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ZIX 


PROFESSOR    PHELPS'    WORKS. 


THE  THEORY   OF    PREACHING,   or,  Lectures  on  Homiletics. 

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MEN  AND  BOOKS,    or,  Studies  m  Homiletics.     Lectures  intro- 
ductory to  "  Theory  of  Preaching."     Cr.  8vo 2.00 

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MEN  AND  BOOKS 


OB 


STUDIES    IN   HOMILETICS 


LECTURES  INTRODUCTORY  TO 

THE    THEORY    OF   PREACHING- 


BY 

AUSTIN   PHELPS,  D.D. 

LATE   BARTLET  PROFESSOR   OF   SACRED   RHETORIC   IN   ANDOVEB 
THEOLOGICAL   SEMINARY 


NEW  YORK 
CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 
1891  ^. 


-  hloifL- 


CorTRIGHT    BT 

CHARLES   SCRIBXER'S  SONS. 
1882. 


PEEFACE. 


A  THOROUGHLY  trained  preacher  is  first  a  man,  at  home 
among  men  :  he  is  then  a  scholar,  at  home  in  libraries.  No 
other  profession  equals  that  of  the  pulpit  in  its  power  to 
absorb  and  appropriate  to  its  own  uses  the  world  of  real  life 
in  the  present  and  the  world  of  the  past  as  it  lives  in  books. 
A  very  essential  part  of  a  preacher's  culture,  therefore,  con- 
cerns his  use  of  these  two  resources  of  professional  power. 
The  large  majority  of  the  topics  commonly  treated  by  pro- 
fessors of  homiletics  as  miscellanies  will  be  found  to  arrange 
themselves  naturally  in  these  two  lines  of  discussion.  By  so 
arranging  them,  I  have  sought  to  gain  the  concentration  of 
unity  and  the  cumulation  of  order. 

Like  the  Lectures  on  "The  Theory  of  Preaching,'*  in  a 
former  volume,  these  discussions  retain  the  form  and  style  of 
the  lecture-room  in  which  they  were  delivered,  in  response 
to  the  practical  inquiries  of  students  on  the  eve  of  entrance 
upon  their  life's  work.  Almost  no  other  changes  have  been 
made  than  those  which  were  necessary  in  the  mechanical 
revision  for  the  press. 

It  should  be  observed,  respecting  that  portion  of  this  work 

which  discusses  the  study  of  books,  that  its  design  is  limited. 

I  have  by  no  means  attempted  to  give  an  analysis  of  English 

iii 


IV  PREFACE. 

literature,  nor  to  plan  the  studies  of  men  of  literary  leisure, 
nor  to  advise  respecting  the  reading  of  miscellaneous  classes, 
as  President  Porter  has  so  usefully  done  in  his  work  on 
''Books  and  Reading."  My  aim  is  to  answer  the  inquiries 
of  young  pastors  whose  collegiate  training  has  created  liter- 
ary aspirations  which  ought  to  be  perpetuated  in  the  life- 
long labors  of  their  profession. 

It  will  be  objected,  to  some  of  the  counsel  given  in  these 
pages,  that  to  many  young  preachers  it  is  impracticable. 
This  objection  is  treated  at  length  near  the  close  of  the  vol- 
ume. But  at  present  this  should  be  said  of  it :  that  any  plan 
of  effort  or  of  study  auxiliary  to  the  work  of  the  pulpit,  to  be 
largely  useful,  must,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  be  largely 
ideal  in  its  character.  One  of  its  chief  virtues  must  be  its 
power  to  sustain  the  aspirations  of  a  preacher,  rather  than  to 
measure  his  achievements.  Diversities  of  gifts,  diversities 
of  culture,  diversities  of  health,  and  diversities  of  leisure, 
must  create  such  diversities  of  condition  among  pastors  that 
no  two  of  them  can  find  precisely  the  same  plan  practicable 
to  them  both. 

All  that  professional  criticism  can  do,  therefore,  is  to 
present  to  all,  as  to  one,  the  true  ideal  of  the  labor  auxiliary 
to  homiletic  culture,  and  trust  to  the  good  sense  of  each  to 
decide  for  himself  how  far,  and  with  what  eclectic  skill,  it  is 
practicable  to  him.  It  is  worth  much  to  have  a  good  ideal 
of  any  thing  that  is  worth  doing.  The  grandest  lives  are  but 
approaches  to  grand  ideals.  The  very  sight  of  a  good 
library,  though  just  now  unused,  is  a  stimulus  and  a  cheer 
to  a  missionary  in  the  backwoods.  So  an  ideal  of  a  life's 
work  is  valuable  as  a  suggestion  of  effort,  perhaps  for  ever 


PREFACE. 


impracticable  in  the  full,  yet  for  ever  susceptible  of  approxi- 
mation. Such  an  ideal  does  much  for  a  youthful  pastor,  if  it 
marks  out  the  line  of  ascent  on  which  he  will  gain  the  loftiest 
altitude  and  the  broadest  vision,  with  the  least  waste  of 
mental  and  moral  forces. 


TABLE   OF   CONTENTS. 


LECTURE  I. 

pAoa 

The  Original  Source  of  Oratorical  Culture.  —  A  Preacher's  Study  of 
his  Own  Mind.  —  Study  of  Other  Men;  of  Individuals;  of  Secu- 
lar Assemblies;  of  Religious  Awakenings     .••.•! 


LECTURE  IL 

Study  of  Men,  continued.  — The  Factitious  Reverence  for  Books. — 
The  Popular  Idea  of  a  Clergyman.  —  The  Clergyman  of  Liter- 
ary Fiction.  —  Clerical  Seclusion;  its  Effects  on  the  Pulpit. — 
Antipathy  to  Political  Preaching.  —  Waste  in  Ministrationa  of 
the  Pulpit 17 


LECTURE  IIL 

Study  of  Men,  continued.  —  Study  of  Eccentric  Preachers.  —  A 
Negative  Ministry.  —  Preaching  in  an  Age  of  Excitement.  — 
Literature  not  constructed  for  the  Masses;  Consequent  Peril  to 
the  Pulpit.  —  Resemblances  between  the  Pulpit  and  the  Greek 
Drama.  —  Popular  Revolutions  often  Independent  of  the  Edu- 
cated Classes      


LECTURE  IV. 

udy  of  Men,  continued.  —  Popular  Revolutions  distorted  for  the 
Want  of  Educated  Leadership;  the  Clergy  the  Natural  Leaders 
of  the  Popular  Mind.  —  The  Clergy  sometimes  Ultra-conser- 
vative; Effect  of  a  Tardy  Leadership.  —  Consequence  of  an 
Exclusive  Ministry 49 


Viil  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

LECTURE   V. 

FAGB 

Study  of  Men,  continued.  —  Clerical  Influence  with  Educated 
Classes  more  largely  Moral  than  Intellectual,  Reflexive  rather 
than  Direct.  —  Anomalous  Relations  often  created  between 
the  Church  and  the  World 67 


LECTURE  VI. 

Study  of  Men,  concluded.  —  Practice  of  Leading  Minds  in  History. 

—  Ancient  Theory  of  Education.  —  Theory  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

—  Modern  English  Theory.  —  Individual  Examples.  —  Eminent 
Writers  who  decry  Oratorical  Study 


LECTURE  Vn. 

Study  of  Literature  for  Clerical  Discipline.  —  Objects  of  the  Study; 
Discipline,  not  Accumulation;  Discovery  of  Principles  of  Effec- 
tive Speech;  Power  of  Unconscious  Use  of  Principles;  Assimila- 
tion to  the  Genius  of  Great  Authors 36 


LECTURE  Vin. 

Objects  of  the  Study  of  Literature,  continued. —Knowledge  of 
One's  Own  Adaptations;  Necessity  of  this  to  the  Ministry; 
Illustrations  of  the  Want  of  it.  —  Peril  of  an  Educated  Min- 
istry. —  Study  of  Books  conducive  to  Self-appreciation      .       ,    111 


LECTURE  IX. 

Selection  of  Authors.— Worthless  Books.  —  Universal  Scholarship 
a  Fiction.  —  Impracticable  Plans  of  Reading.  —  Rebellion 
against  Necessary  Limitations.  — Controlling  Powers  in  Litera- 
ture      12': 


LECTURE  X. 

Study  of  the  Few  Controlling  Minds,  continued.  —  An  Objection 
considered.  —  The  English  Literature  Predominant.  —  Ver- 
nacular as  compared  with  Foreign  Literature.  —  Utility  of 
Culturethe  True  Test.  —  Selfishness  in  Culture  ....    146 


TABLE   OF  CONTENTS.  IX 

LFXTURE   XI. 

PAGK 

Superiority  of  the  English  Literature;  tlie  English  a  Composito 
Order  of  Mind;  a  Literature  of  Power  as  distinct  from  Knowl- 
edge; a  Christian  Literature;  a  Protestant  Literature;  a  Lit- 
erature of  Constitutional  Freedom;  a  Balanced  Literature;  a 
Mature  Literature;  a  Popular  Literature;  Prolific  of  Models 
of  Persuasive  Speech IGO 

LECTURE   XTI. 

Recognition  of  an  American  Literature  in  our  Studies;  its  Intrin- 
sic Worth  in  some  Departments;  an  Offshoot  of  the  Literature 
of  England;  American  Theological  Literature  Original     ,       .    177 

LECTURE   XIIL 

Choice  of  Authors  regulated  in  Part  by  Professional  Pursuits; 
Choice  of  Authors  Compreliensive;  Variety  not  at  the  Ex- 
pense of  Scholarship;  Literary  Affectations;  Cant  in  Literature; 
Breadth  Essential  to  Richness;  Autocracy  of  Authors        .        .    192 

LECTURE  XIV. 

Breadth  of  Range  in  Study,  continued;  the  Clergy  in  Danger  of  a 
Narrow  Culture.  — Dr.  Arnold's  Advice  to  Young  Preachers.— 
Living  Speakers  as  Models;  Magnitude  of  Unwritten  Litera- 
ture; its  Representative  Character;  Powerlessness  of  the  Press 
to  express  it;  Necessity  of  the  Study  of  it  to  True  Conceptions 
Of  Oral  Eloquence;  Essay  and  Speech  distinguished  .       .       .207 

LECTURE    XV. 

Study  of  the  Bible  as  a  Literary  Model.  —The  Neglect  of  the  Scrip- 
tures by  the  Taste  of  Scholars.  —  Defect  in  our  Systems  of  Edu- 
cation.—The  Bible  the  Most  Ancient  Literature  Extant:  its 
Representative  Relation  to  the  Oriental  Mind.  —  Oriental  Races 
not  Effete.  —The  Bible  the  Regenerative  Power  in  the  Revival 
of  the  Oriental  Mind 224 

LECTURE  XVL 

Study  of  the  Bible  as  a  Literary  Classic,  continued.  — The  Bible 
incorporated  into  all  Living  Literature;  Spenser;  Shakspeare; 
Milton;    Wordsworth;    English    Hymnology;    Forensic    Elo- 


X  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

FAGB 

quence.  —  Debt  of  Infidelity  to  the  Scriptures,  —  Intrinsic 
Superiority  of  Biblical  Models.  —  Bearing  of  Inspiration  on 
Literary-  Merit;  in  "What  consists  its  Literary  Superiority  ?       .    238 

LECTURE  XVII. 

Study  of  the  Scriptures  as  Classics,  concluded.  —  Professional  Value 
of  Biblical  Models  to  a  Preacher.  —  Biblical  and  Theological 
Forms  of  Truth,  —  Biblical  Forms  in  Religious  Awakenings. — 
Scholarship  blended  with  Religious  Feeling  in  Biblical  Study  ,    256 

LECTURE   XVIIL 

The  Methods  of  Literary  Study  by  a  Pastor.  —  Preliminaries.  —Ne- 
cessity of  Critical  Reading;  of  Philosophical  Modes  of  Read- 
ing. —  Anomalies  in  Literature,  —  Reading  with  Division  of 
Labor;  Essential  to  Intelligent  Study;  to  Profound  Knowledge; 
to  Extent  of  Learning 269 

LECTURE   XIX. 

Methods  of  Study,  continued,  —  Comparisons  of  Authors.  —  Com- 
parisons of  National  Literatures;  of  Departments;  of  Litera- 
ture with  Art. —  Disclosure  of  Delicate  Qualities.  — Relative 
Excellences,— Special  Culture  of  Weak  Points,  — Tyranny  of 
Natural  Tastes,  — Collateral  Reading  of  Biography  and  His- 
tory; Illustrated 281 

LECTURE  XX. 

Methods  of  Study,  continued,  —Reading  with  Practice  In  Compo- 
sition; improves  the  Quality  of  Study;  promotes  Originality. — 
Proportion  of  Executive  Power  to  Critical  Taste,  —  Methods  of 
connecting  Study  with  Composition,  —  Imitations  of  Authors.  — 
Daily  Composing  prefaced  by  Daily  Study.  — Appreciation  of 
Genius  associated  with  Just  Estimate  of  One's  Self    ,       .       .    295 

LECTURE  XXI. 

The  Practicability  of  Literary  Study  to  a  Pastor.  —  Any  Scholarly 
Plan  of  Study  an  Ideal  One,  —  Study  must  be  made  Practicable. 
—  Retrenchment  of  Executive  Miscellanies. —  Severe  Bodily 
Discipline  Essential.  —  Assisted  by  Moral  Virtues.  —  Originality 
of  Plans.  —  Scholastic  Ideal  alone,  not  Practicable.  —  Necessity 
of  Concentration.  —  Interruptions  anticipated      ....    309 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS.  xi 

LECTURE  XXII. 


PAGH 


A  Plan  of  Study  of  the  English  Literature.  —  A  Historic  Line  of  Pro- 
fessional Reading.  —Collateral  Lines  pursued  as  suggested  by 
the  Professional  Line.  —  Remote  Portions  of  the  Literature  read 
by  Departments.  —  Fragments  of  Time  Utilized.  —  Light  Litera- 
ture reserved  for  Periods  of  Leisure.  — The  Plan  detailed, 
fromA.D.  1350  to  A.D.  1850.  — Miscellaneous  Hints   .       .       .'325 


MEN   AND   BOOKS; 

OR, 

STUDIES    IN    IIOMILETICS 


LECTURE  I. 


INTEODUCTION.  —  STUDY   OF    MEN;    OF  A   PREACHER'S 
OWN   MIND;   OF   OTHER   MEN. 

The  first  orator  in  the  order  of  time  had  nothing  to 
make  him  an  orator  but  his  head  and  his  heart  and  his 
study  of  men.  He  had  no  treatises,  no  models,  no  ob- 
jective eloquence  in  any  form,  to  guide  him.  He  had 
only  human  nature  to  work  with  as  well  as  to  work 
upon.  The  instinct  of  speech  he  improved  into  elo- 
quence by  experiments  upon  men  as  hearers  of  speech. 

Then,  when  the  reflective  process  began  in  his  mmd, 
and  he  reasoned  out  the  first  crude  science  of  his  art, 
he  must  have  reasoned  upon  the  simple  facts  of  his 
experience.  His  primary  question  was  not,  What  is  elo- 
quence in  its  philosophical  germ  ?  or.  Has  it  any  such 
germ?  It  was.  How  is  it  that  men  are  actually  moved 
by  speech?  What,  in  fact,  persuades  men?  What  has 
done  this  as  a  matter  of  experiment  ?  Upon  that  his- 
tory of  eloquence  as  an  experience   of  living   minds, 


2  MEN  AND   BOOKS.  [lect.  i. 

possibly  of  but  ODe  living  mind,  must  have  been  laid 
the  first  stone  of  the  arch  of  oratorical  science. 

But  while  the  first  orators,  and,  following  them,  the 
writers, — for  speech  must  have  preceded  writing, — 
had  only  men  to  study,  their  productions  became  to 
their  successors  an  additional  source  of  oratorical  cul- 
ture. Observe  :  not  an  independent,  but  a  supplement- 
ary source.  It  is  a  source,  which,  from  the  necessity 
of  the  case,  could  be  valuable  only  so  far  as  it  embodied 
the  results  of  a  knowledge  of  human  nature.  Demos- 
thenes, by  incorporating  into  his  orations  the  principles 
of  eloquence  derived  from  the  study  of  men,  rendered 
those  orations  a  source  of  culture  to  all  subsequent 
generations.  We  therefore  have  a  second  source  of 
oratorical  culture  in  models  of  effective  writing  and 
speaking. 

Observe,  that,  when  we  speak  of  models  of  effective 
writing  and  speaking,  we  include  all  successful  and 
permanent  literature.  The  grand  test  of  power  in 
speech  is  the  Napoleonic  test  of  character,  —  success. 
The  final  test  of  success,  from  which  there  is  no  appeal, 
is  permanence.  All  literature,  be  it  oral  or  written, 
which  bears  these  tests,  may  be  a  source  of  professional 
discipline  to  a  public  speaker.  Not  merely  orations, 
speeches,  sermons,  but  all  written  thought  which  bears 
the  stamp  of  success,  must  embody  some  of  the  princi- 
ples of  power  in  the  expression  of  thought  by  language. 
In  defining  the  range  of  it,  we  do  not  inquire  what 
authors  and  speakers  have  written  and  spoken  according 
to  one  standard  or  another,  by  the  rules  of  one  authority 
or  another,  to  the  taste  of  one  age  or  another,  but 
simply  who  have  succeeded.  We  do  not  ask  who  have 
succeeded  in  the  right  cause  or  the  wrong,  with  good 


LECT.  I.]  STUDY  OF  MEN.  3 

motive  or  bad  motive,  by  honest  purpose  or  by  knavery, 
but  who  have  succeeded  in  any  cause,  with  any  motive, 
by  any  means  of  sj^eech. 

Proceeding  to  apply  the  view  here  given  to  the 
studies  of  a  preacher,  I  propose,  in  this  and  the  suc- 
ceeding Lectures,  to  speak  of  a  preacher's  study  of 
MEN  and  of  his  study  of  books  as  sources  of  oratorical 
discipline. 

I.  Upon  a  preacher's  independent  study  of  men  the 
following  suggestions  deserve  remembrance  :  — 

1.  Every  preacher  may  obtain  much  of  oratorical  cul- 
ture from  attention  to  the  processes  of  his  own  mind. 
The  study  of  men  every  man  may  pursue  for  himself. 
We  have  at  least  the  same  facilities  in  this  respect  that 
the  first  orator  had.  In  the  study  of  men  a  preacher 
should  rank  first  his  own  mind.  You  have  in  your  own 
selves  an  original  and  independent  source  of  rhetorical 
knowledge.     No  other  can  be  more  so. 

(1)  In  development  of  this  view,  let  it  be  observed 
that  every  man's  experience  contains  biographical  inci- 
dents suggestive  of  oratorical  principles.  Every  educated 
mind  which  is  therefore  accustomed  to  self-inspection 
has  in  itself  a  history  of  oratorical  appliances.  You 
have  listened  to  public  speakers ;  you  have  heard  ser- 
mons ;  you  have  read  successful  literature  ;  you  know, 
therefore,  what  truths  have  moved  your  own  mind, 
and  in  what  forms,  and  in  what  combinations  with 
other  truths.  You  have  learned  to  distinguish  between 
speakers  who  instruct  your  intellect  only  and  those  who 
move  your  sensibilities.  Your  memory  is  full  of  inci- 
dents of  success  or  failure  in  experiments  of  speech 
which  other  men  have  made  upon  yourselves.  Have 
you  not  unconsciously  laid   the   foundations   of  your 


4  MEN  AND   BOOKS.  [t.ect.  i 

self-knowledge,  in  part,  in  this  knowledge  of  your  own 
susceptibility  to  persuasive  speech? 

Here,  then,  is  a  general  criterion  by  which  to  judge 
of  your  own  appliances  to  other  minds,  —  a  general  cri- 
terion, I  say,  because  individualities  differ  in  details. 
Very  much  spurious  composition  would  collapse  if  the 
writer  would  honestly  apply  to  it  the  test,  "  Would  tliis 
move  me  ?  Would  these  thoughts,  thus  expressed,  sat- 
isfy the  cravings  of  my  nature  ?  Would  this  strain  of 
argument  convince  my  intellect,  this  style  of  reproof 
reach  my  conscience,  this  method  of  appeal  sway  my 
heart?" 

Many  a  preacher  knows  that  the  best  of  his  own  ser- 
mons can  not  stand  this  homely  test.  The  salient  inci- 
dents in  his  own  mental  history,  which  are  always  most 
fresh  in  his  memory,  suggest  something  very  unlike  his 
own  productions.  His  experience  as  a  listener,  and  his 
practice  as  a  preacher,  are  founded  on  different  ideals 
of  success.  If  he  were  to  choose,  on  the  spur  of  the 
moment,  the  preacher  to  whom  he  owes,  more  than  to 
any  other,  his  noblest  conception  of  the  power  of  the 
pulpit,  he  would  choose  the  man  above  all  others  most 
unlike  himself,  and  whose  sermons,  not  only  in  degree 
of  excellence,  but  in  kind  and  in  aim,  are  most  diverse 
from  his  own. 

(2)  Not  only  do  incidents  salient  in  every  man's  life 
suggest  principles  of  eloquent  speech,  but  the  more 
profound  history  of  every  man's  character  is  full  of 
similar  suggestions.  Every  character  has  a  history  of 
changes.  They  lie  deeper  than  transitory  movements 
of  intellect,  and  awakening  of  sensibilities.  As  preach- 
ers we  have  to  deal  mainly  with  fundamental  changes 
of  character.      Our  great  aim  is  to  produce  changes, 


LECT.  I.]  PERSONAL  HISTORY.  O 

Bome  of  which  are  revolutionary.  The  plow  of  the 
pulpit  runs  deep,  if  it  runs  at  all  to  the  purpose  of  the 
pulpit. 

A  preacher  needs,  therefore,  to  study  the  history  of 
his  own  character.  He  needs  wisdom  to  read  it  aright. 
Your  own  life  antecedent  to  your  religious  awakening ; 
the  causes  and  the  process  of  that  awakening ;  the  un- 
written experiences  which  gather  in  your  memory  around 
the  crisis  of  your  conversion,  if  that  crisis  disclosed  itself 
to  you ;  and  the  visible  stages  in  the  process  of  your 
religious  growth  thus  far, — are  most  vital  resources  of 
that  kind  of  culture  which  you  need  as  a  guiding  mind 
to  others  through  similar  experiences.  Other  changes 
auxiliary  to  these  are  scarcely  less  important.  Changes 
of  opinion,  of  taste,  of  mental  habit ;  changes  in  the 
proportion  of  the  spiritual  to  the  physical  in  your 
nature ;  changes  inevitable  to  progress  from  the  infancy 
to  the  maturity  of  godly  principle  within  you;  any 
and  every  change  which  your  self-consciousness  marks 
as  fundamental  to  growth  of  character,  —  are  resources 
of  knowledge  to  you  respecting  means  and  methods  of 
working,  combinations  of  truth  most  helpful  to  success, 
and  the  entire  furniture  of  your  mind  for  the  work  of 
training  characters  which  are  in  need  of  or  are  under- 
going similar  changes  under  your  ministrations. 

Yet  does  not  the  history  of  the  pulpit  give  evidence 
of  inattention  to  this  kind  of  personal  history,  which 
must  lie  back  of  it  in  the  memory  of  the  preacher? 
We  preach  too  little  of  and  from  the  work  of  God 
within  us ;  too  much,  perhaps,  about  our  external  his- 
tory, but  too  little  about  the  principles  involved  in  the 
deeper  processes  of  spiritual  life,  which  do  not  disclose 
themselves  in  events,  nor  provide  the  material  for  an 


6  MEN   AND   BOOKS.  [lect.  i 

anecdote,  but  are  subterranean,  and  tributary  to  aU 
growth.  Much  of  the  fanaticism  of  the  pulpit  would 
be  forestalled,  if  preachers  were  more  studious  of  God'a 
method  in  the  training  of  themselves.  As  a  rule, 
fanatical  preachers  were  not  converted  by  fanaticism. 
They  are  never  themselves  improved  by  fanaticism. 
They  know  this,  if  they  interpret  honestly  their  own 
history.  A  regenerate  man  preaching  from  his  own 
regenerate  experience  could  not  be  a  fanatic :  he  could 
not  so  disturb  the  divine  balance  of  truth.  Some 
short-sighted  modes  of  doing  good,  some  unnatural  ap- 
peals to  the  consciences  and  the  feelings  of  men,  much 
claptrap,  egotism,  humdrum,  animal  magnetism,  in  the 
pulpit,  would  be  displaced  by  more  profound  resources, 
and  more  intensely  vitalized  expedients,  if  preachers 
read  human  nature  more  adroitly  in  their  own. 

Preachers  often  attempt  to  influence  audiences,  not 
only  by  isolated  arguments,  illustrations,  appeals,  but 
by  prolonged  plans  of  ministerial  effort,  which  they 
know,  when  they  fairly  awaken  to  the  realities  of  the 
case,  have  no  root  in  the  underground  of  their  OT\Ti 
characters.  Revivals  of  religion  are  sometimes  labored 
for  by  expedients  which  are  untrue  to  the  preacher's 
own  history.  They  are  expedients  which  he  knows 
would,  if  he  had  encountered  them  at  a  critical  period 
of  his  life,  have  caused  his  own  soul  to  revolt  from 
the  truth,  to  despise  the  truth,  or  to  stagnate  under  the 
truth.  He  is  the  very  last  man,  it  may  be,  to  have 
responded  favorably  to  a  prophecy  of  his  own  sermons. 

Have  you  not  yourselves  observed  the  fact  in  the 
histoiy  of  preaching,  that  ministers  who  fall  into  un- 
philosophical  modes  of  preaching  are  themselves  the 
most  iminterested  listeners  to  such  preaching  ?    Preach- 


LECT.  I.]  UNPHILOSOPHICAL  PREACHING.  7 

ers  are  proverbially  hard  hearers.  One  reason  is,  that 
there  is  so  much  in  preaching  which  is  unreal  to  any- 
body's experience.  They  who  preach  claptrap  are  not 
edified  by  claptrap  any  more  than  their  hearers.  Those 
who  preach  humdrum  are  not  interested  in  humdrum 
when  they  hear  it.  They  sleep  under  it  more  pro- 
foundly, if  possible,  than  other  men.  Seat  them  as 
listeners  to  such  preaching,  and,  if  their  eyes  are  open, 
they  are  as  the  fool's  eyes,  like  those  of  other  hearers. 
A  great  and  live  soul,  which  can  furnish  its  own  fire, 
is  required  to  get  aglow  under  such  preaching.  The 
authors  of  it  never  do :  they  never  feel  even  the 
crackling  of  thorns  under  such  a  pot.  Ignatius  Loyola 
might  have  been  converted  under  such  preaching,  but 
never  the  Rev.  Dr.  Dunderhead. 

The  same  is  true  of  inordinately  intellectual  preach- 
ers. By  this  I  mean  those  preachers  in  whom  intel- 
lectual enthusiasm  exceeds  and  overpowers  religious 
fervor.  Such  preachers  are  not  morally  moved  by  the 
preaching  of  their  peers.  They  are  not  religiously 
edified  by  extreme  profundity,  or  b}^  imaginative  pyro- 
technics, or  by  mystical  reveries,  in  other  preachers. 
The  men  who  move  them  are  probably  the  plain  men 
who  talk  right  on.  The  text  may  move  them;  the 
pra3^er  may  melt  them ;  the  hymn  may  make  them 
weep  :  but  the  immensely  intellectual  sermon,  which 
is  that,  and  nothing  more  —  they  know  too  well  the 
stuff  it  is  made  of. 

The  phenomenon  will  sometimes  discover  itself  to 
you  in  the  experience  of  the  pulpit,  that  a  preacher's 
professional  life  and  his  personal  life  are  at  antipodes  to 
each  other.  He  preaches  almost  any  thing,  in  any  way, 
except  the  thing,  in  the  way,  which  the  Holy  Ghost 


8  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [leci.    - 

has  made  a  living  thing  and  a  living  way  to  liis  own 
soul.  You  perceive,  then,  the  fundamental  character  of 
the  principle,  that  a  preacher  should  study  his  hearers 
in  himself.  Other  things  being  equal,  no  other  preach- 
ing is  so  effective  as  the  preaching  which  is  rooted  in  a 
man's  own  experience  of  truth.  Such  truth  he  knows. 
Comparatively  speaking,  he  knows  nothing  else. 

2.  Every  preacher  has  also  a  source  of  rhetorical 
culture  in  the  study  of  other  men.  Real  life  every- 
where is  full  of  power  in  speech.  Character  can  scarce- 
ly express  itself  in  language  other  than  the  dialect  of 
eloquence.  Whether  it  be  so  denominated  in  books  or 
not,  it  is  such  in  fact.  Books  should  be  conformed  to 
life,  not  life  to  books. 

(1)  Individual  character  in  its  rudest  forms  is  power 
in  speech.  The  market-place,  the  streets,  the  fields,  the 
workshops,  the  counting-rooms,  the  court-rooms,  the 
schoolhouses,  the  platforms,  the  firesides,  the  steam- 
boats, the  rail-cars,  the  exchange,  every  place,  every 
thing,  in  which  men  are  off  their  guard,  and  speak 
right  out  what  they  think  and  as  they  feel,  with  no 
consciousness  of  trying  either  to  think  or  to  feel,  are 
teeming  with  natural  eloquence.  Books  bear  no  com- 
parison with  this  eloquence  of  life.  The  world  could 
not  contain  the  books  which  would  have  been  requisite 
to  express  this  unwritten  development  of  power  in 
oratorical  forms  of  utterance. 

You  can  not  observe  two  men  making  a  bargain  with- 
out witnessing  an  example  of  something  which  enters 
into  the  highest  art  of  persuasion.  You  can  not  listen 
to  the  words,  constructions,  intonations,  of  an  angry 
man,  without  meeting  some  of  the  elements  of  all 
earnest  oratory.     A  man  chasing  his  hat  in  a  gale  acts 


LECT.  I.]  SECULAR  ASSEMBLIES.  9 

in  pantomime  a  principle  which  Demosthenes  could  not 
safely  ignore  in  striving  for  the  crown.  The  slang  of 
the  street,  the  dialect  of  the  forecastle,  the  lingo  of 
collegians,  illustrate  principles  of  style  which  underlie 
forms  of  power  in  thought  and  utterance  which  have 
lived  a  thousand  years.  A  woman  over  the  couch  of  a 
sick  cliild  speaks  in  words  which  have  roots  running 
down  into  the  original  ideal  of  pathos  in  all  literature. 
V  Animated  conversation  illustrates  principles,  and  takes 
on  forms,  which  no  eloquence  of  the  senate  or  the 
pulpit  can  do  without.  How  often  does  our  wearied 
criticism  of  a  public  speaker  express  itself  in  some  such 
inward  exclamation  as  this,  "  Oh  that  he  would  step 
down  from  his  stilts,  and  talk  as  we  heard  him  talk  at 
the  tea-table  on  a  certain  evening !  " 

These  most  common  and  therefore  neglected  forms 
of  individual  character  in  daily  life  are  full  of  the  re- 
sources of  homiletic  culture  to  any  one  who  will  take 
the  trouble  to  observe  them  for  that  purpose.  At  this 
point  is  seen  one  of  the  vital  dependences  of  the  pulpit 
on  pastoral  duty.  No  preacher  can  afford  to  be  a 
preacher  only,  and  live  in  his  study  alone,  were  it  only 
for  his  need  of  homiletic  suggestion  coming  directly 
from  the  homes  and  the  business  of  his  people.  To 
know  thoroughly  one  able  man  in  your  parish  is  the 
counterpart  of  a  homiletic  treatise  in  teaching  you  how 
to  preach  to  all  the  peers  of  that  man. 

(2)  The  conduct  of  secular  assemblies  often  discloses 
the  working  of  power  in  speech.  Much  wisdom  which 
preachers  have  occasion  for  may  be  learned  from  the 
answer  to  the  question,  "  How  do  lawyers  who  gain 
their  cases  deal  with  juries  ?  How  do  they  work  differ- 
ently in  addressing  a  bench  of  judges?"     If  it  were 


10  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lkct.  i. 

possible,  I  would  have  every  minister  of  the  gospel 
practice  law.  Some  of  our  ablest  preachers  have  been 
subjected  to  that  preliminary  discipline,  and  never 
without  acknowledging  their  obligations  to  it  through 
a  lifetime. 

How  are  town-meetings  governed  by  a  few  words 
from  a  few  plain  men?  How  is  it  that  an  educated 
man  sometimes  fails  in  such  an  assembly,  outgeneraled 
by  a  farmer  or  a  blacksmith?  How  is  a  city  mob 
quelled  by  a  dozen  men  with  no  weapons  more  deadly 
than  a  billy?  Why  are  a  dozen  policemen  a  match  for 
a  hundred  desperadoes  ?  The  elements  of  power  which 
explain  that  phenomenon  have  their  parallels  in  oratori- 
cal forces.  The  principle  which  explains,  in  part,  the 
fact  that  an  army  of  sixty  thousand  men  keeps  in  sub 
j action  sixty  millions  of  aliens  in  British  India  is  the 
same  which  explains,  in  part,  the  coming  conversion  of 
the  world  by  a  handful  of  preachers  with  no  auxilia- 
ries to  speech  but  prayer. 

Edward  Everett  could  hold  in  silence  an  audience  of 
three  thousand  scholarly  minds  by  an  oration  which 
passed  at  once  into  the  standards  of  literature ;  and 
Charles  Sumner  could  command  the  most  intelligent 
and  independent  Senate  in  the  world,  not  one  of 
whom  liked  him  personally,  by  a  speech  which  became  a 
thesaurus  of  learning  and  a  landmark  of  history.  Yet 
neither  of  these  princely  orators  could  get  a  hearing  of 
ten  minutes  from  a  crowd  in  the  street,  if  the  Hon. 
Stephen  A.  Douglas  were  known  to  be  there  to  oppose 
them.  What  caused  these  diversities?  Anybody  who 
will  explain  such  facts  as  these  truthfully  must  dis- 
cover in  the  process  some  practical  rhetorical  wisdom, 
and  that  the  very  last  which  a  preacher  can  afford  to  lose. 


LECT.  I.]  RELIGIOUS  AWAKENINGS.  ll 

Are  some  of  these  things  done  by  other  means  than 
speech,  and  by  foul  means  in  part?  Very  true.  But 
all  successes  in  real  life  have  their  counterparts  in 
speech.  Foul  means,  to  be  successful,  must  appeal  to 
elements  of  human  nature  which  are  normal  to  it.  A 
right  appeal  to  those  elements  a  preacher  may  make 
with  hope  of  equal  success.  The  susceptibility  of  the 
human  mind  to  such  appeals  is  the  basis  of  all  elo- 
quence. The  business  of  real  life,  therefore,  is  full  of  it. 
The  study  of  men  succeeding  and  failing  in  that  busi- 
ness must  be  prolific  of  wisdom  to  a  public  speaker. 
The  late  Lord  Lytton  gives  advice  to  a  young  London 
author,  saying,  "  Never  write  a  page  till  you  have 
walked  from  your  room  to  Temple  Bar,  mingling  with 
men,  and  reading  the  human  face."  He  adds  the  fact 
that  great  poets  have,  for  the  most  part,  passed  their 
lives  in  cities. 

(3)  We  find  also  a  specially  valuable  resource  of 
homiletic  culture  in  the  study  of  masses  of  men  under 
religions  excitement.  Sympathetic  religious  awakenings 
are  phenomena  of  life  as  old  as  nations:  to  them  is 
due  by  far  the  major  proportion  of  Christian  progress. 
More  than  half  of  the  history  of  Christianity  in  this 
world  would  be  blotted  out  if  we  should  erase  the  rec- 
ord of  the  great  sympathetic  waves  of  religious  sensi- 
bility which  have  rolled  over  communities  and  nations 
and  races.  The  modern  excitement  which  we  term  a 
revival  illustrates  only  one  phase  of  an  experience  of 
which,  in  kindred  forms,  history  is  full. 

Revivals  are  often  spoken  of  as  an  American  product. 
It  is  true  that  American  revivals  have  had  peculiarities 
growing  out  of  the  national  temperament  and  history ; 
bat  in  the  sense  of  being  in  spirit  limited  to  one  coun- 


12  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  •  [lect.  \. 

try  or  another,  or  one  nation  or  age  rather  than  another, 
the}^  are  not  American.  Revivals  are  a  normal  working 
of  human  nature  moved  by  supernatural  forces.  They 
have  never  been  provincial.  All  the  past  is  dotted  over 
with  them :  all  the  future  must  be  the  same.  Our  hope 
of  the  world's  conversion  is  a  dream,  if  religious  prog- 
ress is  to  be  measured  by  that  of  the  intervals  between 
these  great  awakenings  of  the  popular  heart. 

Such  awakenings,  therefore,  are  a  very  vital  object  of 
a  preacher's  study.  Generally,  sympathetic  religious 
excitements  are  the  result  of  preaching.  Consecutive 
plans  of  preaching  should  contemplate  them,  and  be 
adjusted  to  them.  Under  a  wise  ministry,  blessed  of 
God,  they  are  sure  to  occur.  A  pulpit  not  adjusted  to 
them  is  like  a  system  of  husbandry  not  planned  for  a 
harvest.  One  of  the  saddest  sights  in  the  history  of 
the  pulpit  is  that  of  a  ministry  which  regards  revivals 
as  abnormal,  and  which  therefore  adjusts  itself  in  schol- 
arly ease  and  refinement  to  the  slow  and  well-nigh 
hopeless  growth  of  periods  which  lie  between  revivals. 

Such  a  ministry,  you  will  observe,  are  very  apt  to  find 
their  chief  interests  and  excitements  outside  of  their 
profession.  They  give  themselves  to  literature,  to  sci- 
ence, to  art,  to  reforms,  to  social  life,  to  the  improve- 
ment of  their  private  fortunes.  Some  of  our  standards 
in  literature  have  been  the  work  of  clergymen  who  did 
the  work,  and  could  do  it,  because  their  professional 
plans  did  not  contemplate  nor  aim  at  overpowering 
awakenings  of  the  people.  Few  men  in  the  pulpit  can 
adjust  themselves  to  the  divine  plans  in  this  respect,  as 
history  has  thus  far  given  us  the  means  of  interpreting 
them,  and  yet  find  time  and  mental  force  to  create  lit- 
erary standards  which  shall  live  to  future  times.     The 


LECT.  I.]  PHILOSOPHY  OF  REVIVALS.  13 

exhortations  to  scholarly  aims  which  we  give  and  receive 
are  always  to  be  accepted  with  this  qualification,  that, 
in  a  successful  ministry,  religious  awakenings  may 
overwhelm  a  preacher  with  professional  labors  to  such 
degree  as  to  render  literary  pursuits  for  the  time  imprac- 
ticable. Such  awakenings  must  command  the  profound 
and  prayerful  study  of  men  who  mean  to  be  a  power  in 
the  instrumental  control  of  them. 

The  practical  question  is,  How  are  they  brought 
about?  What  procedure  of  the  pulpit  is  conducive 
to  them?  A  country  village,  remote  from  the  excite- 
ment of  metropolitan  crowds,  is  agitated  by  a  strange 
quickening  of  religious  inquiry.  Skeptics  look  upon  it 
as  an  epidemic.  What  has  Christian  philosophy  to  say 
of  it  ?  What  instruments  have  apparently  wrought  the 
change?  What  methods  of  preaching,  what  subjects 
in  the  pulpit,  what  auxiliary  agencies  outside  of  the 
pulpit,  have  seemed  to  be  the  working  forces  ?  .Hard- 
featured  and  cross-grained  men  are  subdued  by  a  female 
Bible-reader ;  so  that  a  quaint  observer  applies  to  them 
the  old  couplet  in  the  primer,  — 

"  Whales  in  the  sea 
God's  voice  obey." 

What  is  the  secret  of  her  power  ?  A  roving  evangelist 
whom  three-fifths  of  the  community  despise  reaches 
the  other  two-fifths  with  such  power  of  moral  suasion, 
that  the  majority  are  compelled  to  smother  their  con- 
tempt, or  to  express  it  in  tones  which  echo  a  secret  fear 
that  he  is  right,  and  they  are  wrong.  How  does  he  do 
it  ?  Prayer-meetings  are  crowded  in  the  "  Black  Sea  "  in 
Boston.  A  motley  assembly  of  five  thousand,  whom  no 
other  than  a  religious  teacher  could  keep  silent  for  ten 


14  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  i. 

miniTtes,  are  thus  held  for  an  hour  by  the  plainest  of 
plam  religious  talk  in  Burton's  Theatre  in  New  York. 
Twenty  thousand  men  and  women  in  the  Crystal  Palace 
at  Sydenham  are  held  in  such  stillness  that  they  all 
hear  one  voice  intelligibly.  How  are  these  things  done  ? 
What  is  the  philosophy  of  the  success  of  such  men  as 
Whitefield,  Summerfield,  Spurgeon,  Finney,  Moody? 

Right  or  wrong,  normal  or  abnormal,  these  are  facts 
in  popular  history.  They  are  known  and  read  of  all 
men.  They  assume  the  importance  of  crises  in  the 
history  of  nations.  In  our  own  day  they  are  growing 
to  the  magnitude  of  the  old  Roman  gladiatorial  shows. 
The  simple  power  of  speech  seems  now  to  be  achiev- 
ing results  in  popular  excitement,  which  in  Pagan  life 
could  be  created  only  by  brutal  and  sanguinary  spec- 
tacles. What  philosophy  of  speech  can  explain  them  ? 
Wise  is  the  man  who  can  give  the  reason  why  speech 
should  thus  supplant  the  dagger  and  the  lasso  and  the 
trident. 

As  specimens  of  the  questions  on  this  subject  which 
a  preacher  needs  to  ask  and  answer,  let  the  following 
be  specified :  ^  Are  revivals  of  religion  a  normal  method 
of  divine  working  for  the  world's  conversion?  What 
is  their  relation  to  divine  sovereignty?  Are  any  laws 
of  the  working  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  them  discoverable  ? 
In  what  condition  of  the  popular  mind  are  revivals  to 
be  looked  for  ?  What  agency  of  the  pulpit  is  prepara- 
tive to  a  revival  ?  What  agencies  auxiliary  to  the  pulpit 
are  most  essential?  Are  evangelistic  labors  desirable 
under  a  settled  ministry  ?  What  types  of  theology  are 
dominant  in  the  most  valuable  revivals  ?     What  place 

1  The  majority  of  these  inquiries  have  been  published  in  the  appendix 
to  the  "  Theory  of  Preaching." 


LF.CT.  I.]  STUDY  OF  REVIVALS.  15 

should  be  assigned  in  them  to  doctrinal  preaching? 
Has  the  service  of  song  any  special  value  in  them? 
Are  children  proper  subjects  of  conversion  in  revivals  ? 
What  are  the  pathological  perils  incident  to  such  awak- 
enings? How  are  those  perils  avoidable?  How  can 
they  be  counteracted  when  not  avoidable  ?  Are  minds 
of  high  culture  naturally  subject  to  these  popular  awak- 
enings ?  Does  the  subsidence  of  a  revival  imply  reli- 
gious decline  ?  Does  popular  re-action  from  a  revival 
neutralize  its  value  ?  What  policy  of  the  pulpit  should 
characterize  the  period  immediately  following  a  revival  ? 
What  are  the  differences,  if  any,  between  the  type  of 
piety  of  those  who  meet  the  religious  crisis  of  their 
lives  in  revivals  and  those  who  meet  it  in  more  tranquil 
times?  What  is  that  change  in  professing  Christians 
which  often  occurs  in  revivals,  and  is  called  "reconver- 
sion "  ?  Is  President  Edwards's  work  on  the  "  Religious 
Affections"  adapted  to  the  present  religious  inquirers? 
If,  by  a  philosophic  study  of  these  and  kindred  ques- 
tions, we  can  come  at  those  principles  of  human  nature 
which  underlie  the  divine  economy  in  the  sympathetic 
awakenings  of  society  to  the  realities  of  eternity,  we 
gain  thereby  the  very  pith  and  marrow  of  homiletic  cul- 
ture. I  repeat,  therefore,  Study  the  great  awakenings 
of  the  past.  Investigate  the  spiritual  life  of  the  Ref- 
ormation. Read  Tracy's  history  of  the  "  Great  Awaken- 
ing" in  President  Edwards's  day.  Observe  critically 
the  similar  movements  of  our  own  day.  Read  the  "  Year 
of  Grace  in  Ireland,"  the  "History  of  the  Hawaiian 
Islands,"  the  "History  of  Missions  in  Madagascar." 
Study  the  lives  of  pre-eminent  revival  preachers.  Read 
the  memoirs  of  Whitefield,  Wesley,  Nettleton,  Finney, 
Lyman  Beecher,  Dr.  Kirk.     Observe  narrowly  the  facts 


16  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  i 

of  current  history  bearing  on  the  subject.  Be  familiar 
with  the  ministries  of  such  men  as  Mr.  Spurgeon.  Learn 
something  from  them  all.  Study  opposite  characters 
in  the  history  of  revivals. 

Above  all,  preserve  a  docile  state  of  mind  in  such 
studies.  Take  an  expectant  attitude.  Look  for  pro- 
gressive evolution  of  wisdom  in  the  administration  of 
the  pulpit.  Never  allow  your  mind  to  settle  down  in  a 
quiescent  state,  under  the  conviction  that  the  policy  of 
the  pulpit  is  fixed  by  the  past  for  all  time. 

A  most  fatal  position  to  the  clergy  of  a  nation  is  that 
assumed  by  a  portion  of  the  clergy  of  this  country  and 
of  England,  which  holds  them  aloof  from  the  experience 
of  modern  revivals,  and  which  some  of  them  avow  as 
antagonistic  to  such  awakenings.  Fatal,  I  say,  is  such 
an  attitude  to  the  spiritual  power  of  the  ministry.  A 
pulpit  thus  sundered  from  these  quickenings  of  the 
popular  heart  can  never  be  the  pulpit  of  the  future. 
The  work  of  this  world's  redemption  will  sweep  grandly 
over  it,  and  bury  it  in  oblivion.  Or,  if  it  lives,  it  can 
represent  only  a  fragmentary  and  sicldy  development 
of  religious  life.  It  can  only  build  up  a  Christian 
infirmary  in  which  shall  be  gathered  the  invalid  classes 
of  Christian  minds.  All  the  signs  of  our  age  indicate 
increase  rather  than  diminution  of  these  popular  ex- 
citements. The  ministry  must  understand  them,  must 
be  in  sympathy  with  them,  must  be  masters  in  the 
control  of  them,  or  must  perish  under  the  billows  of 
them  which  are  sure  to  roll  in  upon  the  church  of  all 
coming  time. 


LECTURE  II. 

STUDY  OP  MEN,   CONTINUED.  —  CERTAIN  CLERICAL  IN- 
FIRMITIES,  EFFECTS   ON  THE   PULPIT. 

3.  Resuming  the  subject  of  the  study  of  men  where 
we  left  it  at  the  close  of  the  last  Lecture,  let  us  now 
observe  the  fact  that  this  study  is  often  undervalued, 
because  of  a  factitious  reverence  for  books. 

This  must  be  recognized  as  one  of  the  perils  of  stu- 
dious minds  engaged  in  a  practical  profession.  True, 
the  opposite  peril  also  exists ;  but  it  besets  only  indolent 
minds.  Mental  indolence  finds  a  very  cheap  pabulum 
in  underrating  scholastic  learning.  But  studious  men 
are  tempted  on  the  side  of  their  scholastic  tastes.  We 
need  to  see  the  relations  of  the  two  in  some  approach 
to  equilibrium.  We  will  not  say  with  Patrick  Henry, 
"  Sir,  it  is  not  books,  it  is  men,  that  we  must  study ; " 
but  we  say,  "  Books  and  men  we  must  study." 

A  young  man  once  inquired  of  me,  "  Can  you  direct 
me  to  a  book  which  shall  teach  me  to  write  a  sermon  ?  " 
I  receive  letters  of  inquiry  founded  on  the  same  ideal 
of  homiletic  discipline.  "  No,"  must  the  answer  be . 
"  there  is  no  such  book.  From  the  nature  of  the  sub- 
ject there  can  be  none."  Preaching  is  one  of  the  arts 
of  life,  —  as  much  so  as  the  use  of  the  telegraph.  It 
never  can  be  learned  as  an  abstract  science  only.  From 
books  may  be  learned  principles,  nothing  more.     Leo- 

17 


18  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  h. 

tures  can  portray  the  theory  of  preaching,  nothing  else. 
Criticism  is  that  theory  in  fragments. 

The  peril  here  named  is  often  aggravated  by  an 
excess  of  the  conservative  temperament.  This  entices 
men  of  books  and  schools  often  to  live  as  if  the  acqui- 
sition and  classification  of  printed  knowledge  were  the 
chief  object  of  life,  rather  than  the  growth  and  the  use 
of  character.  The  clergy,  therefore,  are  often  charged, 
and  sometimes  justly,  with  reverence  for  the  past  at 
the  expense  of  the  present  and  in  distrust  of  the  future. 
One  of  the  most  seductive  positions  which  can  be  of- 
fered to  a  scholar  is  a  fellowship  in  a  large  and  ancient 
university.  But  scarcely  could  a  more  perilous  position 
be  accepted  by  a  man,  who,  like  a  clergyman,  looks 
forward  to  a  practical  profession  as  the  work  of  his  life. 

Whatever  has  been  once  crystallized  and  labeled  in 
our  cabinet  of  thought,  we  are  tempted  to  prize  at  the 
cost  of  those  creations  which  are  still  in  the  fluid  state, 
and  in  the  seething  process  before  our  eyes.  Clerical 
tastes,  therefore,  often  need  a  counterbalance  to  the 
conservative  temperament.  We  must  remember  that 
a  vast  scene  in  the  drama  of  human  history  is  now 
acting.  We  and  our  cotemporaries  are  the  dramatis 
personoe.  A  link  in  the  chain  of  historic  causes  and 
effects  is  now  forging. 

