the happiness of the christian character. He would describe with a prolonged effusion of beautiful sentiment and language, the delightful confidence in the divine favour, the harmony and communion of the pious spirit with its God and Saviour, the independence on sublunary things, the superiority to the cares and distractions of life, the serenity of trust in Providence under the greatest trials or most menacing presages, the cordial invariable acquiescence in the divine dispensations, the victory over the fear of death, the unclouded prospect into eternity. Now it needs not be said that such would be the felicities of a condition exalted to the absolute perfection of christianity; or that the religious instructor should point to these elevations, as the eminence toward which it is the tendency of religion to draw the human spirit, and toward which a christian is to aspire, however remote his utmost ascent may be from reaching it. He may do well to cite from the memorials of good men, some of the examples most remarkably approaching to a practical evidence, that such is the felicity which it is in the nature of religion to impart. And he will have at once to reprove those who, regarding such a privileged existence as something like a visionary scene suspended in the sky, rather than a state partially attainable by mortals, are resting with a dull acquiescence in a poverty of religious enjoyment; and to console

and animate those whose earnest aspirations are repressed by the consciousness how little they attain. But if, in describing the happiness of a christian, he take it at its highest degree, to which the experience of the most devout men has risen only at some favoured seasons, (at least if they had much to do with the world's concerns,) and spread out the representation in imagery all formed of the finest elements, omitting to advert to the actual state of good men, so beset and overrun with things which deny them to be so happy, it would be inevitable for the supposed cool-minded hearer to have his thoughts once more looking off to matters of fact. He would say to himself, "It may be taken as certain, that many among the sincere christians in this assembly are in circumstances which must make them listen to this unqualified representation with pain or with incredulity. Some of them are harassed, without the possibility of escape, by the state of their worldly affairs; perhaps suffering or dreading disasters beyond the reach of prudence to prevent; anxiously awaiting a critical turn of events; vexed beyond the patience of Job by the untowardness, selfishness, or dishonesty encountered in their transactions. Some are enduring the cares and hardships of poverty. Some are distressed by bad dispositions among their nearest kindred; perhaps by anticipations, grievous in proportion to their piety, of the conduct and ultimate destiny of their children. Some may have come here for an hour who are fixed in the sad situation of witnessing the slow but certain progress of persons, whose life is on all accounts most important to them, in a descent toward the grave. Some are experiencing, while strenuously maintaining, a severe conflict between the good and evil in their own minds. Some may be in mortifying recollection of lapses into which they have been betrayed. Some are of melancholic temperament; and while striving to keep hold of their faith and hope, are apt to see whatever concerns their welfare in an unfavourable view in every direction, and especially in looking forward to death. Some, of contemplative disposition, are often oppressed, even to a degree of danger to their piety, by the gloom which involves the economy of the world, where moral evil has been predominant through all the course of time. In short, it is probable that the much larger proportion of the religious persons now present are in no condition to allow a possibility of their yielding themselves in

sympathy with the spirit of this celebration of the happiness of religion. Would it not, then, be a more useful manner of illustrating this subject, to carry it into a trial on the actual circumstances of the christian life; to place it, with appropriate discriminations, by the side of the real situations of good men ; to shew that, notwithstanding all, religion can insure a preponderance of happiness; to demonstrate how it can do so; to point out the most efficacious means, in each case respectively, and urge their diligent use; to suggest consolations for deficient success, with a note of admonition respecting such of its causes as require that reproof be mixed with encouragement; all the while keeping in view that condition of our existence on earth, which renders it inevitable that the happiness created even by religion, for the men most faithfully devoted to it, should not be otherwise than greatly incomplete?"

These observations have grown to a length beyond my intention or expectation; and I should have been better pleased if I could have felt assured, that a far less protracted criticism might suffice for an intelligible description of the nature and operation of certain things, in the character of Mr. Hall's ministration, which I had presumed to think not adapted, in the proportion of its eminent intellectual superiority, to practical effect.

It is not to be exacted of the greatest talents that they have an equal aptitude to two widely different modes of operation. Nor is any invidious comparison to be made between the respective merits of excelling in the one and in the other. But, indeed, it were impossible to make any comparative estimate that should be invidious to Mr. Hall, if the question were of intellect, considered purely as a general element of strength. To attain high excellence in the manner of preaching which I have indicated as what might be a more useful than his, though it require a clear-sighted faculty, disciplined in vigilant and various exercise, is within the competence of a mind of much more limited energy and reach than Mr. Hall's power and range of speculative thought. At the same time it is not to be denied, that such a mode of conducting the ministration, whatever were the talents employed, were they even of the highest order, would demand a much more laborious and complicated process than it cost our great preacher to produce his luminous expositions of christian doctrine, with