Boniface III. induced Phocas, Emperor of the East, in 606, to restrict its use to the Bishop of Rome.

The origin of the term minister is thus given in the Curiosi ties of Literatare :

"The Hall of the School of Equity at Poictiers, where the institutes were read, was called La Ministerie. On which head, Florimond de Demond, speaking of Albert Babinot, one of the first disciples of Calvin, after having said he was called 'The good man,' adds, that, because he had been a student of the Institutes of this Ministerie of Poictiers, Calvin and others styled him Mr. Minister; from whence, afterwards, Calvin took occasion to give the name of Ministers to the pastors of his church."

The old English name, Parson, is supposed to be a corruption of person, the person-by eminence. Fuller remarks that the Scriptures give four names to Christians, taken from the four cardinal graces: saints, for their holiness; believers, for their faith; brethren, for their love; disciples, for their knowledge.

The clergy were originally styled clerks, from the Norman custom of their judges being chosen from the sacred order. In the first century, they were distinguished by the titles of presbyter and bishops. Church music is supposed to have been first introduced by Gregory the Great, A.D., 602. Church-steeples were originally parochial fortresses.

Sidney Smith thus defines the object of preaching: "It is constantly to remind mankind of what mankind is constantly forgetting; not to supply the defects of human intelligence, but to fortify the feebleness of human resolutions; to recall mankind from the by-paths where they turn, into the path of salvation which all know, but few tread."

The aims and topics of the Pulpit have been eloquently condensed by Talfourd. We transcribe the passage :

"The subjects of the Pulpit have never been varied from

the day the Holy Spirit visibly descended on the first advocates of the Gospel in tongues of fire. They are in no danger of being exhausted by frequency, or changed with the vicissitudes of mortal fortune. They have immediate relation to that eternity, the idea of which is the living soul of all poetry and art. It is the province of the preacher of Christianity to develop the connection between this world and the next; to watch over the beginning of a course that will endure forever, and to trace the broad shadows cast from imperishable realities on the shifting scenery of earth. This sublunary sphere does not seem to them as trifling or mean, in proportion as they extend their views onward, but assumes a new grandeur and sanctity, as the vestibule of a statelier and an eternal region. The mysteries of our being, life and death, both in their strange essences and in their sublimer relation, are topics of their ministry. There is nothing affecting in the human conditions, nothing majestic in the affections, nothing touching in the instability of human dignities, the fragility of loveliness, or the heroism of self-sacrifice, which is not a theme suited to their high purposes. It is theirs to dwell on the oldest history of the world; on the beautiful simplicity of the patriarchal age; on the stern and awful religion, and marvellous story of the Hebrews; on the glorious visions of the prophets and their fulfillment; on the character, miracles and death of the Saviour; on all the wonders and all the beauty of the Scriptures. It is theirs to trace the spirit of the boundless and the eternal, faintly breathing in every part of the mystic circle of superstition, unquenched even amidst the most barbarous rites of savage tribes, and all the cold and beautiful shapes of Grecian mould. The inward soul of every religious system, the philosophical spirit of all history, deep secrets of the human heart, when grandest or most wayward, are theirs to search and to develop. Even those speculations which do not immediately affect a man's conduct and his hopes, are theirs, with all their high casuistry; for in these, at least,

they discern the beatings of the soul against the bars of its earthly tabernacle, which proves the immortality of its essence, and its destiny to move in freedom through the vast ethereal circle to which it thus vainly aspires. In all the intensities of feelings, and all the realities of imagination, they may find fitting materials for their passionate expostulations with their fellow-men to turn their hearts to those objects which will endure forever."

The author of the Tin Trumpet makes the following piquant remark: "Some divines are often too deeply read in theology to appreciate the full grandeur and the proper tendencies of religion. Losing the abstract in the concrete, the comprehensive in the technical, the principal in its accessories. Such are in the predicament of the rustic, who could not see London for the houses."