Specially  should  this  be  borne  in  mind,  that  divine 
communications  to  the  world  have  always  been  made 
through  the  medium  of  real  life.  Living  men  live  a 
great  truth,  and  so  truth  comes  to  the  birth.  The 
Bible  it  almost  wholly  history  and  biography.  Ab- 
stract knowledge  is  given  in  it  only  as  interwoven 
with  the  wants  and  the  experiences  of  once  living  gen- 
erations.    God  took  out  of  the  circle  of  universal  his- 


LECT.  II.]  TRUTH  IN   LIVING  MEN.  19 

tory  a  single  segment,  and  the  result  is  a  revelation. 
Men  lived  under  special  divine  superintendence  and 
illumination,  and  the  product  is  —  a  Bible. 

So  all  the  great  truths  which  have  moved  the  world 
have  been  lived.  They  have  been  struck  out  by  collis- 
ion of  thought  with  the  living  necessities  of  the  world. 
Monotheism  exists  only  as  an  experience  vital  to  living 
men:  it  has  come  into  being  as  a  revolt  from  living 
idolatries.  Liberty  is  a  possession  sprung  from  the 
pressure  of  living  despotisms.  True  theory  in  all  de- 
partments of  civilized  culture  is  a  life.  It  has  grown 
out  of  the  brooding  of  thought  over  an  experience  of 
living  barbarism.  Scholarship,  therefore,  is  always  the 
23upil  of  Providence  when  it  is  the  leader  of  men.  It 
must  be  studious  always  of  Providence  in  the  experi- 
ence of  living  generations,  if  it  would  hold  its  leader- 
ship. That  mind  lags  behind  Providence  which  studies 
only  the  past.  It  is  always  a  little  too  late  in  its  opin- 
ions, its  tastes,  its  culture,  and  therefore  in  its  power  of 
adaptation  to  uses. 

Why  should  we  not  feel  for  the  nineteenth  century 
somewhat  of  the  respect  which  men  of  the  twenty-ninth 
will  feel  for  it  ?  Why  not  place  the  ages  abreast  with 
each  other  in  their  chances  for  rank  in  our  literary 
regard  ?  Studying  in  this  manner  the  phases  of  a  liv- 
ing civilization,  we  shall  surely  learn  something  which 
no  records  of  a  defunct  civilization  can  teach  us.  No 
generation  of  men,  in  God's  plan,  lives  for  nothing. 
Every  generation  is  a  positive  quantity  in  the  world's 
problem.  It  adds  something  to  the  knowledge  or  the 
power  of  the  world  which  its  predecessors  never  knew. 
The  world's  life  is  thus  a  growth,  always  a  growth, 
without  retrogression  and  without  pause.     We  should 


20  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  ii. 

not  allow  ourselves,  then,  to  undervalue  for  oratorical 
discipline  the  study  of  living  men,  through  a  morbid 
reverence  for  books  as  the  sacred  repositories  of  the 
past.  "Books  and  men,  men  and  books,"  should  be 
our  motto. 

This  view  is  enforced  by  the  fact  that  accumulation 
is  not  the  chief  object  of  a  scholarly  life:  if  it  were, 
we  should  never  have  been  fated  to  spend  one-third 
of  our  lives  in  sleep.  The  great  object  of  life,  and 
therefore  of  culture,  is  character,  —  the  growth,  the 
exercise,  the  use,  of  character.  We  gain,  surely,  as  vig- 
orous a  character,  and  as  much  of  it  in  amount,  from 
the  study  of  men  as  from  that  of  books.  No  culture 
can  be  symmetrical  which  is  restricted  to  either.  Each 
needs  the  other  as  its  complement. 

It  should  be  further  remarked,  that  symmetry  of 
culture  in  tliis  respect  is  essential  to  a  hopeful  courage 
in  the  ministry.  A  minister  who  studies  only  the  past 
is  almost  sure  to  be  distrustful  of  the  future,  and  de- 
spondent of  the  present.  He  sees  the  future  in  a  false 
perspective :  therefore  to  him  the  former  times  were 
always  better  than  these,  and  the  future  is  doomed  to 
be  worse  than  either.  He  is  an  incorrigible  pessimist. 
Two  clergymen,  once  companions  in  this  seminary,  met, 
after  twenty  years  of  labor  in  the  ministry,  in  which 
both  had  had  a  fair  measure  of  success.  Said  one  in  a 
brisk,  cheery  tone,  "  I  have  a  hard  life  of  it,  but  I 
enjoy  a  hard  life.  It  pays  to  have  a  hard  life.  I  have 
such  a  glorious  trust  in  the  future  !  "  Said  the  other, 
unconsciously  sinking  his  tone  to  the  habit  of  his  mind, 
"  I  have  a  hard  life  too.  I  try  to  endure  it  patiently, 
but  I  shall  be  glad  when  it  is  over.  The  future  looks 
dark,  very  dark,  to  me.     My  chief  satisfaction  is  in  the 


21 


LECT.  II.]         POrULAR  IDEA  OF  A   CLERGYMAN. ' 

past."  This  man  was  the  more  learned  of  the  two,  but 
he  had  worn  out  his  courage  by  excessive  conservatism. 
He  was  weary  and  footsore  from  walking  backward. 
A  few  years  later  he  was  gathered  to  the  fathers  with 
whom  his  mental  life  had  been  buried  for  twenty  years. 
His  friend,  I  think,  still  lives ;  and,  if  so,  I  venture  to 
affirm  that  he  still  has  a  hard  life,  and  enjoys  it  ^  as 
hopefully  as  ever.  Such  men  never  grow  old.  Which 
of  the  two  men  illustrates  the  better  ideal  of  a  clerical 
scholar  ?  Which  has  been  worth  the  most  to  the  world  ? 
Which  has  the  most  brilliant  record  of  self-culture  to 
carry  into  eternity  ? 

4.  Enthusiasm  in  the  study  of  men  should  be  stimu- 
lated by  that  which  is  well  known  to  be,  in  this  respect, 
the  popular  idea  of  a  clergyman. 

The  popular  conception  of  a  clergyman  is  that  he  is, 
ex  officio,  in  respect  to  the  knowledge  of  mankind,  an 
ignoramus.  Be  it  true  or  false,  this  is  the  popular 
notion  of  the  clerical  character.  It  produces  not  a 
little  of  that  feeling  towards  the  clergy  which  vibrates 
between  amusement  and  contempt.  In  the  popular 
faith  we  belong  to  a  race  of  innocents.  If  not  all 
Vicars  of  Wakefield,  we  are  cousins-german  to  that 
reverend  greenhorn.  Men  of  the  world  feel  it  to  be 
refreshing  when  an  able  preacher  breaks  loose  from  the 
hereditary  conventionalisms  of  the  clerical  guild,  and 
thinks  and  talks  and  dresses  and  acts  as  they  do. 

This  popular  notion  is,  of  course,  a  caricature ;  yet 
to  some  extent  the  habits  of  the  clergy  foster  it.  For 
instance,  no  other  body  of  men  are  in  so  much  danger 
of  excessive  seclusion  from  the  world  as  are  the  clergy. 
Relics  of  the  theory  on  which  clerical  celibacy  was 
founded  yet  linger  among  the  ideas  which  clergymen 


22  •  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  n. 

have  of  the  clerical  office.  We  do  not  avow  it,  yet 
many  feel  a  special  reverence  for  a  celibate  minister. 
So  long  as  the  Romish  clergy  keep  alive  that  fiction 
in  the  persons  of  godly  and  faithful  men,  some  Protes- 
tant ministers  will  make  unconscious  concessions  to  it. 

The  idea  of  a  priesthood,  also,  yet  remains  in  the 
Protestant  conception  of  a  clergy.  So  long  as  the 
Church  of  England  keeps  alive  that  notion,  and  makes 
it  respectable  by  the  culture  and  the  industry  and  the 
piety  of  her  clergy,  the  ministry  of  other  churches  will 
insensibly  be  drawn  towards  it.  Seclusion  from  men 
for  the  sake  of  communion  with  God  is  the  conception 
which  lies  at  the  bottom,  not  only  of  many  of  the  popu- 
lar ideas  about  the  ministry,  but  of  some  of  the  notions 
which  the  ministry  entertain  of  themselves. 

One  consequence  of  this  drift  of  things  is,  that  the 
ministry  often  stand  aloof  from  the  real  world.  Men 
often  do  not  act  themselves  out  in  our  presence. 
They  do  not  express  all  their  opinions  in  our  hearing. 
Principles  and  practices  grow  up  in  a  community,  and 
pass  unnoticed  by  the  ministry  for  years,  in  some  cases, 
because  the  ministry  know  nothing  of  their  existence. 

For  illustration,  take  the  change  which  has  been 
going  on  for  the  last  twenty  years  in  the  Christian 
theory  of  amusements.  That  change  is  a  very  signifi- 
cant one.  It  is  one  to  which  the  ministry,  whenever 
they  recognize  it,  will  find  that  they  must  yield  some- 
thing of  the  clerical  theory  of  fifty  years  ago.  Yet 
one  may  well  be  surprised  at  the  apathy  and  apparent 
ignorance  of  some  of  our  ministry  on  the  subject.  A 
certain  Methodist  conference  once  adopted ,  a  minute 
against  the  playing  of  croquet,  and  were  supported  in 
it  by  so  clear-headed  a  man  as  President  Finney ;  ap- 


LECT.  II.]  WASTE  OF  CLERICAL  POWER.  23 

parently  ignoring  tlie  fact  that  Christian  opinion  in  a 
multitude  of  our  churches  onl}^  laughs  at  such  relics 
of  a  monastic  age.  The  rising  generation  are  in  some 
danger  of  being  swept  into  an  extreme  of  license  in 
popular  amusements,  for  the  want  of  an  intelligent 
handling  of  the  subject  by  their  ministry. 

The  use  of  tobacco  is  not  a  sign  of  a  heavenly  mind. 
But  that  was  a  woful  diagnosis  of  the  condition  of 
eaithly  minds  which  led  an  American  publishing  so- 
ciety to  bear  its  written  testimony  against  tobacco  at 
the  very  time  when  men  were  boiling  over  at  the  re- 
fusal of  that  society  to  utter  its  testimony  against 
American  slavery.  "What  is  this  Christianity,"  men 
asked,  "which  shuts  its  eyes  to  the  public  sale  of  a 
woman  on  the  auction-block,  and  opens  them  so  very 
wide  at  a  pipe  in  the  laboring-man's  mouth?"  Such 
misuses  of  Christian  truth  involve  a  cost  to  the  cause 
of  Christ  which  would  bankrupt  it  if  it  were  any  other 
than  the  cause  of  Christ.  In  ways  which  I  have  not 
time  to  detail,  changes  may  come  upon  the  opinions 
and  temper  of  a  people,  which  a  secluded  clergy  may 
not  detect  till  those  changes  develop  themselves  in 
some  overt  revolution  at  which  we  stand  aghast. 

In  milder  form  the  same  error  shows  itself  in  the 
fact  that  the  theory  of  religious  life  taught  in  some 
pulpits  is  not  recognized  by  the  people  as  a  reality. 
That  is  one  of  the  saddest  illustrations  of  waste  in 
clerical  power,  in  which  the  people  quietly  shove  aside 
the  teaching  of  the  pulpit  as  nothing  but  perfunctory 
deliverances.  The  preacher  is  imagined  to  preach 
them  because  it  is  his  business  to  do  it,  he  is  paid 
for  doing  it :  not  that  he  believes  it,  not  that  he 
expects  the  people  to  believe  it,  as  a  matter  of  heart 


24  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  u. 

and  life ;  but  it  is  the  proper  outflow  of  professional 
routine.  Is  it  not  sometimes  obvious  that  the  theory 
of  the  pulpit  has  no  even  approximate  representative 
in  a  living  church  ?  Do  not  instances  occur  in  which 
preachers  themselves,  who  are  vicegerents  of  God  in 
the  pulpit,  do  not  meet  the  people  out  of  it  as  if  they 
expected  their  viceroyal  authority  to  be  heeded,  nor 
as  if  they  were  at  all  aware  of  the  fact  that  it  is 
not  heeded  in  real  life  ?  Souls  are  lost,  for  which  some- 
body must  give  account,  by  means  of  the  contract 
which  the  people  sometimes  feel  between  the  intense 
fidelity  of  the  preacher  in  the  pulpit  and  the  apparent 
obliviousness  of  it  all  by  the  man  out  of  the  pulpit. 

5.  Tliis  defect  lies  at  the  foundation  of  that  notion 
of  clerical  character  which  is  most  common  in  the  lit- 
erature of  popular  fiction.  The  clergyman  of  literary 
fiction  is  the  secular  parson.  He  is  a  priest,  or  some- 
thing equivalent,  whose  business  is  to  perform  certain 
official  functions,  and  nothing  more.  He  plods  in  rou- 
tine ;  his  preaching  is  routine  ;  his  prayers  are  routine  ; 
his  parochial  service  is  routine;  his  whole  life  is  rou- 
tine. The  vital,  rather  the  fatal,  point  is,  that  his  life  is 
chiefly  outside  of  the  life  of  liis  parishioners.  They  feel 
no  sense  of  reality  in  any  thing  that  comes  from  him 
to  themselves.  Substantially  they  live  and  die  without 
him,  except  that  he  baptizes  their  children,  and  buries 
their  dead.  He  may  be  a  fox-hunter,  and  it  shall  make 
no  difference  that  reaches  them.  If  he  is  of  upright 
character,  he  is  an  innocuous  saint,  who  is  but  half  a 
man.  He  knows  nothing  of  this  world,  and  he  has  no 
business  here  when  men  have  any  earnest  work  on  hand. 
In  whatever  the  people  feel  to  be  a  reality  such  a  cler 
gyman  is  always  in  the  way. 


LECT.  II.]  THE  CLERGYMAN  OF  FICTION.  25 

An  engraving  was  exhibited  for  sale  in  London  not 
long  ago,  in  which  a  nobleman  was  pictured  in  the  last 
gasp  of  life,  having  been  fatally  injured  in  the  hunting- 
field.  By  his  bedside  stands  a  white-haired  but  ruddy- 
faced  and  smirking  clergyman  in  gown  and  bands,  with 
closed  prayer-book  under  his  arm.  His  professional 
duty  to  the  dying  man  is  over.  His  eager  face  shows 
that  the  departing  soul  is  forgotten  in  his  interest  in 
the  story  of  the  hunt,  which  is  going  on  in  the  chamber 
of  death.  A  caricature,  this,  doubtless;  but  could  it 
ever  have  found  spectators  to  enjoy  it,  or  a  purchaser 
to  pay  for  it,  if  it  had  no  original  in  real  life  ?  Carica- 
tures which  men  laugh  at  and  pay  their  money  for  are 
caricatures  of  something. 

So  is  it  with  the  parson  of  literary  fiction.  He  is  not 
nearly  so  vital  a  character  in  the  affairs  of  life  as  an  old 
Roman  augur  was.  The  augur  did  something  to  the 
purpose  of  real  life.  He  told  the  people  when  to  fight 
a  battle,  when  to  raise  a  siege,  when  to  launch  a  fleet. 
The  clergyman  of  fiction  has  no  such  dignity.  Doubt- 
less the  clergyman  of  fiction  is  an  exaggeration.  Upon 
large  numbers  of  both  the  Romish  and  Protestant  clergy 
it  is  a  libel.  Still,  that  it  exists  is  evidence  that  more 
or  less  foundation  for  it  exists.  We  give  occasion  to 
such  a  caricature  by  every  word  and  act  and  silent 
usage  by  which  we  suffer  the  pulpit  to  become  a  subli- 
mated institution,  aloof  by  its  elevation  or  its  refine- 
ment from  the  life  men  are  actually  living,  the  thoughts 
they  are  thinking,  the  habits  of  feeling  they  are  indul- 
ging, and  the  pursuits  in  which  they  are  expending  the 
force  of  their  being. 

An  opinion  was  reported  to  me  a  few  years  ago  as 
coming  from  the  superintendent  of  the  police  of  one  of 


26  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  ii. 

our  Atlantic  cities,  to  this  effect ;  that,  so  far  as  his 
observation  went,  there  was  no  other  claus  of  men  who 
knew  so  little  of  real  life  as  the  clergy.  This  judgment 
was  not  uttered  in  bitterness  of  feeling.  I  did  not 
understand  that  the  author  of  it  belonged  to  that  class 
of  men,  who  are  not  few  in  any  large  community,  who 
are  best  known  as  haters  of  ministers.  He  spoke  from 
his  experience  of  the  phase  of  society  with  which  he  was 
most  familiar.  Whatever  might  be  true  of  the  clergy 
elsewhere,  down  there  where  he  saw  men  and  women 
in  need  of  those  influences  which  the  clergy  are  sup- 
posed to  represent  he  thought  they  were  the  least  effec- 
tive workers.  They  were  easily  imposed  upon.  They 
started  impracticable  methods  of  working.  They  could 
not  get  access  to  the  vicious  and  degraded.  I,  of  course, 
do  not  indorse  this  criticism.  I  give  it  as  one  of  the 
waifs  indicating  what  the  world  says  and  believes  about 
us.  We  need  to  face  the  facts  of  the  popular  theory  as 
they  are. 

Further :  it  should  be  observed,  in  illustration  of  the 
same  point,  that  portraits  of  character  given  in  the  pul- 
pit sometimes  do  not  seem  to  the  people  to  be  true  to 
real  life.  Preachers  often  paint  character  in  the  general. 
Depravity  is  affirmed  and  proved  as  depravity  is  in  the 
abstract,  not  as  it  is  softened  and  adorned  by  Christian 
civilization.  Piety  is  illustrated  as  sainthood,  not  as  it 
is  deformed  by  infirmity  and  sin.  Hearers  sometimes, 
therefore,  seem  to  themselves  to  be  described  as  demons, 
when  they  know  that  they  are  not  such,  and  other 
hearers  to  be  described  as  saints,  when  they  know  that 
they  are  no  more  such.  Have  you  not  listened  to  ser- 
mons which  no  living  man  who  knows  what  the  world 
is  would  be  likely  to  accept  as  true  to  life  ?     Such  work 


LECT.  II.]  POLITICAL  PREACHING.  27 

in  the  pulpit  appears  to  hearers  as  a  work  of  art.  It  is 
a  fancy  sketch.  It  may  be  praised  or  censured,  as  one 
would  criticise  the  Dying  Gladiator,  by  the  very  men 
of  whom  it  ought  to  have  been  a  breathing  likeness. 

It  has  been  said  of  the  old  New-England  ministers, 
that  they  knew  being  in  general  more  thoroughly  than 
they  knew  man  in  particular.  So  the  modern  world 
often  believes  of  the  modern  preacher,  that  he  knows 
man  in  the  abstract  more  thoroughly  than  he  knows  men 
individually.  A  consequence  of  this  popular  idea  of  the 
ministry  is  a  widening  of  the  distance  between  the  pul- 
pit and  the  pew.  Sometimes  you  will  find  the  laity 
settled  comfortably  in  the  conviction  that  the  pulpit 
does  not  mean  to  reach  them.  They  may  live  as  they 
list,  and  may  repose  in  their  immunity  from  rebuke ; 
and  yet  their  clergy  shall  be  firing  the  shot  of  a  sound 
theology,  or  intoning  the  periods  of  a  venerable  liturgy, 
over  their  heads  all  the  while. 

6.  This  sense  of  security  from  the  aims  of  the  pulpit 
is  often  at  the  foundation  of  the  antipathy  of  hearers  to 
that  which  they  call  "political  preaching."  Generally 
that  antipathy  is  morbid.  They  are  so  unused  to  feeling 
the  ministries  of  the  clergy  as  a  reality  touching  the 
vital  affairs  of  life,  that  when,  on  the  eve  of  a  national 
crisis,  they  listen  to  a  sermon  on  the  duty  of  Christian 
citizens,  they  are  disturbed  by  it  as  an  innovation.  It 
breaks  up  the  repose  they  have  been  accustomed  to 
enjoy  in  the  sanctuary.  To  many  good  men  it  appears 
sacrilegious  to  discuss  such  mundane  affairs  so  near  to 
the  sacramental  table.  They  call  it  desecration  of  the 
pulpit.  What  does  this  mean,  but  a  confession  that 
they  have  been  so  long  used  to  regarding  the  pulpit  as 
standing  on  the  confines  of  another  world,  that  it  is  a 


28  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  u. 

novelty  to  them  when  it  presumes  to  concern  itself  with 
the  affairs  of  this  world  by  any  such  methods  as  to 
make  itself  felt  ? 

This  is  one  of  the  most  astonishing  distortions  of  Chris- 
tian opinion  which  our  age  has  witnessed.  The  extreme 
of  it  came  to  my  notice,  a  few  years  before  the  civil  war, 
in  the  case  of  a  very  worthy  man,  and  an  advocate  of 
reticence  in  the  church  on  the  question  of  American 
slavery.  To  test  his  principle  in  the  matter,  I  inquired 
of  him  whether  he  thought  it  the  duty  of  Northern 
Christians  to  send  preachers  to  Utah.  "  Certainly,"  was 
the  reply.  "  What  should  a  preacher  do  in  Utah?"  — 
"Visit  the  people,  hold  meetings,  preach,  as  he  would 
elsewhere."  —  " But  what  about  polygamy? "  —  " He 
should  let  that  alone."  —  "Do  you  mean  to  say  that  a 
preacher  should  go  among  a  people  who  are  living  in 
a  state  of  legalized  adultery,  and  be  silent  upon  that 
sin  ?  "  —  "  Yes."  —  "  Then,  what  would  you  have  him 
preach  about  ?  "  —  "  The  gospeV 

The  courage  of  the  man  was  refreshing.  But  what 
of  the  opinion?  An  instance  not  dissimilar  came  to 
my  knowledge  in  Western  New  York  on  the  day  of  the 
national  fast  following  the  assassination  of  President 
Lincoln.  On  the  morning  of  that  day  the  pastor  of 
one  of  the  churches  in  the  village  had  ventured  to 
utter  in  his  sermon  a  few  very  moderate  and  saintly 
words,  somewhat  in  the  style  of  a  bishop's  benediction, 
on  the  guilt  of  rebellion  to  the  powers  that  be.  The 
language  was  not  positive  enough  to  disturb  any  but 
a  morbid  mind ;  but  it  ruffled  the  placidity  of  some  of 
the  audience  very  perceptibly.  It  was  the  theme  of 
considerable  comment  after  the  service.  Said  one  who 
had  heard  it,  "  That  was  a  bold  sermon,  a  very  bold 


LECT.  II.]  THE  MISSION  OF  COMFORT.  29 

sermon."  I  ventured  to  suggest  that  it  might  have 
been  bolder  without  disturbing  Enoch.  The  reply  of 
my  companion  was,  "  It  was  a  great  deal  for  us  to  hear. 
We  are  not  used  to  hearing  any  thing  from  our  pulpit 
that  means  anybody.'"  Contrast  this  theory  of  the 
pulpit  with  the  observation  of  Coleridge  :  "  If  I  were  a 
preacher  at  St.  Paul's  in  London,  I  would  not  preach 
against  smuggling ;  but,  if  I  were  a  preacher  in  a  village 
of  wreckers  on  the  coast,  see  if  I  would  preach  against 
any  thing  else  I  " 

Why  should  not  the  usage  of  the  pulpit  be  such,  that, 
as  a  matter  of  course,  hearers  shall  understand  that  we 
mean  somebody  ?  Why  should  not  preaching  be  always 
so  truthful  in  its  biblical  rebuke,  so  intelligent  in  its 
knowledge  of  men,  so  stereoscopic  in  its  power  to 
individualize  character,  so  resonant  in  its  reponses  to 
the  human  conscience,  that  hearers  shall  be  unable  not 
to  understand  that  we  mean  somebody?  The  pulpit 
should  be  a  battery,  well  armed  and  well  worked. 
Every  shot  from  it  should  reach  a  vulnerable  spot 
somewhere.  And  to  be  such  it  must  be,  in  every  sense 
of  the  word,  well  manned.  The  gunner  who  works  it 
must  know  what  and  where  the  vulnerable  spots  are. 
He  must  be  neither  an  angel  nor  a  brute.  He  must  be 
a  scholar  and  a  gentleman,  but  not  these  only.  He 
must  be  a  man,  who  knows  men,  and  who  will  never 
suffer  the  great  tides  of  human  opinion  and  feeling  to 
ebb  and  flow  around  him  uncontrolled  because  un- 
observed. 

7.  Not  only  in  the  way  of  rebuke  does  the  pulpit 
often  fail  in  its  mission,  through  the  want  of  a  masterly 
acquaintance  with  mankind.  Often  the  failure  is  more 
marked  in  respect  to  its  mission  of  comfort.     If  there 


30  MEN  AND   BOOKS.  [lect.  ii. 

is  one  thing  more  obvious  than  another  in  the  general 
strain  of  apostolic  preacliing,  it  is  the  preponderance  of 
words  of  encouragement  over  those  of  reproof  and 
commination.  In  no  other  thing  did  inspired  preach- 
ers disclose  their  inspired  knowledge  of  human  condi- 
tions more  clearly.  The  world  of  to-day  needs  the  same 
adaptation  of  the  pulpit  to  its  wants.  We  preach  to  a 
struggling  and  suffering  humanity.  Tempted  men  and 
sorrowing  women  are  our  hearers.  Never  is  a  sermon 
preached,  but  to  some  hearers  who  are  carrying  a  load 
of  secret  grief.  To  such  we  need  to  speak  as  to  "  one 
whom  his  mother  comforteth."  What  delicacy  of  touch, 
what  refinement  of  speech,  what  tenderness  of  tone, 
what  reverent  approach  as  to  holy  ground,  do  we  not 
need  to  discharge  this  part  of  a  preacher's  mission !  and 
therefore  what  rounded  knowledge  of  human  conditions! 
Is  it  a  cynical  judgment  of  the  pulpit  to  affirm  that 
in  our  times  it  has  reversed  the  apostolic  proportions 
of  preaching  in  this  respect?  It  is  vastly  easier  to 
denounce  rampant  sin  than  to  cheer  struggling  virtue. 
Preaching  to  the  ungodly  is  more  facile  than  preaching 
to  the  church.  And  in  preaching  to  the  church  it  is 
less  difficult  to  reprove  than  to  commend,  to  admonish 
than  to  cheer,  to  threaten  than  to  help.  Hence  has 
arisen,  if  I  do  not  misjudge,  a  disproportioned  amount 
of  severe  discourse,  which  no  biblical  model  warrants, 
and  which  the  facts  of  human  life  seldom  demand  from 
a  Christian  pulpit.  Look  over  any  large  concourse  of 
Christian  worshipers,  number  the  stern  and  anxious 
faces  among  them,  —  faces  of  men  and  women  who  are 
in  the  thick  of  life's  conflict.  Where  shall  the  cunning 
hand  be  found  to  reach  out  and  keep  from  falling  these 
weary  ones?     Very  early  in  life,  commonly,  does  the 


LECT.  II.]      POPULAR  CRITICISM  OF  THE   PULPIT.  31 

great  struggle  of  probation  begin.     The  buoyant  joy  of 
youth  is  short  lived. 

"  Shades  of  the  prison-house  begin  to  close 
Upon  the  growing  hoy" 

Probation^  more  than  any  other  word  in  the  language, 
tells  the  story  of  every  human  life.  With  this  one  fea- 
ture of  human  experience  the  mission  of  the  pulpit  has 
chiefly  to  do.  Above  all  other  things,  therefore,  in  the 
clerical  character,  this  world  craves  the  power  of  help- 
fulness. The  Master  walking  on  the  sea  in  the  night, 
and  stretching  forth  liis  hand  to  the  sinking  Peter,  is 
the  emblem  of  that  which  a  Christian  preacher  must  be 
in  every  age,  if  he  would  speak  to  real  conditions,  and 
minister  to  exigent  necessities. 

Intelligent  laymen  are  often  sensible  of  waste  in  the 
ministrations  of  the  pulpit,  growing  out  of  the  want, 
either  of  knowledge,  or  of  tact  in  adapting  them  to  the 
facts  of  human  experience.  The  conversation  of  such 
laymen  will  often  disclose  this.  Their  criticisms,  it  is 
true,  are  to  be  received  with  caution,  as  are  all  the 
popular  criticisms  of  the  clergy.  They  are  sometimes 
thrust  upon  our  notice  by  vain  men,  by  men  who  ignore 
the  real  claims  of  the  pulpit  upon  their  respect,  occa- 
sionally by  men  whom  it  is  not  uncharitable,  and  may 
not  be  unwise,  to  rebuke  for  their  unconscious  envy  of 
ministerial  prerogatives.  It  is  generally  to  be  presumed 
that  the  clergy,  like  masters  in  other  professions,  know 
their  own  business  better  than  such  critics  know  it. 
But,  with  all  reasonable  deductions,  it  will  be  found 
that  this  sense  of  waste  in  the  pulpit  is  felt  by  men  of 
sufficient  character,  and  in  sufficient  numbers,  to  deserve 
attention.     They  believe,  whether  truly  or  not,  that  the 


32  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect^.  n. 

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  sugges- 
tion, which  to  some  may  seem  questionable.  Let  it  pass 
for  what  it  is  worth.  It  is,  that  we  should  be  watcliful 
of  the  ministries  of  certain  eccentric  clergymen. 

In  every  age  of  religious  awakening,  there  is  a  class 
of  preachers  who  break  away  from  the  conventionali- 
ties of  the  pulpit  lawlessly.  They  trample  upon  time- 
honored  usages.  They  are  apt  to  handle  irreverently 
the  opinions  and  the  policy  of  the  fathers.  As  a  conse- 
quence, 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  preach- 
ing is  a  reality  to  them.  The  impression  they  make  is 
that  of  a  business  of  real  life.     Better  men  and  wiser 

33 


34  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  m. 

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  invalua- 
ble 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.  A 

B .     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  impos- 
sible 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  thou- 
sands, 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,  what- 
ever 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  im- 
pression, —  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 


LKCT.  iii.J  PREACHING  IN  TIMES  OF  EXCITEMENT.  35 

holds  its  own.  In  such  a  state  of  things  it  will  gener- 
ally 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  wliich  is 
its  ultimate  momentum.  But  one  of  the  first  princi- 
ples 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  invin- 
cible 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 


86  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  fLECT.  m. 

has  the  pul^^it  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  litera- 
ture 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  de- 
signed 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  neces- 
sary reason  that  they  grew  up  at  a  time  when  the 
people  did  not  know  how  to  read,  and  were  not  expect- 
ed to  become  readers.     It  was  a  time  when  in  England 


LECT.  ni.]    CHAKACTER  OF  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  37 

it  was  sufficient  to  save  a  man  from  the  gallows  that 
he  knew  how  to  read.  This  was  English  law  till  the 
time  of  George  IV.  Therefore  select  classes  of  mind 
have  been  the  object  aimed  at  in  English  literature. 

(2)  The  reading  classes  have  been  select  not  only 
in  numbers,  but  in  character.  They  have  been  exclu- 
sives.  They  have  been  contracted  fragments  of  nations. 
Their  distinction  has  been,  that  they  were  unlike  the 
bulk  of  the  people,  and  not  in  sympathy  with  the  people. 
Their  exclusiveness  was  their  glory.  Their  own  social 
position  demanded  the  popular  ignorance  as  a  back- 
ground. Authors  treated  them  as  a  superior  class. 
They  were  cajoled  by  an  obsequious  recognition  of 
their  caste.  Both  authors  and  readers  held  themselves 
as  retainers  of  the  nobility  with  an  abjectness  which 
often  intensified  the  contempt  they  all  felt  for  the  herd 
of  the  people.  It  is  a  humiliating  fact ;  but  such  were 
the  soil  and  the  atmosphere  from  which  the  bulk  of 
modern  literature  grew. 

(3)  The  English  literature  has  a  larger  infusion  than 
any  other  of  the  popular  element;  but  it  is  not  and 
never  has  been  thoroughly  popular.  Such  a  literature 
is  yet  to  be  created.  Look  into  the  prefaces  of  the 
standard  books  in  our  language,  turn  to  the  correspond- 
ence of  authors,  peruse  the  books  themselves,  and  you 
will  discover  how  oblivious  authors  have  been  of  the 
actual  numerical  majority  of  the  nation.  Read  John 
Foster's  essay  on  "  Popul'ar  Ignorance."  In  the  dialect 
of  the  English  press  the  "  reading  public  "  and  "  the 
nation"  have  never  been  synonymous,  nor  approxi- 
mately so.  Even  so  late  as  when  Addison  and  Swift 
were  delighting  a  select  public  of  readers,  the  masses  of 
the  English  people  never  heard  of  them.     The  masses 


38  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  fi^Ecr.  in. 

at  that  period  found  their  chief  excitements  at  country 
fairs  and  boxing-matches  and  dog-fights  and  bull-bait- 
ings. The  only  gleam  of  literary  thought  which  found 
its  way  to  them,  aside  from  the  pulpit,  shone  from  the 
footlights  of  the  strolling  theaters. 

John  Foster  records  the  following  fact  as  well  au- 
thenticated to  his  judgment  by  direct  testimony  from 
that  golden  age  of  English  letters:  On  one  Sunday- 
morning,  in  one  of  the  rural  churches,  the  service  was 
read  with  unusual  rapidity,  and  every  legal  expedient 
adopted  to  shorten  the  time  during  which  the  people 
should  be  detained  in  the  house  of  God.  At  the  close 
of  the  service  the  officiating  clergyman  gave  publicly 
his  reason  for  thus  abbreviating  the  duties  of  the  hour. 

He  said  that  "  Neighbor  B "  was  about  to  bait  a  bull 

in  the  afternoon,  and  he  wished  to  give  the  people  ample 
time  to  prepare  for  the  enjoyment  of  the  scene.  So 
distant  from  the  enjoyment  of  the  literature  of  England 
were  the  masses  of  the  English  people. 

One  reason  which  has  made  the  poetry  of  Homer  the 
favorite  of  English  scholarship  is  the  intensely  aristo- 
cratic spirit  which  breathes  through  the  Iliad  and  the 
Odyssey.  Not  a  trace  of  the  democracy  of  literature 
is  found  in  Homer,  nor  indeed,  so  far  as  I  know,  in  any 
ancient  poetry,  except  the  Greek  drama  and  the  poetry 
of  the  Hebrews:  hence  the  English  aristocracy  intui- 
tively exalt  Homer  in  their  estimate  of  libraries.  Eng- 
lish noblemen  translate  Homer,  and  write  laudatory 
criticisms  upon  him.  It  may  reasonably  be  doubted 
whether  the  intrinsic  merits  of  the  Odyssey  and  the 
Iliad  would  ever  have  lifted  them  to  the  rank  they  hold 
in  English  criticism,  if  they  had  not  chimed  in  so  harmo- 
niously with  aristocratic  tastes  in  English  scholarship. 


tECT.  m.]  ENGLISH  AUTHORS  EXCLUSIVE.  39 

(4)  In  the  history  of  English  literature  the  rt  aders 
who  stood  between  authors  and  the  people  at  large  did 
not  by  any  means  stand  midway  between.  They  were 
much  nearer  to  the  guild  of  authors  than  to  the  level 
of  the  nation :  therefore  they  were  not  good  conductors 
of  intellectual  stimulus  from  the  upper  to  the  nether 
regions.  A  gulf  as  impassable  almost  as  that  which 
separates  Dives  and  Lazarus  shut  off  the  masses  of  the 
people  from  the  privileges,  the  occupations,  the  sympa- 
thies, and  the  ideas  of  the  authors.  The  project  of 
sinking  a  shaft  of  intelligence  from  above  down  into 
the  torpid  strata  of  the  national  mind  was  never  origi- 
nated by  the  old  standard  productions  of  our  language. 
No  trace  of  it  is  to  be  found  in  the  general  conception 
of  the  mission  of  literature,  even  so  late  as  a  hundred 
years  ago.  Publishers  are  yet  living  who  remember 
when  such  an  idea  was  in  its  infancy.  They  can  recall 
the  time  when  a  sale  of  five  thousand  copies  of  any  thing 
was  deemed  a  prodigious  success  in  their  trade.  The 
sale  of  Walter  Scott's  works  in  his  own  lifetime  —  and 
Scott  died  in  1832  —  was  deemed  a  miracle  of  literary 
achievement,  and  it  bankrupted  his  publishers,  after 
all.  When  the  process  of  stereotyping  plates  was  in- 
vented, it  was  thought  by  the  more  conservative  pub- 
lishers to  be  of  doubtful  value,  because  the  sale  of  so 
few  works  would  justify  the  expense  of  plates.  But 
now  a  publisher  hesitates  to  accept  a  manuscript  which 
is  not  worth  stereotyping.  Books  the  sale  of  which  is 
less  than  five  thousand  copies  are  regarded  as  the  small 
enterprises  of  the  press. 

The  facts  here  noticed  should  be  taken  into  the  ac- 
count in  judging  of  the  limited  rewards  which  some  of 
the  most  illustrious  English  authors  have  received  in 


40  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [leot.  m. 

their  own  lifetime.  Critics  are  fond  of  contrasting  the 
contemporary  with  the  posthumous  fame  of  authors. 
We  are  reminded,  as  if  it  were  an  anomaly,  that  no 
collected  edition  of  Shakspeare's  plays  was  demanded 
during  his  life ;  that  Milton  received  but  five  pounds 
for  "  Paradise  Lost ; "  that  Bishop  Butler,  the  most  pro- 
found of  English  prelates,  was  not  known  outside  of 
his  own  diocese;  that  Spinoza's  works,  though  they 
played  an  important  part  in  revolutionizing  the  philoso- 
phy of  Europe,  brought  no  income  to  the, author.  Mr. 
Froude  says  that  it  is  only  by  accident  that  a  work  of 
genius  becomes  immediately  popular.  I  doubt  this  as- 
sertion. What  is  there,  what  has  there  ever  been,  in  the 
great  works  of  our  literature  which  is  fitted  to  make 
them  popular  ?  They  are  not  addressed  to  the  people, 
not  fitted  to  the  popular  taste  or  comprehension.  To 
this  day  the  actual  readers  of  Milton  are  few.  Those 
who  heartily  enjoy  Shaksj^eare  are  but  a  fragment  of 
the  reading  public.  Even  on  the  stage,  no  manager 
succeeds  in  resuscitating  the  great  dramatist  for  any 
long  period.  Let  a  work  of  genius,  like  "  The  Pilgrim's 
Progress,"  be  made  for  the  people,  and  the  people  recog- 
nize it.  But  the  great  bulk  of  our  literature  is  made 
for  the  few ;  and  it  has  its  reward  in  being  appreciated 
by  the  few. 

A  change  is  in  progress.  A  popular  literature,  good 
and  bad,  is  in  the  process  of  growth.  But  the  old 
standard  literature  of  our  language,  that  which  has 
grown  venerable  with  centuries,  that  which  contains 
the  classic  models  of  English  thought  and  speech,  and 
that  to  which,  therefore,  all  scholarly  minds  turn  for 
literary  stimulus  and  refreshment,  is  a  literature,  which, 
for  the  most  part,  has  known  no  such  thing  as  the  peo- 


LECT.  III.]  PERIL  TO  CLERICAL  TASTES.  41 

pie  in  the  process  of  its  creation.  It  does  not  represent 
the  people ;  it  is  not  of  the  people ;  it  has  never  lived 
among  the  people  ;  it  is  not  dear  to  the  people ;  it  is  not 
known  by  the  people. 

(5)  The  exclusive  character  of  national  literatures 
exposes  the  clerical  mind  to  obvious  peril  in  respect  to 
clerical  sympathy  with  the  people.  It  is  clear,  on  the 
face  of  things,  that  such  a  literature  must  be  in  some 
respects  what  the  Christian  pulpit  ought  not  to  be,  and 
that  a  successful  pulpit  must,  in  some  other  respects,  be 
what  such  a  literature  is  not.  Yet  it  is  equally  plain 
that  a  mind  formed  by  such  a  literature  alone  is  in 
danger  of  acquiring  tastes  which  are  averse  to  popular 
modes  of  thought,  to  popular  habits  of  feeling,  and  to 
the  study  of  popular  necessities.  A  preacher  may  so 
study  such  a  literature  as  to  be  dwarfed  in  his  aptitudes 
for  the  pulpit.  If  he  forms  his  mental  character  by  the 
study  of  such  books  alone,  he  will  inevitably  reverse 
the  process  of  his  education  for  the  ministry.  Disin- 
tegration may  take  place  in  his  natural  tastes  for  the 
popular  service.  Culture  itself  may  unfit  him  for  the 
pulpit,  except  as  an  arena  for  literary  achievement. 

I  have  known  instances  in  which  this  disorganizing 
process  has  been  fatal.  A  student's  clerical  tastes  have 
been  demoralized.  He  has  become  disinclined,  and 
therefore  unfitted,  to  the  work  of  the  ministry,  by  an 
abuse  of  the  very  process  which  was  designed  to  fit 
him  for  it.  He  has. shrunk  back  on  approaching  the 
practical  labors  of  the  pulpit,  through  the  force  of 
acquired  tastes  which  had  the  tyranny  of  instincts  over 
his  moral  purposes.  Such  a  revolution  in  the  character 
of  a  candidate  for  the  pulpit  is  usually  irremediable. 
The  best  thing  we  can  do  with  him  is  to  make  a  pro- 


42  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  m. 

fessor  of  liini.  The  inspiration  of  the  pulpit  has  gope 
out  of  him  to  return  no  more. 

We  need  to  face  this  fact  squarely.  The  very  disci- 
pline of  literary  culture  to  which  we  subject  ourselves 
in  a  course  of  collegiate  and  theological  training  is  at- 
tended with  this  incidental  peril.  Like  all  other  great 
benefits  of  culture,  literary  discipline  is  gained  at  costs. 
It  becomes  us,  therefore,  to  know  that  the  danger  exists, 
and  that,  for  full  growth  in  fitness  to  the  pulpit,  we 
need  a  study  of  men  to  which  no  extant  literature 
invites  us. 

(6)  We  should  never  lose  sight  of  the  fact,  that,  while 
there  is  a  literature  of  the  pulpit  and  in  the  pulpit, 
the  pulpit  still  has  objects  which  no  other  medium  of 
literary  expression  has.  The  pulpit  is  identified  with 
the  people  in  the  very  groundwork  of  its  construction. 
It  stands  in  among  the  people.  It  exists  for  the  people. 
It  depends  for  all  its  legitimate  uses  and  successes  upon 
the  sympathies  of  the  people.  It  reminds  one  of  the 
Pantheon  at  Rome,  which  stands  down  among  the  shops 
and  hovels  of  the  poorest  poor,  partly  buried  in  the 
rubbish  of  ages,  but,  for  all  that,  a  symbol  of  the  history 
of  a  great  people  for  ever. 

The  pulpit  is  not  designed  for  select  audiences.  Its 
object  is  not  to  furnish  entertainment  to  luxurious 
minds,  or  scholarlike  enjoyment  to  tranquil  minds.  Its 
object  is  to  meet  the  necessities  of  minds,  which,  for  the 
most  part,  must  be  engrossed  in  a  care  for  their  neces- 
sities. The  pulpit  addresses  chiefly  the  millions  who 
are  struggling  for  a  living,  and  who  find  the  struggle  so 
severe,  that  books  are  as  dreamlike  a  luxury  as  a  coach 
and  livery.  A  man  of  books  ranks  in  their  minds  with 
millionaires.     On  this  great  low-ground  of  society  the 


I.ECT.  III.]  THE  GREEK  DRAMA.  43 

pulpit  stands  alone.  Literature  lias  no  other  depart- 
ment, which  in  its  very  nature,  as  growing  out  of  the 
amis  for  which  it  exists,  is  so  intensely  popular  as  that 
of  the  pulpit.  The  modern  newspaper,  even,  does  not 
bear  comparison  with  it  in  this  respect.  The  news- 
paper does  not  strike  so  deep  as  the  pulpit  does  in  its 
theory  of  popular  necessities.  It  can  not,  therefore, 
reach  so  profound  and  permanent  a  style  of  thought. 

(7)  The  only  thing  I  can  recall  which  deserves  to  be 
termed  literature,  which  is  at  all  suggestive  of  the  pulpit 
in  the  ideal  on  which  it  was  constructed,  is  the  old 
Greek  drama.  The  Greek  drama  was  oral  in  the  form 
of  its  communication:  so  is  the  pulpit.  The  Greek 
drama  discussed  the  profoundest  problems  of  human 
destiny:  so  does  the  pulpit.  The  Greek  drama  ex- 
pressed the  ideas  which  lay  deepest  in  the  most  enlight- 
ened theology  of  the  day :  so  does  the  pulpit.  Above 
all,  the  Greek  drama  existed  for  the  people;  and  so 
does  the  pulpit. 

In  this  respect  the  Greek  drama  was  exceptional  to 
almost  all  other  ancient  literature.  The  people  of  the 
ancient  cities  of  Greece  were  the  auditors  and  the 
judges  of  the  drama  of  their  times.  The  entire  body 
of  the  free  citizens  of  Athens  —  not  a  literary  coterie 
alone,  not  the  members  of  a  university  alone,  not  the 
pupils  of  a  school  of  philosophy  only,  not  a  set  of 
pleasure- seeking  idlers,  but  the  entire  citizenship  of  the 
metropolis  —  heard  the  plays  of  Sophocles  and  Euripi- 
des. The  accomplished  professor  of  the  Greek  language 
and  literature  in  Amherst  College  is  of  the  opinion 
that  probably  Grecian  women  were  permitted  to  attend 
the  exliibition  of  the  tragic  drama  on  the  Greek  stage, 
iind  that  even  the  slaves  were  not  forbidden  to  attend. 


44  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  m. 

The  most  magnificent  triumphs  of  Grecian  genius  were 
popular  festivals.  This  department  of  Greek  literature 
grew  up  with  the  Greek  people.  Their  minds  awakened 
it;  their  demands  stimulated  it;  their  tastes  passed 
judgment  upon  it ;  their  sympathies  made  it  what  it 
was.  So  far  as  any  Pagan  literature  could  foreshadow 
a  Christian  institution,  the  Greek  drama  foreshadowed 
the  Christian  pulpit.  It  did  so  with  an  approach  to 
resemblance  which  has  never  been  equaled  by  any 
subsequent  literature  of  equal  dignity. 

This  idiosyncrasy  of  the  pulpit,  in  comparison  with 
the  great  mass  of  the  literatures  of  the  world,  should, 
therefore,  never  be  forgotten  in  the  ardor  of  our  literary 
pursuits.  The  pulpit  exists  for  the  people.  It  depends 
for  its  existence,  in  any  broad  growth,  upon  its  union 
with  the  popular  sympathies. 

10.  The  relations  of  the  pulpit  to  the  people  are 
affected,  further,  by  the  fact,  that,  in  the  moral  history 
of  the  world,  great  popular  changes  often  take  place 
independently  of  the  educated  classes  of  mankind  as 
such. 

This  is  a  phenomenon  in  history  which  is  exceed- 
ingly prolific  of  suggestion.  I  am  not  confident  that 
the  philosophy  of  it  is  wholly  intelligible,  nor  that  it 
represents  abstractly  the  normal  method  of  the  progress 
of  the  race.  But  of  the  fact  there  can  be  no  question 
in  the  mind  of  any  thoughtful  observer  of  real  life. 
The  fact  is  most  obvious,  in  respect  to  changes  for  the 
better,  in  ])opular  sentiment.  Evil  works  most  fre- 
quently from  above  downward,  —  from  the  head  to  the 
heart  of  society.  The  bulk  of  mankind  are  more  re- 
ceptive of  evil  than  of  good  from  their  superiors.  A 
licentious   court   can   make   a  people  licentious   more 


LECT.  III.]  THE  CULTIVATED  CLASSES.  45 

readily  than  a  moral  court  can  make  a  people  moral. 
An  infidel  aristocracy  can  make  a  nation  infidel  more 
easily  than  a  Christian  aristocracy  can  make  a  nation 
Christian.  The  most  destructive  forms  of  evil  do,  in 
fact,  usually  begin  in  high  places,  and  work  downward. 
On  the  contrary,  it  very  frequently  happens  that  pro- 
found moral  movements  for  good  begin  low,  and  work 
upward. 

(1)  Let  us  group  the  cultivated  classes  of  mankind 
for  a  moment,  and  observe  how  the  fact  stands.  First 
we  have  the  class  of  royal  and  aristocratic  birth,  —  the 
class  represented  by  the  crown  and  the  court.  Then 
comes  the  military  class,  represented  by  the  sword. 
•Then  we  have  the  literary  class,  strictly  so  called, — 
the  class  represented  by  the  university  and  the  library. 
Then  follow  the  clerical,  the  legal,  and  the  medical 
classes,  represented  by  the  three  liberal  professions,  to 
which  must  be  added,  in  our  day  the  fourth  profession, 
the  journalists,  represented  by  the  most  powerful  of  all 
printed  literature, — the  newspaper.  To  these  succeed 
the  small  but  very  influential  class  of  artists,  repre- 
sented by  painting,  sculpture,  and  music. 

Finally  must  be  appended  a  class  peculiar,  for  the 
most  part,  to  our  own  times,  so  far  as  it  is  distinct  from 
the  rest.  It  consists  of  those  whose  chief  distinction  is 
their  wealth,  and  whose  culture  springs  from  the  con- 
sciousness of  power  which  wealth  creates,  and  from 
the  leisure  which  wealth  renders  practicable.  This  last 
class  have  a  refinement  which  is  often  diverse  from  that 
of  court,  or  school,  or  camp,  or  studio,  or  profession.  It 
is  a  refinement  in  which  manners  take  the  precedence 
of  mind.  These  several  classes  are  all  of  them,  in  some 
sense,  educated.     The  idea  of  culture  is  prized  among 


46  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  hi. 

them.  We  may,  without  essential  error,  speak  of  them 
as  the  cultivated  portions  of  mankind.  Beneath  them, 
in  respect  to  educated  thinking  and  whatever  else  that 
implies,  lies  the  great  bulk  of  the  human  race.  Numeri- 
cally estimated,  these  cultivated  classes  are  but  insig- 
nificant fragments  of  the  whole. 

