alluded to, and to the best of my friend's belief is known as a whole to but few, and those few chiefly the descendants of the actual partakers in it.

Lord Ballybrophy, the reader will be glad to hear, recovered in due time from his attack, and lived to a good old age, respected by all who knew him. The Kennedy family soon afterward left Mount

Kennedy for good; the property was let upon a long grazing lease; the house shut up, and by degrees fell into that condition of neglect and decay in which we now see it. With regard to old Thady O'Roon, about whom I specially inquired, my friends could give me no further information.-Murray's Magazine.

I.

THE eternal rule of hard work applies to preaching. If there be one principle which the preacher above other men needs to remember it is that the sweat of the brow is as needful for him who labors to feed others as for him who labors to feed himself. From nothing comes nothing. We cannot get from the earth unless we give to the earth. There is a shame, too, which hangs round the idleness of the preacher; for he is not only as one whose indolence indicates a slovenly contempt for his hearers, he is also as one who offers to God what costs him nothing. Dr. Chalmers took as much pains with the preparation of his simple sermons for village folk as with his sermons for university and educated congregations. He who lives as in his great Taskmaster's eye will reverence his work and those for whom he works. He will not be content with what comes easily. He could not be content with what is merely ingenious. Forever he must be asking himself, "Is it true ?" "Is it true to me?" He will work not only till his subject is clear to his mind, as crystal truth is clear, but he will work till his soul is possessed of the truth. He will muse till the fire kindles.

But this hard and earnest work must not be supposed to be work within a limited time; as, for instance, between one Sunday and another. The hard work which is requisite goes far beyond the range of the week or the framework of the single sermon. The work is the work of constant study and of the accumulation of material far beyond the bare requirements

of the sermon. I am tempted to quote the following from Dr. Fitch's excellent work on teaching, for what he says of the teacher applies with tenfold force to the preacher. "No one can teach the whole or even the half of what he knows. There is a large percentage of waste and loss in the very act of transmission, and you can never convey into another mind nearly all of what you know or feel on any subject. Before you can impart a given piece of knowledge, you yourself must not only have appropriated it, you must have gone beyond it and all round it; must have seen it in its true relations to other facts and truths; must know out of what it originated, and to what others it is intended to lead."

The

The truth of this is constantly forced upon us, alike by failure and success. My own experience-if I may venture in this one point to speak of it-my own experience is that in the production of a sermon the unseen work with material and study must vastly exceed the seen work. block out of which the statue is carved is vast compared with the statue, and the actual lines of the statue do not represent one tithe of the labor the signs and tokens of which may be seen on the rejected material. Speaking of the preacher, Cecil remarked: He is a merchant embarking in extensive concerns. A little ready money in the pocket will not answer the demands that will be made upon him. Some of us seem to think that it will, but they are grossly deceived. There must be a well-furnished account at the bank

to say, with few exceptions, 'No one, having tasted old wine, straightway desireth new; for he saith the old is better.'" I do not commit myself to Robert Hall's list, still less would I confine myself to it; but the spirit of the counsel is good and worthy of attention-for he cannot well and fitly understand his own times, nor even the writers of his own times, who knows nothing of those ages which went before his own, and also cannot number among his acquaintances those great men of the past without whom the present never had been what it is.

The preacher, however, has a further aim. It is his duty to keep divine thoughts before men.

Human he must be, and the more truly human the better. If he is the best divine who well divines he will be the best preacher who shows that the intricacies and curiosities of human character, the ebb and flow of human hope, the strange antitheses between men's lofty aspirations and their grovelling desires, the pathetic falls and the more pathetic heroisms, the plaintive music of human hearts when deep calleth unto deep, the sins, sorrows, and the sadness of humanity are known to him. Whatever he speaks of divine things he must speak in the language of humanity. Nay, more, he must speak the language of the humanity of his own day. But he must not be the mere echo of the thoughts of men-a voice answering back to the voice of their weakness or their despair. He must be more than the mirror to human nature. Of him we may say as Schiller said of the poet : He is the son of his time, but pity for him if he is its pupil or its favorite. Let some beneficent deity snatch him when a suckling from the breast of his mother and nurse him with the milk of a better time. The preacher must be nursed upon the breast of Heaven. He must draw his inspiration from the world which is the world not of shadows but of realities. He must be the voice, even if it be in an irresponsive wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord. He must be the herald of that which never dies in a world wherein all things seem to die. He must restore the poetry of hope to humankind.