Others, claiming to be religious teachers and superiors, might have done better service in a different department of duty. A dull and illiterate leader will produce his kind in those over whom he presides, since he but administers theological opiates to them, confirming them in their apathy, ignorance, and bigotry. How few divines dare venture to become original; fewer still have we of rational enthusiasts.

How comes it," demanded a Bishop of Garrick, "that I, in expounding divine doctrines, produce so little effect upon my congregation, while you can so easily rouse the passions of your auditors by the representation of fiction?" The answer was short and pithy. "Because I recite falsehoods as if they were true, while you deliver truths as if they were fiction."

Robert Hall, even, admitted that he was tormented with the desire of preaching better than he did. He was for greater earnestness and zeal. It was said of Rowland Hill's preaching, that his ideas, like Baxter's, came hot from the heart. This is effective preaching. Keble sweetly suggests

"Love, on the Saviour's dying head,

Her spikenard drops, unblamed, may pour;

May mount his cross, and wrap him dead,

In spices from the golden shore.

Risen, may embalm his sacred name,

With all a painter's art, and all a minstrel's flame."

Steele observes: "When a man has no design but to speak plain truth, he may say a great deal in a very narrow compass." The true pulpit style is that which brings the intellect down through the heart, and melts all its precious metals in that glowing furnace. Prolixity in preaching is an ancient heresy of the priesthood. As if conscious of this weakness, the Greek and Latin fathers used hour-glasses in their pulpits, to admonish them when to wind up. George Herbert says: "The parson exceeds not an hour in preaching, because all ages have thought that a competency." Southey, in his Commonplace Book, cites a passage from the church records, in 1564, of St. Catharine's, Aldgate, London, which is as follows: "Paid for an hour-glass that hanged by the pulpit when the preacher doth make a sermon, that he may know how the hour passeth away."

A rector of Bilbury, Gloucestershire, was accustomed to preach two hours, regularly turning the glass; it is said that the squire of the parish usually withdrew after the text was announced, smoked his pipe, and then returned to the blessing.

During the civil wars in England, one Stephen Marshall divided his text into twenty-four parts; one of his hearers, taking the alarm, it is said, started off home for his night-cap and slippers.

There are few things against which a preacher should be more guarded than prolixity. "Nothing," says Lamont, "can justify a long sermon. If it be a good one, it need not be long; and if it be a bad one, it ought not to be long." Luther, in the enumeration of nine qualities of a good preacher, gives: as the sixth, “That he should know when to stop." Boyle has an essay on patience under long preaching. "This was never more wanted," said Jay, of Bath, "since the Commonwealth, than now, in our day, especially among our young divines and

academics, who think their performances can never be too much attended to. I never err this way myself," he said, "but my conviction always laments it; and for many years after I began preaching, I never offended in this way. I never surpassed three quarters of an hour at most. I saw one excellency was within my reach-it was brevity-and I determined to obtain it."

Geoffrey Chaucer portrays very felicitously the good pastor in the following lines:

He was a shepherd, and no mercenary,
And though he holy was and virtuous,

He was to sinful men full piteous;

His words were strong, but not with anger fraught:

A love benignant he discreetly taught.

To draw mankind to heaven by gentleness

And good example, was his business.

Cowper thus indicates what a true parson should be :

"Simple, grave, sincere,

In doctrine uncorrupt, in language plain,

And plain in manner, decent, solemn, chaste-
And natural in gesture, much impressed
Himself, as conscious of his awful charge,
And anxious, mainly, that the flock he feeds
May feel it, too; affectionate in spirit,
And tender in address, as well becomes

A messenger of grace to guilty man."

"A good preacher," observes an old writer, "is one who makes all his hearers feel-not one who merely gratifies the learned or awakes the idle." He has been compared to the English verb, to be, to do, and to suffer.

Among uneducated pastors, John Bunyan is the most prominent for earnestness, simplicity, and zeal. It is remarkable that he received the first license from the English government to preach in the times of the Non-conformists. It was dated the 9th of