The  point  I  wish  now  to  emphasize  is,  that  often 
gjeat  changes  of  moral  sentiment  take  jDlace  in  that 
vast  low-ground  of  society,  with  which  not  one  of  these 
educated  classes,  as  such,  has  any  visible  connection. 
Individuals  from  the  educated  classes  are  reached  by 
such  changes,  but  not  the  classes  as  classes.  Religious 
awakenings  of  vast  reach  often  start  down  there  before 
they  become  visible  in  the  aerial  regions  above.  Ad- 
vanced ideas  of  liberty  and  of  national  policy,  which 
are  rooted  in  moral  principle,  often  exist  in  the  popular 
feeling  down  there,  long  before  they  have  worked  up 
high  enough  to  find  the  general  voice  to  sjjeak  them 
from  the  cultivated  strata  of  thought. 

(2)  We  have  a  notable  illustration  of  this  truth  in 
the  history  of  the  antislavery  controversy  in  this  coun- 
try. Looking  back  to  it,  now  that  the  main  question 
is  determined,  do  we  not  discover  that  the  masses  of 
the  people  have  been  generally  in  advance  of  their 
leaders  on  that  subject?  Where  both  classes  lagged 
behind  the  purposes  of  Providence,  have  not  the  many 
been  less  distant  in  the  rear  than  the  few  ?  Have  not 
the  intuitions  of  the  people  been,  at  almost  any  time, 
more  far-seeing  than  the  statesmanship  of  the  Senate  ? 
Have  not  the  people  been,  at  almost  any  time,  ready 
for  progress  which  our  wise  men  thought  unsafe,  but 
wdiich  God  at  length  hurled  us  into,  as  if  in  the  anger 
of  his  exhausted  patience? 


LECT.  III.]  AJVIERICAN  SLAVERY.  47 

The  masses  of  the  people  never  heartily  supported 
the  compromises  which  made  up  nearly  the  whole  of 
our  statesmanship  on  the  subject  for  half  a  century. 
Compromise  —  that  miserable  burlesque  of  wisdom 
where  moral  principles  are  at  stake  —  was  the  sum 
total  of  the  vision  of  our  wise  men  through  all  that 
period ;  but  the  instincts  of  the  people  were  never 
genial  to  it.  When  President  Lincoln  said,  "  If  slavery 
is  not  wrong,  nothing  is  wrong,"  the  conscience  and 
common  sense  of  the  people  responded,  "  So  say  we 
all."  President  Lincoln  himself  was  a  child  of  the  low- 
grounds.  His  ideas  of  political  economy  and  of  social 
rights  he  got  out  of  the  woods.  His  nearest  approach 
to  metaphysical  culture  was  splitting  rails.  His  knowl- 
edge of  books  was  almost  limited  to  the  Bible  and 
Shakspeare.  All  that  he  knew  of  history  he  learned 
from  Abbott's  histories  for  children. 

If  the  cultivated  mind  of  our  country  had  been  more 
childlike  in  its  wisdom,  and  had  followed  the  intima- 
tions of  Providence  more  swiftly,  it  would  have  had  no 
difficulty  with  the  common  mind  in  executing  peacea- 
bly the  plans  which  God  at  last  thrust  upon  the  nation 
in  carnage.  Carnage  is  not  the  normal  and  necessary 
instrument  of  great  revolutions.  In  this  also  the  masses 
of  our  people  were  right  in  their  convictions.  "  Slavery 
is  wrong,"  said  they,  "  and  it  must  die ;  but  it  can  die 
by  peaceful  means."  In  this  conviction  they  were 
nearer  to  the  ultimate  principles  of  God's  government 
of  nations  than  were  the  few  fanatical  leaders  who 
ignored  the  reformatory  potency  of  time.  They  were 
nearer  to  the  old  Mosaic  wisdom  on  the  subject,  —  that 
marvelous  system  of  jurisprudence,  to  which  we  owe 
so  many  germs  of  the  world's  latest  and  wisest  states- 


48  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  iit. 

mansliip.  History  in  future  ages  will  tell  this  story 
more  truthfully  than  living  chroniclers  are  now  doing 
it. 

Even  up  to  this  hour,  is  it  not  the  rude  instincts  of 
the  people  which  are  taking  the  lead  of  political  opinion 
in  the  solution  of  those  problems,  consequent  upon  the 
civil  war,  which  have  a  moral  and  religious  basis  ?  The 
cultivated  classes  as  a  whole  are  not  leading  this 
people :  they  are  following.  The  real  leaders  are  men 
of  the  people,  as  distinct  from,  and  to  some  extent  op- 
posed to,  the  men  of  culture.  Such,  at  least,  is  the 
horoscope  as  I  read  it.  How,  otherwise,  could  the  phe- 
nomenon ever  have  been  possible,  which  we  have  wit- 
nessed within  the  last  decade,  —  that  the  government 
of  a  great  nation  hung  in  suspense  upon  the  votes  of 
a  few  negroes  in  the  backwoods  of  Louisiana  and  the 
everglades  of  Florida,  who  could  not  write  their  own 
names,  nor  distinguish  their  ballots  from  circus-tickets  ? 
One  is  reminded  often,  in  observing  such  phenomena, 
of  the  declaration  of  the  apostle,  "  Not  many  mighty, 
not  many  noble,  are  called."  It  appears  as  if  men  of 
culture  did  not  generally  read  Divine  Providence  aright 
till  they  are  needed  as  leaders  of  great  movements 
which  have,  in  the  main,  been  originated  without 
them.  After  a  certain  growth  of  reforms  we  must 
have  the  leadership,  either  of  high  intelligence,  or,  in 
the  absence  of  that,  of  miraculous  inspiration.  God 
does  not  permanently  abrogate  the  law  by  which  the 
superior  governs  the  inferior  mind ;  but  temporarily, 
and  when  inspiration  and  miracle  can  not  be  interpo- 
lated into  the  system  of  affairs,  he  does  suspend  that 
law  by  making  the  low-grounds  of  society  the  birth- 
place of  great  ideas. 


LECTURE  IV. 

RELATIONS     OF     THE     CLERGY     TO     EE  VOLUTIONS     OF 
POPULAR    OPINION,    CONTINUED. 

(3)  The  views  already  presented  suggest,  further 
that  sometunes  popular  revolutions  of  opinion  beeonie 
distorted  and  corrupt  for  the  want  of  an  educatea^ 
Christian  leadership).  Then  come  mutterings  of  anai> 
chy.  These,  if  not  heeded,  swell  into  belloTfings  o 
revolution.  It  is  my  conviction  that  ponderous  ques 
tions  of  right  and  wrong  are  now  seething  among  thi 
I  masses  of  the  nations,  which  have  been  started  b} 
truthful  ideas.  They  are,  at  the  bottom,  legitimate 
problems  of  Christian  inquiry.  They  are  such  ques 
tions  as  socialism  strives  frantically  to  answer.  Among 
them  are  the  social  problems  which  are  chafing  some 
of  the  Southern  States  of  our  republic.  In  all  the 
great  nations  of  Christendom  questions  of  this  nature 
are  threatening  to  turn  the  world  upside  down.  A 
blind  sense  of  wrong  is  buried  under  the  enormous 
inequalities  of  our  civilization,  which  the  first  influence 
of  Christianity  tends  to  lash  into  frenzy  over  the  first 
principles  of  government  and  social  order,  with  a  reck- 
lessness which  breeds  civil  wars.  Looking  at  the  facts 
as  they  are  known  and  read  of  all  men,  and  as  they 
are  suffered  by  the  great  majority,  liuman  nature  cries 
out    against   them.      It   declares,  that,  if  Christianity 

49 


50  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  iv. 

means  any  thing,  it  means  something  ver}'-  different 
from  this.  Then  follow,  the  world  over,  the  questions, 
''  What  and  why  and  how  and  wherefore,"  down  to  the 
roots  of  things. 

Yet  this  entire  volume  of  popular  questionings  of 
the  drift  of  our  civilization  might  be  answered  so  as  to 
promote  the  peace  of  nations  and  the  brotherhood  of 
races,  if  the  educated  mind  of  the  world  would  accept 
them  as  questionings  which  ought  to  be  answered,  in 
stead  of  beating  them  down  by  a  repressive  conserva 
tism,  by  pride  of  race,  by  the  tyranny  of  wealth,  and 
by  bayonets.  Because  those  questions  are  ignored,  or 
falsely  answered,  by  the  educated  classes,  they  continue 
to  inflame  the  unsatisfied  mind  below.  That  low- 
ground  of  humanity,  ignorant  and  debased  as  it  is, 
can  not  rid  itself  of  them.  It  surges  around  them 
angrily  and  blindly.  The  more  obstinately  the  mind 
above  crowds  them  down,  or  holds  still  in  contempt  of 
them,  the  more  tempestuously,  often  deliriously,  and  in 
the  final  result  demoniacally,  the  mind  below  clamors 
for  a  settlement  of  them.  At  length,  in  the  fullness  of 
its  times,  the  mind  below  breaks  loose  from  estab- 
lished institutions.  The  laws  and  usages  of  centuries 
give  way.  Rabid  diseases  of  opinion  take  the  place  of 
healthy  and  quiescent  faith,  —  all  for  the  want  of  a 
dispassionate,  scholarly,  Christian  leadership. 

(4)  At  the  root  of  almost  all  the  intoxicated  de- 
velopments of  popular  opinion,  there  is  a  truth.  It  is 
a  truth  distorted,  but  still  a  truth ;  a  truth  tainted  by 
error,  but  a  truth  nevertheless ;  a  truth  bloated  by 
intemperate  defenses,  but  a  truth  for  all  that.  A  mys- 
terious power  has  set  it  fermenting  in  secret  in  the 
inexpressible  intuitions  of  ignorant  minds,  as  if  in  tho 


LECT.  IV.]  THE  PILGRIM'S  PROGRESS.  61 

bowels  of  the  earth,  where  the  sun  never  shines.  It 
must  work  its  way  up  to  light  and  air.  If  there  is  no 
other  way  for  its  ascent,  if  the  repressive  forces  above 
are  so  ponderous  and  so  compact  that  it  can  not  lift 
them  off  gently,  then  it  must  spout  up  volcanically.  It 
will  not  be  smothered  passively.  A  man  buried  alive 
will  beat  the  coffin-lid.  So  these  undying  truths,  pent 
up  in  the  souls  of  ignorance  and  debasement,  will 
struggle  for  egress.  They  will  find  their  way  out 
wherever  they  can  discover  the  weakest  spot  in  the 
shell  with  which  conservative  society  becomes  crusted 
over.  The  Providence  of  God  certainly  works  some- 
times in  this  seemingly  anomalous  neglect  of  the  edu- 
cated powers  of  the  world. 

I  say  "  anomalous,"  because  it  is  not  the  normal  way 
of  Providence  to  ignore  culture,  or  to  work  without  it. 
But  sometimes,  when  culture,  as  represented  in  the 
upper  classes  of  great  nations  and  ruling  races,  is  false 
to  its  mission,  and  treacherous  to  its  origin,  God  starts 
great  truths  into  life  m  the  hearts  of  the  masses,  not  in 
the  heads  of  the  few.  He  lets  them  work  a  long  time 
there,  in  a  half  blinded  way,  before  the  few  discover  and 
embrace  them. 

An  episode  illustrative  of  this  in  literary  history  was 
witnessed  in  the  origin  and  early  fate  of  the  "  Pilgrim's 
Progress."  Who  wrote  the  "  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  and 
where  ?  A  tinker  in  Bedford  jail.  By  whom,  and  why, 
was  the  tinker  shut  up  in  Bedford  jail  ?  The  upper 
classes  of  a  great  empire  put  him  there  to  prevent  his 
preaching  other  such  things  as  the  immortal  allegory. 
And  how  was  it  received  by  contemporary  opinion? 
Thousands  of  colliers  and  peasants  and  humble  trades- 
men read  it,  and  admired  it,  and  loved  it,  long  before 


52  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  iv 

the  literary  and  social  magnates  of  England  found  out 
tliat  it  was  literature,  and  that  a  great  prophet  was 
born  among  them. 

God's  method  of  working  is  marvelously  democratic. 
If  there  is  one  idea  which  takes  precedence  of  all 
others  in  the  divine  choice  of  times,  localities,  instru- 
ments, and  methods,  it  is  not  the  idea  of  rank,  it  is  not 
the  idea  of  sect,  it  is  not  the  idea  of  birth,  it  is  not 
the  idea  of  culture :  it  is  the  idea  of  numbers.  To 
an  aeronaut,  at  a  very  little  distance  above  the  earth, 
mountains  and  valleys  are  indistinguishable.  So,  it 
should  seem,  to  the  eye  of  God,  distinctions  of  class  are 
invisible.  Humanity  is  spread  out  as  a  plain.  The 
most  attractive  spots  to  the  divine  eye  are  those  where 
are  to  be  seen  the  densest  clusters  of  being.  The  apos- 
tolic policy  in  laying  the  foundations  of  Christianity  is 
the  divine  policy  through  all  time  and  the  world  over ; 
''  beginning  with  Jerusalem,"  and  advancing  thence  to 
the  conquest  of  the  great  cities  of  the  world. 

11.  The  object  for  which  I  dwell,  perhaps  at  need- 
less length,  upon  this  peculiarity  in  the  divine  method 
of  procedure,  is  to  observe  specially  that  the  natural 
leaders  of  these  movements  of  the  popular  mind  which 
are  started  by  the  first  principles  of  religion  are  the 
Christian  ministry.  The  legitimate  teachers  of  the 
people  in  the  ground-principles  by  which  such  move- 
ments should  be  regulated  are  the  ministry.  Chris- 
tianity has  conservative  as  well  as  quickening  and 
progressive  bearings  upon  social  order,  which  it  is  the 
pro  vine*  3  of  the  ministry  to  teach.  The  wisest  states- 
manship of  nations  does  not  teach  them  in  forms  such 
that  the  popular  mind  can  take  them  in,  and  appreciate 
the  truth  of  them.     It  falls  to  the  clergy  to  represent 


JLECT.  IV.]  CLERICAL  LEADERSHIP.  53 

them  in  moral  rather  than  in  political  principles,  tend- 
ing to  the  regulation  of  progress  and  the  moderation  of 
change,  and  thus  to  the  prevention  of  sanguinary 
revolutions.  The  divinely  chosen  friends  of  the  people 
to  do  this  service  for  them  are  the  ministry.  It  is 
theirs  to  win  popular  confidence,  to  calm  popular  pas- 
sions, to  restrain  popular  vices,  and  to  teach  neglected 
virtues.  It  is  theirs  to  teach  popular  rights  as  balanced 
by  popular  duties.  These  duties  find  almost  none  to 
proclaim  them  among  the  political  leaders  of  the  people. 
They  are  such  as  these, — respect  for  superiors,  obedi- 
ence to  authorities,  charity  to  evil-doers,  patience  under 
wrongs,  freedom  from  envy,  intrusting  government  to 
intelligence  and  virtue,  election  of  superiors  rather  than 
equals  to  high  places  of  trust  and  power.  These  things, 
so  vital  to  republican  life,  political  chiefs,  for  the  most 
part,  ignore.  The  only  order  of  men  who  will  or  can 
teach  the  people  this  divine  balance  of  rights  and  duties 
in  self-government  are  the  Christian  ministry.  Yet  to 
perform  this  mission  wisely,  or  with  any  chance  of 
success,  the  ministry  must  know  the  people,  must  sym- 
pathize with  the  people,  must  recognize  the  rights  and 
wrongs  of  social  life ;  and  to  do  either  of  these  they 
must  study  the  people. 

Probably  there  is  not  a  country- village  in  the  land, 
which  has  any  considerable  history,  in  which  there  is 
not  some  mind,  or  group  of  minds,  which  represent  the 
kind  of  mental  inquiry  here  described.  They  may  be 
within  the  church,  but  more  probably  are  outside  of 
the  church,  yet  are  superior  material  for  the  growth 
of  the  church.  The  pastor  of  such  minds  should  be 
beforehand  with  them.  He  may  be  assured  that  they 
represent  x  movement  which  extends  to  other  minds  in 


64  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  iv. 

adjacent  villages.  The  pulpit  should  be  brought  down 
and  planted  alongside  of  them.  The  geographical 
locality  of  the  church  should  be  in  the  midst  of  their 
homes;  and  its  structure  should  be  such  as  to  seem 
homelike  to  them.  But,  most  of  all,  the  pastor  should 
be  able  to  win  them  by  his  obvious  knowledge  of  their 
condition,  and  his  friendly  appreciation  of  their  wants. 

12.  These  suggestions  naturally  introduce  another  in 
the  same  line  of  thought.  It  is  that  a  certain  portion 
of  the  clergy  of  every  generation  seem  either  insensible 
or  hostile  to  popular  movements  of  inquiry  which  have 
their  origin  in  Christian  ideas. 

(1)  This,  it  should  in  justice  be  observed,  is  not  true, 
generally,  of  those  portions  of  the  clergy  which  are  free 
from  State  control.  History  will  make  distinction  in 
this  respect  between  the  ministry  and  the  priesthood  of 
Clnistendom.  Still,  in  the  ministry  of  free  churches, 
the  exception  occurs  frequently  enough  to  indicate  a 
peril  to  clerical  character  and  a  hinderance  to  clerical 
usefulness.  It  is  not  a  very  rare  exception  that  the 
clergy  is  represented  by  a  man  who  suffers  popular 
inquiries,  which  are  rooted  in  the  gospel  which  he 
preaches,  and  which  therefore,  as  a  Christian  teacher, 
he  ought  to  understand  and  to  answer,  either  to  go  by 
him  unheeded,  or  to  encounter  from  him  an  unqualified 
hostility.  He  thus  permits  the  activity  of  the  common 
mind  to  outrun  him  in  new  channels  of  thought. 

(2)  Delay  in  assuming  leadership  of  popular  inquiries 
often  results  in  consigning  the  people  to  an  infidel 
leadership.  Infidelity  in  this  respect  is  often  enlight- 
ened, and  to  some  extent,  vitalized,  by  Christianity. 
While  the  clergy  are  busy,  as  in  the  main  they  ought 
to  be,  with  teaching  and  applying  the  gospel  in  its 


LECT.  IV.]  INFIDEL  REFORMS.  55 

spiritual  relations  to  individuals,  infidel  lecturers  and 
writers,  knowing  nothing  and  caring  nothing  about  the 
salvation  of  souls,  do  detect  the  bearings  of  the  gospel 
on  social  questions.  They  often  advance  ahead  of  the 
clergy  in  the  public  declaration  of  those  bearings. 
Hence  comes  to  pass  that  phenomenon  which  history 
repeats  over  and  over,  and  which  is  so  perplexing  to  a 
candid  observer ;  viz.,  that  the  infidelity  of  a  country  or 
an  age  seems  to  be  wiser  than  the  Christian  ministry, 
and  more  successful  in  obtaining  the  leadership  of  re- 
forms which  owe  their  origin  to  the  gospel,  yes,  to  the 
preaching  of  the  very  men,  some  of  whom  fail  at  last 
to  assume  their  natural  right  of  leadership  in  those 
reforms. 

(3)  Sometimes  the  leadership  of  reforms  which  were 
Christian  in  their  origin  becomes  so  identified  with 
skepticism  in  religion,  that  to  follow  it  is  to  be  treacher- 
ous to  Christ  and  to  his  church.  Then,  for  a  time,  the 
clergy  are  constrained  by  their  religious  convictions  to 
stand  aloof  from  such  reforms,  lest  they  should  degrade 
the  pulpit  into  an  auxiliary  to  anarchic  infidelity.  That 
is  a  fearfully  false  position  in  which  to  place  the  Chris- 
tian ministry.  Yet  it  may  come  about  from  a  want  of 
alertness  in  the  clerical  mind  to  see  the  wants  of  the 
popular  mind  seasonably,  and  to  supply  those  wants  by 
assuming  promptly  the  leadership  which  is  the  clerical 
prerogative. 

More  than  once,  for  instance,  in  the  religious  and 
political  history  of  Germany,  popular  liberty  has  been 
so  identified  with  infidelity,  that  the  best  Christian 
minds  throughout  the  empire  have  felt  compelled  to 
range  themselves  on  the  side  of  despotic  re-action  on 
the   part   of  the   government.     The   "Liberty  party'* 


56  MEN  AKD  BOOKS.  Llect.  iv. 

were  "  Red  Republicans,"  sympathizing  with  the  Social- 
ists of  France,  and  the  Carbonari  of  Italy,  and  the 
Nihilists  of  Russia.  They  taught,  as  many  of  them 
who  are  now  refugees  in  this  country  are  teaching,  the 
tyranny  of  property  in  land,  the  usurpation  of  marriage, 
the  inhumanity  of  the  Christian  religion,  and  the  neces- 
sity of  abolishing  the  idea  of  God.  In  defense  of  these 
monstrosities,  they  believed  in  no  silken  power  of  free 
discussion,  but  in  the  musket  and  the  guillotine.  Law, 
from  God  or  man,  w?.s  despotism. 

The  consequence  has  been,  that  such  men  as  Trend 
lenburg  and  Hengstenberg,  and  with  them  and  after 
them  the  most  eminent  leaders  of  German  thought  in 
both  the  Church  and  the  State,  have  been  driven,  in 
defense  of  social  order,  to  sustain  the  government  in  the 
establishment  of,  with  one  exception,  the  most  rigid 
military  despotism  in  Europe.  In  this  they  have  done 
only  what  we  should  all  have  done  in  their  place. 
When  things  have  come  to  such  a  pass  that  liberty 
means  anarchy,  and  the  abolition  of  despotism  means 
the  abolition  of  God,  there  can  be  no  question  where 
Christian  and  clerical  authority  ought  to  stand. 

Where,  then,  lay  the  mistake  of  the  religious  leaders  ? 
I  answer,  It  probably  lay  farther  back,  in  not  watching 
and  detecting  the  popular  restlessness  in  its  beginnings, 
instructing  its  infancy,  and  creating  ideas  of  liberty 
which  were  scriptural  and  rational,  and  thus  aiding 
in  building  up  a  public  opinion  which  should  have 
deserved  the  sympathies  of  Christian  men.  Probably 
it  was  once  in  the  power  of  the  Christian  thinkers  of 
Germany,  clerical  and  laical,  to  control  the  popular 
inquiry  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  policy  of  the  govern- 
ment on   the   other;   for  it  is  well  known   that  the 


LECT.  IV.]  GERMINATION  OF  REFORMS.  67 

government  of  Germany  has  been  largely  in  the  hands 
of  kings,  emperors,  and  statesmen  who  personally  have 
been  religious  men. 

But  that  time,  once  passed  unimproved  by  the  clergy, 
left  them  no  alternative  afterwards  but  the  wretched 
choice  between  despotism  and  atheism.  They  chose, 
as  they  ought  to  have  done,  the  lesser  evil ;  but  in  so 
doing  they  threw  an  immense  weight  into  the  scale  of 
infidelity.  German  atheists  to-day  have  this  to  say  for 
themselves,  that  all  the  religion  they  know  any  thing 
about  is  a  religion  of  aristocrats  and  bayonets.  Who 
can  compute  the  dead  weight  which  Christianity  must 
carry  in  such  an  unnatural  alliance  of  truth  with  error? 
Christianity,  in  its  normal  working,  never  creates  a 
state  of  things  in  which  the  best  that  good  men  can  do 
is  to  make  a  choice  of  evils.  Where  that  is  the  situa- 
tion, something  has  always  been  wrong  m  the  antece- 
dent management. 

The  question  is  often  asked  in  this  form,  "  Ought  the 
clergy  to  lead,  or  to  follow,  in  the  agitation  of  moral  re- 
forms? "  In  my  judgment,  it  does  not  admit  of  compact 
answer  in  this  form.  The  question  of  leadership  is  a 
question  of  dates.  It  is  in  the  beginnings  of  such  move- 
ments, before  they  have  reached  the  stage  of  agitation, 
that  the  work  of  the  clergy  is  required.  When  reforms 
are  in  their  germination  is  the  time  for  the  clerical  hand 
to  insert  itself  in  methods  of  wise  and  temperate  con- 
trol. That  then  the  clergy  should  be  leaders,  not  fol- 
lowers, does  not  admit  of  question.  The  people  have 
no  other  leaders  whose  prerogative  is  so  sure. 

(4)  This  leads  me  to  observe,  that,  if  the  clergy  wait 
in  inaction  till  the  popular  mind  is  so  profoundly 
agitated   on   a   great   moral  reform   that   it  will  hear 


58  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  iv 

nothing  else,  it  is  then  often  too  late  for  the  pulpit  to 
be  a  power  of  control  in  that  reform.  A  preacher  then 
seems  to  speak  in  self-preservation.  The  current  has 
rolled  in  around  him,  and  has  risen  to  the  level  of  his 
lips,  and  he  speaks  because  he  must  speak.  His  speak- 
ing then  is  the  sputtering  of  a  drowning  man. 

Moreover,  the  status  of  the  community  is  then  fixed. 
Opinions  are  settled,  prejudices  are  full  grown,  the 
stream  is  set  immovably,  and  probably  some  new  foun- 
tain of  opinion  is  already  opened.  Popular  opinions  of 
the  kind  now  in  question  do  not  become  popular  till 
about  the  time  when  new  opinions  are  forming  under- 
neath. A  man  who  wakes  to  the  discovery  of  a  truth 
at  the  last  moment  of  its  general  adoption  is  still 
behind  his  age.  That  truth  is  still  green  in  his  hand, 
when  it  has  ripened,  and  shed  its  seeds,  in  the  hands  of 
others.  Its  fruit  is  germinating  in  other  forms,  which 
are  likely  to  meet  from  him  the  same  hostility  or  neglect 
with  which  he  encountered  their  forerunners. 

Have  you  never  known  a  pastor  whose  entire  minis- 
try had  the  look  of  a  losing  race  ?  He  was  not  only 
not  in  advance  of  his  age,  not  even  abreast  with  his  age, 
but  a  little,  and  only  a  little,  behind  his  age ;  so  near 
that  he  could  always  be  in  at  a  victory,  but  never  there 
in  the  fight.  A  clergyman  subjects  his  professional 
prestige  to  a  heavy  discount,  if  he  permits  any  popular 
excitement  which  is  rooted  either  in  Christianity,  or  in 
hostility  to  Christianity,  to  escape  his  knowledge,  or  to 
advance  to  its  results  without  his  care.  To  be  a  power 
of  control  in  such  excitements  he  must  lay  a  magnetic 
hand  upon  them  in  their  beginnings. 

(5)  The  principles  here  affirmed  are  not  limited  in 
their  application  to  moral  reforms  technically  so  called. 


LECT.  IV.]  THEOLOGICAL  INQUIRY.  59 

They  have  a  much  broader  range.  To  illustrate  this, 
let  several  things  be  specified  to  which  they  are  ger- 
mane. A  revival  of  religion,  for  instance,  ought  never 
to  take  a  minister  unawares.  Dependent  as  revivals 
nre  upon  the  sovereignty  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  they  do 
not  come  without  premonitions ;  that  is  to  say,  signs  of 
their  approach  are  visible  to  eyes  which  are  open,  and 
watchful  for  them.  There  is  nothing  in  the  philosophy 
of  a  revival  which  locks  it  up  to  occult  causes.  It  will 
commonly  foreshadow  its  approach  in  certain  spiritual 
experiences,  either  within  the  church,  or  in  Christian 
families,  or  in  sabbath  schools,  or,  it  may  be,  in  spiritual 
changes  in  a  preacher's  own  soul.  A  wise  pastor, 
studious  of  the  laws  of  the  Holy  Spirit's  working,  will 
often  discern  tokens  of  his  special  presence  on  the  eve 
of  a  work  of  special  power. 

Again :  a  renewal  of  popular  inquiry  upon  any  doc- 
trine of  our  faith  ought  never  to  be  ignored  by  the 
pulpit.  A  few  years  ago  the  doctrine  of  retribution 
started  a  wave  of  popular  interest  in  many  sections  of 
this  country,  which  is  still  in  progress.  Believers  and 
unbelievers  felt  a  fresh  desire  to  investigate  that  doc- 
trine. In  a  multitude  of  cases,  opinions  have  been 
revised.  Conflicting  opinions  upon  it  have  agitated 
many  communities.  Theories  have  been  broached  re- 
specting it  which  were  locally  new.  Old  errors  have 
been  revivified,  and  re-adjusted  to  suit  modern  tastes. 
Believers  in  universal  salvation  have  become  believers 
in  a  non-eternal  retribution  through  their  faith  in 
modern  necromancy.  In  some  localities  Restorationism 
is  thus  intrenched  in  the  popular  faith  to-day  more 
strongly  than  it  was  twenty  years  ago. 

What,  now,  should  be  the  policy  of  a  Christian  pulpit 


60  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  iv. 

during  such  a  decade  of  revived  inquiry?  Evidently 
it  should  not  be  a  policy  of  reticence.  The  pulpit 
should  not  ignore  such  a  revival  of  popular  interest 
in  one  of  the  standards  of  the  faith.  We  should  not 
retii'e  from  it  in  disgust  at  its  origin.  What  if  the 
wretched  flummery  of  Spiritualism  is  in  some  cases  at 
the  bottom  of  it.  That  is  no  reason  why  the  clergy 
should  hold  themselves  aloof  and  aloft  from  it  as  a 
thing  of  degraded  birth. 

A  case  to  the  point  occurs  to  me.  In  a  certain  parish 
in  Massachusetts,  Spiritualism  had  stolen  a  march. 
Starting  with  a  fortune-teller,  it  crept  into  a  group  of 
respectable  families.  An  educated  physician  gave  it 
prestige.  Seances  were  held  every  fortnight.  Soon 
Dr.  Channing  and  Benjamin  Franklin  began  to  dance 
on  the  tipping  tables.  The  intermediate  state  and 
eternal  retribution  were  revised.  Several  church-mem- 
bers dropped  their  ancient  faith  at  the  bidding  of  the 
ghosts  of  their  grandmothers.  Their  pastor,  when 
inquired  of  about  the  still  revolution  which  was  going 
on  in  his  parish,  scouted  it  because  of  its  origin.  He 
was  preaching  that  winter  upon  the  parables  of  our 
Lord.  He  could  not  descend  from  so  lofty  a  height 
to  contend  with  the  twaddle  of  the  seances.  But  his 
people  could.  Ought  he  not  to  have  followed  them  ? 
Ought  he  not  to  have  known  what  they  were  think- 
ing of  and  talking  of,  and  whither  they  were  drifting 
under  the  lead  of  the  skeptical  physician  ? 

Christianity  never  stands  upon  its  dignity.  It  de- 
scends wherever  man  descends.  Its  mission  is  to  save 
the  lost.  And  to  save,  it  seeks :  it  does  not  wait  to  be 
sought.  The  clergy  are  ex  officio  guardians  of  Christian 
doctrine.      They   should   claim   instant    leadership   of 


LECT.  IV.]  AN  EXCLUSIVE  CLERGY.  61 

popular  discussion,  and  should  show  by  their  mastery 
of  the  subject  their  ability,  and  therefore  their  right,  to 
hold  that  leadership.  Never  should  such  a  revival  of 
popular  inquiry  upon  a  Christian  doctrine  be  allowed 
to  come  to  a  head  in  a  reconstruction  of  opinion,  with- 
out the  wise  and  winning  voice  of  the  pulpit. 

It  is  on  the  same  principle,  and  no  other,  that  any 
question  of  practical  morals  which  arouses  a  commu- 
nity should  summon  its  pastor  to  the  van.  Temper- 
ance, the  desecration  of  the  Lord's  Day,  reform  of  the 
"  social  evil,"  the  ethics  of  trade,  the  evils  of  caste, 
the  relations  of  capital  to  labor,  should  be  watched 
narrowly  by  the  clergy  whenever  and  wherever  they 
are  attracting  the  thinking  of  the  people.  It  will 
never  do  to  turn  these  topics  outside  of  the  church, 
and  consign  them  to  strolling  lecturers  in  lyceums 
and  music-halls,  and  to  wire-pullers  in  political  con- 
ventions. If  the  clergy  let  these  things  alone,  on  the 
plea  that  the  pulpit  has  more  spiritual  functions,  those 
spiritual  functions  can  not  long  hold  any  leadership  of 
the  people. 

13.  The  relations  of  the  clergy  to  the  popular  mind 
have  still  another  phase  in  which  they  need  review.  I 
refer  to  that  condition  of  things  in  which  it  sometimes 
happens  that  the  clergy  become  identified  with  the 
cultivated  classes  of  society  to  the  practical  exclusion 
of  the  lower  classes ;  and  the  point  to  be  specially  noted 
is,  that,  in  such  a  state  of  affairs,  the  pulpit  ceases  to  be 
a  spiritual  power  with  any  class. 

The  Rev.  Dr.  James  Alexander  laments  the  tendency 
of  some  ministers  to  seek  chiefly  "the  society  of  the 
rich  and  the  lettered,"  as  he  describes  them,  "  instead  of 
being  lights  to  the  world."     He  adds,  "The  democracy 


62  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [leci-.  iv. 

must  be  reached.  People  must  be  made  to  feel  that  the 
heart  of  the  minister  is  with  them.  Common  people 
require  this.  The  age  requires  it.  Young  men  require 
it."  He  was  not  the  man  to  put  on  record  even  so  mild 
an  expression  of  the  facts  as  this,  if  he  had  not  seen 
evidence  of  the  need  of  it,  and  more,  among  the  clergy 
of  which  he  was  an  honored  representative. 

(1)  But  this  view  is  enforced  by  a  deeper  principle 
than  any  demand  of  classes  or  of  the  age.  Upon  it 
depends  the  very  existence  of  the  pulpit  as  a  moral 
power.  Aim  at  the  educated  classes  exclusively,  or 
even  chiefly,  and  you  lose  mastery  of  all  classes.  Iso- 
late a  Christian  pulpit  from  the  sympathy  of  the  unedu- 
cated masses,  and  you  forfeit  respect  for  it  as  a  power 
of  control  among  the  ranks  of  culture. 

You  may  sometimes  detect  evidence  of  this  in  the 
history  of  individual  churches.  There  are  churches 
which  have  allowed  themselves  to  become  representa- 
tives of  the  refinement  and  the  wealth  of  a  community 
to  the  practical  exclusion  of  its  laboring  classes.  They 
have  aimed  at  the  heads  of  society  to  the  neglect  of  its 
"  hands."  They  forget  that  to  every  ''  head  "  there  are 
two  "  hands."  The  ministry  of  such  churches  are  not 
respected  even  in  those  churches  as  a  power  of  spiritual 
control.  They  are  not  recognized  as  an  authority. 
Their  churches,  standing  themselves  aloof  from  the 
simple  feelings  and  relationships  which  constitute  the 
plane  of  humanity  in  real  life,  expect  their  pastors  to 
minister  to  their  pleasure,  and  be  guided  by  their  opin- 
ions. They  expect  preaching  to  meet  their  tastes  rather 
than  their  necessities.  Their  pastors  commonly  do  as 
they  are  tacitly  bidden.  Such  churches  will  not  long 
retain  pastors  who  will  not  do  it. 


LECT.  IV.]    CHARACTER  OF  CLERICAL  INFLUENCE.  63 

As  a  consequence,  such  a  ministry  loses  all  mastery. 
They  lose  their  liberty  as  public  teachers,  and  their 
authority  as  public  leaders.  They  deserve  to  lose  them. 
They  are  in  an  unnatural  position  as  it  respects  the 
masses  of  the  people ;  and  a  subtle  instinct  in  the  very 
classes  of  culture  which  have  tempted  them  aloft  pro- 
nounces the  position  a  false  one.  Nobody  looks  up  to 
them  as  men  of  apostolic  power.  As  men,  such  preach- 
ers may  be  loved;  as  social  equals,  they  may  be  re- 
spected; for  the  truths  they  do  utter  they  may  be 
commended.  Smooth  and  pleasant  things  may  be  said 
of  them  for  their  fidelity  in  preaching  "  the  gospel,"  as 
they  call  it.  In  quiet  times,  in  the  routine  of  worship, 
in  pastoral  functions,  they  may  fill  a  place  of  seeming 
honor.  But  they  are  not  revered  by  their  most  devoted 
friends  as  spiritual  superiors.  They  are  not  looked 
up  to  as  men  whose  opinions  are  an  authority,  whose 
approval  is  a  reward,  whose  rebuke  is  feared  as  carry- 
ing the  weight  of  a  message  from  God.  They  are  the 
very  last  type  of  a  Christian  ministry  which  the  people 
will  feel  to  be  a  power  in  the  land. 

(2)  In  further  explanation  of  this  phenomenon  it 
should  be  remarked  that  the  influence  of  the  clergy 
with  the  cultivated  classes  of  society  is  to  a  consid- 
erable extent  a  moral  as  distinct  from  an  intellectual 
influence.  The  time  has  long  since  gone  by  when  the 
clergy  were  ex  officio  the  intellectual  superiors  of  all 
their  parishioners.  They  minister  now  to  many  who 
are,  in  point  of  intellectual  force  and  general  culture, 
their  equals,  and  to  some  who  are  their  superiors.  The 
pulpit  is  criticised  now  with  a  freedom  which  springs 
from  the  conscious  power,  and  therefore  the  right,  to  say 
what  the  pulpit  ought  to  be,  and  to  judge  of  what  it  is. 


64  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect   rv. 

Laymen  as  a  class  know  less  of  theology  than  they  did 
a  half-century  ago,  but  they  know  more  of  some  other 
things.  They  do  not  listen  to  preaching  as  conscious 
inferiors  to  the  man  who  is  addressing  them,  so  gener- 
ally as  they  once  did. 

As  a  consequence,  the  influence  of  the  pulpit  with 
the  cultivated  classes  is  pre-eminently  a  religious  in- 
fluence. It  is  the  influence  of  the  man,  of  his  personal 
weight,  of  his  devotional  spirit,  of  his  self-forgetfulness, 
of  his  eminence  in  all  the  passive  clerical  graces.  The 
most  intelligent  hearers  are  those  who  enjoy  most 
heartily  the  simplest  preaching.  It  is  not  they  who 
clamor  for  superlatively  intellectual  or  sesthetic  ser- 
mons. Daniel  Webster  used  to  complain  of  some  of 
the  preaching  to  which  he  listened.  He  said  it  was  too 
severe  a  strain  upon  the  intellect  to  be  sympathetic 
with  the  spirit  of  worship.  "  In  the  house  of  God  "  he 
wanted  to  meditate  "  upon  the  simple  verities  and  the 
undoubted  facts  of  religion,"  not  upon  mysteries  and 
abstractions. 

The  distinction  between  religion  and  theology  is  one 
which  such  hearers  prize  highly.  While  they  want 
thought,  not  ranting,  in  the  pulpit,  they  do  not  crave 
abstruseness,  nor  is  it  the  intellectual  character  of  the 
ministry  which  chiefly  wins  their  respect.  That  must 
not  be  beneath  their  respect,  but  neither  is  it  nor  can  it 
be  now  an  eminence  to  which  they  look  up  with  pain- 
ful awe.  This  class  of  hearers  think  much  of  the  de- 
votional services  of  the  pulpit.  They  look  there  for 
much  which  wins  and  holds  their  confidence  in  the 
clergy.  For  their  personal  help  in  a  religious  life  they 
want  a  religious  teacher  whose  prayers  uplift  them. 

The  Episcopal  Church  of  this  country,  relatively  to 


LECT.  IV.]  DEVOTIONAL  SERVICES.  Q5 

its  limited  numbers,  embraces  a  larger  proportion  of 
culture  than  any  other  sect  of  Christians.  Yet  its 
pulpit  as  a  whole  is  intellectually  inferior  to  that  of 
any  of  the  other  great  sects  of  the  American  Church. 
What  is  it  that  holds  such  an  amount  of  educated  mind 
in  its  allegiance  to  the  Christian  faith?  It  is  mainly 
their  respect  for  and  attachment  to  their  ancient  liturgy. 
They  know,  and  it  goes  to  the  hearts  of  thousands  of 
devout  believers  among  them  every  Sunday,  that  the 
Litany  is  the  most  sublime,  comprehensive,  and  affect- 
ing piece  of  liturgic  expression  in  the  language.  They 
will  bear  almost  any  amount  of  commonplace  in  the 
sermons  of  a  clergyman  who  so  puts  his  soul  into  that 
incomparable  production  as  to  make  them  feel  his 
heart  in  equal  pulses  with  their  own. 

In  our  own  denomination  the  fact  is  not  always  so 
obvious;  but  the  evidences  of  it  are  still  abundant, 
that  the  culture  of  our  congregations  is  moved  by  the 
religious  more  than  the  intellectual  spirit  of  the  pulpit. 
The  clamorers  for  sensationalism  in  our  pulpits  are 
those  who  really  know  least  about  good  preaching,  and 
are  the  poorest  judges  of  it  when  they  hear  it.  The 
more  ignorant  a  people  are,  the  more  fuss  they  make 
about  the  want  of  mental  gifts  and  acquisitions  in  their 
pastors.  They  will  dismiss  a  really  learned  pastor,  and 
complain  that  they  are  not  "fed,"  when  his  sermons 
have  *'  meat "  enough  in  them  to  gorge  such  hearers  to 
repletion. 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  you  will  not  experience  this 
evil ;  but  the  chances  are  that  some  of  you  will.  If  you 
do,  I  trust  that  the  council  which  dismisses  you  will  be 
faithful  enough  to  put  on  record,  as  one  council  did  in 
such  a  case,  "  Resolved  that  our  brother,  the  Rev.  Mr. 


QQ  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  ir. 

A ,  in  our  judgment  has  given  to  this  church  and 

congregation  meat  fully  equal  to  their  digestive  powers.'* 
Yes,  it  is  the  commonplace  mind  that  complains  most 
loudly  of  commonplace  preaching.  The  black  congre- 
gations of  our  cities  and  the  South  are  notoriously  the 
most  censorious  critics  of  simple  preaching.  They 
often  feel  themselves  insulted  if  a  man  who  can  write 
preaches  to  them  an  extemporaneous  discourse. 


LECTURE  V. 

CLERICAL  INFLUENCE  WITH  THE  EDUCATED  CLASSES, 
ITS  CHARACTER.  —  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORLD, 
THEIR   RELATIONS   DISTORTED. 

(3)  Pursuing  a  little  further  our  review  of  the  re- 
lations of  the  clergy  to  the  educated  classes,  let  us 
observe  that  clerical  influence  over  those  classes  is  very 
largely  a  reflexive  influence.  It  rolls  back  over  the 
cultivated  heights  of  society  by  the  force  of  its  accumu- 
lations below.  Do  we  not  all  sometimes  trace  our  first 
response  to  a  preacher's  influence,  even  our  discovery 
of  the  fact  that  he  has  in  him  the  germs  of  power  as  a 
leader  of  men,  to  the  fact  of  his  moving  others  ?  We 
feel  his  power  through  the  medium  of  our  respect  for 
his  power  over  them.  No  man  who  is  not  past  feeling 
any  thing  great  can  be  insensible  to  the  spectacle  of  a 
man  moving  to  their  eternal  well  being  the  masses  of 
uncultured  mind  by  so  simple  an  instrument  as  preach- 
ing. There  is  a  sublimity  in  it  which  all  feel  who  are 
not  imbruted  in  sensualit3^  The  educated  mind  will 
involuntarily  extend  to  such  a  man  a  respect  to  which 
his  culture  can  lay  no  claim. 

The  landed  gentry  of  England  flocked  to  hear  White- 
field,  not  because  of  any  thing  in  him  which  they 
discovered :  the  discoverers  of  his  genius  were  the 
uncultivated  throngs  in  the  fields  and  on  the  commons 

67 


68  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  v. 

of  England.  It  was  the  great  field-preacher  in  the 
lowlands  whose  voice  reverberated  to  the  surrounding 
heights,  and  commanded  a  respect  whicli  might  never 
have  found  expression  in  any  other  way.  The  refine- 
ment, and  the  culture,  and  the  wealth,  and  the  noble 
birth  of  England,  never  found  the  man  out  till  the 
rudeness,  and  the  ignorance,  and  the  plebeian  tastes, 
and  the  poverty  of  England,  had  opened  hearts  to  him. 
Then  the  classic  heads  of  England  came  to  their  senses 
about  him.  Mr.  Spurgeon,  in  our  own  day,  is  illustrat- 
ing the  same  phenomenon. 

One  of  the  most  useful  of  American  evangelists, 
when  he  began  to  speak  in  public,  was  advised  by  a 
group  of  wise  men  not  to  expose  thus  his  infirmities  of 
speech  and  poverty  of  thought.  For  the  time  they 
were  right  in  that  counsel.  Even  now  he  would  not 
claim  that  his  right  to  speak  consists  in  the  affluence 
of  his  materials,  or  the  elegance  of  his  diction.  Yet 
the  elite  of  Boston  and  Brooklyn  numbered  thousands 
in  his  audiences.  Such  critics  as  those  of  "  The  New- 
York  Tribune"  found  a  theme  of  thoughtful  discus- 
sion in  his  work  as  a  social  phenomenon. 

Why  is  this?  Not,  probably,  because  of  any  thing 
which  they  feel  of  power  in  his  discourses,  but  because 
they  feel  the  fact  that  other  thousands  of  lower  grade 
are  moved  by  him.  His  power  over  his  superiors  is  a 
reflection  of  his  power  over  his  and  their  inferiors.  A 
secret  conviction  sways  thoughtful  minds,  that  such  a 
man  is  in  many  respects  a  representative  of  a  Christ- 
like ministry.  His  success  is  one  of  the  natural  se- 
quences of  the  preaching  of  the  gospel  in  ways  in 
which  spiritual  power  takes  precedence  of  all  other 
elements  of  successful  speech.     The  thing  which  he  is 


LECT.  v.]  LEADERSHIP  IN  EMERGENCIES.  69 

doing  is  the  business  of  a  Christian  pieacher.  The 
higher  classes  no  less  resolutely  than  tha  lower  with- 
hold their  spirit  of  obeisance  from  any  man  who  is  too 
good  for  it,  too  refined,  too  scholarly,  too  gentlemanly, 
or  too  indolent  and  too  weak.  The  preacher,  there- 
fore, who  has  no  power  with  the  common  people,  has, 
in  fact,  no  power  with  anybody.  The  pulpit  which  has 
no  standing-ground  down  in  the  lowlands  of  society 
has  none  anywhere.  An  exclusive  ministry  is  always  a 
weak  ministry. 

(4)  The  weakness  of  an  exclusive  ministry  is  often 
not  disclosed  till  spiritual  emergencies  arise.  In  quiet 
times,  specially  in  stagnant  times,  it  may  pass  unde- 
tected. But  let  emergencies  come  which  agitate  all 
classes,  and  then  the  hollowness  of  such  a  ministry  will 
reveal  itself  to  all  classes.  The  cultivated  will  be  as 
prompt  as  those  below  them  to  detect  it,  and  to  fling  it 
from  them.  They  look  around  them  for  a  spiritual 
leader,  to  some  man  who  has  not  sought  to  please  them. 
Over  the  heads,  it  may  be,  of  their  own  pastors,  they 
will  look  to  some  minister  of  Christ  whom  they  descry 
in  the  distance,  down  on  the  plain,  in  the  dust  and  the 
heat  of  the  battle.  For  such  a  man,  whose  spiritual 
power  has  been  proved  by  emergencies,  the  rest  of  us 
must  fall  back  to  the  right  and  to  the  left.  The  Church 
wants  him.  The  heart  of  the  Church  has  felt  the 
pulsations  of  his  heart ;  and  now  the  brain  of  the 
Church  singles  him  out  by  a  judgment  well-nigh  unani- 
mous. The  Church  wants  his  experience ;  she  wants 
his  knowledge  of  men ;  she  wants  his  insight  into  the 
popular  necessities ;  she  wants  his  skill  in  touching  the 
springs  of  popular  sensibility:  more  than  all  else,  she 
wants   his   sympathy   with  God's  spirit  in  movement 


70  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  v. 

upon  the  popular  conscience.  Under  sucli  conditions, 
vox  populi  vox  Dei.  Such  a  man  always  finds  his 
reward  even  in  this  world:  it  is  only  a  question  of 
time. 

14.  ^Another  sequence  of  any  general  deficiency  in 
clerical  knowledge  of  and  sympathy  with  men  is  the 
establishment  of  anomalous  relations  between  the 
church  and  the  world. 

The  biblical  idea  of  the  church  is  simply  that  of 
an  organized  body  of  regenerate  mind:  the  biblical 
idea  of  the  world  is  that  of  the  unsaved  multitude  of 
unregenerate  mind.  Two  classes  of  character,  and 
only  two,  make  up  the  human  race  as  the  Scriptures 
represent  it;  viz.,  saints  and  sinners,  friends  of  God 
and  enemies  of  God.  Much  of  the  power  of  the  pulpit 
depends  on  assuming  the  reality  of  that  distinction. 
One  of  the  chief  objects  of  church  organization  is  to 
make  that  distinction  vivid.  A  living  church  always 
fastens  that  distinction  upon  the  conscience  of  the 
world.  Apostolic  preaching  was  full  of  it.  Religious 
reformations  always  rejuvenate  it.  Often  the  first 
evidence  of  a  religious  awakening  is  a  new  illumination 
of  that  one  thought  in  the  experience  of  the  church 
and  in  the  convictions  of  lookers-on. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  amenities  of  Christianized 
social  life  tend  to  obscure,  even  to  obliterate,  that  dis- 
tinction. This  is  specially  true  in  nations  of  vigorous 
mental  stock.  In  such  nations  Christianity  displaces 
barbarism  by  refinement :  it  drives  depravity  out  of 
brutal  into  aspiring  forms ;  it  crowds  the  savage  under 
cover  of  the  lofty  vices.  The  churchly  idea  is  then  in 
perpetual  conflict  with  its  imitations  for  its  own  exist- 
ence.    The  tendency  is  often  almost  overpowermg  to 


LECT.  v.]  CHURCHLY  DISTINCTION.  71 

confound  regenerate  graces  with  ornate  and  silken  forms 
of  irreligion. 