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The subject-range of the sermon is very great. Judged by the vast variety of topics which have been treated of in the pulpit we might conclude that any defini

tion of the scope and object of preaching was impossible. The latest development of political agitation, the newest social development, the most recent discovery, the most sensational public scandal, the most striking scientific theory, the last novel, the last crime, the last fad, the last failure, are among pulpit topics. How can any definition of the aim of the preaching be reached when the range of subjects is so great and so diversified? I desire to exclude no subject which can be profitably treated in the pulpit. No doubt the most unpromising theme may be made fruitful of good, as surely as the dullest preacher may teach us patience. But if a preacher has no aim beyond passing an hour in amusing and interesting his people, he becomes the lecturer or the promoter of entertainments, and becoming these he ceases to be the preacher. It is, perhaps, not needless to recall to our minds that the end of preaching and the end of worship is edification of some sort. There is too much of the "variety of attraction" spirit in the notices of Sunday services and sermons. We cannot pass along the street without seeing placards announcing the sensational topic of next Sunday's sermon or the distinguished artists who are to form the principal attraction in buildings which were once thought to be houses of prayer. I recognize the kindness and generosity of those who thus lend their talents and gifts to the promotion of some good object. Far be it from me to suggest that any gift may not be consecrated to the service of God and to the highest good of mankind. But for all that, the modern development of sensationalism in church appears to me to have a large admixture of the flavor of advertisement and suggests the desperation which clutches at a cheap and shallow success of (in a bad sense) a popular service instead of the calm earnestness which seeks to benefit the people and the Church of God. It is needful to keep in mind the divine calling of the preacher. Make the range of his preaching as wide as you will, yet let the light of what is divine shine over it. Let him travel to the remotest end of the earth in his subject, but let him not forget that as on every land the same sun shines, so over every subject a divine light should be shed.

Here we may, perhaps, reach what may pass for a definition. The scope of the

II.

preacher's work is to bring the Heavenly into the earthly-to bring the divine near to the human. He thus can bring back what is better than romance to human life.

The world may be too much with us, but on the Sunday at least the preacher will remind us of the light which never was yet always is on sea and land. The path we tread may be dark and our prospects gloomy and cloudy, but the preacher will point out the bow in the cloud-the token of changeless and faithful love-eternal in the heavens. The complications of modern questions may be perplexing and bewildering, the changes around too rapid and alarming, but the quiet hours of the Sunday will bring to us the remembrance of how God fulfils Himself in many ways, and how all things may be working around for good toward that one divine far-off event to which the whole creation moves. To fail to put this divine touch upon the wearied and wandering lives of men is to fail in preaching. To send people

home amused and interested is not a worthy aim. Instruct and teach, if you will. Interest them if you can. Beguile them from the overmuch sadness of life, if you think well. But strive above all to let them return to their toil with the deeper conviction of the eternal realities, a profounder sense of the spiritual education of this life, and a more tender and unwavering persuasion of the nearness of Him in Whose presence is fulness of joy, and in the knowledge of Whom is eternal life. The highest influence of this kind is expressed in Jean Ingelow's poem, "Brothers and a Sermon." When the

hearer leaves the church he leaves it with such a vivid sense of the near presence of the Lord that he is prepared to find Him every where :

"I have heard many speak, but this one man-
So anxious not to go to Heaven alone-
This one man I remember, and his look,
Till twilight overshadowed him. He ceased,
And out in darkness with the fisher-folk

We passed and stumbled over mounds of

moss,

And heard, but did not see the passing beck. Ah, graceless heart, would that it could regain

From the dim storehouse of sensations past
The impress full of tender awe, that night,
Which fell on me! It was as if the Christ
Had been drawn down from Heaven to track
us home,

And any of the footsteps following us
Might have been His."

W. B. RIPON.

If

IT is with considerable hesitation that I sit down to write on the subject of preaching. I am very far indeed from regarding myself as an authority on the subject. To preach aright has always seemed to involves an immense responsibility. me a serious problem, and to preach at all there are any who can contemplate the duty with a light heart, I am not one of them. To see before you the faces of hundreds, sometimes even of thousands, of men and women; to know that some of them at least are hungering and thirsting after righteousness; to know that the multitude is composed of men, women, and the youth of both sexes, and that the word spoken may prove to be for some of them a message from God and the turningpoint of a life; to know something of the struggles, the doubts, the difficulties, the temptations, the deadly perils, by lest we should incur the reproach due to which they are variously beset; to fear

those whose

"Lean and flashy songs

straw;

Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched The hungry sheep look up and are not fed, But, swoll'n with wind, and the rank mist they draw,

Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread"all this is, to a serious man, a very serious matter. "When I walk up the aisle of Westminster Abey," said Canon Kingsley to a friend," and see those gathered thousands, I wish myself dead; and when I walk back again after the sermon I wish myself more dead.'