In  such  a  state  of  society  —  and  it  is  one  which  is 
inevitable  in  any  nation  which  has  reached  the  higher 
stages  of  a  Christian  civilization  —  very  much  depends 
on  the  adjustments  of  the  pulpit.  The  pulpit  has  an 
office  like  that  of  ''  Old  Mortality "  in  Walter  Scott's 
romance,  —  to  cut  over  again,  and  engrave  deeper  in  the 
popular  conscience,  the  conviction  of  the  old  distinction 
between  saint  and  sinner.  One  of  the  vital  aims  of  the 
pulpit  must  be  to  enforce  the  scriptural  ideal  of  what 
the  church  should  be  and  of  what  the  world  is.  Any 
thing  which  enervates  the  pulpit  in  that  work  must 
tend  to  fuse  the  church  and  the  world  together  in  the 
judgment  even  of  thoughtful  men.  The  reality  of 
consecration  on  the  one  side  and  of  ungodly  living  on 
the  other  will  grow  dim  in  proportion  as  each  ap- 
proaches the  other  in  its  external  signs. 

The  point,  therefore,  to  be  emphasized  is,  that  any 
general  deficiency  in  the  clerical  knowledge  of  the 
world  must  tend  directly  to  that  end :  it  must  tend  to 
blot  out  this  churchly  distinction.  It  is  well  known 
that  the  theory  of  the  moral  nature  of  man  which  has 
been  taught  in  some  New-England  pulpits  has  resulted, 
in  some  cases,  in  the  abolition  of  all  church  organiza- 
tion, and  the  disuse  of  the  Lord's  Supper  as  the  token 
of  churchly  prerogative.  To  the  same  result  tends 
ignorance  of  the  world  in  clerical  ministrations.  It 
tends  to  leave  the  fusion  of  the  church  and  the  world 
to  go  on  unchecked  by  any  forcible  delineations  of  the 
difference  between  them.  A  ministry  not  knowing 
men  as  they  are  will  not  preach  to  men  as  they  are. 
Not  recognizing  the  face  of  their  own  contemporaries, 


72  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  v. 

tliey  will  not  speak  to  their  own  contemporaries.  Men 
who  do  not  themselves  feel  the  pulsations  of  the  popu- 
lar heart  can  not  minister  to  the  real  diseases  of  tlie 
popular  condition. 

Furthermore,  the  pulpit,  under  such  circumstances, 
is  apt  to  be  full  of  side-issues.  Preaching  becomes 
powerless  from  overshooting,  or  shooting  at  random. 
Preaching  by  routine  takes  the  place  of  original  think- 
ing. One  is  reminded  by  it  of  the  old  rule  of  English 
military  tactics,  by  which  a  platoon  of  infantry,  at  the 
command  "  Fire,"  were  taught  to  discharge  their  mus- 
kets on  a  dead  level  before  them,  without  aiming  at 
any  thing,  and  then  to  wheel  around  to  the  rear. 

Such  preachers  will  often  preach  against  forms  of 
sin  which  are  for  the  time  extinct,  and  exhort  to 
virtues  which  are  just  there  out  of  place,  and  just  then 
untimely.  They  may  describe  fossilized  characters, 
instead  of  the  living  men  and  women.  The}"  will 
depict  sinners  in  the  general,  and  saints  in  the  abstract, 
instead  of  American  or  English  Christians  and  sinners. 
They  will  urge  proportions  of  truth  which  the  popular 
conscience  will  not  respond  to  as  the  most  pressing 
need  of  the  hour.  They  will  preach  in  a  dialect  which 
is  not  abreast  with  the  growth  of  the  language.  They 
will  hold  on  to  pliraseology  which  is  obsolete  every- 
where else  than  in  the  pulpit.  They  will  betray  no 
insight  into  the  modes  of  thinking,  the  types  of  inquir}', 
the  subjects  of  interest,  the  convictions  of  truth,  and  the 
tendencies  to  error,  which  are  in  the  living  souls  around 
them.  They  will  preach  so  that  many  thoughtful  men 
will  not  believe  them :  as  many  more  will  not  believe 
that  they  believe  themselves.  No  large  proportion  of 
a  community  will  feel  their  presence  as  that  of  a  reli- 


LECT.  v.]  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORLD.  73 

gious  power.  The  masses  of  society  especially,  who 
are  immersed  in  the  struggle  for  a  livelihood,  will  nut 
come  within  reach  of  the  echo  of  their  voices. 

A  church  formed  under  the  influence  of  such  a 
ministry,  it  is  obvious,  can  have  no  power  of  conquest 
in  the  world.  The  sense  of  distinction  between  it  and 
the  world  must  become  practically  defunct.  Thinking 
men  will  feel,  and  blunt  men  will  say,  that  there  is  no 
difference  between  the  character  and  life  of  such  a 
church  and  many  of  the  more  respectable  forms  of 
worldliness.  Worldly  organizations  with  religion 
enough  in  them  for  ornament,  associations  for  reform, 
charitable  leagues,  secret  societies,  will  grow  up  and 
take  the  place  of  the  church  in  the  estimation  of  many, 
because  they  see  no  churchly  mission  in  actual  opera- 
tion, of  which  they  feel  the  need. 

Meanwhile  the  deepest  religious  inquiries  of  men  of 
profound  conscience  do  not  turn  to  such  a  church  for 
an  answer.  Those  inquiries  go  on  outside  of  the 
church,  with  no  leanings  to  it,  and  no  listening  ear  for 
its  teachings.  A  class  of  thoughtful  men  arise  who 
are  not  in  the  church,  who  do  not  wish  to  be  there, 
who  can  not  be  persuaded  to  be  there,  and  yet  whose 
consciences  do  not  convict  them  when  the  pulpit,  in 
stereotyped  phrase,  prays  for  deliverance  from  ''the 
world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil,"  and  declaims  against 
"  haters  of  God,  and  enemies  of  the  cross  of  Christ." 
They  form  a  third  class  who  are  not  consciously  the 
one  thing  or  the  other.  They  do  not  "  profess  and  call 
themselves  Christians;"  yet  their  consciences  do  not 
respond  when  the  pulpit  addresses  them  as  sinners  in 
distinction  from  saints. 

You  can  judge  for  yourselves  of  the  extent  to  which 


74  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  v. 

this  picture  is  approximately  true  in  our  own  day. 
The  main  point  which  I  wish  to  observe  is,  that  such  a 
state  of  things  is  a  distortion  of  the  normal  relations 
of  church  and  world,  and  that  it  results  inevitably 
from  any  general  sense  of  clerical  unfitness  to  the 
world  of  real  life.  It  follows  as  a  necessary  sequence, 
when  the  popular  mind  is  left  in  want  of  a  ministry 
which  is  wise  in  its  knowledge  of  its  own  times, 
thoroughly  cordial  in  its  sympathy  with  its  own  times, 
and  vigorous  in  adapting  the  pulpit  to  the  spiritual 
wants  of  its  own  times.  This  third  class  of  minds 
need  a  living  pulpit  in  order  to  be  made  sensible  of 
the  presence  of  a  living  church.  They  need,  not  a 
pulpit  of  the  past,  not  a  pulpit  of  the  future,  but  a 
pulpit  of  to-day.  They  need  to  see  a  live  man  at  the 
head  of  the  elect.  Else  their  response  is  quick  and 
stern,  "Who  are  you,  that  you  should  claim  to  be 
elect?" 

As  to  the  material  of  preaching,  they  need  not  so 
much  new  truth  as  old  truth  freshened.  They  want 
the  ancient  substance  of  the  gospel  as  apostles  preached 
it,  but  clothed  in  the  experience  of  to-day,  and  coming 
out  boldly  yet  winningly  in  the  speech  of  to-day.  They 
want  the  old  creeds  of  the  church,  which  reverent  men 
and  saintly  women  have  chanted,  translated  into  the 
dialect  of  common  life.  They  claim  the  right  to  test 
those  creeds  as  uninspired  productions.  They  will  test 
them  by  the  common  sense  of  men  in  the  interpreta- 
tion of  God's  word.  In  that  process  they  claim  that 
the  advance  which  the  human  mind  has  been  making  in 
centuries  of  popular  development  shall  be  recognized. 
They  ask  that  the  Scriptures  as  represented  by  modern 
creeds  shall  seem  to  be  consistent  with  themselves  and 


LECT.  v.]  AN  HYPOTHESIS.  75 

with  the  necessary  convictions  of  the  race.  They  Wait, 
sometimes  a  long  while,  for  a  living  pulpit  which  shall 
speak  out  for  them  these  yearnings  of  their  own  souls, 
and  help  them  to  understand  themselves.  No  other 
kind  of  ministry  can  ever  win  them  to  the  visible 
church  of  Christ. 

Here  the  inquiry  is  pertinent  for  the  moment,  Whac 
would  be  the  consequence  of  a  permanent  isolation  of 
the  clergy  from  the  popular  sympathy  ?  I  answer  with- 
out hesitation.  The  destruction  of  the  church  as  a  living 
power.  The  few  whom  we  now  recognize  as  a  third 
class — not  churchmen,  yet  not  reprobates,  earnest  think- 
ers and  of  upright  lives  —  would  increase  in  numbers 
and  in  influence.  Christianity  is  too  far  advanced  in  its 
conquest  of  human  thought  to  be  extinguished  by  the 
defection  of  one  or  two  generations  of  either  church  or 
clergy.  In  other  hands  Christian  thinking  would  live, 
and  Christian  discussion  would  make  itself  heard.  Now 
and  then  platoons  of  inquirers  would  fall  back  into  infi- 
delity. Here  and  there  fraternities  of  them  would 
become  absorbed  in  moral  reforms.  But  the  bulk  of 
them  would  press  their  way  into  some  form  of  organiza- 
tion which  should  express  the  idea  of  Christian  fellow- 
ship, but  which,  we  may  be  assured,  they  would  not  call 
a  church.  They  would  then  create  for  themselves  and 
their  children  some  order  of  religious  teachers  which 
they  would  not  call  a  clergy.  Meanwhile,  as  it  respects 
power  of  conquest  in  the  world,  by  the  side  of  such  an 
organization  the  church  and  her  clergy  would  be 
stranded. 

But  we  need  not  fear  any  such  result.  God  does  not 
permit  the  clergy  to  fall  permanently  out  of  rank  into 
false  relations  to  the  world.     It  is  cheering  to  note  how 


76  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  v 

seasonably  divine  intervention  prevents  that  disaster. 
Religious  awakenings  on  the  eve  of  emergencies  are 
constantly  vitalizing  the  pulpit  anew.  Metaphorically 
speaking,  new  blood  is  put  into  clerical  leadership. 
The  spiritual  anaemia  is  cured.  Preachers  are  often, 
in  popular  phrase,  "  reconverted."  Men  who  have  been 
deficient  in  consecrated  graces,  and  some  of  whom  have 
held  theories  unfriendly  to  direct  ministrations,  are  re- 
formed. They  either  preach  inconsistently  with  their 
theories,  or  they  change  their  views,  and  seem  to  them- 
selves to  experience  a  new  baptism  from  the  Holy 
Ghost.  By  some  means  the  end  will  always  be  gained, 
of  securing  to  the  church  a  ministry  which  shall  be 
sympathetic  with  their  own  generation,  and  studious  of 
the  wants  of  their  own  times. 

The  views  here  advanced  I  am  very  sensible  are 
liable  to  misinterpretation.  It  is  difficult  to  state  the 
truth  on  the  subject  forcibly  without  exaggeration. 
Principles  affirmed  must  be  qualified,  and  some  of  the 
qualifications  are  as  important  as  the  principles.  State- 
ments of  fact  also  must  be  limited ;  and  often  the  lim- 
itations are  essential  to  prevent  invidious  comparisons. 
I  have  endeavored  to  limit  and  to  qualify  as  the  truth 
demands ;  yet  I  am  sensible  of  the  danger  of  seeming 
to  judge  the  ministry  cynically. 

I  beg  you  to  note,  therefore,  that  the  criticisms  upon 
men,  implied  in  my  remarks  on  this  subject,  I  do  not 
apply  to  the  evangelical  body  indiscriminately.  They 
are  true  of  many  in  some  sections  of  the  church,  and 
of  few  in  others ;  of  many  at  some  periods,  and  of  few 
at  others.  Let  me  quote  here  a  slip  which  I  take  from 
one  of  the  secular  periodicals  of  London.  I  by  no 
means  indorse  it.     I  present  it  as  a  specimen  of  the 


LECT.  v.]  A  CLERICAL  CARICATURE.  77 

impression  which  may  be  unconsciously  made  t  pon 
men  of  the  world  by  an  educated,  refined,  scholarly 
clergy  representing  one  or  more  of  the  historic  denomi- 
nations of  Christendom. 

The  editor  in  question  classifies  the  clergy  of  Eng- 
land thus:  "We  have  first  the  mild,  school-visiting, 
weak-eyed,  tea-drinking,  croquet-playing  curate,  with  a 
strong  conviction  that  he  stands  in  need  of  feminine 
sympathy;  then  the  pet  parson,  who  finds  his  way 
into  the  drawing-rooms  of  fashionable  watering-places, 
as  a  fly  into  a  sugar-basin ;  then  the  comical  parson, 
who  is  great  in  organizing  archery  clubs  and  bazaars, 
as  well  as  in  enacting  the  part  of  social  buffoon  on  every 
possible  opportunity ;  then  the  dancing  parson  and  the 
hunting  parson ;  and  lastly  the  parson  who  is  denomi- 
nated par  excellence  '  fast.'  " 

You  will  observe  here,  that  no  place  is  found  for 
apostolic  ministers  of  Christ,  in  numbers  sufficient  to 
form  a  class,  in  the  whole  body  of  the  English  clergy. 
Nothing  limits  it  absolutely  to  the  clergy  of  the  Estab- 
lishment. The  picture  is,  of  course,  a  caricature :  more, 
it  is  a  libel  upon  very  valuable  branches  of  the  church 
of  Christ.  Yet  even  as  a  caricature  it  is  instructive. 
Caricatures  do  not  spring  up  like  mushrooms.  This 
one  could  not  have  existed  if  the  classes  which  it  satir- 
izes did  not  exist  in  sufficient  numbers  to  suggest  it, 
and  to  be  suggested  by  it.  It  could  not  exist  if  there 
were  not  a  considerable  minority  of  the  clergy  who  are 
making  on  the  world  the  impression  which  it  exagger- 
ates. They  are  men  of  the  world  in  all  that  makes  up 
its  artificial  life,  and  yet  are  not  feeling  after  and  min- 
istering to  the  profound  necessities  of  the  world  as  a 
world  of  lost  sinners  for  whom  Christ  died.     I  repeat, 


78  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  y, 

therefore,  that,  in  some  sections  of  the  church,  the  criti- 
cisms I  have  made  are  true  of  many,  and  in  others  of 
few.  My  belief  is,  that  in  all  they  are  applicable  to  a 
minority,  and  that,  relatively,  a  small  one.  In  some 
periods  of  history,  also,  these  criticisms  are  more  ob- 
viously true  than  at  others. 

But  at  all  periods,  in  all  sections,  under  all  condi- 
tions of  real  life,  the  peril  which  they  suggest  exists. 
This  is  the  point  which  I  wish  to  impress.  The  ten- 
dency to  the  disastrous  state  of  things  which  they 
imply  is  always  attendant  upon  the  preaching  of  the 
gospel  in  a  world  like  this  by  such  instrumentalities  as 
even  the  best  that  human  nature  furnishes.  The  ten- 
dency lies  deep  in  our  civilization  to  subordinate  moral 
distinctions  to  social  distinctions,  and  therefore  to  be 
swayed  by  whatever  is  found  afloat  on  the  surface  of 
the  so-called  "upper  classes  "  of  society. 

Let  that  tendency  become  dominant  in  the  ministra- 
tions of  the  gospel,  and  it  betrays  itself  in  such  phe- 
nomena as  these ;  viz.,  the  organization  of  churches  by 
social  affinities  chiefly ;  the  erection  of  church  edifices 
so  costly  and  ornate  that  the  poor  can  not  feel  at  home 
in  them ;  the  crowding  together  of  such  churches  in 
fashionable  localities,  in  which  "society"  lives,  and 
"the  people"  do  not;  the  consequent  adjustment  of  an 
educated  pulpit  to  educated  hearers  only ;  the  gradual 
separation  of  the  poor  from  the  rich  and  of  the  ignorant 
from  the  cultivated  in  religious  worship ;  the  gradual 
concentration,  therefore,  of  the  wealthy  and  the  refined 
into  one  or  two  denominations  of  Christians ;  the  usage 
in  those  denominations  of  acting  upon  the  poor  and  the 
ignorant,  if  at  all,  by  methods  which  create  a  sense  of 
social  distance  between  the  superior  and  inferior ;  the 


LECT.  v.]  MISSION-CHAPELS.  79 

sequence  that  success  in  winning  the  inferiors  to  Christ 
is  made  impossible,  and  the  effort  to  do  it  under  such 
conditions  farcical ;  and  finally,  as  the  result  of  all  these 
things,  a  worldly  ambition  among  the  clergy  to  be  mag- 
nates over  magnificent  churches  whose  secret  pride  is 
that  they  have  no  poor,  no  ignorant,  no  rude  wor- 
shipers in  their  gorgeous  temples,  and  whose  fixed 
purpose  it  is  not  to  tolerate  such  worshipers  under 
the  same  roof  with  themselves. 

It  is  this  peril  which  I  have  wished  to  portray 
temperately  yet  truthfully.  I  think  there  are  facts 
in  the  present  drift  of  things  in  our  own  denomination, 
specially  in  our  cities,  which  should  set  us  on  double 
guard  against  it.  Calvinistic  denominations  are  all 
giving  evidences  of  its  existence.  The  rise  of  Meth- 
odism was  a  revolt  of  spiritual  forces  against  it.  But 
now,  even  Methodism  gives  signs  of  its  encroachment 
upon  the  ancient  discipline. 

The  establishment  of  mission-chapels  in  our  large 
cities  by  the  prominent  evangelical  sects  is,  in  my 
judgment,  a  very  questionable  experiment.  It  has  not 
the  right  look  for  the  working  of  a  Christian  church. 
I  am  not  prepared  to  say  that  it  may  not  be  the  best 
thing  now  practicable,  things  being  as  they  are.  Hu- 
man nature  must  be  taken  as  we  find  it,  in  the  higher 
classes  as  in  the  lower.  In  such  a  reform  of  Christian 
usage  as  these  remarks  suggest,  we  must  begin  by 
working  as  we  can.  We  must  cherish  the  patient 
virtues  with  which  the  apostles  trained  the  imperfect 
graces  of  the  early  church.  But  the  first  thing  we 
have  to  do  is  to  see  our  existing  policy  as  it  is.  We 
should  mark  its  inevitable  tendency  to  foster  a  classi- 
fication of  Christians  by  mutual  repulsion   of  classes 


80  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  v. 

from  each  other.  Its  tendency  is  directly  to  falsify  the 
apostolic  principle  which  lies  at  the  very  foundation  of 
a  church  of  Christ:  "We,  being  many,  are  one  body 
in  Christ."  Whatever  may  be  said  in  defense  of  it, 
it  is  just  what  Christ  did  not  do  when  he  entered 
Jerusalem  as  a  preacher.  It  is  just  what  the  apostles 
did  not  do  at  Corinth  and  at  Ephesus.  Is  it  not  what 
neither  of  them  would  do  to-day  if  they  were  to  itiner- 
ate among  our  American  churches  ? 

To  illustrate  the  temptation  to  which  a  pastor  may 
be  exposed  by  the  spirit  of  caste  in  our  metropolitan 
churches,  let  me  relate  a  single  case  which  occurred 
in  one  of  our  Eastern  cities.  A  certain  preacher  of 
considerable  local  popularity  had  gathered  a  large  and 
wealthy  and  intelligent  congregation,  not  surpassed,  if 
equaled,  by  any  other  in  the  State.  Not  a  pew  was 
unsold  in  the  church,  and  not  a  seat  often  vacant  on 
the  Lord's  Day.  Applications  for  pews  were  made 
months  in  advance  of  a  supply.  Every  thing  that 
could  minister  to  the  pastor's  worldly  comfort  or  ambi- 
tion he  had  at  his  command.  For  salary,  voyages  to 
Europe,  increase  of  library,  long  vacations,  he  had  only 
to  ask,  and  he  received.  The  social  eminence  of  his 
congregation  created  an  eminence  for  him  on  which  he 
was  seen  and  sought  after  from  afar.  Yet  he  was  not 
content.  He  felt  himself  restrained  from  the  work  of 
his  life  by  the  very  luxury  of  his  position,  and  this  from 
the  fact  that  he  had  none  of  God's  i^^or  among  his 
people.  Not  one  family  worshiped  in  his  church  from 
the  humbler  walks  of  life.  It  could  not  be  said  of  his 
ministry,  "  To  the  poor  the  gospel  is  preached."  They 
could  not  shun  a  pest-house  more  cautiously  than  they 
did  his   church-door.      The  long  row  of  private  car- 


LECT.  v.]  THE  "HYPOCHONDRIAC"  PASTOR.  81 

riages  before  it,  some  of  them  witli  liveried  drivers  on 
the  boxes,  on  a  Sunday  morning,  was  a  grief  lo  him. 
He  had  no  agrarian  sympathies;  but  he  felt  himself 
called  of  God  to  preach  to  the  drivers  as  well  as  to 
their  masters. 

He  at  length  sought  a  consultation  with  the  leadiiig 
men  in  his  society,  and  told  them  his  afiliction.  He 
told  them  frankly  that  he  had  done  all  he  could  do  for 
them  and  their  families,  conditions  being  as  they  were, 
and  now  he  wanted  an  increase  of  his  congregation  of 
a  different  social  rank.  He  asked  them  to  put  galleries 
into  their  church  edifice,  lioping  by  that  means  to 
achieve  his  object.  They  heard  him  respectfully,  but 
blandly  refused  his  request.  He  reasoned  and  pleaded 
with  them,  to  no  effect.  They  thought  he  was  hypo- 
chondriac, and  offered  to  send  him  to  Europe.  But  to 
go  to  Europe  would  be  only  to  "  change  the  place,  and 
keep  the  pain."  He  was  an  hypochondriac  of  the  class 
to  which  our  Lord  belonged  when  he  wept  over  Jeru- 
salem. He  must  preach  the  gospel  to  the  poor,  or  he 
could  not  be  content  with  his  life's  work.  His  people 
argued  that  galleries  would  injure  the  architecture  of 
their  beautiful  temple ;  but  he  reasoned  them  out  of 
that  fear,  so  far  at  least  as  to  silence  them. 

At  last  they  plainly  told  him  that  it  would  be  dis- 
agreeable to  them  and  their  families  to  have  a  crowd 
of  the  poor  thronging  the  same  place  of  worship  with 
themselves.  They  belonged  to  the  high  classes  of 
society,  and  wished  to  remain  such.  They  would  not 
have  galleries  over  their  heads.  One  of  the  saints  told 
him  plainly  that  he  did  not  believe  that  God  meant  to 
have  the  rich  and  the  poor  worship  under  the  same 
roof.      He  had  ordained  the  distinction,  and  was  re- 


82  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  v. 

sponsible  for  the  consequences.  The  pastor,  with  grief 
and  indignation,  at  length  told  them  thg,t  it  was  more 
than  he  could  bear.  Much  as  he  loved  them,  grateful 
as  he  felt  for  their  kindness,  he  must  leave  them. 
Preach  to  the  poor  somewhere  he  must  and  would,  if 
he  had  to  go  into  the  streets  to  do  it.  And  they  let 
him  go  into  the  street.  They  found  a  successor  who 
was  not  "  hypochondriac."  All  honor  to  the  man  ! 
But  what  of  the  church  as  a  spiritual  power  in  the 
world  ?  How  soon  would  such  churches,  though  as  the 
stars  of  heaven  in  multitude,  be  successful  in  the  con- 
version of  the  world  ?  Indeed,  how  much  better  would 
the  world  be  than  it  is  now,  if  it  were  converted  to  the 
type  of  Christianity  which  such  churches  represent? 
Give  me  rather  the  philosophy  of  Socrates  and  Plato, 
and  the  faith  of  Cicero,  than  such  a  Christianity. 


LECTURE  VI. 

THE  STUDY  OF  MEN,  CONCLUDED.  —  PRACTICE  OP 
LEADING  MINDS  IN  HISTORY. 

15.  The  theoretical  consideration  of  the  study  of 
men  as  a  means  of  rhetorical  discipline  invites  ns  to 
observe  further,  in  concluding  the  discussion,  that  the 
study  of  living  men  as  a  source  of  discipline  is  com- 
mended by  the  general  practice  of  leading  minds  in 
history.  The  remarks  I  have  to  make  on  this  point 
will  not  add  much  to  your  note-books.  Yet  they  are 
necessary  to  illustrate  the  reality  of  the  views  I  have 
presented,  as  proved  by  experience. 

The  truth  is,  that  the  majority  of  us  have  passed 
through  our  courses  of  collegiate  training,  under  erro- 
neous impressions,  probably,  of  the  proportion  in  which 
books  have  contributed  to  the  making  of  controlling 
minds  in  real  life.  The  cases  have  been  exceptional 
in  which  power  of  control  has  been  gained  largely  in 
any  department  of  life  without  this  practice  of  the 
study  of  men  as  distinct  from  the  study  of  libraries. 

(1)  Much  is  signified  to  the  purpose  here  by  the 
ancient  curriculum  of  education.  The  ancient  systems 
of  education  included  provision  for  extensive  travel. 
The  Greek  and  Roman  schools  of  learning  were  never 
considered  adequate  to  the  complete  training  of  men 
for  public  life.     The  training   of   the  schools,  it  was 

83 


84  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  vi. 

assumed,  was  to  be  followed  by  travel  in  other  lands. 
No  man  would  tlien  have  regarded  his  literary  culture 
as  finished,  even  in  its  foundations,  without  the  appen- 
dix of  travel  to  the  scholastic  discipline. 

This  was  the  ideal  of  a  liberal  education  throughout 
the  middle  ages.  It  has  always  been  the  English  ideal, 
to  this  day,  of  the  most  perfect  educational  training. 
The  idea  of  deriving  the  whole  of  a  young  man's  mental 
discipline  from  schools  of  learning  is  a  modern,  and 
specially  an  American  idea.  Here  it  has  arisen  from 
the  extension  of  scholastic  privileges  to  multitudes  who 
have  not  the  means  of  travel,  and  also  from  the  fact 
that  the  early  entrance  of  young  men  upon  public  life 
here  in  part  takes  the  place  of  travel  in  pressing  them 
into  some  knowledge  of  the  world. 

Plato  was  thirty  years  old  when  Socrates  died.  He 
spent  eight  or  nine  years  under  the  instruction  of 
Socrates,  and  then  he  spent  ten  years  in  Megara, 
Magna  Grecia,  and  Sicily,  before  he  returned,  and  en- 
tered upon  his  public  life  in  Athens.  In  this  country, 
six  of  the  corresponding  ten  years  in  a  young  man's 
life  are  spent  in  the  first  experiments  of  professional 
duty.  Practically  those  six  years  are  a  part  of  his 
professional  discipline.  We  all  find  it  such  in  fact. 
We  depend  on  the  first  years  of  our  public  life  for  that 
part  of  our  training  which  the  early  systems  of  educa- 
tion derived  from  travel. B  ut,  come  from  what  source 
it  may,  it  comes  from  some  source  in  nearly  all  the 
cases  in  which  a  power  of  control  is  gained  largely  in 
an}^  department  of  public  life. 

(2)  Not  to  rest  with  general  assertion  on  a  point  of 
so  much  interest  as  this,  let  me  recall  to  you  certain 
biographical  facts  in  the  history  of  literature,  and  of 


LBCT.  VI.]  SHAKSPEARE.  85 

government,  and  of  the  arts.  These  embrace  specially, 
among  others,  some  which  relate  to  the  habits  of  distin- 
guished speakers. 

But  first  let  me  recall  the  one  man  who  illustrates 
almost  every  thing  in  literary  history.  The  point  in 
the  history  of  the  English  drama  which  Shakspeare 
marks  most  vividly  is  that  in  which  it  ceased  to  be 
scholastic,  and  became  popular.  Shakspeare  disowned 
the  tyranny  of  literature,  and  defied  the  tyranny  of  crit- 
icism. He  became  what  he  was  to  the  English  drama 
simply  by  being  what  he  was  to  the  English  people. 
Critics  have  tried  hard  to  make  out  for  him  a  large 
acquaintance  with  books;  but  that  is  the  very  thing 
of  which  the  evidence  is  least  in  his  history. 

On  the  other  hand,  notliing  else  is  so  certain  in  the 
meager  knowledge  we  have  of  his  personal  career,  as 
that  he  acted  his  own  plays,  lived  in  the  world  which 
he  sought  to  entertain,  studied  the  tastes  of  his  own 
companions,  and  wrote  for  the  people  of  his  own  times. 
Never  was  man  more  intensely  a  man  of  the  present. 
From  the  latest  researches  in  Shakspearean  literature, 
it  appears  that  he  seldom  or  never  wrote  a  tragedy  till 
some  one  else  had  first  tried  the  public  taste  on  the 
same  subject.  M.  Guizot,  who,  though  a  Frenchman, 
has  written  the  keenest  criticism  upon  Shakspeare's 
works  which  I  have  met  with,  finds  nothing  else  in 
them  so  characteristic,  and  so  philosophically  explana- 
tory of  their  success,  as  the  fact  that  they  evince  a  most 
masterly  knowledge  of  his  own  age  and  country,  and 
that  he  wrote  in  a  spirit  of  ardent  loyalty  to  them 
both. 

The  next  illustration  is  Raphael.  Says  one  of  the 
most  intelligent  critics  of  this  prince  of  painters,  "  His 


86  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  vi. 

paintings  seem  as  if  he  had  gone  about  the  streets, 
and,  whenever  he  found  an  expressive  face  or  attitude, 
had  daguerreotyped  it  on  his  brain,  and  gone  back  to 
his  studio  to  reproduce  it."  The  point  of  interest  in 
the  criticism  is  the  fact  that  such  was  precisely  the  fact 
in  Raphael's  professional  habits.  His  most  celebrated 
faces  are  almost  all  of  them  portraits.  His  personal 
friends,  the  celebrated  women  of  his  age,  some  of  the 
courtesans  of  Rome  and  Florence,  still  live  on  his 
canvas.  Such  was  the  extent  to  which  he  carried 
this  fidelity  to  real  life,  that  some  critics  even  question 
his  originality  of  conception. 

A  third  example  is  Edmund  Burke.  One  of  his 
critics,  speaking  of  Burke's  writing,  says  of  the  man, 
"  He  was  a  man  who  read  every  thing,  and  saw  every 
thing."  The  key  to  his  success  as  an  author  —  an 
author,  I  say,  for  he  was  no  speaker  —  is  to  be  found 
in  his  own  criticism  of  Homer  and  Shakspeare,  of  whom 
he  said,  "  Their  practical  superiority  over  all  other  men 
arose  from  their  practical  knowledge  of  all  other  men." 
Burke  respected  the  popular  mind.  In  his  appeals  to 
it  he  laid  out  his  whole  strength.  Some  of  his  most 
profound  reflections  on  political  economy  he  embodied 
in  his  "  Letter  to  the  Sheriffs  of  Bristol."  And  what 
was  the  "  Letter  to  the  Sheriffs  of  Bristol "  ?  Nothing 
but  a  political  pamphlet  written  to  carry  on  a  political 
campaign  in  a  single  shire.  His  "  Essay  on  the  Sublime 
and  Beautiful "  was  the  product  of  a  period  of  recrea- 
tion. The  hard  work  of  his  life  was  expended  on  the 
practical  affairs  of  England.  He  was  one  of  the  most 
ardent  and  original  of  theorists ;  yet  such  was  his  sub- 
jection of  theory  to  fact  in  his  knowledge  of  mankind, 
that  his  was  the  first  leading  mind  in  Eurcipe  which 


LECT.  VI.]  HISTORICAL  EXAMPLES.  87 

recovered  from  the  intoxication  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, and  detected  the  drift  of  it  towards  anarchy. 

A  fourth  illustration  is  Curran,  the  Irish  orator.  His 
mother  used  to  say  of  him,  "  O  Jackey,  what  a  preacher 
was  lost  when  you  became  a  barrister  !  "  The  old  lady 
was  right  if  Curran  would  have  carried  into  the  minis- 
try the  same  methods  of  self-discipline  which  he  prac- 
ticed for  the  bar.  He  laid  the  foundation  of  his  success 
as  a  barrister  in  the  coffee-houses  of  London. 

The  London  coffee-houses  of  that  day  were  what  the 
"  London  Times "  and  other  metropolitan  newspapers 
are  now.  Curran  used  to  spend  two  hours  every  night 
in  them  for  the  purpose  of  studying  the  politicians 
whom  he  found  there,  observing  their  ways,  their 
speech,  their  opinions,  even  their  dress.  He  would  go 
from  one  to  another,  selecting  those  which  he  said 
"  were  most  fertile  in  game  for  a  character-hunter."  In 
this  respect  he  represented  almost  all  the  public  men  of 
his  day  who  became  eminent  in  the  public  life  of  Eng- 
land. Lord  Macaulay  says  that  the  coffee-house  was 
then  a  national  institution,  so  general  was  the  resort  to 
it  of  men  whose  public  efforts  of  speech  and  authorship 
ruled  the  realm. 

Fox  and  Mirabeau  I  name  as  men  of  great  power  in 
speech  without  great  learning.  As  students  of  books 
they  were  too  indolent  to  accumulate  the  materials  of 
their  own  speeches :  each  had  his  fag.  But  as  observ- 
ers of  men  they  were  indefatigable :  therefore,  in  spite 
of  their  deficiencies  in  the  knowledge  of  libraries,  they 
became  masters  in  parliamentary  debate.  These  men 
represent  a  class  of  minds  which  spring  up  in  every 
country  of  free  speech. 

Napoleon  is  a  seventh  example.     He  founded  libra- 


88  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  vi. 

lies,  but  never  entered  them.  But  that  was  no  boast 
when  he  said,  "  I  know  man."  He  used  to  visit  in  dis- 
guise the  seaports  of  France  to  converse  in  person  with 
the  fishermen  and  sailors  and  smugglers.  He  illustrated 
the  way  in  which  a  man  of  the  world  will  often  spring 
at  a  bound,  in  religious  argument,  to  results  which  a 
scholastic  mind  would  have  reached,  if  at  all,  with  slow 
and  wary  steps.  Thus  it  was  that  the  superhuman 
nature  of  Jesus  Christ  revealed  itself  to  him.  When 
he  formed  the  celebrated  "  Code "  which  bears  his 
name,  he  gathered  around  him  the  first  jurists  of  the 
empire,  including  those  of  the  old  monarchy;  and  he 
astonished  them  all  by  the  practical  wisdom  with  which 
he  fused  the  conflicting  materials  which  they  furnished 
him,  into  one  consistent  and  feasible  system  of  organic 
law.  His  method  of  studying  any  subject  which  the 
welfare  of  the  empire  required  him  to  master  was  to 
summon  a  group  of  conflicting  living  authorities  on 
that  subject,  and  set  them  to  arguing  with  each  other 
in  defense  of  their  respective  opinions. 

Another  instance  to  the  point  is  Walter  Scott.  He 
lived  with  the  multitude.  His  ofiQcial  duties  kept  him 
a  large  part  of  the  time  in  a  Scottish  court  of  quarter 
sessions.  Hence  it  has  been  so  often  said  that  his 
fictions  read  like  histories,  while  the  histories  of  other 
men  read  like  fictions.  In  his  school-days  Scott  was  a 
dull  boy  and  an  inveterate  truant.  He  would  entice 
one  or  more  of  his  companions  to  run  away  with  him 
to  Calton  Hill  or  Arthur's  Seat,  and  there  he  would 
practice  upon  them  his  art  of  story-telling.  He  was  an 
unwearied  conversationalist :  nobody  was  too  high,  and 
nobody  too  low,  for  him  to  talk  with.  In  the  "  For- 
tunes of  Nigel "  he  represents  one  of  the  characters  as 


LECT.  VI.]  WALTER  SCOTT'S  EXAMPLE.  89 

saying  that  a  man  of  active  mind  can  not  talk  with  the 
boy  who  holds  his  horse  at  a  watering-place,  without 
obtaining  some  new  thought.  He  used  to  go  to  the 
fish-market  at  Billingsgate  to  study  the  dialect  of  the 
fishwomen.  He  has  been  known  to  pause  in  the  street 
to  jot  down  on  a  scrap  of  paper,  or  on  his  thumb-nail,  a 
word  which  he  caught  from  a  passer-by. 

In  his  novels  he  draws  so  largely  upon  real  life  that 
they  are  not  properly  called  romances.  He  deals  with 
living  characters,  employs  living  dialects,  records  as 
fictions  actual  occurrences.  His  own  henchman,  Tom 
Purdie,  is  described  in  the  "Red  Gauntlet."  The 
death  of  the  Templar  in  "  Ivanhoe  "  was  an  exact  copy 
of  a  death-scene  which  occurred  to  a  friend  of  Scott 
while  pleading  a  cause  in  his  presence  in  a  court-room 
in  Edinburgh.  The  localities  of  most  of  his  stories  he 
describes  from  his  own  sight  of  them.  He  visited  the 
Continent  to  see  for  himself  the  localities  of  "  Quentin 
Durward."  The  best  guide-book  to  the  lakes  of  Scot- 
land is  said  to  be  Scott's  "  Lady  of  the  Lake." 

Aristocratic  as  he  was  in  his  aspirations,  he  still 
enjoyed  the  common  people  more  heartily  than  the 
society  of  his  equals.  The  professors  of  the  University 
of  Edinburgh  complained  that  he  chose  the  society  of 
men  of  business  rather  than  their  own.  He  held  to 
that  choice  deliberately.  He  said  that  he  found  the 
conversation  of  men  of  the  world  to  be  more  original, 
and  more  fit  to  feed  a  literary  spirit,  than  that  of  literary 
men  themselves.  In  a  moment  of  petulance  he  declared 
that  the  dullest  talk  he  ever  listened  to  was  that  of  a 
group  of  literary  men  at  a  dinner-table.  "  I  love  the 
virtues  of  rough  and  round  men,"  he  says :  "  the  others 
are  apt  to  escape  me  in  sal-volatile  and  a  white  pocket- 
handkerchief." 


90  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  vi. 

Agaiu  be  writes:  "I  have  read  books  enough,  and 
conversed  with  enough  of  splendidly  educated  men  in 
my  time ;  but  I  assure  you  I  have  heard  higher  senti- 
ments from  the  lips  of  poor  uneducated  men  and  women 
than  I  ever  yet  met  with  out  of  the  pages  of  the  Bible." 
On  another  occasion,  when  his  daughter  condemned 
something  for  being  "vulgar,"  he  replied,  "You  speak 
like  a  very  j^oung  lady.  Do  you  not  know  the  mean- 
ing of  the  word  '  vulgar '  ?  It  is  only  '  common.'  Noth- 
ing that  is  common,  except  wickedness,  can  deserve  to 
be  spoken  of  in  a  tone  of  contempt.  When  you  have 
lived  to  my  years,  you  will  agree  with  me  in  thanking 
God  that  nothing  really  worth  having  in  this  world  is 
uncommon." 

A  ninth  example  is  Patrick  Henry.  His  bank- 
ruptcy in  a  country  store  in  Virginia  was  a  foregone 
conclusion  because  of  the  way  in  which  he  spent  his 
time.  His  habit  was  to  -collect  a  company  of  villagers 
in  his  store,  and  give  them  a  subject  of  conversation, 
and  then  fall  back  and  listen  to  their  talk.  Popular 
modes  of  thought,  popular  ways  of  argument,  popular 
styles  of  illustration,  popular  sophistries,  popular  ap- 
peals, he  studied  thus  month  after  month.  That  was 
his  university,  his  school  of  oratory,  his  library.  The 
principles  and  methods  he  learned  there  he  adopted 
and  imitated  in  his  subsequent  political  career.  He 
was  the  orator  of  the  rabble  all  through  life.  He  talked 
like  the  rabble,  lived  like  the  rabble,  ate  and  drank  and 
dressed  like  the  rabble.  He  did  this  designedly  for  the 
sake  of  swaying  the  rabble  in  his  public  speeches. 

One  witness  testifies  to  this  from  Mr.  Henry's  lips : 
"  Mr.  Chairman,  all  the  larnin'  upon  the  yairth  air  not 
to  be  compared  with  naiteral  parts."     Yet  to  studies 


LECT.  VI.]  WHITEFIELD'S  EXAMPLE.  91 

and  abuses  of  this  kind  he  owed  at  hist  his  power  to. 
send  the  House  of  Burgesess  rushing  from  their  seats 
at  the  close  of  his  description  of  a  thunder-storm,  or 
rather  his  adroit  use  of  one  which  occurred  near  the 
close  of  one  of  his  addresses.  He  was  a  representative 
of  the  whole  class  of  public  speakers  who  are  so  delu- 
sively called  "natural  orators."  There  are  no  natural 
orators.     They  all  study  oratory  in  studying  men. 

Passing  now  to  the  pulpit,  I  name  but  one  other 
illustration,  George  Whitefield.  His  name  is  often 
adduced  as  an  example  of  untaught,  spontaneous  elo- 
quence. He  was  no  such  thing.  No  man  was  ever 
further  from  it.  For  patient,  laborious,  painstaking, 
lifelong  study  of  the  art  of  oratory,  give  us  George 
Whitefield  as  the  prince  of  students.  Long  before  his 
conversion,  when  he  was  a  tapster  in  his  mother's 
tavern,  he  studied  the  English  dramatic  writers  till  he 
knew  large  portions  of  them  by  heart.  He  personated 
some  of  their  female  characters  amidst  rounds  of  ap- 
plause from  the  villagers.  Though  sometimes  intoxi- 
cated, he  composed  sermons,  and  tried  the  effect  of 
them  on  the  crowd  around  the  doorposts.  He  stole 
hours  of  the  night  for  the  study  of  the  dramatic  por- 
tions of  the  Bible.  Thus  was  it  that  the  great  field- 
preacher  was  made. 

One  effect  of  these  experimental  studies  on  his  own 
mind  was  to  create  such  a  sense  of  the  difQculty  of 
preaching  well,  that,  after  his  conversion,  he  says  he 
never  prayed  against  any  corruption  in  his  life  so  much 
as  he  did  against  being  tempted  into  the  ministry  too 
soon.  "  I  have  prayed  a  thousand  times,"  he  says,  "  till 
the  sweat  has  dropped  from  my  face  like  rain,  that 
God  would  not  let  me  enter  the  ministry  till  He  thrust 
me  forth  to  his  work." 


92  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [.^ct.  vi. 

In  this  spirit  of  reverence  for  his  work,  he  became 
through  his  whole  ministry  a  student  of  his  audiences. 
He  was  incessantly  trying  experiments  upon  his  con- 
gregations. The  same  sermons  he  preached  over  and 
over,  till  they  were  crowded  with  variations  and  im- 
provements. Garrick,  who  himself  owed  much  to  his 
study  of  Whitefield,  said  that  Whitefield  never  finished 
a  sermon  till  he  had  preached  it  forty  times.  He 
preached  from  thirty  to  forty  thousand  sermons,  but 
only  about  seventy-five  have  found  their  way  into 
print.  This  is  some  index  to  the  extent  to  which  he 
must  have  carried  repetition  of  the  same  discourses. 

The  pulpit  is  crowded  with  illustrations,  either  of 
the  neglect,  or  the  use,  or  the  abuse,  of  this  study  of 
men  as  a  source  of  homiletic  culture.  They  might 
be  multiplied  indefinitely,  but  it  is  needless. 

(3)1  proceed,  therefore,  to  remark  that  the  same  view 
is  confirmed  by  the  opinions  of  a  class  of  writers  and 
speakers  derogatory  to  the  value  of  rhetorical  culture. 

Oratorical  study  has  to  contend  with  the  expressed 
judgments  of  certain  orators  and  writers  who  say  that 
it  is  useless.  They  have  succeeded,  as  they  imagine, 
without  it.  They  have  refused  to  be  hampered  by  it. 
They  have  trusted  to  the  instinct  of  speech  and  the 
cravings  of  a  full  mind  for  utterance.  They  have  but 
filled  the  mind  with  thought,  and  then  let  it  express 
itself.  They  have  followed  the  counsel  they  so  often 
give  to  young  preachers,  "  Find  something  to  say,  and 
then  say  it."  They  therefore  dispute  the  value  of  all 
conscious  effort  for  oratorical  discipline.  Cicero,  after 
writing  the  "  De  Oratore,"  condemned  books  on  rheto- 
ric. Macaulay,  though  the  author  of  criticism  enough 
to  make  volumes  of  rhetorical  suggestion,  decries  con- 


LECT.  VI.]  RHETORICAL  STUDY.  93 

scious  study  of  rhetorical  science.  George  William 
Curtis  in  this  country  has  reproduced  Macaulay  s  judg- 
ment with  approval.  He  sums  up  the  whole  argument 
by  saying  that  rhetoric  makes  critics,  but  never  orators 
nor  writers. 

These  men  represent  a  class  of  writers  and  speakers, 
themselves  successful,  whom  every  flourishing  age  of 
literature  has  produced,  and  who  have  no  faith  in  the 
scientific  culture  of  oratory  for  any  other  purpose  than 
that  of  mental  gymnastics.  Its  direct  practical  value 
they  doubt  or  deny. 

Test,  now,  these  opinions  by  the  actual  experience  of 
such  men,  and  what  do  the}^  amount  to  ?  Simply  this  : 
they  are  comparative  opinions,  in  which  abstract  rheto- 
ric is  weighed  against  the  literary  discipline  of  real 
life.  Such  critics  have  profited  so  much  more  from  the 
study  of  men  than  from  the  study  of  rhetorical  treatises 
that  the  latter  sink  into  insignificance  in  the  comparison. 
Is  it  conceivable  that  Cicero's  orations  grew  out  of 
innate,  unstudied  eloquence  alone?  His  own  confes- 
sions contradict  this.  Is  it  imaginable  that  Macaulay's 
style  was  the  fruit  of  unconscious  ebullition  of  power  ? 
A  thousand  years  of  criticism  could  never  convince  the 
literary  world  of  that.  Is  it  possible  that  Mr.  Curtis's 
"Easy  Chair"  was  never  manufactured?  If  the  styles 
of  these  writers  are  specimens  of  spontaneous  genera- 
tion, the  world  does  not  contain  any  thing  which  is  not 
such.  The  immortal  columns  of  Greek  architecture  aie 
no  more  made,  studied,  elaborated  things  than  are  such 
styles  as  theirs.  Those  styles  have  been  originated, 
compacted,  adorned,  polished,  by  laborious  study  of 
speech  and  authorship  in  real  life.  Their  authors  have 
studied  rhetoric  in  embodied  forms.     They  have  prac- 


94  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  vi. 

ticed  it,  as  literary  journeymen,  in  the  mental  collisions 
and  abrasions  of  public  life.  They  lived  it  many  years 
before  they  could  command  their  facile  pen. 

All  opinions,  therefore,  of  successful  writers,  deroga- 
tory to  the  study  of  oratory,  are  to  be  taken  as  only 
practical  testimonies  to  the  value  of  the  study  of  it  as 
embodied  in  living  men.  Whatever  may  be  the  bear- 
ing of  them  upon  the  scholastic  culture  of  rhetoric, 
they  are  the  most  emphatic  witness  possible  to  the 
value  of  its  practical  culture  through  an  elaborate  and 
lifelong  study  of  mankind. 

To  recapitulate,  then,  the  several  aspects  of  the  sub- 
ject which  we  have  considered :  we  have  observed  that 
every  preacher  may  obtain  much  oratorical  culture 
from  the  stud}^  of  his  own  mind ;  that  he  has  a  similar 
source  of  culture  in  the  study  of  other  men ;  that  'this 
study  is  often  undervalued,  because  of  a  factitious  rev- 
erence for  books ;  that  this  study  should  be  stimulated 
by  that  which  is  well  known  to  be  the  popular  idea  of 
a  clergyman ;  that  the  need  of  it  in  some  quarters  is 
indicated  by  the  idea  of  a  clergyman  which  is  most 
common  in  literary  fiction ;  that  the  absence  of  it  dis- 
closes itself,  not  only  in  the  unfitness  of  the  pulpit  to 
its  mission  of  reproof,  but  also  in  its  unfitness  to  the 
mission  of  comfort ;  that  we  may  learn  something  to 
the  purpose  from  the  study  of  eccentric  preachers ;  that 
the  study  of  men  is  specially  needful  to  educated 
preachers,  because  the  literature  of  the  world  is  not 
constructed,  in  the  main,  for  the  masses  of  mankind ; 
that  the  need  of  it  is  enforced  by  the  fact  that  often 
great  changes  of  popular  opinion  occur  independently 
of  the  cultivated  classes  as  such ;  that  in  suck  popular 
changes  the  clergy  are  the  natural  leaders  of  the  peo- 


LECT.  VI.]  SUMMARY.  95 

pie ;  that  a  certain  minority  of  the  clergy  are  found  to 
be  insensible  or  hostile  to  such  changes ;  that,  when  the 
pulpit  becomes  identified  with  the  cultivated  classes 
alone,  it  loses  power  of  control  over  all  classes ;  that, 
when  the  pulpit  betrays  a  want  of  knowledge  of  men 
as  they  are,  the  result  is  the  creation  of  anomalous  rela- 
tions between  the  church  and  the  world ;  and  that  the 
study  of  men  here  recommended  is  supported  by  the 
practice  of  leading  minds  in  history. 

You  will  not  understand  me  as  decrying  scholastic 
discipline  in  the  comparison.  On  that  subject  I  have, 
in  the  sequel,  other  things  to  say.  But  I  have  wished 
to  establish  at  present  this  as  one  part  of  a  preacher's 
necessary  and  perpetual  discipline  for  his  life's  work : 
that  he  must  be  a  student  of  men,  himself  a  man  of 
his  own  times,  living  in  sympathy  with  his  own  times, 
versed  in  the  literature  of  his  own  times,  at  home 
with  the  people  of  his  own  charge,  observant  of  the 
movements  of  the  popular  heart,  and  aspiring  in  his 
expectations  of  controlling  those  movements  by  the 
ministrations  of  the  pulpit. 

That  was  a  confession  which  no  minister  should 
oblige  himself  to  make,  as  a  late  professor  in  one  of 
our  theological  seminaries  did  in  the  last  year  of  his 
life,  that  for  half  a  century  he  had  read  more  Latin 
than  English.  That  was  the  mark  of  a  mind  whos«^ 
roots  were  in  an  obsolete  age,  and  whose  culture  was 
chiefly  in  a  language,  a  literature,  and  a  style  of  think- 
ing, which  never  can  again  be  dominant  in  the  civili- 
zation of  the  world. 


LECTURE   VII. 

THE     STUDY     OP     LITERATURE     FOR    CLERICAL    DISCI- 
PLINE.—  OBJECTS   OF   THE   STUDY. 

II.  We  have  observed  in  analyzing  the  sources  of 
our  oratorical  knowledge,  that,  while  there  is  but  one  ori- 
ginal source,  an  auxiliary  source  is  found  in  the  study 
of  models,  and  that  in  the  term  "  models"  we  include 
all  successful  and  permanent  literature.  This  exten- 
sion of  the  term  is  essential.  Our  primary  notion  of  a 
model  is  limited.  When  a  painter  speaks  of  a  model, 
he  means  by  it  a  painting,  or  the  thing  which  is  to  be 
transferred  to  canvas,  and  nothing  more.  When  a 
sculptor  speaks  of  a  model,  he  means  by  it  the  human 
form,  or  a  piece  of  statuary,  and  nothing  more.  In  criti- 
cism of  poetry  a  model  is  a  poem,  and  nothing  more. 
In  military  art  a  model  is  a  historic  campaign,  or  the 
plan  of  a  battle,  and  nothing  else.  That  is  to  say,  a 
model  has  primarily  a  professional  limitation. 

When,  therefore,  a  preacher  conceives  of  a  model,  he 
is  apt  to  think  only  of  a  sermon,  or  at  most  of  an  ora- 
tion. Consequently  he  is  in  danger  of  limiting  his  read- 
ing for  homiletic  discipline  to  sacred  or  secular  sjyeech. 
The  point,  therefore,  needs  to  be  emphasized  as  a  pre- 
liminary, that  we  should  not  restrict  our  idea  of  models 
to  any  such  professional  range.  The  advice  often  given 
to  young  preachers  in  respect  to  their  reading  is  nar- 

96 


LECT.  vii.J  DEFINITION  OF  "MODELS."  97 

row,  in  that  their  attention  is  directed  exclusively  to 
oratorical  literature.  In  my  judgment,  that  is  not  even 
the  chief  source  of  homiletic  culture  derivable  from 
books.  In  the  broader  view,  all  successful  and  perma- 
nent literature  is  a  collection  of  models  to  an  educated 
mind. 

The  culture  wliich  a  preacher  needs  from  books  is 
substantially  that  which  any  other  professional  man 
needs.  Excepting  the  necessities  of  the  profession,  the 
less  his  culture  is  narrowed  by  professional  affinities  in 
its  range,  the  better.  Nearly  the  most  meager  prepa- 
ration you  could  acquire  for  the  pulpit  would  be  the 
'eading  of  the  whole  mass  of  English  sermons,  and 
nothing  else.  Every  book  which  is  a  book  is  a  model 
of  something  to  an  educated  mind.  By  a  preacher, 
every  book  he  reads  should  be  read  as  a  model  of  some- 
thing. Whatever  has  achieved  success,  specially  what- 
ever has  been  long-lived,  we  may  be  sure  contains 
something,  which,  if  intelligently  studied,  will  be  to  a 
preacher's  culture  what  the  torso  of  Hercules  is  to 
sculptors. 

Moreover,  our  conception  of  a  model  to  a  professional 
man  should  not  be  limited  to  literature  as  distinct  from 
philosophy  or  from  science.  There  is  a  distinction  here  ; 
but  it  is  not  so  important  to  a  professional  man  as 
to  one  whose  life  is  made  up  of  literary  pursuits.  A 
mind  moving  in  the  orbit  of  a  great  practical  profession 
must  be  open  to  culture  from  any  thing  in  our  libraries 
which  represents  the  world's  past  or  living  thought. 
Every  su?h  volume  is  a  model  to  such  a  mind,  in  the 
sense  that  it  contains  something  helpful  to  its  disci- 
pline or  its  furnishing  for  its  life's  work.  One  young 
preacher  I  knew,  who  found  the  most  effective  awakener 


98  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  vn. 

of  his  own  mind  to  original  production  in  the  study  of 
La  Place's  "  Mechanique  Celeste."  Such  are  the  occult 
affinities  between  literature  and  science,  that  there  is 
a  mental  appropriation  of  them  both  by  an  alert  mind, 
in  which  the  distinction  between  them  vanishes. 

Bearing  in  mind,  then,  the  principle  that  the  range 
of  a  preacher's  possible  study  of  models  opens  to  him 
all  standard  libraries,  the  remarks  I  wish  to  make 
upon  the  subject  arrange  themselves  naturally  under 
the  objects  of  the  study,  the  selection  of  authors,  and 
the  methods  of  the  study. 

1st,  The  Objects  of  the  study  of  books :  what  are 
they  ?  I  answer,  in  the  general.  The  object  is  discipline 
as  distinct  from  accumulation.  Its  results,  when  prop- 
erly conducted,  will  never  be  the  mere  conglomeration 
of  knowledge.  Its  aim  is  discipline ;  its  process  is 
discipline ;  its  result  is  discipline.  A  certain  mental 
growth  is  the  sum  and  substance  of  it.  A  man  knows 
nothing  of  the  rudiments  of  the  culture  to  which  it 
belongs  who  has  not  begun  to  be  conscious  of  mental 
growth  under  that  culture.  One  of  the  first  and  most 
profound  impressions  which  the  study  of  books  should 
make  upon  a  man  is  that  of  the  distinction  between 
literary  labor  and  literary  leisure.  No  habits  like  those 
of  a  literary  amateur  can  accomplish  the  object  in  view. 
The  aim  is  never  a  luxury,  except  in  that  stage  which 
mature  discipline  at  length  reaches,  in  which  labor  is 
itself  luxury.  But,  in  particular,  the  chief  objects  of 
a  pastor's  study  of  literature  are  four. 

The  first  is  a  discovery  of  the  principles  of  effec- 
tive thought,  and  its  expression  in  language.  We  all 
come  to  the  study  of  books  with  minds  uninformed  as 
to  what  is  excellence,  and  what  is  not.     No  man's  lit- 


LECT.  VII.}  DISCO  V^ERY  OF  PRINCIPLES.  99 

erary  instinct  is  at  the  first  a  sufficient  guide  to  his 
literary  judgment.  What  are  the  principles  of  effective 
literature  is  a  question  to  be  answered  by  an  after- 
process  to  that  of  feeling  the  power  of  literature.  It 
is  a  process  of  reflection  upon  a  previous  experience. 
It  is  as  purely  a  process  of  discovery  as  a  search  in  a 
gold-mine. 

Novalis  said  that  painting  was  "  the  art  of  seeing." 
So  the  true  study  of  books  is  the  art  of  seeing  what 
is  and  what  is  not  there.  You  read,  for  instance,  an 
author  who  moves  you.  He  stimulates  your  intellect; 
he  arouses  your  sensibilities ;  he  delights  you,  fascinates 
you,  elevates  you  to  an  unwonted  height  of  mental  and 
moral  excitement ;  he  becomes  therefore  a  favorite  with 
you ;  you  feel  grateful  to  him  for  his  disclosure  to  you 
of  a  new  world  of  thought  and  feeling.  At  first  you 
have  no  disposition  to  any  process  of  reflection.  You 
only  feel,  as  Dr.  Franklin  felt  his  first  hearing  of  White- 
field.  But  by  and  by  the  time  of  reflective  study  comes. 
You  ask,  What  is  it  in  my  favorite  author  which  makes 
him  what  he  is  to  me  ?  What  are  the  roots  of  his  pro- 
ductions which  make  them  such  a  vital  and  vitalizing 
power  to  me?  The  answer,  unless  your  experience  has 
been  factitious,  will  disclose  to  you  one  or  more  of  the 
elements  which  make  all  vital  literature  a  power  to  all 
minds. 

Until  our  minds  go  through  that  reflective  process 
of  discovery,  we  know  nothing  of  books  as  an  object  of 
criticism.  We  have  no  intelligent  tastes  in  literature. 
We  have  no  culture  of  scholarly  judgment.  We  are,  in 
respect  to  libraries,  in  that  inchoate  state  in  which  a 
man  often  is  in  respect  to  painting,  or  sculpture,  or 
music,  in  which  he  honestly  confesses,  "  I  do  not  know 


100  MEN  AISTD  BOOKS.  [lect.  vii. 

what  is  artistic  excellence,  I  only  know  what  I  like.'* 
Exactly  thus  we  might  express  our  state  of  culture  iu 
literature  before  the  critical  taste  is  formed  in  us  by  an 
introversion  of  mind  upon  our  own  instincts,  and  by 
thought  upon  the  objects  which  have  pleased  or  roused 
them.  We  do  not  know  what  is  excellent  in  literarv 
creation;  we  only  know  what  we  like.  Whether  oi:r 
taste  is  true  to  any  lofty  ideal  we  do  not  know :  we 
only  know  what  we  like.  A  savage  knows  as  much 
when  he  struts  around  in  his  adornments  of  beads  and 
peacock  feathers.  A  child  knows  as  much  when  his 
tears  are  dried  at  the  jingle  of  nurserj^-rhymes. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  faculty  of  good  taste  under 
high  culture  becomes  one  of  superlative  excellence. 
It  is  an  instance  in  which  an  acquired  faculty  rivals 
original  endowments  of  mind.  We  should  not  be 
deceived  by  our  associations  with  the  word  "  taste."  It 
is  the  only  single  word  by  which  our  language  expresses 
the  thing  in  question.  Yet  the  word  is  unfortunate  in 
the  multiplicity  of  its  uses.  We  connect  it  so  much 
with  millinery  and  upholstery  and  bijouterie^  if  not 
with  the  pleasures  of  the  table,  that  we  often  carry  it 
into  literature  with  degrading  associations.  We  need 
there  to  enlarge  and  ennoble  it.  It  expresses  there  one 
of  the  last  and  noblest  results  of  mental  discipline. 
I  can  not  call  it  virtue  :  usage  calls  it  taste.  "  Virtue  " 
is  reserved  for  a  class  of  conceptions  totally  distinct. 

Yet  taste  does  express  lofty  intellectual  character, 
not  moral  character,  but  a  development  of  intellect 
which  stands  over  against  moral  character,  and  corre- 
sponds to  it  in  dignity.  By  it  we  distinguish  what  is 
true  from  what  is  factitious  in  letters.  We  penetrate 
by  it  to  that  which  is  deepest  in  thought.     We  reach 


LECT.  VII.]  FACULTY  OF  GOOD  TASTE.  lOl 

that  which,  m  literary  expression,  corresponds  to  integ- 
rity in  morals.  We  discern,  therefore,  that  which  is  and 
must  be  long-lived.  Taste  under  high  culture  gives  to 
a  scholar,  not  only  knowledge,  but  foreknowledge,  of 
literary  history.  He  learns  to  look  into  the  future  with 
as  much  confidence  as  he  feels  in  his  knowledge  of  the 
past.  He  pronounces  judgment  on  certain  works  with 
the  confidence  of  an  oracle.  He  says  of  them,  "  These 
must  fade :  there  is  in  them  that  which  dooms  them  to 
decay."  Of  other  works  he  says  as  confidently,  "  These 
will  live :  these  express  the  soul  of  man  and  the  voice 
of  God  in  forms  which  the  world  will  not  willingly  let 
die." 

This  finished  taste  represents  a  state  of  mental  con- 
quest. A  man's  own  insight  into  the  life  of  literature 
becomes  a  law  to  him.  He  is  an  independent  thinker, 
reader,  scholar,  author,  preacher.  His  own  insight,  if 
it  conflicts,  as  it  sometimes  will,  with  a  popular  taste, 
gives  him.  repose,  while  that  taste  lasts,  in  the  assurance 
that  it  will  be  ephemeral.  He  can  work  on  calmly  in 
his  own  way.  He  is  like  an  eagle  in  his  eyrie :  he 
knows  that  he  sees  farther  than  his  contemporaries  . 
he  knows  as  surely  that  he  must  succeed  in  the  end. 
Wordsworth  expressed  grandly  this  vision  of  the  lit- 
erary future,  when  he  replied  to  the  outburst  of  hostile 
criticism  w^ith  which  "  The  Excursion  "  was  received  at 
the  first.  "  This  will  never  do,"  said  Jeffrey  in  "  The 
Edinburgh  Review."  "  It  must  do,"  responded  the 
poet,  as  if  inspired.  "  I  very  well  know  that  my  work 
will  be  unpopular ;  but  I  know,  too,  that  it  will  be  im- 
mortal." 

The  second  object  of  a  preacher's  study  of  litera- 
ture is  that  familiarity  with  the  principles  of  effective 


102  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  vn. 

tliouglit  and  expression  which  gives  one  a  working 
knowledge  of  those  principles  as  distinct  from  a  critical 
knowledge.  We  need  such  an  inwrought  possession  of 
them,  that,  in  our  own  productions,  we  can  apply  them 
unconsciously.  In  the  act  of  composing,  the  mind  can 
not  pause  to  recall  by  sheer  lift  of  memory  a  principle 
of  good  writing,  and  then  apply  it  by  conscious  choice. 
This  is  specially  true  of  select  hours  of  composition. 
All  writers  have  such  hours.  Our  best  work  is  done  in 
such  hours.  The  mind  then  is  lifted  by  the  impulse 
of  original  invention.  Thought  is  ebullient.  An  act  of 
creation  is  going  on.  The  creating  mind  then  must 
seize  involuntarily  upon  the  forms  of  language  which 
lie  nearest,  and  which  come  unbidden.  Lawlessly, 
rudely,  arbitrarily,  it  uses  those  forms,  so  far  as  any 
conscious  selection  is  concerned. 

If,  therefore,  we  have  not  so  learned  the  principles  of 
power  in  speech  as  to  be  able  to  apply  them  uncon- 
sciously, we  can  not  apply  them  at  all.  Therefore  we 
need  to  acquire  such  familiarity  with  those  principles, 
that  our  command  of  them  shall  be  what  the  uncon- 
scious skill  of  the  athlete  is  to  muscle  and  sinew. 

In  this  view  it  is  obvious  that  the  familiarity  of 
unconscious  use  of  principles  of  literary  expression 
marks  a  high  state  of  mental  discipline  in  respect  to 
executive  skill.  We  have  observed  that  the  object  of 
literary  study  is  discipline,  not  accumulation.  We  have 
observed  also  that  a  full  discovery  of  the  principles 
of  taste  marks  a  high  discipline  in  respect  to  criticism. 
The  point  now  before  us  indicates  an  advance  upon  the 
discipline  of  criticism.  It  contemplates  discipline  in 
respect  to  executive  skill.  Such  possession  of  the 
principles  of  effective  writing  as  that  involved  in  the 
unconscious  use  of  them  marks  power  of  execution. 


LECT.  VII.]  TASTE  AND  EXECUTION.  103 

No  man  can  have  listened  to  Edward  Everett  or 
Rufus  Choate,  for  example,  without  being  sensible  of 
the  fascination  of  some  of  their  prolonged  and  invo- 
luted passages.  They  are  marvelous  phenomena  of 
executive  discipline.  Pages  could  be  selected  from 
their  writings  in  which  the  processes  of  reasoning,  of 
judging,  of  analysis,  of  comparison,  of  combination,  of 
imagining,  of  memory,  of  abstraction,  and  of  invention, 
all  interlace  each  other  in  one  marvel  of  expression. 
The  mental  strain  of  producing  the  wondrous  network 
seems  like  torture  to  a  critic  who  is  looking  on ;  yet 
those  processes  embrace  each  other  with  a  kindliness 
which  makes  them  seem,  to  one  who  feels  only  the 
naturalness  of  their  evolution,  like  the  play  of  spiritual 
beings  at  their  ease.  We  obtain  a  new  conception  of 
the  susceptibility  of  discipline  which  is  in  every  mind 
from  such  specimens  of  high  art  in  discourse. 

This  view  is  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  exquisite 
taste  often  exists  without  executive  skill.  Eminent 
critics  are  often  not  superlative  writers.  This  is  only 
saying  that  they  know  more  than  they  can  do.  The 
reason  is  found  in  the  distinction  before  us,  between  a 
discovery  of  the  principles  of  effective  speech,  and  such 
a  possession  of  them  as  would  secure  unconscious  obe- 
dience to  them  in  one's  own  productions.  It  has  been 
said  of  Lord  Brougham,  that  in  his  own  writings  he 
violates  nearly  all  the  rules  which  in  his  criticism  of 
others  he  prescribes.  The  critical  study  of  books 
tends  to  prevent  such  anomalies  as  this,  by  giving  us 
the  principles  of  good  writing  in  illustrated  forms.  We 
most  readily  become  familiar  with  them,  if  we  have 
them  exemplified.  The  example  which  we  enjoy  will 
tend  to  fix  in  our  taste  the  principle  which  otherwise 


104  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  vii 

it  would  be  a  drudgery  to  remember.  Like  all  other 
knowledge,  that  is  most  homelike  to  us  which  comes 
through  the  medium  of  an  experience. 

This  attractive  knowledge  of  rhetorical  principles 
comes  to  us  but  very  slightly  from  rhetorical  treatises. 
Some  minds,  it  is  true,  may  be  fascinated  by  rhetoric  in 
its  scientific  forms,  and  for  their  own  sake.  Dr.  Arnold 
could  honestly  speak  of  Aristotle,  after  years  devoted 
to  a  study  of  his  works,  as  "  that  dear  old  Stagyrite." 
But  very  few  minds  are  so  affectionately  constituted. 
Few,  therefore,  attain  to  such  passionate  love  of  abstract 
science  in  their  studies.  The  large  majority  become 
fascinated  by  such  studies  only  through  the  medium  of 
example  in  favorite  authors. 

A  fine  illustration  of  this  is  found  in  the  literary  dis- 
cipline of  Dryden.  Dryden  is  one  of  the  acknowledged 
masters  of  the  English  language.  In  his  day  he  was 
an  autocrat  in  criticism.  Nobody  presumed  to  question 
a  decision  by  Dryden.  Yet  he  says  of  himself,  "  If  I 
have  gained  any  skill  in  composition,  I  owe  it  all  to 
Archbishop  Tillotson,  whose  works  I  have  read  many 
times  over."  One  can  not  but  marvel  at  his  choice  of 
a  model;  but  it  illustrates  the  power  of  any  choice 
which  a  man  makes  with  enthusiasm,  and  therefore 
enjoys. 

The  same  truth  is  illustrated  in  an  interesting  fact 
in  the  literary  history  of  Edmund  Burke.  I  know  of 
no  fact  which  furnishes  a  more  instructive  key  to  the 
structure  of  Burke's  mind.  When  he  was  about  seven- 
teen years  old  he  conceived  a  passionate  fondness  for 
the  works  of  Milton.  In  a  debating-club  of  which  he 
was  a  member,  in  Dublin,  his  Miltonic  taste  still  exists 
on  record.     Among  other  examples  of  it  the  record 


LECT.  VII.]  LITERARY  ASSIMILATION.  105 

States  that  Burke  rehearsed  the  speech  of  Moloch  in 
the  "  Paradise  Lost,"  and  followed  it  with  his  own  criti- 
cisms upon  it.  Thus  it  is  that  literary  models  Avhich 
attract  us  fondly  to  themselves  plant  within  us  the  prin- 
ciples of  effective  speech  which  underlie  those  models, 
and  make  them  what  they  are.  We  much  more  cor- 
dially, and  therefore  successfully,  aim  at  resemblance  to 
a  living  character  than  at  obedience  to  an  abstract  law. 
This  is  as  true  in  literary  as  in  moral  discipline.  An 
example  is  worth  more  than  a  rule.  An  illustration 
has  more  authority  than  a  command. 

This  view  suggests  a  third  object  of  a  pastor's  study 
of  books;  viz.,  assimilation  to  the  genius  of  the  best 
authors.  There  is  an  influence  exerted  by  books  upon 
the  mind  which  resembles  that  of  diet  upon  the  body. 
A  studious  mind  becomes,  by  a  law  of  its  being, 
like  the  object  which  it  studies  with  enthusiasm.  If 
your  favorite  authors  are  superficial,  gaudy,  short-lived, 
you  become  yourself  such  in  your  culture  and  your 
influence.  If  your  favorite  authors  are  of  the  grand, 
profound,  enduring  order,  you  become  yourself  such  to 
the  extent  of  your  innate  capacity  for  such  growth. 
Their  thoughts  become  yours,  not  by  transfer,  but  by 
transfusion.  Their  methods  of  combining  thoughts  be- 
come yours ;  so  that,  on  different  subjects  from  theirs, 
you  will  compose  as  they  would  have  done  if  they  had 
handled  those  subjects.  Their  choice  of  words,  their 
idioms,  their  constructions,  their  illustrative  materials, 
become  yours ;  so  that  their  style  and  yours  will  belong 
to  the  same  class  in  expression,  and  yet  your  style  will 
never  be  merely  imitative  of  theirs. 

It  is  the  prerogative  of  great  authors  thus  to  throw 
back  a  charm  over  subsequent   generations  which  is 


106  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  L^ect.  vii. 

often  more  plastic  than  the  influence  of  Ji  parent  over 
a  child.  Do  we  not  feel  the  fascination  of  it  from  cer- 
tain favorite  characters  in  history?  Are  there  not 
already  certain  solar  minds  in  the  firmament  of  your 
scholarly  life  whose  rays  you  feel  shooting  down  into 
the  depths  of  your  being,  and  quickening  there  a  vi- 
tality which  you  feel  in  every  original  product  of  your 
own  mind?  Such  minds  are  teaching  you  the  true 
ends  of  an  intellectual  life.  They  are  unsealing  the 
springs  of  intellectual  activity.  They  are  attracting 
your  intellectual  aspirations.  They  are  like  voices 
calling  to  you  from  the  sky. 

Respecting  this  process  of  assimilation,  it  deserves 
to  be  remarked,  that  it  is  essential  to  any  broad  range 
of  originality.  Never,  if  it  is  genuine,  does  it  create 
copyists  or  mannerists.  Imitation  is  the  work  of  un- 
developed mind.  Childish  mind  imitates.  Mind  una- 
wakened  to  the  consciousness  of  its  own  powers  copies. 
Stagnant  mind  falls  into  mannerism.  On  the  contrary, 
a  mind  enkindled  into  aspiration  by  high  ideals  is  never 
content  with  imitated  excellence.  Any  mind  thus 
awakened  must  above  all  things  else  be  itself.  It  must 
act  itself  out,  think  its  own  thoughts,  speak  its  own 
vernacular,  grow  to  its  own  completeness.  You  can 
no  more  become  servile  under  such  a  discipline  than 
you  can  unconsciously  copy  another  man's  gait  in  your 
walk,  or  mask  your  own  countenance  with  his. 

A  fine  example  of  assimilation  as  distinct  from 
mannerism  is  furnished  by  the  literary  history  of  Cole- 
ridge's "  Christabel."  That  poem  on  its  first  appear- 
ance produced  a  profound  impression.  It  was  circulated 
in  manuscript  among  the  scholars  of  England  several 
years  before  its  publication.      It  is  believed  by  good 


LECT.  VII.]  ASSIMILATION  AND  OPINIONS.  107 

critics  to  have  exerted  a  powerful  influence  upon  the 
subsequent  writings  of  Byron  and  Shelley  and  Sc(  tt. 
A  casual  reading  of  it  in  a  little  circle  in  which  Shelley 
was  present  affected  him  so  deeply  that  he  fainted. 
Some  of  his  poems  published  afterwards  bore  traces 
of  the  poetic  stimulus  which  his  imagination  then 
received.  Mr.  Lockhart  says  that  it  was  the  hearing 
of  "  Christabel "  from  manuscript  which  led  Scott  to 
produce  the  "  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel."  It  gave  to 
all  those  poets  a  conception  of  the  possibilities  of  the 
English  language  in  freedom  of  versification,  and  spe- 
cially in  the  expression  of  supernatural  imagery,  which 
was  new  to  them.  Their  minds  drank  it  in,  and  ap- 
propriated it,  as  flowers  do  light.  Yet  what  critic  has 
ever  thought  to  charge  them  with  imitating  ''  Christa- 
bel "  ?  Assimilation  of  it  in  their  poetic  culture  ren- 
dered mannerism  in  copying  it  impossible. 

Further :  it  should  be  observed  that  identity  of  opin- 
ions with  those  of  a  great  author  is  no  evidence  of 
assimilation  to  his  genius.  It  no  more  follows  that  a 
man  has  a  Platonic  or  an  Aristotelian  mind  because  he 
adopts  Platonic  or  Aristotelian  opinions  than  that  his 
body  belongs  to  one  or  another  of  the  molluscan  species 
because  his  digestion  craves  a  molluscan  diet.  Assimi- 
lation goes  deeper  than  the  plane  of  opinions.  In  any 
broad  culture  it  will  be  generous  to  diverse  models. 
From  the  fountains  of  conflicting  opinions  it  will  derive 
the  fluids  of  its  own  life,  and  they  shall  be  all  the  more 
pure  and  the  more  vital  for  the  mingling. 

It  is  a  mark  of  a  narrow  culture  that  a  man  feels  no 
sympathy  of  resemblance  to  widely  different  characters 
in  the  history  of  thought,  even  to  those  whose  opinions 
are  in  flat  contradiction.     Great  minds  are  moj-e  nearly 


108  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  vit 

alike  in  their  genius  than  in  their  opinions.  Great  and 
sincere  minds  tend  always  to  unanimity  in  their  final 
influence.  A  student  of  their  works  may  become  more 
sensible  of  this  than  they  themselves  were.  You  ma}' 
derive  from  them  a  more  generous  growth  than  they 
had.  You  may  feel  the  identity  in  spirit  of  the  very 
works  in  which,  perhaps,  they  fought  each  other  as 
champions  of  rival  factions. 

Among  the  recent  discoveries  in  Athenian  architec 
ture,  it  has  been  found  that  the  lines  of  a  Doric  column, 
which  have  for  ages  been  supposed  to  be  vertical,  and 
parallel  to  each  other,  are  almost  imperceptibly  con 
vergent  as  they  ascend  from  the  pedestal;  so  that,  if 
projected  to  an  immense  height  above,  they  would  meet 
in  a  point.  It  is  believed  that  the  Greek  artistic  mind 
adopted  this  model,  not  fortuitously,  but  with  design, 
to  express  thus  the  ultimate  oneness  of  all  ideas  of 
beauty. 

So  it  is  with  the  aspirations  of  great  minds  as  ex 
pressed  in  their  works.  They  seem  to  run  in  grooves 
of  eternal  parallels,  in  which  they  can  never  come 
together.  They  might  traverse  the  universe  apparently, 
and  come  around  to  the  point  of  their  starting,  as  defi- 
ant of  union  as  ever.  But  the  great  Architect  of 
mind  has  not  so  constructed  them.  An  appreciative 
student  of  their  works  may  discern,  what  they  could 
not,  —  a  point  in  the  upper  firmament  of  thought  in 
which  the  lines  of  their  influence  converge,  and  they 
become  as  one  mind  in  their  projection  upon  the  world's 
future. 

Do  not  all  generous  minds  already  judge  thus  of  the 
two  great  lines  of  thought  represented  by  Aristotle  and 
Plato?     Do   not  such   minds   feel   the  same  ultimate 


LKCT.  VII.]  HIGH  CULTURE  LIBERAL.  109 

sympathy  between  the  life's  work  of  Leibnitz  and  of 
Bacon?  Do  we  not  often  catch  glimpses  of  the  same 
destiny  of  union  between  Kant  and  the  Scotch  philoso- 
phers ?  Let  a  scholarly  mind  keep  itself  open  and 
receptive  in  its  study,  and  it  can  not  fail  to  experience 
this  consciousness  of  the  convergence  of  the  great 
thinkers  through  the  blending  of  them  in  its  own 
culture. 

One  advantage,  therefore,  of  literary  study,  is  that 
it  tends  to  liberalize  mental  culture  in  those  lines  of 
thought  in  which  culture  is  most  profound.  By  such 
discipline  we  become  disinthralled  from  partisanship. 
Be  it  in  philosophy,  in  theology,  in  a3sthetics,  in  art,  a 
partisan  spirit  is  sure  to  be  outgrown.  Positive  as 
our  opinions  may  be,  we  spurn  bondage  to  schools  of 
opinion.  One  of  the  most  striking  evidences  often  of 
a  young  man's  growth  under  such  discipline  as  I 
am  advocating  is,  that  he  outgrows  a  school  of  some- 
thing in  which  he  was  once  an  enthusiast,  and  uncon- 
sciously a  servitor.  As  we  approach  maturity  of 
culture,  we  become  conscious  that  we  have  a  culture 
which  lies  deeper  than  our  opinions,  and  which  runs 
under  opposing  schools. 

Our  expressed  opinions  may  often  be  governed  by 
the  wants  of  our  own  age  or  the  business  of  our  own 
profession.  They  may  represent  but  a  fraction  of  the 
entire  circle  of  our  beliefs.  But  a  perfect  culture 
might  master  the  beliefs  of  all  ages,  so  as  to  hold  all 
the  truth  that  was  ever  in  them.  Assimilation  to  the 
loftiest  in  literature  may  give  us  a  vision  of  truths 
which  minds  of  narrower  discipline  will  ignore.  Thus 
expanded  in  its  culture,  a  scholarly  mind  becomes 
eclectic   in   its   opinions   in   every  thing.     It   becomes 


110  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  vn. 

calm  also  in  the  utterance  of  them.  It  will  be  generous 
to  opponents  in  proportion  to  its  trust  in  itself.  It  can 
afford  to  cherish  both  these  qualities  of  a  liberal  mind. 

One  other  remark  upon  this  point  of  assimilation  to 
the  genius  of  literature  is  that  from  its  nature  it  must 
be  the  work  of  time.  All  mental  discipline  is  such, 
but  this  peculiarly :  no  man  reaches  it  at  a  bound.  A 
sudden  appearance  of  it  in  a  man's  professions  is  sus- 
picious. He  is  probably  self-deceived.  His  enthusiasm 
for  the  great  authors  is  probably  not  a  genuine  growth 
into  their  likeness,  but  an  upstart  fancy  for  them,  —  for 
their  defects,  it  may  be,  rather  than  for  their  excellences. 
It  may  be  even  so  poor  a  thing  as  an  affectation  of 
sympathy  with  their  reputation,  instead  of  a  genuine 
reverence  for  their  character.  In  the  nature  of  the 
case,  like  all  other  enduring  growths,  a  true  assimila- 
tion to  the  noblest  ideals  is  the  process  of  a  lifetime. 
A  collegiate  and  professional  education  can  do  little 
more  than  to  plant  the  germ  of  it,  and  fertilize  the  soil 
which  shall  nurture  it  through  life. 


LECTURE  VIIL 

OBJECTS  OF  A  PASTOR's  STUDY  OF  LITERATURI!,  CON- 
CLUDED. —  THE  ADJUSTMENT  OF  SELF-ADAPTA- 
TIONS. 

To  the  three  objects  of  literary  study  already  con- 
sidered should  be  added  a  fourth,  which  is  to  facilitate 
a  man's  knowledge  of  his  own  powers  and  adaptations 
to  professional  labor. 

It  is  unsafe  to  trust  incautiously  the  early  fascina- 
tions of  books  or  men  over  a  young  mind.  Our  earli- 
est tastes  may  give  us  false  ideas  of  our  own  capacities. 
Specially  do  we  need  to  study  our  favorite  authors  with 
reference  to  our  adaptations  to  our  life's  work.  We 
are  not  supposed  to  be  mere  literati  by  profession.  We 
do  not  study  literature  for  its  own  sake  and  that  only : 
we  have  a  laborious  profession  in  prospect.  Our  studies 
must  fit  us  for  that,  or  they  may  become  a  hinderance 
to  our  life's  work.  We  need  to  know  our  own  adapta- 
tions ;  and  that  literary  enthusiasm  is  a  woful  blunder 
which  misleads  us  in  that  self-knowledge. 

The  theory  of  Jesuitism  in  one  respect  is  most  in- 
structive. The  whole  Jesuit  policy  turns  upon  the 
adaptation  of  men  to  work,  and  work  to  men.  The 
Jesuit  theory  is,  that  every  man  is  better  fitted,  or  may 
be  made  so,  to  one  thing  than  to  another ;  and  that 
every  work  requires  one  man  more  imperatively  than 

111 


112  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  vm 

another.  It  assumes  to  fit  the  man  to  the  work,  and 
the  work  to  the  man,  as  precisely  as  Nature  fits  together 
the  brain  and  the  skull.  Jesuitism  is  wise  so  far  as 
this,  that  it  lays  the  study  of  adaptations  at  the  basis 
in  building  an  order  of  public  men.  That  study  must 
lie  at  the  foundation  of  the  liberal  professions,  if  they 
are  to  be  powers  in  the  world. 

The  study  of  adaptations  must  form  the  clergy. 
Under  a  free  system,  every  clergyman  must  perform 
that  study  for  himself.  For  the  want  of  it  men  have 
often  entered  the  ministry  under  a  mistaken  self- 
estimate.  Is  it  not  one  of  the  most  obvious  and  pain 
ful  facts  of  clerical  life,  that  men  have  entered  the 
ministry  who  would  never  have  done  so  if  they  had 
known  seasonably  their  own  natural  qualifications? 
Such  men  fight  the  air,  through  life  it  may  be,  because 
they  do  not  understand  their  own  mission. 

The  importance  of  the  error  here  indicated  justifies  a 
consideration  of  it  at  some  length,  at  the  expense  of  an 
excursus  from  our  main-line  discussion.  The  peril  of 
a  wasted  life  in  the  ministry,  through  errors  in  self- 
estimate,  will  be  best  illustrated  by  a  case  in  hand.  A 
graduate  of  this  seminary  once  came  to  me  asking 
advice  respecting  his  abandonment  of  the  ministry  for 
some  other  profession.  He  had  been  a  pastor  two 
years.  He  was  pleasantly  and  usefully  settled.  He 
made  no  complaint  of  his  people,  nor  they  of  him. 
He  did  not  wish  for  a  different  parish.  But  he  thought 
he  had  better  leave  the  pulpit.  Why  ?  The  reason  lay 
wholly  in  the  mental  make  and  culture  of  the  man. 
He  had  inveterate  tastes  for  a  different  line  of  mental 
activity  from  the  one  which  the  ministry  opened  to 
him.      By  natural  constitution  those  tastes  were  pre- 


LECT.  VIII.]  A  pastor's  mistake.  113 

dominant  in  him.  His  collegiate  training  and  his  read- 
ing had  intensified  them.  He  had  denied  them,  and 
chosen  the  ministry  as  a  profession  from  convictions 
of  religious  duty,  as  Pascal  did  under  similar  circum- 
stances, but  with  no  such  mental  rest  in  his  choice  as 
Pascal  experienced.  He  found  that  the  practical  duties 
of  the  pulpit  were  a  drudgery  to  him.  He  felt  no  intel- 
lectual elasticity  in  them.  To  be  a  guiding  mind  to 
others  in  the  office  of  a  religious  teacher  did  not  draw 
out  his  aspirations.  He  seemed  unable  to  make  himself 
what  the  Scriptures  call  "apt  to  teach."  He  had 
struggled  with  himself  two  years  in  silence  to  force  his 
mind  and  body  to  do  the  bidding  of  his  conscience,  and 
to  do  it  joyously ;  but  the  effort  was  undermining  his 
health.  A  nervous  headache  had  become  the  invariable 
consequence  of  a  morning's  work  in  the  writing  of  a 
sermon,  and  an  afternoon  given  to  chemistry  or  flori- 
culture was  the  only  remedy.  He  dragged  himself 
through  another  year  of  purgatorial  fidelity  to  his 
ministerial  vows ;  and  then  his  health  was  so  seriously 
affected  as  to  leave  no  question  as  to  the  path  of  duty. 
He  left  the  ministry,  studied  for  three  years  another 
profession,  and  is  now  contented,  healthy,  happy,  and 
useful  in  it,  and  as  a  layman  is  pronounced  by  his 
pastor  to  be  the  most  devoted  and  useful  member  of  his 
church. 

One  thing  is  certain  of  this  case :  it  is  that  a  wofu] 
mistake  was  made  at  the  outset  for  the  want  of  a  thor- 
ough study  of  the  man's  own  aptitudes.  At  least  six 
years  of  his  early  manhood  were,  not  lost  indeed,  but 
extravagantly  expended  on  an  experiment  which  a  more 
thorough  self-knowledge  would  have  prevented. 

A  similar  experience,  I  think,  in  less  degree,  befalls 


114  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  vrn. 

some  men  wlio  remain  in  tlie  ministry.  Are  they  not 
found  in  all  denominations  ?  They  work  at  cross-pur- 
poses with  Providence,  because  it  is  a  long  while  before 
they  accept  themselves  for  what  they  are.  They  at- 
tempt things  which  they  can  not  do,  or  as  often  they 
fail  to  do  things  which  they  might  do,  because  they  dare 
not  attempt  them. 

The  late  Dr.  Griffin  used  to  say  that  he  thought 
Providence  designed  him  for  a  metaphysician.  I  sup- 
pose it  is  very  certain  that  no  other  man  who  knew 
Dr.  Griffin,  thought  that  Providence  would  have  been 
wise  in  any  such  designation  of  a  man  who  was  so 
eminently  an  orator  by  nature  and  by  training. 

Dr.  Chalmers  expressed  the  opinion,  that,  as  he  said, 
"  Nature  had  cut  him  out  for  a  military  engineer."  In 
the  public  life  which  he  afterwards  led,  he,  too,  thought 
that  his  specialty  of  talent  for  public  influence  lay  in 
the  department  of  intellectual  philosophy.  He  proba- 
bly stood  alone  in  both  those  opinions  to  the  day  of  his 
death.  Chalmers  was  by  nature  a  statesman.  In  the 
Church  his  great  power  lay  in  the  discovery  and  the 
use  of  administrative  principles.  The  reach  of  his  mind 
in  this  respect  was  marvelous.  He  was  in  the  Church 
the  counterpart  of  Edmund  Burke  in  the  State.  The 
thing  in  which  consisted  the  greatness  of  both  would 
have  prevented  either  from  taking  the  first  rank  as 
metaphysicians. 

Professor  Stuart  believed,  that,  when  he  began  his 
public  life,  he  had  no  special  taste  or  aptitude  for 
sacred  literature,  or  any  department  of  philology ;  but 
no  one  else  believed  this  of  him  after  it  was  found 
that  the  youthful  pastor  in  New  Haven,  though  crowded 
by  the  care  of  the  old  "  Center  Church  "  in  a  powerful 


LECT.  VIII.]  OBLIQUE  USEFULNESS.  115 

revival  of  religion,  still  kept  his  Hebrew  Bible  within 
reach  of  his  dinner-table,  that  he  might  devote  to  it  the 
fragments  of  time  stolen  from  that  meal. 

Providence  is  often  very  kindly  in  pressing  men  into 
a  service  which  they  would  never  have  been  wise 
enough  in  self-knowledge  to  choose  for  themselves. 
Yet  often  the  wisdom  of  Providence  is  not  regarded, 
or  the  finger-point  is  not  seen.  Perhaps,  like  Nelson, 
men  turn  their  blind  eye  to  the  telegraphic  order. 
Then  comes  a  long  history  of  wasted  ministerial 
energy. 

Ministerial  energy,  when  it  is  not  all  a  waste,  is  often 
most  extravagantly  expended  on  the  results  it  achieves. 
Do  you  not  know  men  in  the  ministry  who  have  been 
sailing  obliquely  all  their  lives  ?  All  that  some  accom- 
plish in  the  ministry  is  accomplished  laterally  to  their 
conscious  aims.  In  their  deliberate  aims  they  fail ;  in 
incidentals  to  those  aims,  which  Providence  always 
seems  to  be  on  the  watch  for  in  ill-regulated  lives,  they 
succeed.  The  sum  total  of  their  work,  when  it  shall 
be  tried  as  by  fire,  may  be  this,  —  relative  uselessness 
in  the  things  they  have  aspired  to,  and  relative  success 
in  the  things  they  have  undervalued.  To  them  is 
fulfilled  the  promise :  "  Thou  shalt  hear  a  voice  heUnd 
thee,  saying,  This  is  the  way ;  walk  ye  in  it."  "  The 
door  into  life,"  says  a  living  writer,  "  generally  opens 
behind  us.  A  hand  is  put  forth  which  draws  us  in 
backward."  This  is  eminently  true  of  the  professional 
life  of  a  certain  class  of  ministers. 

Here,  for  example,  is  a  man  who  honestly  thinks  that 
poetry  is  his  birthright,  while  in  fact  his  very  make  is 
prose  personified.  The  Muses  were  slumbering  at  the 
hour  of  his  birth.     He  wastes  himself  in  rhymes  which 


116  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  vin. 

are  "published  for  the  author,"  —  that  rose-colored 
gauze  by  which  is  covered  the  polite  negative  of  pub- 
lishers. This  is  literally  true  of  one  of  the  early  grad- 
uates of  tliis  seminary.  Rather,  it  was  true ;  for  I  am 
grateful,  for  his  sake,  that  he  has  found  rest  in  a  world 
where  even  he  can  aspire  to  no  such  poetry.  He  had  a 
wasted  ministry  here,  so  far  as  man  could  judge  of  it, 
because  he  was  for  ever  puttering  at  verses  which  could 
command  no  circulation  except  by  the  anxious  assiduity 
of  a  blind  man  who  made  a  pittance  by  their  sale.  An- 
other man  for  several  years  sent  to  me  by  mail,  as  often 
as  about  once  a  quarter,  his  poetic  deliverances,  printed 
on  tinted  sheets  at  his  own  expense.  Of  their  quality 
what  shall  I  say  ?    The  old  couplet  in  the  Primer  — 

« In  Adam's  fall 
We  sinned  all "  — 

is  a  gem  in  the  comparison. 

There  is  a  man,  who,  like  Dr.  Griffin,  because  he 
knows  the  difference  between  metaphysics  and  psy- 
chology, imagines  that  intellectual  philosophy  is  the 
forte  of  his  brain  and  the  end  of  his  creation ;  while  in 
fact  the  elements  of  a  popular  orator  are  the  constituents 
of  his  nature,  and  those  he  despises.  He  wastes  him- 
self in  attempts  to  settle  the  problems  of  the  ages. 
His  book  —  the  labor  of  his  prime,  and  the  darling  of 
his  soul  —  is  for  sale  at  the  bookstalls,  on  that  shelf 
which  is  so  sad  a  monitor  to  aspiring  authorsliip,  the 
shelf  placarded  with  "Fifty  Cents."  Yet  the  pulpit, 
if  he  would  but  lift  his  downcast  eyelids  to  see  it,  would 
be  a  throne  to  him. 

One  of  the  most  successful  preachers  now  laboring 
in  a  city  of  the  interior,  when  he  left  this  seminary, 


LECT.  VIII.]  ERRORS  IN  SELF-ESTIMATE.  117 

endeavored  earnestly  to  convince  me  that  philosophical 
study  and  authorship  were  the  department  in  which  lay 
prospectively  the  design  of  his  creation.  Not  one  of 
his  instructors  shared  that  opinion.  His  scholastic  life 
had  throAvn  a  glamour  around  that  group  of  studies,  so 
that,  for  the  time,  he  saw  nothing  else.  He  did  not 
begin  to  be  himself  till  the  spell  was  broken  by  a  reli- 
gious awakening  among  his  people. 

Again  :  a  man  conceives  that  literary  criticism,  or  the 
study  of  languages,  is  his /orfe;  while  in  fact  his  most 
valuable  talents  are  colloquial.  He  wastes  himself  in 
struggling  after  a  place  in  reviews,  or  piniig  for  a 
professorship,  when  the  place  of  honor  for  him,  because 
the  place  of  richest  usefulness,  would  be  the  pastoral 
routine  of  a  parish. 

Another  is  persuaded,  that,  if  he  has  any  specialty 
of  fitness,  it  is  to  advance  the  Christian  culture  of  the 
more  thoughtful  and  educated  classes ;  while  in  fact  he 
is  only  on  a  level  with  such  classes.  This  deserves  to  be 
noted  as  the  most  frequent  error  in  self-estimate  by  a 
certain  minority  of  educated  clergymen.  Many  such 
preachers  have  culture  enough,  backed  by  natural  force 
enough,  to  go  into  classes  of  society  below  them,  and 
make  their  power  felt  there  like  a  hydraulic  engine.  But 
some  of  them  waste  themselves  by  aims  at  that  which 
they  suppose  to  be  the  standard  of  pulpit  eloquence  in 
cities.  They  do  not  understand  why  they  are  not  more 
thoroughly  known  by  Providence,  and  by  committees 
of  vacant  metropolitan  pulpits.  It  is  astonishing  how 
many  secret  enemies  such  men  have.  Great  is  the  mys- 
tery  of  their  life's  trial.  But  the  truth  is,  that  the 
church  of  a  factory-village  or  a  farming-town  would 
be  more  than  the  temple  of  Jerusalem  to  them  in  an 


118  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  vm. 

eternal  estimate  of  their  lives;  because,  working  on  a 
level  below  them,  they  could  work  with  downright 
power. 

The  mistake  here  indicated  is  one  of  the  perils  pecu- 
liar to  an  educated  clergy, — peculiar  in  degree,  if  not  in 
kind.  No  judgment  is  more  hollow,  none  betokens  more 
ignorance  of  the  philosophy  of  ministerial  success,  than 
that  sometimes  cherished  by  a  youthful  preacher,  that, 
because  he  is  an  educated  man,  therefore  he  must  min- 
ister to  educated  men ;  because  he  has  acquired  culti- 
vated tastes,  therefore  his  parish  must  consist  of  families 
of  cultivated  tastes;  because  he  has  become  familiar 
with  refined  society,  and  has  acquired  the  manners  of  a 
gentleman,  therefore  his  pastoral  charge  should  be  in 
refined  society,  and  his  manners  should  have  gentlemen 
to  appreciate  them.  If  Providence  does  not  order  his 
lot  by  the  law  of  intellectual  and  social  affinity,  the 
cause  of  Christ  suffers  a  mysterious  waste  of  ministerial 
usefulness,  and  he  suffers  a  mysterious  eclipse.  The 
man  has  not  found  his  place,  nor  the  place  its  man,  till 
each  is  adjusted  to  the  other  by  the  satisfaction  of 
mutual  similitude.  Like  must  minister  to  like.  This 
is  what  it  amounts  to  when  we  put  it  into  the  most 
charitable  form  of  plain  English. 

I  speak  of  this  as  a  frequent  error  among  young 
preachers,  the  most  frequent  of  all  that  concern  the 
topic  before  us.  I  am  glad  that  my  observation  enables 
me  to  testify,  that,  with  rare  exceptions,  it  is  but  a 
youthful  folly,  outgrown  in  the  tug  of  real  life  and 
under  the  pressure  of  eternal  things.  I  have  known 
but  one  instance  in  which  it  extended  into  a  preacher's 
middle  life. 

The  truth  is,  that  the  error  is  oblivious  of  one  of  the 


LECT.  VIII.]  THE  LAW  OF  INFLUENCE.  119 

plainest  principles  of  ministerial  success ;  viz.,  that,  to 
achieve  any  thing  worthy  of  the  clerical  office,  a  minis- 
ter must  work  from  above  downward.  The  ministry 
is  something  more  than  a  profession  in  which  a  man  i? 
struggling  for  a  living,  and  a  position  among  his  equals 
It  is  a  grander  thing  than  all  that,  —  a  thing  of  God's 
making.  It  is  a  power  from  God,  or  it  is  nothing  to  the 
purpose.  Its  work  is  that  of  a  superior  on  an  inferior 
mind.  The  law  of  gravitation  bids  a  laboring  man  to 
work  down  hill  with  his  spade  and  his  wheelbarrow,  if 
he  can.  That  law  is  not  more  imperative  than  the 
spiritual  law  which  bids  clerical  influence  to  flow  from 
above  downward.  Thus  regulated,  all  culture  is  avail- 
able in  a  preacher's  work.  Nothing  else  is  like  it  in 
the  range  which  it  gives  to  the  worker.  The  highest 
culture  finds  its  use  iii  the  lowliest  labor.  Often  the 
richest  fruits  of  culture  will  be  discovered  in  despised 
spheres  of  effort.  Mental  discipline  of  the  rarest  finish 
will  find  its  reward  in  the  exhaustion  of  its  resources 
upon  ignorant  and  debased  materials. 

One  of  the  most  accomplished  of  our  American  mis- 
sionaries spent  her  life  in  Africa.  Her  education,  her 
refinement,  her  tastes,  her  manners,  would  have  graced 
and  elevated  any  metropolitan  society.  Yet  her  testi- 
mony was,  that  she  found  use  for  them  all  in  the  Chris- 
tianizing of  savages.  She  was  not  conscious  of  one 
wasted  gift.  She  had  no  regrets  over  useless  acquisi- 
tions. Not  a  single  accomplishment  of  her  beautiful 
youth  —  her  drawing,  her  painting,  her  music  —  ever 
lay  idle.  She  was  right  in  her  judgment  of  herself 
and  her  life's  work.  It  v/ill  bear  the  test  of  eternity, 
whatever  this  world  may  say  of  it. 

The  same  principle  applies  to  ministerial  labor  every- 


120  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  viit 

where.  Locality  and  surroundings  have  very  little  to 
do  relatively  with  its  prospect  of  results.  No  other 
work  is  so  absorbent  in  its  power  to  appropriate  to  itself 
all  the  resources  which  culture  can  bring  to  it,  even  in 
its  rudest  and  most  unpromising  forms,  provided  only 
that  culture  be  wise  enough  to  be  humble,  and  to  labor 
on  something  below  its  own  level.  The  clerical  hand, 
if  it  is  a  cunning  one,  will  be  always  reaching  down- 
ward in  its  activity.  There  is  an  infinite  sadness  in  the 
sight  of  a  minister  of  Christ  turning  from  the  level  he 
stands  on  to  lift  himself  into  the  air  above  him,  or  strug- 
gling horizontally  on  a  stream  that  is  level  with  his  lips, 
instead  of  being  content  to  stand  where  he  is  sure  of 
his  footing,  and  to  work  down  upon  the  strata  beneath 
him.  Any  ignorance  of  himself  which  leads  a  man  to 
this  inversion  of  his  life's  work  may  doom  him  to  a  bar- 
ren and  disappointed  ministry.  If  in  exceptional  cases 
this  result  does  not  follow,  it  is  because  the  providence 
of  God  sometimes  compassionately  provides  an  inferior 
work  for  the  man  when  it  is  impossible  to  develop  the 
man  to  the  best  work  of  his  opportunities.  But  such 
adjustments  are  adjustments  to  the  man's  infirmities, 
not  to  his  strength.  He  is  never  all  that  he  might  have 
been.  He  is  like  the  patriarch  Lot,  to  whose  whining 
over  the  risk  of  climbing  the  mountain  his  guardian 
angel  gives  way. 