Sermons are, and for the last two centuries have been, a common butt for the scorn of wits and men of the world. I attribute this in part to the depth of inanity, dulness, and artificiality to which, with a few brilliant exceptions, they fell at the Restoration, and throughout the eighteenth century. I do not think it would be fair to say that the general run of average preaching in these days is at all contemptible. I hear many sermons, preached by curates and by clergymen en tirely unknown, and am constantly struck with the fact that if there be in one's self the least trace of "meek heart and due reverence, ," the sermons are few indeed which may not produce at least their passing and infinitesimal effect for good. It is true that many sermons-one's own

and others' are trite, feeble, commonplace; it cannot possibly be otherwise. There are twenty thousand clergy in the English Church, and many of us are very ordinary and every-day persons, who have not the faintest pretence to profoundness or eloquence. But then we share these limitations of faculty with our lay critics. We find the tedious and the platitudinous quite as much in books, newspapers, law courts, Parliamentary debates, and magazines as in sermons. Sermons would be just as bad if you turned out all the clergy to-morrow and put twenty thousand of their most disdainful and self-satisfied critics in their place. The clergy possess no monopoly of dulness or patent of unprofitableness. If very few of us arc great, or wise, or clever, we at least stand intellectually on a level with the mass of our hearers. To most men God does not give ten talents, but only one; and that only in an earthen vessel. It is impossible to expect an endless succession of

""

thoughts that breathe and words that burn' from a preacher whose powers at the best are but ordinary; who may be suffering at any moment from sickness of body or depression of spirits; who is, in very many instances, involved in endless work and unceasing worry; whose heart may be aching with anxiety, and whose life may be burdened by poverty and all the sordid cares which it inevitably brings. And when we remember that most clergymen, in the midst of heavy parochial burdens, have to produce-not rare and splendid conférences at Advent or Easter like some of the great French preachersbut two sermons, or more, regularly every week, besides various addresses, we shall, I think, be struck with the general excellence of sermons; at any rate we shall be less impatient of their many defects.

"The worst speak something good; if all want sense,

God takes a text, and preacheth patience."

There are, I frankly admit, some sermons which are simply detestable. When the preacher is conceited, affected, and manifestly unreal; when he betrays his ignorance while he is pretending to a knowledge and authority which he does not possess; when he is insinuating some disputed and paltry party dogma, instead of pressing home the great, broad, simple truths of the Gospel; when he is indulg

ing in "loud-lunged anti-Babylonianisms'' instead of "preaching simple Christ to simple men ;' when he is abusing the coward's castle of his pulpit to slander his betters, and to teach the sham science of castes and the sham theology of cliques, or to air the cut and dried snippings of the formula with which he has been assiduously crammed at his party training place; when he is doing anything but "Preach as never sure to preach again,

And as a dying man to dying men"

all hearers are free to turn their thoughts to something else with such charity for the preacher as they may. But so long as he is evidently and transparently sincere; so long as he confines himself to preaching the plain eternal truths of the Gospel of Christ; so long as he insists on the fundamental and primary truth that "what that supreme and sacred Majesty requires of us is Innocence alone," I think that the most critical of hearers ought to bear with his limitations of power, or his ineradicable defects of manner and style. After all, the lowest claim which any sermon could put forward would be a claim to rhetorical skill, or literary finish. If a sermon attempts to charm the ear or the mind, it should only be as a means of moving the heart. Moral and spiritual edification is the humble yet lofty aim of every truc Christian pulpit. It is as St. Augustine said, docere, flectere, movere,to arrest the careless, to strengthen the weak, to lift up the fallen, to bring the wanderer home.

This is the deeper aspect of preaching, and a clergyman must indeed have been indifferent or unfortunate if, during his ministry, abundant proofs have not come to him that even the ministrations which he himself, as well as many of his hearers, regarded as so feeble and imperfect have yet fallen as with dews of blessing on many souls.

But I must turn to questions of voice and gesture.

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1. Most Englishmen have a just horror of the word of the word elocution," because they think that it means something histrionic and artificial, which in the pulpit is more offensive than any other fault. For if a preacher gives himself any airs and graces, or indulges in theatrical tones or studied gesticulations, if he thinks of himself at all, and so ceases to be his own natural and