Details  might  be  specified,  if  it  were  necessary,  in 
the  work  of  the  pulpit,  in  which  there  is  sometimes  a 
certain  proportion  of  waste,  because  energy  is  expended 
in  methods  of  preaching  and  styles  in  preaching  (some- 
times imitated  methods  and  styles)  which  the  preacher 
can  not  execute  well.  It  is  a  great  thing  for  a  man  to 
know  what  he  can  do.     It  is  a  greater  thing  to  do  tliat^ 


LECT.  VIII.]  MIS  JUDGMENTS  OF  SELF.  121 

and  not  something  else,  to  aspire  to  it  if  a  man  i'.  self- 
distrustful,  to  come  down  to  it  if  he  is  self-conctited, 
to  be  content  with  it  and  grateful  for  it  when  he  finds 
it  out.  To  have  done  any  thing  in  such  a  service  is  a 
thing  to  be  grateful  for  for  ever.  "  Permitted  to  preach 
the  gospel  seven  months  "  is  the  epitaph  on  the  tomb- 
stone of  an  alumnus  of  this  seminary,  who  died  before 
he  had  a  parish  of  his  own.  It  was  placed  there  at  his 
dying  request. 

It  is  not  always,  I  do  not  think  it  is  generally,  any 
unusual  defect  of  piety  which  leads  to  these  distortions 
of  clerical  life.  It  is  chiefly  the  want  of  self-knowledge. 
I  mean  that  this  is  the  weight  which  turns  the  scale 
adversely  to  a  man's  usefulness.  Whatever  be  his  moral 
delinquencies,  if  he  is  a  man  of  genuine  consecration  at 
heart,  they  will  give  way  if  they  are  not  protected  by 
honest  intellectual  misjudgments.  The  moral  growth, 
on  the  other  hand,  is  greatly  expedited  by  the  mental 
rectitude,  when  once  gained.  Therefore  I  say,  that,  in 
respect  to  the  point  before  us,  the  chief  want  is  the 
want  of  a  correct  self-estimate.  No  matter  how  it  is 
gained,  whether  through  the  heart  or  through  the  brain, 
the  critical  need  is  that  of  a  full  measurement  of  self  in 
comparison  with  other  powers  in  the  world,  like  that 
which  life  in  the  business  of  the  world  very  soon  forces 
upon  a  man  of  sense  in  reference  to  capacities  for  suc- 
cess in  the  business  of  the  world.  For  the  want  of  this 
gauging  of  one's  self  skillfully,  the  early  years  of  min- 
isterial life  are  often  like  those  of  a  young  landsman 
before  the  mast. 

Returning,  now,  from  this  excursus^  and  applyiug 
these  views  to  the  main  topic  before  us,  let  us  observe 
the  bearing  of  a  study  of  books  upon  the  discovery  of  a 


122  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  vm. 

man's  own  adaptations.  We  have  already  given  ample 
space  to  the  study  of  men  as  one  expedient  for  a  min- 
ister's culture.  We  have  now  to  observe,  as  tending 
to  the  same  result,  the  self-discipline  which  comes  from 
literary  pursuits.  Until  a  man  knows  a  certain  amount 
of  thf  work  of  the  great  minds  in  literature,  he  has  no 
adequate  standard  by  which  to  gauge  himself. 

It  has  become  a  truism,  that  self-educated  men  are 
but  half  educated.  They  are  apt  to  blunder  into  errors 
which  the  educated  mind  of  the  world  has  long  ago 
exploded.  They  announce  as  original  discoveries  that 
which  the  history  of  opinion  long  ago  recorded  and  as 
long  ago  refuted.  They  seem  to  themselves  to  be  origi- 
nal in  processes  of  mind  which  a  better  knowledge  of 
libraries  would  teach  them  are  the  common  property 
of  thinkers.  Much  as  a  man  gains  from  actual  conflict 
with  living  minds,  he  may  gain  much  even  of  the  same 
kind  of  knowledge,  though  different  in  detail,  from  the 
accumulated  thinking  of  the  past.  No  living  genera- 
tion can  outweigh  all  the  past.  If  books  without  expe- 
rience in  real  life  can  not  develop  a  man  all  around, 
neither  can  life  without  books  do  it.  There  is  a  certain 
dignity  of  culture  which  lives  only  in  the  atmosphere 
of  libraries.  There  is  a  breadth  and  a  genuineness  of 
self-knowledge  which  one  gets  from  the  silent  friendship 
of  great  authors,  without  which  the  best  work  that  is  in 
a  man  can  not  come  out  of  him  in  large  professional 
successes. 

Disraeli  says,  "  The  more  extensive  a  man's  knowl- 
edge of  what  has  been  done,  the  greater  will  be  his 
power  of  knowing  what  to  do."  He  adds  substantially, 
that  those  who  do  not  read  largely  will  not  themselves 
deserve  to  be  read.     This  is  doubly  true  in  view  of  the 


LECT.  VIII.]  SELF-APPRECIATION.  123 

effect  of  reading  upon  a  man's  criticism  of  himself. 
The  whole  class  of  romantic  ambitions  which  have  been 
illustrated  will  almost  surely  disappear  from  a  young 
man's  mental  habits,  if  he  gains  the  consciousness  of 
thorough  scholarship  in  even  one  line  of  study.  The 
juvenility  of  such  ambitions  is  discovered  in  the  pro- 
cess. The  cost  of  their  indulgence  to  a  man's  executive 
force  in  a  great  practical  profession  takes  its  proper 
place  in  his  estimate  of  them.  He  learns  the  magnitude 
of  that  which  must  be  done  to  realize  them  by  adding 
any  thing  to  that  which  has  been  done.  One  of  the 
unerring  signs  of  this  mental  growth  in  a  young  man  is 
a  certain  sobering  of  tone  in  his  judgment  of  himself, 
which  springs  from  an  expansion  of  his  studies.  It  is 
to  character  what  the  ripening  of  colors  is  to  painting. 
The  character  is  enriched  by  the  very  process  which 
subdues  its  exuberant  confidence.  This  view  is  too  well 
known  among  educated  men  to  need  further  expansion. 

But  there  is  another  view,  not  so  often  recognized, 
which  deserves  more  attention  than  it  receives.  It  is 
that  the  study  in  question  stimulates  self-appreciation, 
as  well  as  represses  self-conceit.  You  may  learn  for  the 
first  time  of  the  existence  of  certain  powers  within  you, 
from  the  awakening  of  those  powers  in  response  to  the 
similar  gifts  of  other  minds  distinguished  in  literature. 
Your  own  enthusiasm  awakened  by  good  models  may 
disclose  to  you  susceptibilities  and  powers  which  you 
never  conjectured  as  existing  within  you. 

Sir  James  Mackintosh  gives  it  as  the  result  of  his 
experience  as  an  educator,  that,  with  all  the  evils  of 
self-exaggeration  among  young  men,  the  evils  of  self- 
depreciation  are  greater.  Among  Christian  young  men 
this  certainly  is  true.     Many  young  men  are  not  sufQ- 


124  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  viri 

ciently  aspiring.  They  do  not  aim  at  labors  whicli  are 
within  their  reach,  because  they  are  not  immediately 
conscious  of  power  to  perform  those  labors.  Nor  will 
they  be  conscious  of  it  till  some  inspiration  from  without 
awakens  it  in  them.  That  inspiration  often  comes  from 
a  simple  extension  of  literary  study.  Give  to  yourself 
a  hearty,  affectionate  acquaintance  with  a  group  of  the 
ablest  minds  in  Christian  literature,  and,  if  there  is  any 
thing  in  you  kindred  to  such  minds,  they  will  bring  it 
up  to  the  surface  of  your  own  consciousness.  You  will 
have  a  cheering  sense  of  discovery.  Quarries  of  thought 
original  to  you  will  be  opened.  Suddenly,  it  may  be, 
in  some  choice  hour  of  research,  veins  will  glisten  with 
a  luster  richer  than  that  of  silver.  You  will  feel  a  new 
strength  for  your  life's  work,  because  you  will  be  sen 
sible  of  new  resources. 

There  is  no  romance  in  these  assertions.  The  only 
peril  in  making  them  is,  that  the  class  of  minds  who 
need  them,  and  of  whom  they  are  true,  are  not  the  class 
who  will  most  readily  appropriate  them  to  themselves. 
Still  they  express  a  truth,  wliich,  with  all  its  perils,  we 
do  right  to  accept,  and  apply  with  inspired  adroitness, 
saying,  "  Let  him  that  readeth  understand." 

A  very  striking  illustration  of  this  kind  of  mental 
awakening,  on  a  large  scale,  from  the  study  of  literary 
models,  is  found  in  the  transition  of  European  mind 
from  the  middle  to  the  later  ages  of  the  Christian  era. 
The  dark  ages,  as  we  call  them,  followed  the  entire  loss 
of  the  Greek  and  Latin  classics.  The  effect  of  that  loss 
was  an  almost  entire  oblivion  of  good  models  of  literary 
expression.  The  mind  of  the  middle  ages  strove  to 
work  alone  :  it  began  de  novo  the  history  of  letters.  The 
consequence  was  the  suppression,  for  the  time,  of  the 


LECT.  VIII.]  REVIVAL  OF  LETTERS.  125 

natural  genius  of  those  ages.  It  never  rose  from  that 
depression  till  the  ancient  literatures  were  recovered. 

Gasparin  of  Barziza,  one  of  not  more  than  three  or 
four  minds  to  whom  is  due  the  credit  of  starting  the 
revival  of  the  ancient  classics,  says  that  he  gave  himself 
to  the  study  of  Cicero  till  his  own  instinct  was  devel- 
oped within  him,  by  which  he  could  judge  of  the  Latin 
language,  and  till  his  own  power  to  use  the  language 
grew  to  maturity  under  that  single  discipline.  The 
study  of  one  author  developed  him  to  his  maturity.  It 
was  the  recovery  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  treasures 
which  stimulated  the  awakening  of  the  genius  of  the 
middle  ages,  as  it  was  the  loss  of  them  which  had 
originally  depressed  it,  and  enslaved  it  to  vitiated  tastes. 
What  is  true  of  national  minds  is  as  true  of  individuals 
and  of  orders  of  public  men.  Let  the  ministry  be  igno- 
rant of  the  best  authors  of  the  past,  and  their  own 
powers  will  lie  undeveloped  in  proportion  to  the  depth 
of  that  ignorance.  Lift  them  out  of  such  ignorance, 
and  their  own  powers  receive  an  original  impulse  in 
proportion  to  the  extent  and  the  depth  of  their  scholar- 
ship. 

It  is  one  object,  then,  of  a  pastor's  study  of  literature, 
to  reduce  and  to  elevate  his  estimate  of  his  own  powers. 
The  object  is  to  restrain  and  to  stimulate,  to  check  and 
to  cheer.  If  a  man  is  inclined  to  see  himself  at  either 
end  of  the  telescope,  the  right  study  of  models  of  lit- 
erary excellence  will  act  as  a  corrective,  and  give  him 
his  natural  eyesight.  I  know  of  nothing  else  that  is 
better  fitted  to  give  temper  to  a  young  man's  criticisms 
of  his  own  productions,  so  that  his  judgment  shall  be 
calm  and  clear,  as  keen  as  steel,  and  yet  as  true,  than 
a  large  acquaintance  with  those  works  which  have 
become  monumental  in  Christian  literature. 


126  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  viii. 

To  recapitulate,  and  to  distinguish  clearly  the  four 
objects  which  we  have  now  considered,  I  observe  that 
the  first,  the  discovery  of  the  principles  of  taste,  will 
tend  to  make  a  correct  writer ;  the  second,  the  famil- 
iarity with  those  principles,  will  tend  to  make  a  natu- 
ral writer ;  the  third,  assimilation  to  the  genius  of  the 
best  authors,  will  tend  to  make  an  original  writer; 
and  the  fourth,  a  just  estimate  of  his  own  powers,  will 
tend  to  make  both  a  modest  and  a  courageous  writer. 
In  other  words,  the  first  develops  a  man's  literary  per- 
ceptions; the  second,  his  literary  skill;  the  third,  his 
literary  genius ;  the  fourth,  his  good  sense  in  literary 
aims. 


LECTURE  IX. 

SELECTION  OF  AUTHORS  FOB  PASTORAL  STUDY. — 
PRELIMIKARY  HINTS.  —  CONTROLLING  MINDS  IN 
LITERARY  HISTORY. 

2d,  We  have  thus  far  considered  the  objects  of  a 
pastor's  study  of  literature.  The  second  thing  to  be 
regarded  in  that  study  is  the  selection  of  authors. 

Rogers  the  essayist  remarks  that  "  a  very  useful  book 
might  be  written  on  the  art  of  reading  books,  if  we 
could  get  a  Leibnitz  or  a  Gibbon  to  compose  it."  True  : 
yet  the  reading  of  the  majority  of  educated  men  must 
be  governed  so  much  by  circumstances  which  can  not 
be  controlled  by  any  theory  of  scholarship,  that  I  think 
the  hints  which  are  necessary  on  the  subject  must  be 
susceptible  of  very  flexible  application.  Scarcely  any 
subject  of  professional  inquiry  is  less  capable  of  rule. 
Of  the  principles  which  concern  it,  two  preliminaries 
need  to  be  first  remarked.  The  first  is,  that  in  practice 
these  principles  will  cross  and  qualify  each  other.  Any 
one  of  them  alone  would  be  one-sided  and  impracti- 
cable. They  must  be  considered  singly,  yet  applied 
collectively ;  and  each  must  be  subjected  to  limitations 
by  the  others.  Otherwise,  as  literary  advice,  they 
would  be  nonsense. 

The  second  preliminary  is  a  repetition,  for  the  sake 
of  emphasis,  of  a  remark  already  made  in  the  preface  of 

127 


128  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  ix. 

this  volume,  and  which  will  be  treated  more  at  length 
in  the  sequel,  —  that,  at  the  best,  scholarly  principles  of 
selection  can  suggest  only  an  ideal  of  a  pastor's  use  of 
books,  which  must  be  in  many  cases  theoretic,  but  out 
of  which  each  man  may  obtain  the  elements  for  forming 
his  own.     Some  can  use  more  of  it  than  others. 

I  have  hesitated  whether  to  venture  at  all  upon  the 
question  of  a  pastor's  selection  of  books,  I  am  so  well 
aware  that  practically  that  selection  can  seldom,  if  ever, 
satisfy  a  scholarly  ideal.  But  to  make  any  selection 
wisely,  of  even  a  few  volumes,  a  pastor  must  have  a 
scholar's  ideal  in  mind  :  therefore  I  attempt  it,  trusting 
to  your  good  sense  to  see  the  limitations  and  qualifi- 
cations which  the  conditions  of  your  life's  work  render 
necessary.  One  book  which  deserves  a  scholar's  read- 
ing is  worth  for  a  pastor's  discipline  a  dozen  of  inferior 
quality. 

(1)  With  these  preliminaries  in  mind,  let  it  be  first 
observed  that  we  must  put  out  of  our  account  of  lit- 
erature vicious  and  worthless  books.  A  book  may  be 
vicious  in  literary  influence,  which  is  not  immoral.  It 
may  foster  false  principles  of  taste,  and  minister  to 
degraded  conceptions  of  scholarship.  A  book  may  be 
worthless,  which  has  no  positive  power  for  evil.  A 
book  which  is  a  negative  quantity  in  the  sum  total  of 
our  acquisitions  is  a  worthless  book.  Menzel,  in  his 
history  of  German  literature,  says,  "Bad  books  have 
their  season,  as  vermin  have.  They  come  in  swarms, 
and  perish  before  we  are  aware.  How  many  thousands 
of  books  have  gone  the  way  of  all  paper,  or  are  now 
moldering  in  our  libraries  !  " 

We  make  a  stride  of  advance  into  the  heart  of  a 
seemingly  unconquerable  library  when  we  have  accus- 


LECT.  IX.]  DEAD  AND  LIVING  BOOKS.  129 

tomed  our  minds  to  the  reality  of  bad  books  in  that 
which  goes  by  the  name  of  literature.  Books  false  in 
principle,  corrupt  in  taste,  effeminate  in  influence,  or 
negative  in  all  that  respects  high  culture,  are  to  be 
found  in  all  our  large  collections.  There  are  books 
which  once  had  some  force  for  good  or  ill,  but  which 
the  world  has  outlived.  A  man  has  no  more  use  for 
them  now  than  for  an  Arabic  work  on  alchemy  or 
magic.  Hundreds  of  such  volumes  are  to  be  reckoned 
in  all  libraries  which  are  reckoned  by  thousands. 
There  are  folios  of  commentary  on  the  Scriptures, 
works  in  criticism,  works  in  philosophy,  which  have 
been  displaced  bodily  in  the  living  thought  of  mankind, 
and  which  will  never  be  resuscitated  except  by  anti- 
quarian curiosity. 

That  which  De  Quincey  calls  the  "knowledge-litera- 
ture "  of  the  world,  as  distinct  from  the  "power-litera- 
ture," is  incessantly  changing :  it  is  constantly  retiring 
to  the  attics  and  lofts  and  inaccessible  shelves  of  libra- 
ries, unread  and  forgotten.  Later  knowledge  must 
for  ever  crowd  back  into  oblivion  the  earlier.  Such  is 
the  law  of-  progress.  If  a  displaced  literature  is  re- 
stored by  antiquarian  research,  it  is  of  no  use ;  for,  as 
Horace  Walpole  says,  "  What  signifies  raising  the  dead 
so  often,  when  they  die  again  the  next  minute  ?  " 

We  need,  then,  to  begin  our  studies  with  an  agile 
effort  of  good  sense  to  distinguish  between  books  which 
are  living  literature,  and  books  which  are  dead.  Do  not 
revere  every  thing  which  appears  between  two  muslin 
covers.  Remember  Charles  Lamb's  demand  for  "  books 
which  are  books."  It  is  a  partial  relief  from  the  night- 
mare which  one  feels  in  the  vision  of  a  huge  library,  to 
remember  that  there  is  a  vast  multitude  of  volumes,  as 


130  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lkct.  ix. 

comely  as  any  to  the  eye,  and  as  tempting  to  the  bibli- 
ographer, which  are  not  living  literature  in  any  scholarly 
sense  of  the  term  or  for  any  scholarly  use  in  real  life. 
We  can  no  more  use  them  for  the  purposes  of  a  living 
civilization  than  we  can  use  mastodons  and  ichthyosauri 
as  beasts  of  burden. 

Further  :  we  need  not  adopt  any  very  limited  range  of 
the  term  "  literature  "  in  order  to  rid  ourselves  of  them. 
We  need  not  be  so  chary  of  the  title  as  to  withhold  it, 
as  Professor  Henry  Reed  does,  from  professional  and 
technical  and  sectarian  books.  A  much  more  liberal 
policy  than  this  will  serve  the  purpose ;  for  the  works 
to  which  I  refer,  as  related  to  scholarly  culture,  are 
useless  to  us  in  any  way  whatever.  No  profession,  or 
art,  or  sect  is  served  by  them.  They  are  not  models 
of  any  thing  but  ignorance,  or  vicious  taste,  or  self- 
conceit,  or  puerile  fiction,  or  exploded  and  superannu- 
ated science.  They  are  the  paralytic  literature  of  the 
world.  It  mumbles  to  us  in  thickened  speech,  and 
with  distorted  visage.  Let  us  cover  up  its  deformity 
compassionately,  and  pass  on. 

I  do  not  pause  to  specify  more  narrowly  what  these 
volumes  are,  because  practically  our  exclusion  of  them 
is  necessitated  by  other  principles  of  selection,  even 
more  imperatively.  It  is  essential,  however,  that  this 
principle  be  firmly  lodged  in  our  minds  at  the  threshold 
of  our  advance,  —  that  we  must  not  read,  even  in  a 
cursory  way,  every  book  we  happen  to  lay  our  hands 
on,  nor  look  with  awe  upon  every  volume  we  have  to 
strain  our  eyes  to  see  in  our  libraries. 

(2)  A  second  principle  of  selection  is,  that  we  must 
abandon  the  idea  of  universal  scholarship.  The  Hon. 
Mr.  Toombs  of  Georgia  is  reported  to  have  once  said 


LECT.  IX.]  UNIVERSAL  SCHOLARSHIP.  131 

that  he  could  carry  the  treasury  of  the  Confederate 
States  of  America  in  his  hat.  Probably  it  could  have 
been  put  into  less  space  than  that.  So,  I  suppose,  the 
time  must  have  been  when  all  extant  literature  could 
have  been  committed  to  memory,  and  covered  by  one 
hat.  But  it  is  a  truism  which  we  often  seem  to  forget, 
that  no  man  can  perform  that  achievement  now. 

The  idea  of  literary  omniscience  long  ago  became  a 
fable.  It  was  true  when  foxes  talked  with  hares,  and 
frogs  were  erudite  philosophers.  Comparatively  speak- 
ing, no  very  large  portion  of  the  literature  now  stored 
in  the  world's  libraries  can  be  known  to  any  one  mind. 
It  is  the  cant  of  literature  which  makes  pretensions  to 
the  contrary.  Division  of  labor  is  nowhere  more  im- 
peratively demanded  than  in  scholarly  reading.  The 
wisest  scholar  of  the  age  must  be  content  to  die  in 
ignorance  of  the  greater  part  of  what  other  men  have 
known,  and  to  possess  an  equal  proportion  of  that 
which  he  does  know  only  at  second-hand. 

It  is  the  right  of  every  pupil  in  any  branch  of  learning 
to  receive  cautiously  the  oracles  which  professors  are 
apt  to  give,  I  must  confess,  more  authoritatively  than 
their  own  acquisitions  justly  warrant.  A  single  fact 
speaks  more  than  a  homily  on  this  point :  it  is,  that  the 
mechanical  process  of  reading  those  books  which  are  or 
have  been  the  standard  literature  of  their  times  would 
require  more  than  three  thousand  years.  Such  is  the 
estimate  of  a  respectable  English  critic.  If  Homer  had 
begun  the  labor  at  twenty  years  of  age,  and  read  till 
this  time,  he  would  still  have  had  two  hundred  and 
fifty  years  of  it  before  him.  If  Plato  had  been  set  to 
the  task  by  the  immortal  gods  of  Greece,  he  would  not 
by  this  time  have  got  beyond  the  discovery  of  America. 


132  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  ix 

Dante  and  Racine  and  Goethe  and  Shakspeare  would 
still  be  unknown  to  him ;  and  Wordsworth  and  Bryant 
and  Longfellow  he  would  never  have  heard  of. 

It  is  evident,  then,  how  little  of  the  wisdom  of  the 
past  any  living  man  can  know  within  the  limits  of  one 
lifetime.  This  conviction  forces  itself  upon  extensive 
readers  sooner  or  later.  It  is  well  to  admit  it  "  sooner  " 
rather  than  *'  later."  Robert  Southey,  one  of  the  most 
voluminous  readers  that  England  has  ever  produced, 
at  the  age  of  fifty  years  writes :  "  After  all,  knowledge 
is  not  the  one  thing  needful.  Provided  that  we  can 
get  contentedly  through  the  world,  and  to  heaven  at 
last,  the  sum  of  all  the  knowledge  which  we  can  collect 
by  the  way  is  infinitely  more  insignificant  than  I  like 
to  acknowledge  in  my  own  heart." 

What,  then,  should  be  the  influence  of  this  impossi- 
bility of  universal  scholarship  upon  our  literary  plans  ? 
I  answer  in  three  particulars.  One  effect  of  it  should 
be  to  prevent  our  wasting  ourselves  in  impracticable 
plans  of  study.  Every  young  man  should  take  the 
measure  of  his  time,  his  physical  health,  his  degree  of 
independence  of  other  avocations,  and  specially  his 
power  of  mental  appropriation.  Then  his  plans  of 
reading  should  be  adjusted  accordingly.  No  other  one 
habit  is  so  unproductive  to  a  student  as  that  of  omnivo- 
rous reading.  The  space  which  such  a  reader  traverses 
in  libraries  is  no  evidence  of  his  culture.  The  most 
useless  men  living  are  the  bookworms  who  are  nothing 
more.  There  are  men  who  devour  books  because  they 
are  books.  They  read  as  if  they  fancied  that  the  me- 
chanical process  of  trotting  doggedly  through  libraries 
were  the  great  business  of  a  life  of  culture.  Such  men 
can  not  possess  sound  learning. 


tKCT.  IX.]  RESTRICTIONS  OF  STUDY.  133 

A  writer  in  ''The  Edinburgh  Review"  very  justly 
satirizes  them  as  "  entitled  only  to  the  praise  of  being 
very  artificially  and  elaborately  ignorant.  They  differ 
from  the  utterly  uncultivated,  only  as  a  parrot  who 
talks  without  understanding  what  he  says  differs  from 
a  parrot  who  can  not  talk  at  all  "  You  have  made 
a  great  discovery  when  you  have  found  oat  what  is 
and  what  is  not  practicable  to  yourself.  Carlyle,  ad- 
dressing the  students  of  the  University  of  Edinburgh, 
said  to  them :  "  It  is  the  first  of  all  problems  for  a  man 
to  find  out  what  kind  of  work  he  's  to  do  in  this  uni- 
verse." So  is  it  the  first  of  problems  in  the  details  of 
a  scholar's  life  to  find  out  what  he  can  do.  To  attempt 
impracticable  plans  of  reading  is  one  of  the  most  dis- 
couraging of  literary  mistakes.  It  leads  many  young 
men  every  year  to  abandon  all  hope  of  a  scholarly  life. 

Another  effect  of  the  fact  before  us  should  be  to  pre- 
vent our  minds  from  acting  feverishly  under  the  neces- 
sary limitations  of  our  reading.  We  should  submit  to 
the  literary  privations  of  our  lot  gracefully.  No  man 
will  do  his  best  in  literary  effort  till  he  can  work  con- 
tentedly. Our  early  efforts  are  often  inflamed  by  a 
certain  heat  of  blood  which  indicates  a  chafing  of  the 
spirit  against  the  restrictions  of  time  and  sense  and 
finite  faculties.  That  is  a  bad  absorbent  of  literary 
energy.  We  must  rid  ourselves  of  it.  We  must  aban- 
don the  ambition,  which  Fontenelle  says  he  indulged  in 
early  life,  "  of  driving  all  the  sciences  abreast."  At  the 
basis  of  our  culture,  in  this  respect  as  in  others,  we 
should  lay  our  religious  principle.  By  prayer,  if  need 
be,  bring  your  mind  into  a  state  of  contentment  with 
the  limitations  of  human  knowledge,  and  of  your  own  in 
particular.    You  have  made  some  progress  in  the  culture 


134  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect   ix. 

of  a  manly  habit  of  study,  if,  with  an  earnest  sense  of 
the  dignity  of  an  educated  life,  you  can  spend  an  hour 
alone  in  a  large  library,  and  can  come  out  of  it  with  a 
perfectly  equable  and  happy  resolution  in  your  own 
life's  work. 

Says  the  late  Professor  Reed  of  Philadelphia,  "  It  is  a 
bewildering  tiling  to  stand  in  the  midst  of  a  vast  con- 
course of  books.  It  is  oppressive  to  conceive  what  a 
world  of  human  thought  and  human  passion  is  dwelling 
on  the  silent  paper,  how  much  of  wisdom  is  ready  to 
make  its  entrance  into  the  mind  that  is  prepared  to  wel- 
come it.  It  is  mournful  to  think  that  the  multitudinous 
oracles  should  be  dumb  to  us."  Who  of  us  does  not 
understand  this  mourning  over  inaccessible  knowledge  ? 
Yet  we  have  no  reason  to  mourn.  The  restrictions 
upon  our  knowledge  are  a  part  of  our  discipline ;  and, 
as  we  have  seen,  discipline,  not  accumulation,  is  the 
great  object  of  a  scholarly  life,  as  it  is  of  every  life. 

Gibbon  was  one  of  the  most  laborious  of  readers ;  yet 
he  says,  "  We  should  attend,  not  so  much  to  the  order 
of  our  books  as  of  our  thoughts.  The  perusal  of  a 
work  gives  birth  to  ideas.  I  pursue  those  ideas,  and 
quit  my  plan  of  reading."  Gibbon  in  this  remark  hits 
the  vital  point.  A  book  is  valuable  for  the  ideas  it 
starts  in  the  mind,  rather  than  for  those  it  puts  there. 
The  book  depends  more  on  what  you  bring  to  it  than 
on  any  thing  you  take  from  it.  No  knowledge  is  of 
vital  moment  to  a  man,  which  is  not  thus  reproductive 
within  him,  which  does  not,  in  some  sense,  work  itself 
into  character.  Of  knowledge  we  need  so  much,  and 
only  so  much,  as  we  can  assimilate  to  ourselves  in  some 
form  of  character.  If  to  possess  less  than  that  is  a 
misfortune,  to  possess  more  is  no  blessing.     The  mind's 


LECT.  IX.]  POWERS  OF  CONTROL.  135 

capacities  can  be  no  more  than  full.  We  have  no  more 
reason  to  mourn  over  unconquerable  departments  of 
knowledge  than  over  inaccessible  planets  and  angelic 
travels.  Contented  with  our  literary  limits,  we  can 
advance  to  our  life's  work  buoj^antly. 

The  third  effect  of  the  view  we  have  taken  should  be, 
that  we  should  regard  a  choice  selection  of  volumes  as 
the  first  step  to  success.  This  is  obvious.  We  should 
make  an  elaborate  selection  of  the  best  only.  If  we 
can  read  but  one  volume  in  a  year,  let  that  one  be  wor- 
thy of  a  scholar's  ideal  of  good  reading,  all  the  more  so 
because  it  is  but  one.  Our  chief  peril  is  that  of  allow- 
ing ourselves  to  be  impelled  by  the  pressure  of  our  pro- 
fessional avocations  down  an  inclined  plane,  from  the 
scholarly  upland  to  which  our  collegiate  training  lifted 
us,  to  a  level  so  low  that  no  scholarly  eye  can  recognize 
us  fraternally.  Read  only  the  best,  therefore.  Then 
the  whole  remaining  literature  of  the  world  should  be 
as  irrelevant  to  any  purpose  of  ours  as  the  cinders  of 
the  library  of  Alexandria. 

(3)  The  third  principle  of  selection  should  be,  that 
we  rank  first  in  our  estimate  those  authors  who  have 
been  controlling  powers  in  literature ;  not  necessarily 
first  in  the  order  of  time  in  our  reading ;  not,  indeed, 
that  we  must  read  all  of  them  at  any  time ;  not,  as  we 
shall  see  in  the  sequel,  that  all  of  us  must  read  any  of 
them  outside  of  our  own  vernacular,  but  that  we  should 
mentally  give  them  the  first  rank,  in  point  of  intrinsic 
worth,  as  models  of  the  noblest  culture.  What  we  do 
read  we  should  select  and  read  under  the  elevating 
influence  of  this  recognition  of  what  is  the  best. 

In  stating  this  principle,  I  purposely  speak  of  our 
estimate  of  literature,  rather  than  of  our  personal  study 


136  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  ix. 

of  it,  because  the  exigencies  of  professional  life  will 
not  permit  every  pastor  to  read  largely  in  this  regal 
literature  of  all  the  ages.  Because  Plomer  was  in  one 
sense  the  father  of  all  poetry,  it  does  not  follow  that 
every  pastor  in  Oregon,  and  every  missionary  in  Africa, 
should  read  Homer.  We  shall  return  to  this  qualifica- 
tion again  in  a  future  lecture :  at  present  it  is  sufficient 
tc  note  that  we  should  rank  the  authors  in  question  as 
the  first  in  our  scholarly  judgment. 

Taking  the  standard  literatures  of  the  world  together, 
there  is  a  group  of  names  which  all  scholarly  judgment 
has  placed  at  the  fountain-head  of  the  streams  of  thought 
which  those  literatures  represent.  They  are  the  origi- 
nals of  all  that  cultivated  mind  has  revered  in  letters. 
They  have  been  powers  of  control.  The  world  of  mind 
has  recognized  them  as  such.  Their  names,  therefore, 
float  on  the  current  of  all  times.  In  any  enlightened 
age  and  country  they  become  known  to  schoolboys. 
Several  suggestions  respecting  them  deserve  notice. 

First,  They  are  not  numerous.  In  any  one  of  the 
standard  literatures  of  the  race  you  can  number  this 
order  of  imperial  minds  on  the  fingers  of  one  hand.  In 
the  Hebrew  literature,  not  more  than  three ;  in  the 
classic  Greek,  not  more  than  three ;  in  the  Hellenistic 
Greek,  only  two ;  in  the  Roman,  possibly  two ;  in  the 
Italian,  only  one ;  in  the  French,  less  than  that ;  in  the 
Arabic,  the  Spanish,  the  Scandinavian  literatures,  none  ; 
in  the  German,  only  three;  and  in  the  English,  but 
four. 

Of  coarse,  opinions  would  differ  in  the  assignment  of 
individuals  to  groups  so  small  as  these ;  but  they  would 
not  differ  as  to  the  main  assertion.  I  do  not  assume  to 
speak  ex  cathedra  on  this  matter.     I  have  sought  to 


LECT.  IX.]  FRENCH  LITERATURE.  137 

enlighten  my  own  judgment  by  correspondence  with 
scholarly  readers  in  several  departments  in  which  they 
are  acknowledged  experts.  I  discard,  also,  as  I  have 
remarked  before,  the  technical  restriction  of  the  term 
"  literature  "  by  which  philosophy  and  science  are  ex- 
cluded. That  restriction  is  not  germane  to  the  purp-ose 
now  in  view.  An  original  philosopher,  for  instance, 
may  give  character  to  a  nation's  thought  for  centuries 
with  such  authority  that  no  technically  "literary"  au- 
thor shall  equal  or  approach  him  as  a  national  power. 
It  is  the  great  powers  over  national  thought  that  we 
seek  to  discover  in  such  an  estimate  as  the  one  now 
before  us.  As  the  result,  therefore,  of  the  means  of 
judgment  which  I  possess,  I  should  reckon  the  world's 
royal  names  in  literature  as  follows ;  viz.,  in  the  Hebrew 
tongue,  Moses,  David,  and  Isaiah :  in  the  classic  Greek, 
Homer,  Plato,  and  Aristotle ;  in  the  Hellenistic  Greek, 
St.  Paul  and  St.  John ;  in  the  Roman,  Cicero  and  Virgil ; 
in  the  Italian,  Dante. 

In  the  French  I  have  said,  "less  than  one,"  because 
no  mind  among  French  scholars  has,  so  far  as  I  can 
discover,  exerted  a  formative  and  permanent  influence 
outside  of  France  itself.  Some  critics  would  name 
Voltaire  among  the  first  class  of  authorship ;  but  his 
influence  outside  of  France  has  been  short-lived.  Even 
among  his  own  countrymen,  I  am  informed  that  few 
French  authors  of  equal  eminence  are  so  little  read 
to-day.  Scarcely  any  works  of  solid  French  literature 
find  so  poor  a  sale  as  those  of  Voltaire.  His  fame  and 
his  influence  were  at  their  height  among  his  contempo- 
raries, and  have  been  steadily  declining  ever  since  his 
last  triumphant  entrance  into  Paris,  shortly  before  his 
decease.     The  ruling  influence  of  France   in   modern 


138  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [ikct.  ix, 

civilization  has  been  in  politics  more  than  in  literature. 
If  Descartes  deserves  a  place  in  so  select  a  group  as  I 
have  in  mind,  I  confess  that  my  imperfect  knowledge  of 
his  writings  and  of  the  opinion  of  experts  about  them 
does  not  qualify  me  to  affirm  it,  and  perhaps  I  ought 
not  therefore  to  deny  it.  Let  my  impression  pass  for 
what  it  is  worth. 

The  Arabic,  the  Spanish,  and  the  Scandinavian  liteia- 
tures  have  all  of  them  fallen  into  the  second  and  thud 
ranks  of  authorship.  In  the  German  I  should  follow 
the  general  voice  of  German  critics  in  selecting  the 
names  of  Goethe,  Schiller,  and  Kant.  In  the  English, 
after  much  hesitation,  I  assign  the  first  rank  to  Chau- 
cer, Shakspeare,  Bacon,  and  Wordsworth,  —  to  Chaucer 
as  the  historic  head  of  English  poetry,  to  Bacon  for 
his  influence  on  the  national  mind  of  England  in  all 
departments  of  thought,  to  Wordsworth  as  having  revo- 
lutionized English  poetic  tastes,  and  to  Shakspeare  as 
the  "  myriad-minded,"  the  poet  of  all  times  and  nations. 
I  hesitate  in  excluding  the  name  of  Milton ;  and  many 
would  dissent  from  the  position  which  I  assign  to 
Wordsworth.  But  for  this  I  have  the  authority  of 
Coleridge.  It  may  interest  you  to  know  that  one  of  the 
most  accomplished  critics  in  our  own  country,  to  whom 
this  classification  has  been  submitted,  added  to  the 
English  quadrilateral  the  name  of  Hawthorne  as  being 
an  absolute  and  solitary  original  in  English  letters. 

The  main  point,  however,  to  be  noted,  is  that  all 
scholarly  opinion  would  limit  the  authors  of  the  first 
rank  in  literary  influence  upon  national  mind  to  very 
few  in  number.  The  marvels  of  genius  are  like  cen- 
tury-plants. Ages  of  mediocrity  often  separate  them. 
They  are  elect  spirits,  and  generally  they  are  given 
only  to  elect  nations. 


LECT.  IX.]  PERPETUITY  OF  LITERATURE.  139 

This  suggests,  further,  that  these  authors  of  the  first 
cLass  claim  their  rank  by  virtue  of  their  power  over 
otlier  literature.  They  have  given  to  national  litera- 
tures their  great  impulses  of  development.  Their 
names  mark  epochs  of  growth.  They  have  been  awak- 
ening powers.  Multitudes  of  other  great  minds,  who 
but  for  these  would  never  have  been  great,  have  been 
aroused  by  these  the  greater.  We  can  not  appreciate 
the  other  literature  of  the  world  without  knowing  the 
creative  power  of  these  few  originals.  No  man  knows 
well  the  Greek  development  of  mind,  who  does  not 
know  Homer  and  Plato.  No  man  knows  the  Italian 
graft  upon  the  Latin  stock,  who  does  not  know  Dante. 
No  man  knows  the  ripening  of  Christian  civilization 
in  the  English  mind,  who  does  not  know  Chaucer  and 
Bacon.  And  no  man  can  judge  profoundly  of  all  the 
existing  drifts  of  culture,  who  does  not  know,  or  who 
refuses  to  recognize  as  literature,  the  writings  of  David 
and  Isaiah  and  St.  Paul.  This  historic  position  of  a 
very  few  names  along  the  line  of  the  world's  advance- 
ment would  be  sufficient  to  attract  attention  to  them, 
as  the  first  in  rank  of  representatives  of  what  the  mind 
of  the  race  has  thought  and  felt  and  expressed  in  liter- 
ary forms. 

Again :  these  authors  of  the  first  order  claim  their 
position  by  reason  of  the  perpetuity  of  their  influence. 
They  live  while  others  die.  All  poetry  feels  to  this 
day  the  impulse  of  Homer:  all  philosophy  feels  the 
impulse  of  Plato.  German  literature  abounds  with 
commentaries  on  Shakspeare,  and  calls  him  inspired. 
No  Italian  scholar  becomes  eminent  in  any  department 
of  thoiAght,  without  paying  tribute  to  Dante.  No 
modern  thinker  in  Europe  or  America  climbs  to  pre- 


140  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  ix. 

eminence  as  a  power  with  his  contemporaries,  except 
on  the  ladder  which  Bacon  has  erected.  Everywhere 
those  minds  which  represent  most  prophetically  the 
literature  of  the  future  are  those  which  are  most  pro- 
foundly imbued  with  the  literature  of  the  Hebrews. 
Wordsworth,  speaking  of  the  ancient  classic  literatures, 
says,  "  We  have  appropriated  them  all ; "  and  of  Mil- 
ton he  says,  "  He  was  a  Hebrew  in  soul." 

This  immortality  of  the  few  royal  minds  of  the  past 
is  the  ultimate  test  of  their  authority.  Nothing  else 
proves  a  thing  as  time  does.  Nothing  else  gives  author- 
ity like  the  unanimity  of  ages.  It  is  not  safe  for  a 
young  man  to  dissent  from  such  authority  as  this.  It 
is  virtually  the  voice  of  the  common  sense  of  mankind. 
Says  Coleridge,  "Presume  those  to  be  the  best  the 
reputation  of  which  has  been  matured  into  fame  by  the 
consent  of  ages."  If  there  is  any  truth  in  universal 
convictions,  every  mind  that  is  intent  on  scholarly 
culture  will  sooner  or  later  seek  its  most  enduring 
impulses,  directly  or  indirectly,  from  those  few  ideals 
which  the  common  consent  has  pronounced  the  grand- 
est, the  most  symmetrical,  and  the  most  intense.  That 
is  a  foolish  waste  in  one's  policy  of  study  which  leads 
one  needlessly  to  sacrifice  those  ideals  by  expending 
one's  enthusiasm  on  their  inferiors. 

Yet  it  should  be  observed  that  in  the  study  of  this 
class  of  authors,  with  the  exception  of  the  inspired 
writers,  we  do  not  seek  direct  contributions  to  our  pro- 
fessional labors.  We  do  not  seek  to  appropriate  their 
contents  bodily,  but  their  scholarly  influence.  We  are 
not  ferreting  out  examples  for  imitation.  We  are  not 
preparing  to  quote  Homer  in  our  sermons,  nor  to  preach 
Lord   Bacon   or   Shakspeare.       The   weakest  possible 


LEOT.  IX.]  GREAT  MEN  NOT  SCHOOLMEN.  141 

preacliing  may  be  that  in  wLicli  our  study  of  these 
authors  is  visible.  They  are  to  exist  in  our  own  work 
only  by  the  transfusion  of  their  genius  into  our  own 
mental  character.  We  seek  to  be  mentally  uplifted  by 
them.  The  least  significant  part  of  their  usefulness  to 
us  will  appear  in  the  form  of  quotation.  Indeed,  one 
of  the  perils  of  extensive  reading,  to  be  watched  and 
shunned,  is  that  of  excessive  extract  from  other  authors. 
Avoid  a  mania  for  quotation:  a  great  deal  of  literary 
cant  appears  in  that  form.  You  will  soon  note  in  your 
reading  two  classes  of  authors  who  quote  little.  They 
are  those  who  are  the  most  original,  and  those  who  are 
the  most  profoundly  sincere. 

Further :  the  study  of  this  first  class  of  authors  has 
a  special  tendency  to  promote  independence  of  provin- 
cial narrowness  in  our  culture.  The  secret  of  the 
perpetuity  of  their  power  is,  that  they  are  universal  in 
their  adaptations.  They  appeal  to  and  they  represent 
elements  which  are  innate  in  human  nature.  They  are 
independent  of  sect,  or  class,  or  school.  Hence  comes 
their  literary  autocracy.  Schools  may  have  grown  out 
of  them,  but  they  were  never  schoolmen.  They  did 
not  aim  to  found  schools.  No  man  was  ever  less  of  a 
Platonist,  in  the  sense  of  a  Platonic  partisan,  than  Plato 
himself ;  no  man  was  ever  less  of  a  Baconian,  in  the 
scholastic  sense,  than  Bacon  himself.  What  schools  of 
poetry  did  Homer  and  Shakspeare  found?  Schools 
grow  up  with  smaller  minds.  They  would  be  as  offen- 
sive to  those  whose  names  they  bear  as  the  apostolic 
beets  were  to  Cephas  and  St.  Paul. 

A  preacher,  therefore,  by  drinking  in  the  spirit  of 
such  authors,  imbibes  a  constitutional  antidote  to  con- 
tracted  tastes,   to   narrow   opinions,   and   to    cramped 


142  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  ix 

methods  of  worldng.  Let  a  young  scholar  drink  deep 
at  these  fountain-heads  of  power,  or  absorb  their  influ- 
ence from  the  atmosphere  around  him,  and  he  must  do 
violence  to  his  whole  scholarly  nature  if  he  becomes  a 
bigot  or  a  cynic.  You  will  discover,  if  you  take  pains 
to  observe  it,  that  often  purely  theological  extremes 
and  distortions  of  opinion  are  corrected  or  forestalled 
by  a  purely  literary  culture.  Such  are  the  affinities 
of  all  truth  with  all  truth,  that  breadth  of  culture  any- 
where tends  to  produce  breadth  of  culture  everywhere. 
Who,  as  a  rule,  are  the  most  liberal  thinkers  in  theol- 
ogy ?  In  whom  do  you  find  the  most  evenly  balanced 
faith?  Are  they  not  the  men  of  profound  and  en- 
larged literary  sympathies  ?  On  the  other  hand,  if  you 
find  a  preacher  who  holds  and  tries  to  preach  an  im- 
practicable dogma  which  outrages  the  common  sense  of 
men,  can  you  not  affirm  safely  beforehand  that  he  is  a 
man  of  contracted  reading  ?  He  knows  little  or  noth- 
ing of  the  great  creators  of  the  world's  thought  in 
libraries.  When,  for  example,  I  hear  that  a  celebrated 
English  preacher  has  been  heard  to  say  that  the  reason 
why  God  permits  the  wicked  to  live  is  that  "  He  knows 
they  are  to  be  damned,  and  is  willing  to  let  them  have 
a  little  pleasure  first,"  I  know  without  inquiry  that  that 
preacher  is  not  a  man  of  books.  I  venture  to  affirm 
that  he  has  never  read  Spenser's  "  Faerie  Queene." 
It  is  doubtful  whether  he  could  with  a  clear  conscience 
read  Shakspeare.  Such  a  ferocious  notion  in  theology 
never  could  survive  contact  with  the  regal  order  of 
minds  in  literature,  even  the  most  remote  fi^om  theo- 
logic  thought.  It  is  the  property  of  a  little  mind,  fed 
by  little  minds,  and  sympathetic  with  no  other. 

To  these  suggestions  it  should   be  added,  that,  to 


LECT.  IX.]  WASTEFUL  READING.  143 

these  authors  of  the  first  rank,  inferior  literature  should 
be  largely  sacrificed.  The  chief  peril  of  a  prea  ther  in 
his  reading  is  suggested  by  this  remark:  it  is  that  he  will 
devote  a  disproportionate  amount  of  time  to  ephemeral 
books.  We  are  apt  to  sacrifice  the  great  powers  of  lit- 
erature, not  of  design,  but  by  neglect.  The  reading 
of  the  majority  of  educated  men,  I  think,  is  wasteful. 
We  read  newspapers  and  magazines  indiscriminately. 
What  do  we  want  to  know  of  the  murder  in  North 
Street  last  night,  or  the  forgery  in  State  Street  last 
week?  William  Prescott  the  historian  used  to  in- 
struct his  secretary,  in  reading  to  him  the  morning 
newspaper,  never  to  read  about  an  accident  or  a  crime. 
He  applied  to  his  newspaper  the  same  eclectic  econo- 
my of  time  which  he  practised  in  exploring  the  Spanish 
archives. 

Stern  self-discipline  should  adjust  the  proportion  of 
our  reading.  It  is  well  to  read  such  an  author  as  Car- 
lyle ;  but  by  what  right  do  we  neglect  for  his  sake 
such  writers  as  Bacon  and  Milton  ?  It  is  well  enough 
to  know  Byron  as  the  representative  of  a  certain  phase 
of  English  poetry;  but  what  principle  of  scholarl}^ 
policy  justifies  our  sacrifice  to  him  of  such  an  author 
as  Dante  ?  What  axiom  of  economy  leads  a  preacher 
to  buy  Hood's  poems,  when  he  is  too  poor  to  own  a 
copy  of  Shakspeare?  or  to  purchase  the  works  of 
Thomas  Moore,  when  he  can  not  afford  to  own  Words- 
worth? Who  can,  without  a  twinge  of  scholarly  con- 
science, spend  an  hour  a  day  over  the  newspapers  of  the 
week,  when  he  has  never  opened  even  a  translation  of 
Schiller?  If  I  am  rightly  informed,  merchants  in  active 
business  do  not  feel  able  to  spare  half  of  that  time  for 
their  morning  paper.     Is  the  accumulation  of  money 


144  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  ix. 

of  SO  much  more  value  than  the  accumulation  of  brains  ? 
In  these  suggestions,  however,  I  have  in  mind  the  habits 
of  a  healthy  scholar,  not  those  which  disease  has  de- 
moralized. 

I  once  took  up  from  a  student's  table  a  book  of  three 
hundred  duodecimo  pages  on  the  culture  of  poultry. 
I  took  occasion  to  ascertain  from  him  afterwards  that  he 
had  never  read  a  page  of  Spenser's  ''  Faerie  Queene," 
and  he  did  not  know  who  wrote  the  "  Canterbury  Tales." 
On  another  occasion  I  took  from  the  shelf  of  a  young 
pastor's  library  a  book  of  nearly  equal  dimensions  with 
the  other,  on  the  breeding  and  training  of  horses.  Pos- 
sibly a  cramped  salary  may  com^^el  a  pastor  to  own  such 
a  book,  as  his  wife  must  own  a  cookery-book ;  yet  in 
the  case  in  question  there  was  no  such  economic  neces- 
sity, and  I  learned  from  that  pastor  that  he  had  never 
been  able  to  "  wade  through,"  as  he  expressed  it,  a  his- 
tory of  the  Reformation.  What  business  has  an  edu- 
cated man,  not  pressed  by  the  necessities  of  poverty, 
to  be  plodding  through  the  literature  of  the  farmyard 
when  three-quarters  of  Westminster  Abbey  are  unknown 
to  him? 

An  earnest  scholar  will  sacrifice  much  that  is  useful 
in  inferior  literature,  if  his  knowledge  of  it  must  be 
purchased  at  the  cost  of  acquaintance  with  names  which 
must  outlive  it  a  hundred  years.  Dr.  Arnold  says, 
"  As  a  general  rule,  never  read  the  works  of  any  ordi- 
nar}^  man  except  on  scientific  matters,  or  when  they 
contain  simple  matters  of  fact.  Even  on  matters  of 
fact,  silly  and  ignorant  men,  however  honest,  require 
to  be  read  with  constant  suspicion ;  whereas  great  men 
are  always  instructive,  even  amidst  much  of  error.  In 
general,  I  hold  it  to  be  certain  that  the  truth  is  to  be 


LECT.  IX.]  BIBLIOMANIA.  145 

found  in  the  great  men,  and  the  error  in  the  little  ones." 
Pascal  said  that  he  had  left  off  reading  the  Jesuits, 
because,  if  he  had  continued  it,  he  must  have  "  read  a 
great  many  indifferent  books." 

Once  more :  not  merely  worthless  literature  should 
be  sacrificed,  but,  for  the  sake  of  the  best,  we  must 
sacrifice  much  which  would  be  very  valuable  to  us  if 
we  had  not  the  best.  Pliny  said  that  no  book  had  ever 
been  written  which  did  not  contain  something  profitable 
to  a  reader.  Leibnitz  and  Gibbon,  both  of  them  vora- 
cious readers,  expressed  the  same  opinion.  One  of  the 
most  rapid  and  voluminous  readers  and  writers  of  our 
own  day  once  told  me  that  he  had  never  read  a  book 
which  did  not  give  him  some  new  thought. 

These  judgments,  with  qualifications,  are  true ;  yet 
they  do  not  justify  that  bibliomania  which  leads  a  man 
to  seize  upon  the  book  which  lies  nearest  to  him,  because 
it  is  a  book,  and  because  something  or  other  can  be  got 
from  it.  We  must  sacrifice  a  great  many  good  books. 
We  must  let  go  our  hold  upon  much  which  would  be  a 
model  to  us  if  we  had  no  better.  We  must  force  our 
way  grimly  through  the  heaps  of  them  which  bestrew 
our  path  in  order  to  reach  the  smaller  but  weightier 
heap  which  lies  beyond.  Otherwise  we  shall  be  very 
large  readers  of  comparatively  small  thought.  Our 
culture  will  suffer  from  a  plethora  of  little  books.  The 
after-clap  of  their  reading  will  be  more  distressing  than 
that  of  the  little  book  in  the  Apocalypse. 


LECTURE  X. 

SELECTION  OF   AUTHORS,   CONTINUED.  —  PREDOMI- 
NANCE  OF   THE   ENGLISH   LITERATURE. 

Before  proceeding  to  consider  other  principles  bear- 
ing upon  a  pastor's  study  of  books  for  homiletic  culture, 
let  a  moment  be  given  to  a  plausible  objection  to  the 
principle  already  advanced,  that  we  should  exalt  to  the 
first  rank  the  few  controlling  minds  in  the  world's 
literatures.  It  is  urged  that  that  principle  would  prac- 
tically doom  a  pastor  to  reading  nothing  but  the  ancient 
classics,  or  at  best  to  waste  himself  on  dead  or  foreign 
languages. 

I  have  in  the  sequel  much  to  say  of  the  practicability 
of  literary  study  to  a  pastor.  But  for  the  present,  and 
in  application  to  the  point  in  hand,  I  answer.  The  objec- 
tion is  often  a  valid  one.  Therefore  I  have  said  that 
we  should  rank  first  in  our  estimate  of  literature  the 
authors  of  first  rank.  Then  we  should  read  them,  if 
we  can.  This  is  the  practical  summary  of  the  principle 
before  us.  But,  further,  it  is  not  impracticable  for  the 
majority  of  pastors  in  active  service  to  know  the  lead- 
ing authors  in  foreign  literatures  through  translations. 
The  prejudice  against  translations  is  not  sensible.  It 
was  originated  when  literature  was  less  voluminous 
than  now.  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  reads  translations, 
and   respects   them.      His   reading   would  have   been 

146 


LECT.  X.]  READING  TRANSLATIONS.  147 

restricted  vastly,  if  lie  had  not  done  so.  Who  sup- 
poses that  he  gets  his  quotations  from  the  originals  of 
the  Veda  and  of  Confucius? 

It  is  not  impracticable,  then,  for  the  majority  of  pas- 
tors to  read  translations  of  Homer  and  Plato.  It  is 
not  impossible  to  own,  and  to  read  in  some  vacation,  so 
readable  and  so  portable  a  book  as  Carey's -'Dante." 
For  the  intrinsic  value  of  Dante's  "Inferno,"  let  me 
cite  the  opinion  of  Mr.  Prescott  the  historian.  H- 
says  that  he  deems  it  "  a  fortunate  thing  for  the  world 
that  the  first  poem  of  modern  times  should  have  been 
founded  on  a  subject  growing  out  of  the  Christian  reli- 
gion, and  written  by  a  man  penetrated  with  the  spirit 
of  its  sternest  creed.  Its  influence  on  literature  has 
been  almost  as  remarkable  as  that  of  Christianity  itself 
on  the  moral  world."  It  surely  is  an  irreparable  loss 
to  the  culture  of  a  preacher  to  remain  through  life  igno- 
rant of  such  a  poem.  So  of  Goethe's  "  Faust "  and 
Schiller's  "  Robbers."  Coleridge's  translation  of  Schil- 
ler's "  Wallenstein  "  and  the  "  Piccolomini "  would  pro- 
mote a  double  purpose  by  giving  }■  ou  German  classics 
in  splendid  English  poetry.  One  might  select  twenty 
or  thirty  volumes  of  English  translations  which  would 
give  to  a  hard-worked  pastor,  not  by  any  means  a  mas- 
terly knowledge,  but  a  very  useful  and  usable  knowl- 
edge, of  the  best  authors  in  the  great  literatures  of  the 
world  outside  of  the  English  tongue. 

Again:  it  is  not  impracticable  for  all  pastors  to 
exercise  the  sinrit  of  this  principle  in  the  selection  of 
authors  of  our  own  language.  Every  educated  man 
can  read  and  enjoy  the  great  writers  in  English  litera- 
ture. We  can  spend  our  time  on  these  rather  than  on 
the  little  ones.     In  doing  this  we  may  really  imbibe 


148  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  x. 

inucli  of  the  best  literary  culture  of  all  times  and  coun- 
tries. The  great  authors  of  England  have  fed  upon 
the  ancient  and  the  modern  continental  literatures  of 
Europe.  Wordsworth  was  right  when  he  said,  "  We 
have  reproduced  all  that."  He  was  right  to  this  ex- 
tent, that  English  literature  has  reproduced  in  Christian 
forms  the  best  of  all  that  Pagan  literature  ever  was. 

(4)  The  principles  of  selection  in  literary  study 
already  discussed  need  to  be  qualified  by  a  fourth 
principle,  which  is,  that,  in  our  choice  of  authors,  the 
literature  of  the  English  language  should  predominate. 
You  have  no  reason  to  think  meanly  of  your  acquisi- 
tions, or  to  apologize  for  them,  if  they  are  limited  to 
your  mother-tongue.  In  the  majority  of  cases  a  pas- 
tor's reading  will  be  limited  thus,  be  his  theory  of  read- 
ing what  it  may.  In  such  a  case  he  has  no  reason  to 
be  ashamed  of  the  necessity.  This  view  is  contested 
by  good  critics ;  and  I  approach  it  with  a  sense  of  the 
difficulty  of  expressing  to  you  what  I  believe  to  be  the 
exact  truth,  without  being  misunderstood.  Yet  my 
conviction  is  the  growth  of  years,  that,  if  there  is  one 
l)eril  greater  than  another  to  our  scholarly  habits,  it  is 
that  of  doing  injustice  to  the  literature  of  England. 
Intense  as  our  national  spirit  is  in  other  respects,  it 
does  not  rise  to  the  level  of  the  birthright  we  possess 
as  inheritors  of  the  treasures  in  the  English  tongue. 

In  a  discussion  of  the  subject,  we  have  to  encounter, 
in  the  first  place,  a  prejudice  which  attributes  superiority 
to  whateTer  is  foreign.  The  distant,  the  strange,  the 
unknown,  the  half-known,  awes  a  cultivated  mind  often 
as  it  does  the  rudest.  We  are  apt  to  stand  agape  at 
the  wisdom  locked  up  in  a  foreign  speech,  as  children 
do  in  listening  to  foreign  conversation.     Did  you  never 


I.ECT.  X.]  THE  ANCIENT   CLASSICS.  149 

experience  this?  I  must  confess  to  having  stood  mo- 
mentarily in  speechless  wonder,  in  my  first  efforts  to 
acquire  the  German  language,  because  a  German  truck- 
man in  the  street  could  talk  the  language  so  much  more 
volubly  than  I  could,  and  a  dray-horse,  in  understand- 
ing him,  was  my  superior.  Yet  as  senseless  as  that  is 
the  feeling  which  underlies  much  of  the  preference 
often  felt  for  foreign  literatures  above  our  own.  If  in- 
dulged with  equal  knowledge  of  the  literatures  brought 
into  the  comparison,  it  is  literary  cant.  This  is  the 
ground. of  the  pre-eminence  given  to  the  French  lan- 
guage in  some  schools  for  the  education  of  women. 

Then,  in  approaching  the  question  of  the  worth  of 
the  English  literature,  we  encounter  the  atmosphere 
which  is  created  by  our  system  of  training  in  the 
ancient  classic  languages.  Our  collegiate  system  we 
have  taken  chiefly  from  the  English  universities.  Those 
grew  up  at  a  period  when  England  had  no  literature 
of  her  own.  The  reverence  then  paid  to  the  ancient 
classics  was  normal  and  necessary.  Generally  speaking, 
there  was  no  other  literature  which  deserved  reverence. 
The  revival  of  the  ancient  learning  created  for  the 
modern  mind  the  only  models  in  existence  which  were 
of  superior  finish  for  the  purposes  of  liberal  culture, 
except  the  sacred  models  of  Palestine.  The  new  enthu- 
siasm for  learning  must  have  looked  to  Athens  and 
Rome,  or  nowhere.  Hence  arose  that  profound  rever- 
ence for  what  is  called  classic  study,  which  tinges  the 
university  system  of  England,  of  which  the  American 
college  is  an  offshoot.  That  reverence  is  not  a  whit 
too  profound  absolutely ;  but  it  is,  by  a  vast  proportion, 
too  exclusive  relatively. 

Our  usage  by  which  we  designate  the  ancient  litera- 


150  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  x. 

tures  by  the  term  "  classic  "  is  an  evidence  of  the  depth 
to  which  the  preference  of  the  ancient  authors  over 
every  thing  English  is  embedded  in  our  scholarly  inher- 
itance. It  is  as  if  nothing  English  could  deserve  the 
title  of  a  classic,  i.e.,  of  a  model  for  the  education  of 
mind.  English  authorship  has  been  compelled  to  con- 
tend for  its  right  to  the  name  in  its  own  language.  A 
youth  of  to-day  is  at  first  confused  when  he  hears  the 
phrase  "English  classics." 

Our  collegiate  discipline  —  and  here  lies  the  precise 
point  of  its  defect,  in  my  judgment  —  preserves  no  just 
proportions  between  the  ancient  and  the  English  clas- 
sics. The  English  literature  is  a  fact  to  which  it  does 
no  justice  in  its  theory  of  the  education  suitable  to  an 
English  or  an  American  pupil.  This  literature  is  now 
the  accumulation  of  centuries.  It  is  expanding  with 
every  decade  of  years.  Yet  who  of  us  ever  obtained 
in  our  collegiate  experience  any  very  exalted  conception 
of  it  as  compared  with  the  Greek  and  Latin  models  ? 
I  think  I  speak  the  experience  of  a  majority  of  educated 
Americans  in  saying  that  a  sense  of  the  classic  rank  of 
the  English  literature  is  a  discovery,  which,  for  the  most 
part,  they  have  to  make  for  themselves  after  they  have 
left  our  collegiate  and  professional  schools.  It  dawns 
upon  us  as  a  novelty  when  we  begin  to  extend  our  Eng- 
lish reading.  When  we  do  admit  it,  when  the  glory  of 
our  native  literature  forces  it  upon  us,  we  feel  a  sense 
of  regret  that  the  discovery  has  come  to  us  so  late  in 
our  mental  history.  We  turn  to  our  own  language, 
then,  with  sometliing  of  the  rebound  with  which  we 
spring  to  a  long-neglected  virtue. 

Again :  the  presumption  is  always  in  favor  of  the  pre- 
eminence of  the  literature  of  one's  vernacular  tongue  in 


LECT.  X.]  VERNACULAR  LITERATURE.  151 

one's  culture,  if  that  tongue  has  a  literature.  If  a  lan- 
guage has  no  literature,  tlie  mind  to  which  it  is  vernacu- 
lar is  so  far  a  barbarous  mind.  Culture,  in  the  high 
sense  of  the  term,  is  impracticable  to  it  in  its  native 
tongue.  But,  if  a  language  has  a  literature,  that  litera- 
ture is  an  expression  of  the  national  mind.  It  is  a  prod- 
uct of  tliat  mind.  Of  that  mind,  the  man  himself  is 
a  fragment ;  his  own  mental  structure  is  a  part  of  the 
growth  which  has  made  the  literature.  He  sustains  to 
it,  therefore,  a  relation  which  he  can  not  sustain  to  any 
embodiment  of  foreign  thought.  It  is  a  relation  of 
sympath}^  and  kindred.  The  very  life-blood  of  thought 
flows  to  and  through  him  by  means  of  the  vernacular 
arteries,  as  it  can  not  by  transfusion  from  any  foreign 
fountains. 

Says  Dr.  George  P.  Marsh,  "  Deep  in  the  recesses 
of  our  being,  beneath  even  the  reach  of  consciousness, 
or  at  least  of  objective  self-inspection,  there  lies  a  cer- 
tain sensibility  to  the  organic  laws  of  our  mother- 
tongue."  He  elsewhere  adduces  two  facts  in  proof  of 
this.  One  is,  that  a  man's  vernacular  language,  though 
forgotten,  "  can  never  be  completely  supplanted  or  sup- 
plied by  another ; "  and  the  second  is,  that  those  who 
grow  up  speaking  many  languages  very  seldom  acquire 
complete  mastery  over  any  one  of  them.  That  which 
is  true  of  linguistic  acquisition  is  doubly  true  of  liter- 
ary culture.  The  secret  sympathies  of  mind  with  truth 
in  the  vernacular  speech  more  than  realizes  Words- 
worth's fancy  of  the  communings  of  the  seasheli  with 
its  native  ocean.  No  man  can  do  violence  to  those 
sympathies  without  a  loss  in  the  breadth  and  natu- 
ralness of  his  own  development.  The  confusion  of 
tongues  bears  every  mark  of  a  curse  upon  the  race.     It 


152  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  x. 

is  an  evil  of  incalculable  magnitude,  that  we  must 
derive  so  much  of  our  mental  training  through  other 
media  of  expression  than  that  which  we  grow  up  with, 
and  grow  into  as  our  minds  expand  from  childhood. 

Experience  in  the  conducting  of  foreign  missions 
confirms  these  views.  The  original  idea  of  foreign 
missionary  work,  and  the  one  which  first  roused  Chris- 
tian enthusiasm  most  profoundly,  was  that  the  heathen 
world  must  be  Christianized  mainly  by  the  agency  of 
preachers  sent  from  Christian  lands.  I  heard  in  my 
boyhood  the  claims  of  foreign  missions  urged  on  Ameri- 
can Christians  and  students  for  the  ministry,  on  the 
ground  that  thousands  of  preachers  must  be  sent  from 
Christian  countries,  outnumbering  by  multitudes  the 
whole  Protestant  clergy  of  the  world.  "  How  shall 
they  hear  without  a  preacher?  and  how  shall  they 
preach  except  they  be  sent?''  was  the  text.  Inspired 
authority  for  it  seemed  to  be  given  at  the  outset. 

Experience  has  corrected  all  that.  It  has  proved 
that  heathen  nations  are  not  to  be  reached,  any  more 
than  Christian  nations,  in  the  large  masses,  by  a  minis- 
try which  to  them  is  foreign,  trained  in  a  foreign  civil- 
ization, pervaded  by  foreign  modes  of  thouglit,  and 
using  their  vernacular  under  the  embarrassments  cre- 
ated by  the  mixture  of  the  idioms  of  a  foreign  speech. 
It  has  long  since  become  trite  that  the  great  bulk  of 
the  work  of  Christianizing  the  heathen  world  is  to  be 
done  by  a  native  ministry  trained  originally  by  foreign 
teachers,  but  ultimately  taking  the  work  into  their  own 
hands.  Minds  created  under  the  influence  of  the  lan- 
guage spoken  by  a  people  are  needed  to  become  con- 
trolling powers  in  the  Christian  civilization  of  that 
people.  The  secret  sympathies  with  vernacular  speech 
run  very  deep.     We  are  all  ruled  b}^  them. 


tECT.  X.]  STUDIES  OF  AMATEURS.  153 

Applying  this  principle,  then,  to  our  own  prepara- 
tions for  the  American  pulpit,  I  contend  that  if  a  Greek 
or  a  Latin,  or  a  German  literature,  or  all  combined,  have 
for  us  claims  superior  to  those  of  our  English  speech, 
it  is  a  thing  to  be  proved.  Perhaps  it  can  be  proved  ; 
but  the  presumption,  in  the  nature  of  things,  is  against 
it. 

Further :  the  utility  of  a  man's  culture,  other  things 
being  equal,  requires  the  ascendency  in  it  of  the  litera- 
ture of  his  native  language.  Culture  is  for  use,  not  for 
display,  not  for  literary  enjoyment  mainly.  The  weak- 
est education  is  that  which  is  aimed  at  display.  The 
highest  homoeopathic  trituration  of  the  educational 
ideal  is  that  of  a  modern  French  boarding-school  for 
young  ladies.  It  is  worthy  of  the  "  nugiperous  gentle- 
dame  "  whom  the  ''Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam"  de- 
scribes as  ''  the  very  gizzard  of  a  trifle,  the  product  of 
a  quarter  of  a  cipher,  and  the  epitome  of  nothing." 

But  the  most  selfish  education,  and  therefore  the  nar- 
rowest of  all  educational  ideals  which  may  be  respec- 
table for  strength,  is  that  which  is  directed  to  literary 
pleasure. 

The  danger  from  this  source  to  the  integrity  of  a 
pastor's  studies  justifies  a  brief  excursus  at  this  point 
upon  the  selfish  ideal  of  a  scholarly  life.  No  concep- 
tion of  life,  not  grossly  sensual,  can  be  formed,  which  is 
more  odious  for  the  intensity  of  its  selfishness  than  the 
life  of  a  man  of  letters  who  is  that  and  nothing  more, 
with  no  aims  in  his  studies  but  those  of  an  amateur 
student.  A  studious  man  in  dressing-gown  and  slip- 
pers, sitting  in  the  midst  of  a  choice  library  which  is 
adorned  with  works  of  art  and  costly  relics  of  antiquity, 
yet  from  which  not  a  thought  goes  out  to  the  Intel- 


154  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  x, 

lectual  or  moral  improvement  of  mankind,  is  a  model 
of  refined  and  fascinating  selfhood.  Under  certain 
conditions  it  may  do  more  evil  than  the  life  of  a 
libertine.  Walter  Scott's  ideal  of  life,  as  expressed  in 
the  building  and  furnishing  of  Abbotsford,  was  not 
the  true  ideal  of  a  Christian  scholar.  For  their  influ- 
ence on  the  tastes  of  educated  men,  give  me  rather  the 
drinking-songs  of  Robert  Burns.  These  are  the  less 
seductive  to  such  men,  and  carry  their  antidote  on 
the  face  of  them.  Prescott  the  historian  pronounces 
the  mental  luxury  of  successful  composition  one  of  the 
two  most  exalted  pleasures  of  which  man  is  capable ; 
the  enjoyment  of  a  reciprocated  passion  for  woman 
being  the  other. 

Conceive  of  a  man  so  constituted,  or  so  trained  to 
literary  enjoyment,  that  he  can  honestly  say,  as  Buffon 
did  of  his  hours  of  composition,  "  Fourteen  hours  a  day 
at  my  desk  in  a  state  of  transport !  "  It  is  not  difficult 
to  see  that  such  a  man's  life  may  become  as  selfish  in 
its  literary  enjoyment  as  that  of  another  man  in  his 
sensuality.  Is  there  not,  indeed,  a  class  of  literary 
men  who  suggest  to  us  the  doubtful  query  whether 
they  have  any  large,  generous  sympathy  with  their 
kind  ?  Their  studies  are  conducted  with  a  stolid  indif- 
ference to  the  questions  which  are  agitating  the  masses 
of  mind  underneath  them.  At  a  sublime  altitude  above 
such  problems  as  those  which  involve  the  salvation,  the 
liberty,  the  education,  the  bread,  of  the  millions,  these 
favorite  sons  of  literary  fortune  dwell  in  an  atmosphere 
of  rarified  selfishness,  from  which  comes  down  now  and 
then  a  sneer  at  the  boorishness,  or  a  fling  at  the  fanati- 
cism, of  those  who  are  humbly  striving  to  feed  the 
hungry,  and  clothe  the  naked,  and  save  the  lost. 


LECT.  X.]  LITERATURE  AND   PROFESSIONS.  155 

Give  us  rather  the  literary  spirit  of  Milton,  Avho 
returned  from  his  tour  in  Italy,  and  gave  up  his  pro- 
jected visit  to  the  Acropolis  of  Athens,  ''  because," 
said  he,  "  I  esteemed  it  dishonorable  in  me  to  be  linger- 
ing abroad,  even  for  the  improvement  of  my  mind, 
when  my  fellow-citizens  were  contending  for  liberty  at 
home."  Dr.  Arnold  was  so  sensible  of  the  peril  of 
literary  selfishness,  that  he  held  firmly  to  the  opinion 
that  literary  pursuits  ''  should  never  be  a  profession  by 
themselves."  They  should  be  an  appendage  always  to 
some  business  or  profession  which  should  keep  a  man's 
mind  healthy  by  interesting  him  in  the  questions  of 
real  life  and  in  his  own  times.  Speaking  of  Coleridge's 
"  Literary  Remains,"  he  says,  "  There  were  marks 
enough  that  his  mind  was  diseased  by  the  want  of  a 
profession.  The  very  power  of  contemplation  becomes 
impaired  or  perverted  when  it  becomes  the  main  object 
of  life."  Mr.  Froude  the  historian  has  been  heard  to 
say,  that,  if  his  son  sought  to  make  literature  his  profes- 
sion, he  would  oppose  it  as  he  would  an  imprudent 
marriage.  Yet  Froude  speaks  from  experience  of  the 
error  which  he  condemns.  A  pastor's  life  meets  pre- 
cisely the  conditions  which  such  critics  deem  most 
healthfully  conducive  to  success  in  literary  study.  Lit- 
erary labor  held  by  the  necessities  of  a  profession  in 
adjustment  with  the  real  world  we  live  in,  and  made 
tributary  to  great  and  unselfish  uses, — this  is  the 
Christian  ideal  of  a  scholar's  life. 

Yet,  returning  to  the  main  point  before  us,  this  is  one 
of  the  most  cogent  reasons  that  can  be  urged  for  giving 
pre-eminence  in  our  culture  to  the  literature  of  our  own 
language.  We  belong  to  the  English-spealdng  stock. 
With  the  exception  of  foreign  missionaries,  the  Ameri- 


156  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  x 

can  clergy  must  find  their  life's  work  among  an  English- 
speaking  people.  If  heathen  preachers  were  prepared 
to  carry  on  the  Christian  work  efficiently,  they  would 
do  it  among  their  own  countrymen  more  efficiently 
than  you  can  do  it. 

It  is  not  merely  the  accumulations  drawn  from  our 
vernacular,  and  applied  to  direct  use  in  our  labors, 
which  will  fit  us  most  effectually  to  influence  the  minds 
of  our  countrymen.  It  is  more  than  these :  it  is  the 
very  breath  of  mental  life  which  we  take  in  from  the 
literature  of  our  vernacular.  It  is  the  very  essence  of 
all  there  is  in  us  which  gives  us  claim  to  be  called  edu- 
cated men,  and  which  qualifies  us  for  intellectual  and 
moral  leadership.  We  must  derive  this  chiefly  from 
our  vernacular  literature  to  fit  us  to  influence  most 
effectively  those  who  speak  our  vernacular  language. 
That  literature  is  an  expression  of  their  minds  as  it  is 
of  ours.  That  language  is  a  medium  of  more  than 
speech  between  us  and  them.  It  is  a  medium  of  mag- 
netic currents  of  brotherhood.  Speak  English,  and 
they  understand  you.  Think  in  English,  and  you  think 
their  thoughts.  Feel  the  pulsations  of  an  English  cul- 
ture, and  you  feel  the  throbs  of  their  heart.  Live  in  an 
English  literary  atmosphere,  and  you  live  near  to  their 
level,  —  far  enough  above  them  to  insure  their  respect 
for  you  as  their  superior,  yet  near  enough  to  them  to 
feel  yourself  at  home  with  them,  and  make  them  feel 
at  home  with  you. 

Let  me,  in  passing,  notice  one  phenomenon  in  the 
history  of  theological  education  which  I  do  not  en- 
tirely understand,  but  which  illustrates  the  peril  into 
which  an  educated  preacher  sometimes  falls.  It  is 
that  foreigners  educated  for  the  pulpit  in  this  country 


LECT.  X.]       ANGLICIZING  FOREIGN  LITERATURE.  157 

are  seldom  inclined  to  spend  their  professional  life 
among  their  own  countrymen.  A  German  educated 
here  seldom  wishes  to  preach  to  Germans;  or  a  Jew 
to  Jews ;  or  a  Swede  to  the  Swedes  of  our  north-west ; 
or  a  Welshman  to  the  Welsh  churches  of  Pennsylvania. 
I  have  repeatedly  known  them  to  struggle  with  the 
infirmities  of  an  imperfect  knowledge  of  the  English 
language,  and  persist  for  years  in  the  conflict  with 
the  adverse  influences  they  encounter  among  American 
congregations,  rather  than  to  preach  in  their  vernacu- 
lars to  their  own  countrymen.  Even  a  black  man  I 
have  known  to  throw  away  the  advantages  of  kindred 
race  to  lift  himself  up  into  competition  with  the  white 
race.  Such  struggles  are  among  the  saddest  mistakes 
in  professional  policy.  They  are  struggles  against 
nature.  They  abandon  invaluable  advantages  ready  to 
one's  hand,  for  the  sake  of  others  which  must  be  gained 
by  years  of  toil,  and  which,  if  gained,  never  can  equal 
the  treasure  lost.  A  preacher,  above  all  men,  should 
never  abandon  his  vernacular  if  he  can  help  it.  As 
well  may  a  fish  leap  out  of  the  sea. 

Even  those  contributions  to  our  culture  which  we 
receive  from  foreign  sources  need  to  be  Anglicized  in 
our  use  of  them.  They  should  be  received  with  Eng- 
lish tastes,  seen  with  English  eyes,  interpreted  with 
English  idiom,  wrought  into  our  opinions  under  the 
superintendence  of  English  discipline,  and  adjusted  to 
our  use  with  a  certain  sifting  and  weighing  process 
conducted  with  a  heavy  preponderance  of  English 
habits  of  thought.  Every  literature  which  is  trans- 
ferred from  its  native  soil  to  be  used  as  an  exotic  in 
another  land  needs  to  be  passed  through  some  native 
mind  of  that  land,  which  shall  act  in  a  spirit  of  loyalty 


158  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  x. 

to  its  own  language.  Otherwise  that  exotic  literature 
can  not  be  largely  useful  there.  It  will  not  be  useful 
because  it  can  not  be  used.  No  national  literature  is 
ever  dug  up,  and  transported  and  replanted  bodily. 
The  living  forces  of  a  nation's  libraries  can  not  migrate 
in  any  such  way.  Laws  of  national  character  repre- 
sented by  diversities  of  speech  forbid  such  violent 
transitions. 

Therefore  nothing  dooms  a  man  to  greater  sterility 
in  the  pulpit  than  the  attempt  to  import  whole  the 
spirit  of  a  foreign  culture.  Sermons  to  an  Anglo- 
American  audience,  founded  upon  an  exclusive  or 
ascendant  German  model,  expressive  of  German  habits 
of  thought,  clothed  in  German  idioms,  though  in  Eng- 
lish words,  are  useless,  —  necessarily  so,  though  they 
may  not  contain  an  error  or  a  distortion.  I  once  knew 
a  pastor,  who,  under  the  pressure  of  severe  pastoral 
duties,  preached  to  his  people  through  a  winter,  on 
Sunday  afternoons,  a  free  translation  of  the  sermons 
of  a  German  preacher.  He  was  dismissed  in  the 
spring.  Similar  would  be  the  tendency  of  German 
sermons  to  a  German  audience  expressive  of  English 
culture  alone.  The  same  is  true  if  the  ancient  litera- 
tures have  predominated  in  the  forming  of  a  preacher's 
mind. 

Said  a  clergyman  of  high  repute  in  the  ministry,  "  I 
always  fear  for  the  result  when  I  see  a  very  scholarly 
man  enter  the  pulpit."  The  remark  was  founded  on 
his  observation  of  the  fact  that  eminently  scholarly 
men  are  often  alienated  unconsciously  in  their  tastes 
from  the  national  mind  of  their  own  country.  They 
live  so  much  in  dead  or  foreign  languages,  among 
modes  of   thought  which  are  alien  to  those  of  their 


LECT.  X.]  FOREIGN  LANGUAGES.  169 

own  times  and  kindred,  that  they  do  not  syir  pathize 
with  their  audiences,  and  therefore  have  no  magnetic 
power  to  move  them.  No  literature  is  so  universal  in 
its  adaptations  to  the  mind  of  the  race  as  to  be  abso- 
lutely independent  of  its  national  history.  Even  that 
of  the  Bible  is  not  so.  It  is  Jewish  in  its  type  and 
spirit.  We  can  not  use  it  with  power  until  we  Angli- 
cize it.  We  are  obliged  to  bring  to  it  our  own  minds, 
trained  in  the  school  of  English  thought,  and  to  receive 
it  into  our  own  culture  as  into  English  molds,  before 
we  can  reproduce  it  in  English  sermons  to  which  the 
sympathies  of  an  American  audience  will  respond. 

De  Quincey  entertained  such  strong  convictions  on 
the  subject  of  servitude  to  foreign  languages,  that  he 
said  the  act  of  learning  a  new  language  was  in  itself 
an  evil.  "  Unless  balanced  "  by  other  studies,  he  de- 
clared it  to  be  "the  dry  rot  of  the  human  mind."  He 
expressed  more  temperately  the  true  principle  of  cul- 
ture in  this  respect  by  saying  to  a  young  man,  "So 
frame  your  selection  of  languages,  that  the  largest 
possible  body  of  literature  available  for  your  purposes 
shall  be  laid  open  to  you  at  the  least  possible  price 
of  time  and  mental  energy."  "  The  largest  available 
for  your  purposes :  "  this  is  common  sense.  And  to 
every  man  of  English  or  American  stock,  except  a 
professional  philologist,  it  requires  the  subjection  of 
every  thing  outside  of  the  English  tongue  to  acclima- 
tion in  the  atmosphere  of  English  libraries. 


LECTURE  XL 

PSEDOMTNANCE    OF    THE    ENGLISH    LITERATURE,    CON- 
TINUED.—  ITS  INTRINSIC   SUPERIORITY. 

In  addition  to  that  which  has  been  already  remarked 
of  the  predominance  of  the  English  literature  in  a 
pastor's  studies,  it  should  be  further  observed,  that,  all 
things  considered,  the  English  literature  is  intrinsically 
superior  to  every  other.  In  the  preceding  Lecture  we 
claimed  this  superiority  for  it  on  the  ground  of  profes- 
sional usefulness.  It  is  now  claimed  on  the  ground  of 
intrinsic  worth.  I  repeat  the  qualifying  clause  of  the 
statement,  "  all  things  considered."  It  is  a  foolish  par- 
tisanship in  learning  to  decry  any  of  the  great  collec- 
tions of  wisdom  which  represent  the  growth  of  great 
nations  in  intellectual  power.  That  man  has  one  of  the 
elements  of  scholarship  yet  to  acquire,  who  is  unable  to 
admit  the  inferiority  in  some  respects  of  that  which,  as 
a  whole,  may  be  his  favorite  language  and  his  dearest 
resource  of  thought. 

I  do  not  wish  to  assert  extravagant  claims,  still  less 
to  speak  magisterially  of  literatures  in  which  I  am  not 
at  home.  I  assume  to  give  you  only  the  judgment 
which  is  founded  upon  that  knowledge  of  our  own 
literature  which  is  current  among  educated  men,  and 
is  supplemented  by  the  judgment  of  other  literatures 
expressed  by  men  whose  knowledge  entitles  them  to 

160 


LECT.  XI.]  THE  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  161 

be  received  as  authorities.  In  a  sober  estimate  thus 
formed  I  must  think  that  our  own  literature  heads  the 
list.  The  grounds  of  this  judgment  are  numerous,  and 
they  underlie  the  whole  discussion  of  what  is  and  what 
is  not  vital  in  the  current  of  a  nation's  thought.  We 
can  do  little  more  than  to  glance  at  them  with  remark 
sufficient  to  indicate  the  line  of  argument. 

In  the  first  place,  the  argument  is  narrowed  in  its 
range  by  the  fact  that  but  few  of  the  literatures  of 
the  world  can  enter  into  the  account  at  all.  There 
have  been  but  few  great  literatures  in  history.  You 
will  easily  recall  them.  The  only  great  ones  of  anti- 
quity are  those  of  Palestine,  Greece,  and  Rome.  The 
Egyptian,  the  Arabic,  the  Hindoo,  the  Chinese,  are  all 
provincial.  They  are  all  either  infantile  in  character, 
or  lateral  to  those  lines  of  culture  which  have  projected 
themselves  with  power  of  control  into  modern  thought. 
Those  secondary  literatures  had  no  power  of  reproduc- 
tion. They  were  eddies  in  the  stream  and  along  the 
shore  of  civilization. 

Then,  of  the  modern  literatures,  all  that  can  bear 
comparison  with  each  other  are  theEnglish,  the  French, 
and  the  German.  No  intelligent  scholar  would  place 
by  the  side  of  these  the  Italian,  the  Spanish,  the  Portu- 
guese, or  those  of  the  Scandinavian  nations.  It  is  at 
the  head  of  these  imperial  literatures  which  have  made 
and  are  making  the  deepest  grooves  in  history,  that  I 
would  place  the  work  of  the  English  mind  as  a  whole, 
and  as  a  means  of  culture  to  be  used  upon  the  world  of 
the  present  and  the  future. 

This  is,  furthermore,  presumptively  true,  because  the 
English  literature  is  the  expression  of  a  composite  order 
of  mind.     Nations,  like  individuals,  are  subject  to  physi- 


162  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xi. 

ological  laws.  One  of  these  laws  is,  that  virility  of 
national  mind  is  proportioned  to  the  intermingling  of 
virile  races.  Mental  power  does  not  flow  in  the  iso- 
lated currents  of  national  being  which  aristocratic 
jealousy  has  kept  running  for  centuries  in  the  channels 
of  pure  blood.  In  this  relation  of  things  pure  blood  is 
weak  blood.  It  runs  low,  and  grows  pale.  It  is  what 
Shakspeare  calls  "  pigeon-livered."  Mental  force  flows 
rather  in  the  crosses  and  reduplications  and  interfusions 
of  diverse  and  even  contrary  elements  of  being.  Con- 
quests which  bring  warring  elements  into  one  solution 
are  essential  to  the  best  intellectual  resultant.  The 
best  national  mind  in  the  history  of  civilization  is  what 
the  composite  column  is  in  architecture.  It  consists 
of  a  union  of  eclectic  forces.  We  can  not  designate 
it  briefly  and  yet  more  definitely  than  by  terming  it  a 
composite  mind. 

Just  this  the  English  mind  is  in  its  make.  The  Eng- 
lish literature  is  an  expression  of  such  a  composite 
mind.  There  is  no  other  spot  in  the  Old  World  into 
which  so  many  diverse  streams  of  life-blood  have 
flowed  as  into  the  British  Isles.  Not  a  full-blooded 
race  in  all  the  northern  and  central  parts  of  Europe  is 
unrepresented  in  the  present  blood  of  Great  Britain. 
Those  are  the  cool  regions,  where  forceful  men  are 
made  by  the  very  elements.  This  is  a  vital  fact,  that 
the  cool  zones  of  Europe  have  poured  their  populations, 
either  for  colonization  or  conquest,  into  the  original 
reservoir  of  the  British  Empire.  Germany  and  France 
have  both  contributed  some  vital  vigor  through  the 
Angles,  the  Saxons,  and  the  Normans,  to  the  living 
English. 

Dr.  George  P.  Marsh  finds  linguistic  evidences,  in  the 


LECT.  XI.]  THE  ENGLISH  MIND.  163 

structure  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  dialects,  of  a  marvelous 
commingling  of  tribes  in  the  early  invasions  of  Britain. 
He  pronounces  the  linguistic  evidence  of  such  a  com- 
mingling more  conclusive  than  the  historic  evidence. 
"  Diversity,  not  unity,  of  origin,"  he  says,  is  indicated 
by  the  structure  of  the  Anglo-Saxon.  There  is  no  evi- 
dence that  any  one  people  ever  spoke  it  outside  of 
Great  Britain.  It  bears  internal  signs  of  having  grown 
up  there  from  heterogeneous  elements  imported  from 
abroad.  Moreover,  philologists  think  they  find  traces 
of  the  same  heterogeneousness  of  origin  in  the  modern 
dialects  still  existing  around  the  North  Sea,  the  district 
from  which  the  early  invaders  of  Britain  came.  In 
no  other  part  of  Europe,  it  is  said,  are  there  so  many 
forms  of  language,  within  the  same  area,  which  are  not 
intelligibly  interchangeable,  as  are  found  there.  Such 
philological  phenomena  all  point  to  the  fact  of  a  most 
remarkable  solution  of  ingredients  foreign  to  each  other 
in  the  original  compound  which  forms  the  basis  of  the 
English  tongue.  And  what  the  English  tongue  is  in 
thh  respect,  the  English  mind  is,  from  which  our  litera- 
ture has  sprung,  and  of  which  it  is  the  immortal  expres- 
sion. 

It  is  accordant  with  all  the  laws  which  govern  the 
growth  of  national  minds,  that  a  literature  which  is  the 
natural  representative  of  such  a  composite  mind  in 
books  should  be,  as  a  whole,  the  superior  of  the  litera- 
tures springing  from  the  provincial  resources  which 
have  been  tributaries  to  the  stock  of  that  mind.  The 
"  Father  of  Waters,"  it  is  to  be  presumed,  has  a  volume 
and  a  momentum  exceeding  those  of  any  one  of  its 
feeders. 

The  same  law  which  in  this  respect  has  made  our 


164  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xi. 

literature  what  it  is,  is  now  operating  anew  in  our  own 
country  to  make  our  literature  what  it  is  to  be.  Races 
are  intermingling  here  to  an  extent  unprecedented 
since  the  Gothic  conquests  of  Rome.  New  blood  is 
flowing  in  from  every  source  on  the  globe  which  con- 
tains the  elements  of  national  vigor.  It  is  borne  hither 
in  the  veins  of  the  most  enterprising  and  athletic 
classes  of  the  old  nations.  Such  are  always  the  migrat- 
ing classes.  They  are  the  classes  in  which  family  stock 
has  a  future.  It  has  not  spent  itself  in  the  vices  and 
luxuries  of  a  decadent  civilization.  Such  migratory 
hordes  always  carry  with  them  the  germs  of  great 
nations.  That  virility  which  first  appears  in  the 
growth  of  numbers  and  of  material  prosperity  will  by 
and  by  show  itself  in  a  new  stock  of  composite  mind. 
This,  again,  will  reproduce  and  prolong  under  new  con- 
ditions the  national  literature.  It  must  be  English  at 
heart,  but  broadened  and  deepened  to  represent  the 
mind  of  a  new  world. 

The  claims  of  the  English  literature  to  pre-eminence 
in  our  culture  are  confirmed  by  a  third  fact ;  viz.,  that 
the  English  as  compared  with  other  literatures  is  pre- 
eminently a  literature  of  power  as  distinct  from  a 
literature  of  knowledge  only.  Turn  to  De  Quincey's 
"Essays  on  the  Poets."  In  his  essay  on  Alexander 
Pope  you  will  find  very  clearly  expressed  a  vital  distinc- 
tion between  the  literature  of  power  and  the  literature 
of  knowledge.  The  function  of  the  literature  of  knowl- 
edge is  to  teach :  that  of  the  literature  of  power  is  to 
move.  "  The  first  is  a  rudder ;  the  second,  a  sail."  To 
illustrate,  he  inquires,  "  What  do  you  learn  from  the 
'  Paradise  Lost '  ?  Nothing  at  all.  What  do  you  learn 
from  a  cookery-book?     Something  you  did  not  know 


LECT.  XI.]  LITERATURE  OF  POWER.  165 

before,  on  every  page.  But  would  you,  therefore,  i  wt 
the  cookery-book  on  a  higher  level  than  the  'Paradise 
Lost '  ?  What  you  owe  to  Milton  is  not  any  knowledge, 
of  which  a  million  separate  items  are  but  a  million  ad- 
vancing steps  on  the  same  earthly  level.  What  yon 
owe  is  power ;  that  is,  expansion  and  exercise  to  your 
own  latent  capacity  of  sympathy  with  the  infinite, 
where  every  pulse  and  each  separate  influx  is  a  step 
upwaids,  —  a  step  ascending,  as  upon  Jacob's  ladder, 
from  earth  to  mysterious  altitudes." 

I  can  not  develop  this  idea  further  so  vividly  as  you 
will  find  it  expressed  in  the  essay  to  which  I  have 
referred.  The  whole  essa}^  by  the  way,  is  a  superior 
specimen  of  criticism.  The  point  I  would  observe 
more  particularly  is,  that,  in  the  judgment  of  European 
critics,  the  English  literature  as  a  whole  is  superior  to 
any  other  modern  embodiment  of  thought  as  a  litera- 
ture of  power.  It  is  a  plastic  as  distinct  from  a  didactic 
literature.  The  most  intelligent  German  scholars  con- 
cede this  respecting  English  poetry  as  compared  with 
that  of  their  own  language.  German  critics  write 
commentaries  on  Shakspeare  as  on  one  of  the  prophets. 
M.  Guizot  concedes  substantially  the  same  thing  to  the 
English  as  compared  with  the  French  drama. 

Our  literature  is  less  accumulative  than  the  German, 
but  more  creative.  An  impulse  received  from  its  great 
models  strikes  deeper,  and  lives  longer.  The  English 
mind  is  constructive,  and  builds  for  durability.  We 
have  more  numerous  poets,  historians,  orators,  whose 
productions  have  become  standards  and  whose  influ- 
ence is  of  the  creative  sort,  than  are  to  be  found  in 
either  of  the  rival  literatures  of  the  Continent.  Ger- 
man philosophers  and  philologists  are  more  numerous 


166  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xi. 

tlian  ours.  French  scientists  are  more  numerous  than 
ours.  But  with  these  exceptions  our  authors  of  the 
rank  which  De  Quincey  designates  by  the  word  "power" 
as  contrasted  with  "knowledge,"  outnumber  those  of 
France  and  Germany  together.  On  such  a  subject  as 
this,  few  men  can  claim  to  be  authorities.  But  the 
drift  of  critical  judgment  among  scholars,  if  I  have 
not  misread  it,  is  in  this  direction,  giving  ascendency 
to  the  English  over  the  Continental  literatures  in 
respect  to  creative  and  durable  vitality. 

Again :  the  English  is  pre-eminently  a  Christian  lite- 
rature. No  other  is  to  so  large  an  extent  pervaded  with 
Christian  thought.  No  other  has  so  little  in  its  stand- 
ard works  that  is  adverse  to  Christianity.  No  other  is 
so  profoundly  rooted  in  the  Christian  theory  of  life. 
No  other  deals  so  intelligently  with  Christian  ideas  of 
destiny.  No  other  is  so  reverent  towards  the  Christian 
Scriptures.  No  other  owes  so  much  of  its  own  vitality 
to  the  literature  of  the  Hebrews. 

These  features  constitute  the  great  distinction  of  our 
literature  above  those  of  antiquity.  No  Pagan  embodi- 
ment of  thought  can  possibly  be  a  substitute  for  it  or  an 
approximation  to  it.  It  stands  on  an  upper  level,  above 
Greek  and  Roman  culture,  in  the  very  fact  that  it  is 
built  on  Christianity.  It  therefore  embodies  a  large 
experience,  which  the  ancient  classic  languages  had  not 
even  words  to  express,  if  the  ancient  people  had  had 
the  ideas.  Coleridge,  for  example,  declares  that  "  sub- 
limity "  in  the  true  conception  of  it  is  not  extant  in 
any  production  of  the  Greek  literature.  He  contends 
that  it  is  a  modern  idea  which  was  Hebrew  in  its  origin. 
Yet  the  English  literature  is  full  of  it.  Moreover,  the 
sterility  of  the  classic  Greek  language  in  words  expres- 


LECT.  XI.]  LITERATURE  OF  FREEDOM.  167 

sive  of  Christian  thought  is  seen  in  the  very  (,xistence 
of  the  New  Testament.  But  our  English  tongue  is 
built  upon  Christian  thought. 

The  English  is  also  a  Protestant  literature,  —  Protes- 
tant as  distinct  from  a  Romish,  and  equally  distinct 
from  an  infidel  bias.  In  this  it  stands  above  both  its 
rivals  on  the  Continent.  Dr.  Newman  of  Oxford  says, 
speaking  of  the  conversion  of  England  to  Rome,  "  The 
literature  of  England  is  against  us.  It  is  Protestant  in 
warp  and  woof.  We  never  can  unmake  it."  This  fea- 
ture of  it  gives  to  it  a  splendid  opening  into  the  world's 
future,  if  there  is  any  truth  in  our  faith  that  the  world 
is  to  be  converted  to  some  simple,  spiritual,  apostolic 
type  of  Christianity. 

Furthermore :  the  English  is  the  literature  of  consti- 
tutional freedom.  It  is  not  a  literature  of  anarchy,  noi 
of  despotism,  as  so  large  a  fragment  of  the  Continental 
literatures  is,  but  is  an  expression  of  constitutional  lib- 
erty. I  emphasize,  it  is  an  expression  of  that  liberty. 
It  is  not  a  silent  nor  an  expurgated  volume  in  respect 
to  the  ideas  of  freedom  which  are  upheaving  the 
nations.  The  body  of  it  has  never  sprung  by  stealth 
from  a  muzzled  press.  It  has  not  been  obliged  to 
ask  leave  to  be,  from  the  police.  Next  to  the  Bible, 
no  other  single  fortress  of  liberty  in  the  world  is  so 
impregnable  as  the  walls  and  buttresses  of  English 
libraries. 

Those  libraries  are  full  of  outbursts  of  the  love  of 
liberty  in  poetic  forms  which  stir  the  passions  of  na- 
tions. The  common  people  sing  them  in  their  homes ; 
mothers  over  cradles ;  and  plowmen  among  the  hills. 
Our  libraries  are  full  of  calm  and  scholarly  defenses  of 
freedom  in  the  forms  of  constitutional  argument  which 


168  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xi. 

create  great  statesmen  for  the  leadership  of  nations. 
They  are  full  of  the  statute  laws  of  England,  which 
are  liberty  embodied  in  good  government.  They  are 
full  of  histories  of  liberty  in  the  great  battles  and  revo- 
lutions of  England,  —  a  record  which  a  nation  never 
retreats  from  or  dishonors  till  it  falls  off  from  the 
platform  of  great  Powers. 

Other  nations  can  not  know  our  literature  with  safety 
to  despotic  ideas.  Men  have  to  expurgate  it,  as  slave- 
holders did  our  school-books  before  the  civil  war,  in 
order  to  make  it  innocent  of  hostility  to  despotism. 
The  poetry  of  England  must  be  riddled  with  expurga- 
tions, before  it  can  be  safely  taught  in  the  schools  of  a 
people  who  fear  the  growth  of  free  ideas.  The  Bible 
is  but  a  fragment  of  that  mass  of  thought  which 
Romanism  would  expel  from  our  schools.  The  sonnets 
of  Milton  and  Wordsworth,  the  speeches  of  Edmund 
Burke,  the  story  of  Magna  Charta,  the  biography  of 
Wilberforce,  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill,  must  all  be 
expunged  or  garbled  before  Romanism  is  safe  in  com- 
mon schools  in  which  the  English  literature  is  taught 
or  sung.  No  poetic  fiction  is  it,  but  the  most  prosaic 
of  sober  facts  in  political  economy,  which  Wordsworth 
uttered :  — 

"  We  must  be  free  or  die,  who  speak  the  tongue 
That  Shakspeare  spake." 

This  affiliation  of  our  literature  with  constitutional  free- 
dom is  a  feature  of  it  which  must  open  avenues  for  it 
into  the  world's  future.  Certain  great  arteries  of  life 
in  the  great  nations  run  directly  into  it.  The  heart  of 
the  nations  is  beating  in  sympathy  with  it  to  an  extent 
not  true  of  any  other  literature  dead  or  living. 


LECT.  XI.]  WELL-BALANCED  LITERATURE.  109 

Moreover,  the  English  is  a  well-balanced  liteiature. 
No  important  department  of  it  is  meager.  In  some 
departments  the  Continental  literatures  surpass  it  in 
affluence  ;  but  the  critic  betrays  ignorance  of  the  Eng- 
lish mind  who  pronounces  it  barren  in  any  of  the  great 
lines  of  scholarly  thought. 

The  only  department  of  culture  in  which  England  is 
poor,  as  compared  with  the  Continental  countries,  is 
that  of  the  fine  arts.  Canova  gave  the  true  explana- 
tion of  that  when  he  said,  "  It  is  all  owing  to  your  free 
institutions.  They  drain  away  genius  from  the  arts  to 
the  bar  and  the  House  of  Commons.  Had  England 
been  Italy,  Pitt  and  Fox  would  have  been  your  artists." 
In  no  great  department  of  literature  is  the  English 
language  barren. 

Our  literature  is  evenly  balanced,  also,  in  the  fact  of 
its  aversion  to  extremes  of  opinion,  and  extravagances 
of  culture.  In  philosophy,  in  criticism,  in  morals,  in 
poetry,  in  theology,  in  politics,  the  English  mind  re- 
volts from  excesses.  As  a  whole,  the  literature  is 
healthy.  It  is  full-chested,  and  walks  erect.  In  the 
main,  it  is  a  liberal  and  candid  literature.  It  is  free, 
also,  from  innate  inclinations  to  sentimentality  or  to 
mysticism.  It  is  an  earnest  growth  of  thought  rooted 
in  good  sense.  If  a  literary  monomaniac  happens  to 
spring  up,  and  attract  attention  by  unseemly  antics,  the 
reading  people  of  England  look  on  long  enough  to 
laugh,  and  then  go  about  their  business. 

Opposites  are  well  balanced  in  our  literature.  It 
never  surges  this  way  and  that,  as  if  a  whole  nation 
had  run  mad  for  the  want  of  mental  ballast.  In  this 
respect  it  is  superior  to  that  of  France.  No  single 
man  could  ever  have  had  such  power  to  lead  the  Eng- 


170  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xi. 

lisli  people  on  a  tramp  of  delusion  and  godlessness  as 
Voltaire  had  over  the  French  mind.  It  was  not  in  the 
make  of  the  English  mind  to  be  thus  inveigled  into  a 
volcanic  revolution.  Both  nations  had  their  revolu- 
tions. Both  executed  their  monarchs  on  the  scaffold. 
But  England  did  it  decently,  under  the  forms  and  in 
the  spirit  of  her  ancient  laws.  She  did  not  sacrifice 
all  her  institutions  for  the  sake  of  doing  it.  The 
conscience  of  the  nation  acted  in  it  a  great  national 
tragedy,  with  no  heart  for  ribaldry  and  brutality.  It 
was  done  under  a  regime  marked  by  days  of  religious 
fasting. 

Macaulay  says  that  the  two  most  profound  revolu- 
tions in  English  history  were  that  which  effaced  the 
distinction  between  the  Norman  and  the  Saxon,  and 
that  which  effaced  the  distinction  between  master  and 
slave.  Both  were  brought  about  by  silent  and  imper- 
ceptible changes.  Civil  war  accomplished  neither; 
moral  causes  produced  both.  It  is  impossible  to  fix 
the  time  when  either  ceased  to  be.  Lord  Macaulay 
says  that  the  institution  of  villanage  has  never  been 
abolished  by  statute  to  tliis  day.  With  such  history 
as  this  in  the  process  of  making,  and  constantly  going 
on  record  in  her  libraries,  and  taught  in  her  universities, 
and  fostered  by  her  pulpits,  and  acted  in  her  drama,  and 
sung  in  the  ballads  of  her  people,  it  has  never  been 
possible  for  England  to  have  a  "  Reign  of  Terror." 

The  literature  of  this  English  stock,  therefore,  excites 
trust  in  its  genuineness.  It  is  a  grandly  equable  thing 
by  which  to  form  a  scholar's  mind.  It  cultivates  his 
powers  symmetrically.  It  exalts  intellectual  and  moral 
above  material  and  turbulent  causes  in  his  ji.dgment 
of  events.      It  creates   a   predisposition  in  his   tastes 


LECT.  XI.]  MATURE  LITERATURE.  171 

to  a  moderation  of  passionate  opinions  and  to  an 
appreciation  of  opposites  both  in  historic  and  in  living 
character. 

Yet  again :  the  English  is  the  most  mature  of  all 
the  gi'eat  embodiments  of  the  world's  thought.  It  ex- 
presses the  results  of  the  longest  growth  of  power  in 
literary  forms.  It  has  claims,  superior  to  those  of  any 
other,  to  be  regarded  as  the  last  and  ripest  fruitage 
of  intellectual  energy  that  the  world  has  yet  seen. 
The  proof  of  this  can  only  be  hinted  at  here. 

In  the  comparison  with  the  ancient  literatures,  it  is 
sufficient  to  say,  as  we  have  before  observed,  that  the 
English  has  utilized  them  all.  It  is  in  part  built  upon 
them.  It  has  absorbed  whatever  is  vital  in  every  one 
of  them.  If  they  were  extinguished  to-day  in  their 
original  forms,  every  idea  they  contain  which  is  vital 
to  mental  culture  could  be  reproduced  from  the  Eng- 
lish literature  alone.  Dr.  Johnson  said,  that,  in  his 
(lay,  almost  the  whole  bulk  of  human  thought  and  learn- 
ing could  be  expressed  in  a  vocabulary  drawn  from  the 
writings  of  Bacon,  Raleigh,  and  Shakspeare.  It  is 
more  strictly  true  that  not  a  thought  which  is  of  any 
value  to  the  present  or  the  future  of  civilization  can  be 
found,  in  either  of  the  three  great  literatures  which 
represent  the  ancient  development  of  mind,  which  is 
not  extant  in  English  libraries.  Consequently  no  man 
can  thoroughly  master  the  English  literature  withoat 
receiving  unconsciously  into  his  own  culture  the  sub- 
stantial literary  life  of  Palestine,  Greece,  and  Rome. 

Large  account  may  fairly  be  made  of  this  fact  in  the 
case  which  is  prominently  before  us,  of  a  man  whose 
life  is  given  to  an  arduous  profession,  and  who,  there- 
fore, can  find  little  time  or  mental  force  for  the  study 


172  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xi. 

of  the  ancient  classics.  Let  him  master  the  classics 
of  his  own  vernacular,  and  he  is  breathing  an  atmos- 
phere made  up,  in  part,  of  the  best  Hebrew  and  Greek 
and  Roman  models  all  the  while. 

In  the  comparison  of  the  English  with  the  German 
and  French  literatures,  it  is  sufficient,  so  far  as  the  point 
of  relative  maturity  is  concerned,  to  note  the  fact  that 
the  English  is  much  the  oldest  of  the  three,  and  yet  is 
growing  abreast  with  its  rivals.  So  far  back  as  when 
Chaucer,  Spenser,  Shakspeare,  Milton,  Hooker,  and 
Jeremy  Taylor  had  all  appeared,  the  French  literature 
was  barely  beginning.  De  Quincey  says,  that,  in  the 
time  of  Corneille,  he  was  the  only  French  living  author 
of  general  credit,  and  Montaigne  the  only  deceased 
author  of  equal  eminence.  The  English  had  an  im- 
mense bulk  of  literature  long  before  that,  which  has 
lived  to  our  day.  As  to  German  literature,  at  that 
time  it  was  almost  a  cipher.  The  English  literature  is 
by  far  the  most  mature  of  those  of  modern  growth,  in 
that  it  has  the  longest  historical  development,  and  is  yet 
thriving.     It  gives  no  signs  of  decadent  taste. 

Still  further :  the  English  is  the  nearest  approach  the 
world  has  seen  to  a  popular  literature.  Strictly  speak- 
ing, there  is  no  popular  literature  in  existence ;  but 
ours  is  an  approximation  to  it  to  an  extent  which  is 
not  true  of  an}'"  other  which  has  existed  since  the  time 
of  the  old  Greek  drama.  Created  as  it  has  been 
under  the  influence  of  free  institutions,  it  is  a  nearer 
approach  to  the  masses  of  the  people  than  any  other 
of  modern  times.  A  mind  formed  under  its  sway  has 
less  to  acqmre  from  other  sources  in  order  to  fit  it  for 
leadership  of  the  masses  of  men  than  if  formed  under 
any  foreign  cuHure  whatever. 


LECT.  XI.]  GERMAN  LITERATURE.  173 

The  spirit  of  the  French  literature,  in  this  respect, 
was  expressed  in  the  sentiment  of  Voltaire,  that  the 
people  should  be  amused,  and  have  bread,  but  should 
never  be  tempted  to  reason ;  for,  "  if  the  people  became 
philosophers,  all  would  go  to  destruction."  The  liter- 
ary mind  of  France,  till  a  recent  date,  has  had  no  faith 
in  the  people.  Moreover,  so  far  as  French  authors  do 
address  themselves  to  the  popular  mind,  it  is  chiefly  to 
the  Parisian  mind;  and  they  publish  much  which  is 
vicious  both  in  morals  and  in  taste.  The  chief  repre- 
sentative of  popular  literature  in  France  is  the  French 
novel,  the  most  corrupt  of  all  modern  fiction.  It 
seldom  deserves  a  place  in  a  popular  library. 

In  Germany  we  find  a  similar  gulf  between  the 
people  and  the  national  literature.  I  am  unable  to  say 
what  changes  may  be  taking  place  there  in  this  respect ; 
but,  if  I  am  rightly  informed,  there  is  scarcely  another 
body  of  men  living,  of  equal  numbers  and  intelligence, 
comprising  so  many  masters  of  solid  learning,  who  are 
so  far  removed  from  the  masses  of  the  people  as  the 
scholarly  men  of  Germany.  German  taste  in  literature 
seeks  the  clouds.  My  attention  has  been  called  to  the 
fact,  that,  so  far  as  German  books  are  addressed  to  the 
popular  mind,  they  are  aimed  at  a  lower  grade  of  intel- 
lect than  the  same  class  of  books  in  this  country. 
They  assume  that  the  people  are  nearer  childhood  in 
their  tastes.  The  paternal  idea  which  pervades  so 
largely  the  German  theory  of  government  is  prominent 
in  German  books  for  the  people. 

This  involves  no  disparagement  of  the  German  litera- 
ture in  other  relations.  Palliations  of  the  existing 
state  of  things  are  found  in  the  political  distractions  of 
Germany  for  the  last  half-century.      German  govern- 


174  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xi. 

meDts  have  virtually  said  to  German  scholars,  "  Think 
and  print  for  yourselves  and  among  yourselves.  Do  not 
set  the  people  to  thinking."  Consequently,  as  related 
to  the  English,  the  German  literature  is  inferior  in  those 
elements  which  go  to  make  a  thinking  commonalty. 
The  English  has  more  of  the  popular  mind  and  heart 
expressed  in  it,  and  in  forms  which  can  reach  and 
inspire  the  popular  mind  and  heart.  It  assumes  the 
existence  among  the  people  of  a  more  manly  mind  and 
a  broader  range  of  thinking.  It  has  more  of  those 
universal  ideas  which  appeal  to  human  nature  as  such 
and  in  its  maturity  of  development,  and  which  are 
seconded  by  the  large  common  sense  of  mankind. 

Consequently,  a  mind  in  whose  culture  English 
thought  and  taste  predominate  will,  other  things  being 
equal,  have  a  larger  capacity  of  influence  over  the 
popular  mind  than  one  in  whose  growth  the  German 
literature  is  ascendant.  It  will  have  less  of  the  con- 
traction of  an  exclusively  scholastic  discipline. 

Finally,  the  English  literature  contains  a  rich  depart- 
ment devoted  to  the  several  forms  of  persuasive  speech. 
Eloquence  proper  is  more  largel}^  represented  in  the 
English  language  than  in  any  other  in  all  history.  Tlie 
forensic  and  deliberative  eloquence  of  England  has  con- 
tributed standards  to  libraries  which  have  almost  no 
counterpart,  and  can  have  none,  in  any  other  living 
language.  The  senate  and  the  bar  on  the  continent 
of  Europe  have  till  recently  been  almost  nonentities  for 
any  purpose  of  oratorical  culture.  The  restriction  of 
free  speech  there  has  doomed  the  Continental  libraries 
to  sterility  in  both  these  departments  which  are  so 
essential  to  the  culture  of  a  public  man  in  America. 

The  strictly  professional  literature  of  the  pulpit  also  is 


LECT.  XI.]  EUROPEAN  PULPIT.  175 

largely  represented  in  our  native  tongue.  I)e  Quincey, 
by  a  refreshing  departure  from  his  usual  contempt  for 
the  clergy,  admits  that  the  living  pulpit  of  England  is 
uttering  a  vast  amount  of  unpublished  literature  every 
Sunday.  The  English  language  has  a  large  contribu- 
tion from  the  pulpit  of  the  past  also  already  among  its 
published  standards.  In  the  richness  of  this  depart- 
ment it  stands  unrivaled.  The  ancient  classics  contain 
no  word  for  such  a  thing  as  a  pulpit.  Preaching  was 
an  undiscovered  art  when  Plato  taught  and  when 
Homer  sung.  Aristotle's  rhetoric  would  be  proof,  if 
there  were  no  other,  that  he  never  heard  a  sermon. 
The  vocabulary  of  Plato  and  Homer  can  not  express 
all  the  ideas  which  are  predominant  in  Christian 
preaching. 

The  French  and  the  German  pulpits  bear  no  com- 
parison with  the  English.  They  contain  no  single 
models  which  equal  Barrow  and  South  and  Taylor  and 
Robert  Hall.  Still  less  do  they  contain  any  such 
variety  as  is  found  in  the  history  of  English  preaching. 
The  French  ideal  of  the  pulpit  is  too  theatrical  for 
profound  and  long-lived  influence.  The  Germans  can 
hardly  be  said  to  have  an  ideal  of  it  which  reaches  up 
to  the  German  ideal  of  learning.  In  the  German  view 
the  pulpit  is  beneath  scholarly  criticism.  Tholuck, 
Krummacher,  Nitzsch,  Schleiermacher,  and  Stein meyer 
are  fair  representatives  of  the  first  rank  of  German 
preachers  in  the  last  half-century.  Not  one  of  them 
would  be  placed  by  an  intelligent  critic  by  the  side  of 
American  preachers  of  the  corresponding  rank. 

The  English  language,  on  the  contrary,  overflows  with 
the  literature  of  the  pulpit.  It  abounds  in  material 
which  secular  critics  admit  to  he  literature.     This  is  a 


176  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xi. 

concession  which  secular  criticism  makes  with  difficulty. 
But  the  fact  compels  it.  We  have  standards  which 
were  created  by  the  pulpit,  to  which  scholars  in  all 
departments  of  thought  turn,  as  among  the  choicest 
productions  of  the  English  mind.  The  bearing  of  this 
opulence  of  our  literature  in  the  forms  of  persuasive 
speech  upon  the  claims  of  it  on  the  study  of  a  preacher 
is  obvious. 

It  is  not  that  the  ancient  or  the  foreign  literatures 
should  be  ignored,  or  estimated  lightly,  but  that  they 
should  be  subordinated.  We  should  go  to  them  from 
an  English  culture,  and  come  back  from  them  to  an 
English  culture.  Enlarge  that  culture,  expand  it, 
deepen  it,  elevate  it,  but  let  it  in  the  end  be  English, 
pervaded  by  English  tastes,  controlled  by  English  good 
sense,  and  supported  by  sympathy  with  English  models. 


LECTURE   XII. 

THE      PLACE      OF      AMERICAN      LITERATURE      IN     THE 
STUDIES   OF  A  PASTOR. 

(5)  The  views  thus  far  advanced  suggest  a  prin- 
ciple in  the  selection  of  authors,  by  which  the  princi- 
ples already  named  should  be  modified.  It  is,  that, 
in  our  estimate  of  authors,  the  just  claims  of  Ameri- 
can literature  should  be  recognized.  The  chief  value 
of  this  suggestion  is  felt  not  so  much  in  the  practical 
selection  of  books  as  in  the  spirit  in  which  a  pas- 
tor's studies  are  conducted.  Respect  for  the  national 
mind  of  one's  own  country  and  for  contemporaneous 
authorship  is  a  prime  factor  in  the  preparation  of  a 
man  to  minister  to  his  own  countrymen.  The  same 
law  by  which  a  preacher's  culture  is  impaired  for  pro- 
fessional service  by  an  excessive  fondness  for  the 
ancient  rather  than  the  modern,  or  the  distant  above 
the  near,  in  literary  development,  holds  good  respecting 
a  similar  preference  of  the  foreign  to  the  national 
literature. 

It  must  be  conceded  that  one  of  the  dangers  to  the 
reading  of  an  American  pastor  is  that  he  will  read 
disproportionately  American  books.  Our  proximity  to 
them,  the  ease  with  which  they  can  be  obtained,  and 
the  fulsome  style  of  criticism  in  which  American  peri- 
odicals indulge,  expose  us  to  the  peril  of  wasting  our 

177 


178  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xn. 

mental  force  on  works  of  ephemeral  authority.  An 
American  library  needs  frequent  weeding  to  rid  it  of 
books  which  do  not  wear  well  in  the  judgment  of 
mature  scholarship.  One  of  the  most  eminent  of  our 
American  scholars,  at  the  time  of  his  decease,  had  hun- 
dreds of  such  discarded  volumes  in  his  attic-chambers, 
where  he  had  hidden  them  for  years,  that  his  eye  might 
not  be  wearied  by  the  sight  of  them,  and,  perhaps, 
that  his  vanit}^  might  not  be  wounded  by  the  remem- 
brance of  his  folly  in  purchasing  them.  During  the 
civil  war,  when  manufacturers  gave  large  prices  for 
waste  paper,  many  libraries  were  reduced  in  bulk,  but 
improved  in  quality,  by  the  sale  of  American  books  to 
peddlers. 

Still,  in  this  as  in  more  important  things,  it  is  a  pro- 
tection against  the  extreme  to  see  and  to  trust  the  mean. 
The  principle  is  a  sound  one,  that  an  American  scholar 
should  recognize  the  growth  of  American  mind.  In 
books,  as  in  affairs,  that  growth  demands  a  scholarly 
respect.  The  literature  of  one's  country  does  not 
deserve  the  pre-eminence  which  belongs  to  that  of  one's 
vernacular.  The  growth  of  a  language  is  a  more 
profound  development  of  mind  than  the  peopling  of 
a  continent,  or  the  organization  of  a  republic.  But 
there  is  a  literary  justice  which  a  preacher  should  not 
withhold  from  the  literature  of  his  country  in  his  ad- 
justment of  proportions  in  his  own  reading.  He  can 
not  do  it  without  peril  to  the  adaptations  of  his  own 
culture  to  professional  service. 

Our  American  literature,  be  it  observed,  then,  claims 
our  recognition  on  three  grounds.  One  is  that  of  its 
intrinsic  merits  in  some  departments.  In  poetry  it 
must  in  candor  be  admitted  that  we  ha\  e  nothing  yet 


LECT.  XII.]  POEMS  IN  ACTION.  179 

to  show  which  criticism  places  by  the  side  of  the  great 
poets  of  England.  The  American  is  not  yet  a  poetio 
temperament.  Our  civilization  has  not  yet  reached  the 
poetic  stage  of  its  development.  Our  national  history 
is  not  old  enough  to  create  for  itself  the  poetic  enthu- 
siasm. We  have,  also,  in  the  past  of  the  English  mind, 
so  radiant  a  constellation  of  poets,  that  the  taste  of  our 
own  scholars  delights  in  them  without  attempting  to 
emulate  their  luster.  "Like  thee  I  will  not  build; 
better  I  can  not,"  said  Michael  Angelo  of  the  dome  of 
Santa  Maria  in  Florence.  Such  may  be  the  instinct 
of  the  American  imagination  in  visiting  the  "  Poets' 
Corner"  of  Westminster  Abbey. 

Whatever  be  the  cause  of  the  phenomenon,  we  owe 
it  to  the  integrity  of  our  critical  judgment  to  acknowl- 
edge the  fact  that  our  literature  is  not  eminent  in  this 
department  of  production.  We  are  a  young  nation. 
We  have  been  living  poems.  Many  events  in  our  his- 
tory are  grand  themes  for  poetic  story.  Says  a  writer 
in  "The  Edinburgh  Review,"  "There  is  a  poetry  of 
the  past,  of  the  mountains,  the  seas,  the  stars ;  but  a 
great  city  seen  aright  is  tenfold  more  poetical  than 
them  all."  A  Pacific  railroad  is  a  poem  in  act.  The 
State  of  Massachusetts  is  a  poem.  Old  Governor  Win- 
throp  is  a  hero  beyond  Greek  or  Roman  fame.  The 
colonization  of  Kansas  is  splendid  material  for  a  great 
epic  :  so  is  the  war  of  the  rebellion.  Magnificent  mate- 
rials have  we  in  our  history  for  poetry  which  shall  by 
and  by  rival  Wordsworth's  sonnets,  and  Shakspeare's 
historical  dramas.  They  will  give  birth  to  great  poems 
when  age  has  gathered  around  them  the  imaginative 
reverence  of  scholars.  As  Carlyle  says  of  "  The  May- 
flower," "  Were  we  of  open  sense,  as  the  Greeks  were, 


180  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xii. 

we  had  found  a  poem  here,  one  of  Nature's  own,  such 
as  she  writes  in  broad  facts  over  great  continents." 

In  several  other  departments,  however,  we  have  a 
literature  already  of  which  we  need  not  be  ashamed. 
In  the  department  of  history  America  is  represented 
by  authors  whom  European  criticism  does  not  hesitate 
to  rank  by  the  side  of  the  great  historians  of  England. 
Baron  Alexander  Humboldt  thought  that  there  was  not 
in  existence  a  finer  specimen  of  historic  writing  than 
Prescott's  ''  Ferdinand  and  Isabella."  In  the  depart- 
ment of  the  essai/  we  have  writers  representing  in 
monographs  nearly  all  the  varieties  of  English  style  as 
perfectly  as  writers  of  the  same  class  in  Great  Britain. 

In  prose-fiction  Walter  Scott  and  Charles  Dickens 
are  the  only  names  which  deserve  to  precede  that  of 
Cooper.  Mrs.  Stowe  must  be  credited  with  having 
produced  a  romance  which  has  had  a  larger  circulation, 
in  more  numerous  languages,  than  any  other  book  ever 
published,  except  the  Bible.  In  forensic  and  parliamen- 
tary/ eloquence  the  names  of  Webster,  Clay,  Calhoun, 
Sumner,  do  not  suffer  by  the  side  of  Burke,  Pitt, 
Fox,  Brougham.  In  the  department  of  demonstrative 
eloquence  I  do  not  know  the  name  in  the  annals  of 
any  living  nation  which  should  stand  before  that  of 
Edward  Everett.  For  that  style  of  eloquence,  Everett's 
orations  are  well-nigh  perfect. 

In  the  literature  of  the  pulpit  there  certainly  are 
names,  of  the  living  and  the  dead,  which  must  be 
ranked  as  equals,  at  least,  of  the  most  powerful  preach- 
ers of  England.  In  no  country  in  the  world  has  the 
pulpit  proved  its  power  by  its  effects  more  conspicu- 
ously than  in  ours.  The  fear  sometimes  expressed  of 
the  decline  of  the  American  pulpit  is  not  entirely  un- 


LECT.  xn.]  OUR  LITER ATUx^E  ENGLISH.  181 

warranted ;  yet,  all  things  considered,  the  evidences  of 
decline  are  offset  by  evidences  of  improvement.  Our 
pulpit  has  a  fluctuating  history ;  but  on  the  whole  it 
has  never  had  a  more  docile,  and  at  the  same  time 
intelligent,  hearing  than  it  has  to-day.  The  decline  of 
the  pulpit  in  the  sense  so  much  boasted  of  by  skeptical 
critics  is  disproved  by  the  very  impunity  with  which 
those  critics  proclaim  their  sentiments.  They  would 
be  at  the  whipping-post,  and  their  books  burnt  by  the 
hangman,  if  the  American  pulpit  had  not  assisted  by 
its  reasoning  habits  to  enlighten  and  liberalize  the 
popular  faith.  On  the  ground,  therefore,  of  its  intrinsic 
merits,  American  literature  deserves  to  be  recognized 
in  our  estimate  of  the  resources  of  our  professional 
discipline. 

It  deserves  recognition,  also,  as  an  offshoot  of  the 
literature  of  England.  This  is  at  present  its  relative 
position.  As  we  have  no  American  language,  neither 
have  we  an  American  literature,  which  is  not  a  graft 
upon  the  English  stock.  Their  literature  is  ours,  and 
ours  is  theirs.  In  this  respect  our  literature  partakes 
of  the  same  character  with  that  of  nearly  all  the  insti- 
tutions which  lie  deepest  in  our  civilization.  Those 
institutions  are  essentially  English.  Our  religion,  our 
jurisprudence,  our  educational  policy,  our  periodical 
press,  our  tendencies  in  pliilosophy,  in  a  word  the  make 
of  American  mind  in  all  its  great  expressions  of  itself, 
are  English  at  bottom.  They  are  not  German;  they 
are  not  French ;  they  are  not  derivatives  from  the 
ancient  republics:  they  are  English.  No  man  under- 
stands the  American  mind  who  fails  to  appreciate  this, 
or  who  does  not  act  upon  it  in  his  public  life. 

Public  speakers  among  us  fail  to  reach  the  popular 


182  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [le^  t.  xii. 

heart,  if  their  owii  culture  is  tinged  with  foreign  and 
ancient  literatures  to  such  extent  as  to  make  those 
obvious  in  public  sj)eech.  The  chief  defect  in  senator 
Sumner's  speeches  was  the  excessive  freedom  with 
which  he  indulged  in  quotations  from  the  ancient 
classics,  and  allusion  to  the  ancient  mythology.  He 
was  at  home  in  English  literature  and  history.  He  was 
master  of  a  solid  English  style.  For  durability  and 
richness  of  material,  no  other  speeches  in  the  Senate, 
since  Mr.  Webster's  day,  were  equal  to  his.  Yet  he  did 
not  seize  and  hold  the  popular  mind.  Even  the  United- 
States  Senate  sometimes  wearied  of  him.  This  was  in 
part  because  of  the  artificialness  created  by  his  freedom 
in  the  use  of  the  learning  he  had  derived  from  the 
dead  languages.  In  the  real  affairs  of  life,  and  specially 
in  the  government  of  great  nations,  men  demand  an 
intensity,  and  a  homeliness  of  aim  at  present  realities, 
which  forbid  a  very  free  and  very  obvious  use  of 
foreign  and  ancient  lore.  It  chills  their  sympathies 
to  quote  from  an  author  who  has  been  two  thousand 
years  in  his  grave.  Therefore  it  weakens  a  speaker's 
grasp  of  the  popular  mind. 

It  is  a  mystery  to  many  that  the  English  Parliament 
should  tolerate  so  much  as  they  do  of  that  which 
seems  like  pedantic  use  of  the  Latin,  and,  to  some  ex- 
tent, of  the  Greek  languages  in  parliamentary  debates. 
The  English  House  of  Commons  is  said  to  be  the  most 
prosaic  body  of  men  living.  Any  thing  like  "  fine  writ- 
ing "  they  put  down  with  their  inimitable  "  Hear, 
hear !  "  in  a  tone  of  derision  which  a  young  speaker 
never  ventures  to  encounter  but  once.  The  style  of 
their  debates  is  almost  wholly  conversational.  The 
prime  qualities  which  command  their  hearing,  if  not 


TECT.  XII.]  CLASSIC  QUOTATIONS.  183 

their  votes,  are  good  sense  in  talking  to  the  point,  and 
stopping  at  the  end.  Yet  some  of  their  most  eminent 
debaters  interlard  their  speeches  with  classic  quotations 
to  an  extent  which  seems  inconsistent  with  the  parlia- 
mentary taste  as  evinced  in  other  things. 

I  have  never  till  recently  met  with  a  satisfactory- 
explanation  of  the  apparent  anomaly.  But  probably 
the  truth  is  this,  that  the  great  majority  of  those  quo- 
tations are  relics  of  the  school-days  of  the  members  of 
Parliament.  They  are  almost  all  of  them  graduates 
of  the  two  universities.  In  the  universities,  classical 
study  is  the  central  discipline.  It  overshadows  every- 
thing else.  It  takes  largely  the  form  of  committing 
to  memory  favorite  passages  from  Greek  and  Latin 
authors,  and  imitating  their  versification.  A  certain 
routine  of  such  passages  becomes  as  familiar  as  the 
English  alphabet  to  the  graduates  of  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge. To  a  great  extent,  they  all  know  by  heart 
the  same  extracts,  and  know  the  English  of  them. 
When,  therefore,  twenty  years  after  graduation,  they 
meet  in  Parliament,  and  harangue  each  other,  an  apt 
recitation  from  one  of  the  old  text-books  of  the  uni- 
versity, given  with  the  proper  intonation  and  prosody, 
is  instantly  recognized  and  understood  by  four-fifths  of 
the  audience.  It  comes  to  them  also  with  the  golden 
associations  of  their  youth.  Hence  the  applause  with 
which  such  a  quotation,  if  apt,  is  often  received.  More 
than  once  a  ministry  has  been  unseated  by  the  irre- 
sistible power  of  a  piece  of  sarcasm  clothed  in  the 
words  of  Juvenal  or  Cicero. 

This  explanation,  which  I  have  from  a  trustworthy 
source,  is  plausible,  to  say  the  least.  But  it  is  obvious 
that  an  American  senator  who  should   imitate  in  that 


184  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xii. 

respect  an  Imglish  leader  in  the  House  of  Commons 
would  have  no  such  prepossessions  in  his  audience  to 
protect  liim  from  the  charge  of  pedantry.  In  this 
country,  audiences  scarcely  tolerate  a  Gieek  or  Roman 
tinge  in  the  style  of  public  speech.  But  they  bear 
any  thing  belonging  to  our  vernacular.  With  all  our 
hereditary  antipathy  to  English  aristocracy,  and  our 
rivalship  with  English  prestige,  we  are  still  English  at 
heart.  We  feel  in  every  throb  our  English  origin. 
We  confess  our  kinship  to  English  modes  of  thought. 
We  love  the  old  mother-country.  We  can  not  help 
this  till  we  cease  to  think  in  the  mother-tongue. 

American  literature  has  furthermore  a  special  claim 
upon  the  clergy,  in  the  fact  that  the  theological  think- 
ing of  this  country  has  been  to  a  certain  extent  original. 
In  no  part  of  the  world  in  modern  times  has  theological 
discussion  been  more  vigorous,  or  more  unique  in  its 
character.  Some  of  the  ablest  minds  of  the  last  centu- 
ry spent  their  lives  in  it.  It  has  also  commanded  a 
respect  among  the  laity  which  it  has  not  received  in 
England  or  in  Continental  Europe.  Men  who  in  Europe 
would  have  been  foremost  as  philosophers  and  states- 
men have  here  been  found  among  our  theologians. 
The  ablest  contributions  of  this  country  to  mental 
philosophy  have  been  made  at  the  instance  of  theology, 
and  chiefly  in  direct  connection  with  theology. 

The  Puritan  type  of  theological  thinking  in  this 
country,  even  as  compared  with  the  corresponding  type 
in  England  and  in  Holland,  was  largely  original.  The 
inquiry  is  often  made,  by  those  who  are  not  familiar 
with  the  theological  history  of  New  England,  whethei 
or  not  it  has  developed  any  thing  new  in  theological 
science,     ""^he  controversy  between  the  "  Old  School  '* 


LECT.  Ki  .]  NEW-ENGLAND  riiCOLOGY.  185 

and  the  "  New  School "  in  the  religious  thought  of  this 
country  has  retired  into  the  shade  in  consequence  of 
the  re-union  of  the  Presbyterian  Church.  It  has  given 
place  to  a  totally  different  class  of  discussions.  It  is 
worthy  of  consideration,  therefore,  in  a  brief  excm^sus 
from  the  main  theme  before  us. 

Is  the  orthodox  theology  of  New  England  an  ad- 
vance upon  that  of  the  older  confessions?  A  glance 
at  the  character  of  the  early  clergy  of  New  England 
will  go  far  to  answer  this  inquiry.  They  were  remarka- 
bly self-reliant  men,  made  such  by  the  force  of  their 
origin  and  condition.  They  wore  no  man's  livery. 
They  were  not  predisposed  to  recognize  uninspired 
authorities  in  matters  of  religious  faith.  It  is  im- 
possible to  read  the  history  of  the  four  New-England 
Colonies,  before  their  separation  from  Great  Britain, 
without  observing,  that,  from  the  very  landing  at 
Plymouth,  the  idea  of  independence  had  possession 
of  the  colonial  mind.  In  government,  in  religion,  in 
social  civilization,  our  fathers  scented  subjection  to 
human  authority  a  great  way  off.  Probably  the  world 
has  never  seen  a  more  intense  development  of  indi- 
vidualism. 

In  religion,  especially,  the  New-England  mind  was  a 
law  to  itself.  In  religious  affairs  they  saw  the  extreme 
of  peril  to  all  men's  liberties,  and  their  vigilance  against 
authority  was  sleepless  accordingly.  It  was  with  dif- 
ficulty that  they  recognized  the  necessity  even  of  the 
fellowship  of  churches.  A  scheme  for  a  "  consocia- 
tion "  of  churches,  which  was  laid  before  the  Massachu- 
setts Legislature  in  1662,  never  got  further  than  the 
order  that  it  be  printed  "  for  the  consideration  of  the 
people."     The  people  have  had  it  in  safe  "considera- 


186  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect   xii. 

tion"  ever  sin3e.  Independence  was  in  the  air  It 
pervaded  every  important  subject  of  colonial  interest. 
It  was  the  last  thought  of  a  true  Pilgrim  when  he 
retired  to  rest  at  night,  and  the  first  that  sprang  to  the 
birth  in  his  mind  in  the  morning.  No  body  of  men 
were  ever  more  faithful  illustrations  of  that  "eternal 
vigilance  "  which  is  "  the  price  of  liberty  "  than  the 
people  of  these  Colonies. 

This  feature  in  the  make  of  the  New-England  Puri- 
tans has  given  character,  down  to  this  day,  to  the  whole 
drift  of  New-England  theology.  They  knew  no  right 
more  sacred,  and  no  duty  more  imperative,  than  that 
of  private  judgment.  At  the  same  time  they  did  not 
have  the  means  of  forming  their  theology  as  a  deriva- 
tive from  other  standards  than  the  Bible.  They  had 
not  access  to  large  libraries.  They  were  isolated  from 
frequent  correspondence  with  the  old  countries.  There 
was  no  such  intimacy  of  correspondence  between  the 
American  clergy  and  their  Scotch  and  English  brethren 
as  that  which  fed  the  English  Reformation  from  the 
fountains  of  the  Dutch  and  Genevan  schools.  No  such 
volume,  for  instance,  as  the  "  Zurich  Letters,"  grew  out 
of  the  relations  of  the  colonial  ministry  of  this  country, 
or  their  immediate  successors,  to  their  brethren  in  Great 
Britain.  They  had  no  ecclesiastical  ties  binding  them 
as  a  body  to  authorities  and  standards  on  the  other  side 
of  the  Atlantic.  If  they  acknowledged  the  standards 
of  the  European  churches,  they  did  so  feeling  at  entire 
liberty  to  modify  them,  or  to  attach  to  their  formulae 
an  interpretation  of  their  own. 

In  New  England,  as  matter  of  fact,  the  right  and 
the  duty  of  private  judgment  were  a  right  and  a  duty 
exercised.     Separate  creeds  for  separate  chr  rches  were 


LECT.  xn.]  OUR  THEOLOGY  ORIGINAL.  187 

the  rule.  Each  church  changed  established  formulae 
at  its  own  pleasure.  Even  individuals,  by  the  ancient 
usage  of  New  England,  were  at  liberty  to  frame  their 
own  creeds  in  their  own  language  ;  and  their  fitness 
to  be  admitted  to  the  communion  of  the  church  was 
judged  of,  so  far  as  doctrinal  tests  were  concerned,  by 
the  soundness  or  the  unsoundness  of  such  private 
creeds.  Originality  in  theological  literature  was  the 
necessary  outcome  from  the  conditions  of  colonial  life 
here  from  the  very  first.  If  this  country  was  to  have 
any  theological  thinking  at  all,  it  was  a  foregone  con- 
clusion that  it  must  be  original.  It  was  predestined 
to  be  home-made,  like  the  rye  bread  upon  their  tables 
and  the  homespun  cloth  in  their  looms. 

Moreover,  the  early  theologians  of  America  were 
preachers.  Many  of  them  were  eminent  preachers. 
Their  theology  has  come  down  to  us  largely  in  the 
form  of  sermons.  They  constructed  their  theology  for 
the  pulpit.  It  was  suggested  to  them  by  the  demands 
of  the  pulpit  rather  than  by  the  demands  of  the  school 
as  represented  in  any  current  system  of  philosophy. 
No  other  type  of  theology  since  apostolic  days  has  been 
so  purely  the  product  of  the  pulpit,  aimed  at  the  objects 
of  the  pulpit,  breathing  the  spirit  of  the  pulpit,  and 
actually  preached  in  the  pulpit,  as  the  theology  of  New 
England. 

In  this  respect  of  its  homiletic  origin,  the  New-Eng- 
land theology  was  widely  diverse  from  the  patristic 
and  mediaeval  confessions.  Those  were  largely  the 
product  of  the  schools.  They  grew  out  of  the  abstract 
relatioQs  of  philosophy  to  a  revealed  faith.  They 
were  in  some  degree  subservient  to  the  philosophies  of 
the   respective   ages    in    which  they   crystallized  into 


188  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [i  5CT.  xn. 

creeds.  The  Puritan  theology,  on  the  contrary,  and 
specially  that  type  of  it  which  grew  up  in  New  Eng- 
land, was  the  theology  of  the  pulpit.  The  men  who 
framed  it  were  preachers,  and,  either  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  they  aimed  to  produce  a  theology  which 
should  preach  well.  The  pulpit  was  their  throne,  not 
the  school,  not  the  chair  of  philosophy,  not  that  of 
ecclesiastical  dominion. 

Theirs  was  a  theology,  also,  which  was  molded  by 
powerful  religious  awakenings.  These,  in  the  peculiar- 
ities of  their  development,  were  intensely  American. 
As  time  passed  away,  they  became  almost  an  idiosyn- 
crasy of  American  religious  life.  Not  in  their  ultimate 
spirit,  but  in  many  of  their  external  phenomena,  they 
were  American.  So  peculiar  were  they  in  some 
respects  to  this  country,  that  for  a  long  time  they  have 
been  regarded  in  Great  Britain  and  in  Germany  as 
the  result  of  some  peculiar  diathesis  of  American  tem- 
perament. Under  the  dominant  influence  of  religious 
awakenings,  the  theology  of  New  England  has  grown 
up  to  its  maturity. 

All  these  facts  in  the  history  of  our  theological  litera- 
ture tended  to  give  it  originality.  It  is  the  work  of 
men  who  were,  by  the  force  of  circumstances  without 
and  of  tendencies  within,  thrown  back  upon  their  own 
resources.  They  recommenced  theological  inquiry  de 
novo.  They  laid  new  foundations,  and  erected  new 
structures.  For  good  or  for  evil,  such  was  the  fact. 
"We  have  no  occasion  to  blink  it,  and  no  right  to  deny 
it.  We  unconsciously  falsify  history,  if  we  try  to  se- 
cure foi  the  New-England  theology  the  prestige  of  un- 
swerving conformity  to  the  more  ancient  standards  by 
conceiving  of  it  as  a  mere  reproduction  of  them.     It 


LECT.  XII.]  CALVINISM  IMPROVED.  189 

claimed  to  be,  and  it  was,  an  advance  upon  them.  In 
the  direction  of  truth  or  of  error,  according  to  the 
prepossessions  of  the  looker-on,  it  was  a  progress.  Its 
authors  claimed  for  it  the  title  of  an  improvement  in 
theology  as  a  human  science.  They  called  it  Calvinism, 
but  Calvinism  improved.  In  my  judgment,  they  com- 
mitted a  mistake  in  theologic  policy  in  clinging  so 
pertinaciously  to  the  name  of  Calvin.  The  system 
they  framed  was  not  Calvinism,  as  Calvin  taught  and 
preached.  They  started  with  the  assumption  that  the- 
ology is  an  improvable  science,  and  they  ended  with 
the  claim  that  they  had  improved  it.  They  claimed 
thus  to  have  evolved,  more  completely  and  symmetri- 
cally than  Calvin  had  done,  the  spirit  of  the  Scriptures, 
and  to  have  made  the  scriptural  faith  appear  more 
reasonable,  and  more  accordant  with  the  necessary 
beliefs  of  the  human  mind. 

Yet  this  fact  has  been  almost  wholly  ignored  by  the 
opponents  of  the  popular  theology.  Scarcely  a  trace 
of  its  recognition  can  be  found  in  the  writings  of  Dr. 
Channing.  He  almost  invariably  aimed  the  shafts  of 
his  argument  and  invective  at  the  theology  of  Calvin, 
not  at  that  of  his  own  contemporaries.  The  same  is 
true  of  the  whole  history  of  that  side  of  the  debate 
which  he  represented  down  to  our  day. 

Specially  is  the  originality  of  New-England  theology 
true  of  it,  as  represented  in  a  succession  of  theologians 
extending  over  nearly  a  century  and  a  half  backward 
from  our  own  times.  The  leading  theologians  of  New 
England  during  this  period  —  beginning  with  the  elder 
Edwards,  and  ending  with  one  still  living — have  done 
more,  in  the  way  of  original  thinking,  for  the  advance 
of  strictly   theological   science,  than  any   other  equal 


190  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xii. 

number  of  men,  within  an   equal  space  of  time,  since 
Augustine's  day. 

The  theological  work  of  the  reformers,  ai  I  under- 
stand it,  was  mainly  the  recovery  of  a  lost  theology : 
that  of  this  catena  of  American  theologians  has  been 
the  establishment  of  an  advanced  theology.  They 
have  been  originators  in  a  sense  which  can  not  properly 
be  affirmed  of  the  great  bulk  of  their  contemporaries  in 
this  country  or  in  Europe.  We  do  an  injustice  which 
Iiistory  will  eventually  undo,  if  we  try  to  throw  a  sus- 
pension-bridge over  their  heads,  and  to  attach  our  own 
work  to  that  of  the  theologians  who  preceded  them,  as 
if  nothing  new  in  theological  thinking  had  been  done 
in  the  interval.  They  certainly  were  originators,  if 
any  man  ever  was.  As  such  they  will  stand  in  the 
final  version  of  theological  history.  If  opprobrium  is 
attached  to  the  fact.  New  England  must  bear  that; 
if  dignity,  she  is  entitled  to  this. 

The  German  theologians  recognize  the  same  thing 
whenever  they  inform  themselves  of  the  history  of 
American  theological  thought.  As  a  rule,  I  am  told, 
they  know  very  little  of  it.  A  solid  and  useful  work 
remains  yet  to  be  done  by  some  American  student  in 
Germany,  to  publish  in  the  German  language  a  history 
of  the  American  development  of  theological  opinion. 
But,  so  far  as  our  most  eminent  theologians  of  the  last 
centiuy  and  a  half  are  known  at  all  in  Germany,  Ger- 
man scholars  detect  in  them  an  original  vein  of  thought. 
The  same  is  true  of  English  scholars.  When  such  a 
man  as  Frederick  Robertson  reads  President  Edwards, 
he  finds  in  him  the  germs,  as  he  says,  of  an  original 
style  of  thinking.  It  strikes  him  not  as  a  reproduc- 
tion, but  as  a  discovery. 


LECT.  xn.]  AN  ADVANCED  THEOLOGY.  191 

Resuming  the  line  of  suggestion  from  which  we  have 
deviated,  let  the  fact  be  noted,  that  this  originality  of 
our  theology  furnishes  a  peculiar  ground  of  claim  for 
American  literature  upon  the  studies  of  a  preacher. 
You  do  not  know  the  full  development  of  theological 
science,  if  you  study  it  only  in  the  older  European 
standards.  The  American  development,  and  specially 
that  of  New  England,  as  being  the  earliest  and  the 
most  adventurous  and  the  most  unique,  is  needed  to 
fill  out  the  programme  of  the  course  which  theology 
has  actually  taken  in  the  history  of  opinion. 


LECTURE   XIII. 

HEARING  OF  PROFESSIONAL  PURSUITS  ON  A  PASTOR'S 
STUDIES.  —  BREADTH  OF  RANGE  IN  SELECTION  OF 
BOOKS. 

(6)  Some  of  the  remarks  already  made  suggest  an- 
other principle  of  selection  in  pastoral  studies.  It  is 
that  the  true  ideal  of  a  pastor's  reading  must  be  regu- 
lated in  part  by  his  professional  duties ;  in  how  great 
part,  the  good  sense  of  each  must  decide.  The  prin- 
ciple is  vital,  that  reading  for  the  direct  purpose  of 
homiletic  use  is  a  necessity,  and  as  such  should  be 
respected.  It  not  only  is  not  unscholarly,  but  a  pas- 
tor's scholarship  is  radically  defective,  without  it,  and 
this  for  two  reasons. 

One  is  the  necessity  of  such  study  to  the  dignity  of 
other  literary  pursuits.  That  is  a  degrading  definition 
of  literature  which  excludes  from  it  professional  studies. 
We  create  effeminate  conceptions  of  it  when  we  isolate 
it  from  the  tug  of  real  life.  It  becomes  the  accom- 
plishment of  an  idle  character,  if  you  limit  it  to  the 
amusement  of  idle  hours. 

Professor  Henry  Reed  notices  the  popular  use  of  the 
phrase  belles-lettres  as  indicating  the  tendency  of  a 
certain  class  of  minds  to  this  degrading  notion.  That 
phrase  was  the  invention  of  an  effeminate  taste,  which 
sought  to  hide  its  own  feebleness  under  the  guise  of  a 

102 


LECT.  XIII.]  PROFESSIONAL  ENTHUSIASM.  193 

foreign  tongue.  Coleridge  remarks  it  as  one  of  the 
disastrous  revolutions  of  England,  that  "literature  fell 
away  from  the  professions."  For  the  earnestness,  and 
therefore  for  the  dignity,  of  our  literary  pursuits,  we 
need  to  associate  them  with  some  regular  and  necessary 
avocation  in  life.  The  necessity  of  labor  for  a  living 
is  not  a  hinderance,  but  a  help,  to  the  depth  of  our 
scholarly  life.  Every  important  vocation  in  life  has 
some  literature  of  its  own :  at  least,  it  has  a  history 
which  a  man  is  the  wiser  for  knowing.  The  clerical 
profession  has  a  literature  which  no  clergyman  can 
afford  not  to  know. 

A  second  reason  for  this  principle  of  selection  is  its 
obvious  necessity  to  professional  success.  There  are 
two  kinds  of  interest  in  the  clerical  office.  One  is  the 
direct  interest  in  its  objects ;  the  other,  interest  iu  it 
as  a  profession.  Providence  has  benevolently  arranged, 
for  our  assistance  in  life's  labors,  that  we  are  so  made 
as  to  enjoy,  not  only  the  results,  but  the  process  to 
results.  Pleasure  is  imparted,  not  only  at  the  end,  but 
on  the  way  to  the  end.  This  professional  joy  is  as 
legitimate  to  a  clergyman  as  to  a  lawyer. 

Not  that  it  is  the  highest  motive  to  clerical  fidelity 
but  it  is  an  innocent  and  a  stimulating  motive.  The 
highest  success  is  never  gained  without  it.  The  pos- 
session of  it,  however,  leads  necessarily  to  study  of 
professional  literature.  This  is  as  it  should  be.  Our 
tastes  in  reading  ought  to  be  tinged  with  the  pecu- 
liarities of  our  profession  to  a  sufficient  extent  to  make 
them  tributary  to  it.  The  two  may  blend,  so  that  the 
one  shall  never  be  a  drudgery,  and  the  other  never 
effeminate. 

(1)  Our  choice  of  authors  should  cover  as  large  a 


194  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xm. 

range  of  literature  as  can  be  read  in  a  scholarly  way. 
This  as  a  theory  seems  self-evident ;  yet  in  practice  it 
is  at  this  point  that  the  hopelessness  of  the  scholarly 
life  to  a  pastor  appears  most  invincible.  Yet,  be  it 
ever  so  limited  in  its  practical  application,  the  recog- 
nition of  the  principle  is  invaluable  to  a  pastor's  schol- 
arly spirit. 

Observe,  in  confirmation  of  this,  the  uselessness  of 
variety,  if  gained  at  the  expense  of  scholarship,  in 
reading.  Adults  in  years  are  often  juvenile  in  culture. 
This  juvenile  period  is  characterized  by  three  things,  — 
reading  is  amusement,  the  choice  of  authors  is  for- 
tuitous, and  opinions  about  authors  are  either  an  echo 
of  their  reputation,  or  a  wilful  contradiction  of  it.  No 
profound  personal  sympathy  with  authors  is  yet  created, 
and  no  antipathies  for  which  scholarly  reasons  can  be 
given.  Our  collegiate  curriculum  does  not  commonly 
advance  a  student  much  beyond  this  juvenile  period 
of  culture,  unless  he  is  above  the  average  age  of  colle- 
gians, and  has  read  more  than  they  commonly  read. 

In  this  juvenile  period  the  first  peril  encountered  is 
that  of  reading  too  much  and  too  variously.  We  are 
in  danger  of  skimming  the  surface  of  every  thing  that 
falls  in  our  way,  without  penetrating  any  thing.  One 
very  soon  wearies  of  such  reading,  if  it  is  directed  to 
any  thing  which  deserves  to  be  called  earnest  literature. 
To  read  such  literature  with  any  pleasure  we  must  be 
ourselves  in  earnest;  and  to  be  in  earnest  in  it  we 
must  penetrate  it  in  spots.  The  mind,  otherwise,  is 
like  a  bird  always  on  the  wing.  This  is  not  scholarly 
reading.  No  man  will  pursue  it  long  m  the  use  of 
serious  literature,  unless  he  falls  into  an  affectation 
of  scholarly  tastes. 


LECT.  xm.]  LITERARY  AFFECTATION.  IQ/i 

A  second  peril  to  which  the  juvenile  period  of  cul- 
ture is  exposed  is  that  of  literary  affectation.  Did 
you  never  see  a  freshman  in  college,  in  a  fit  of  literary 
eagerness,  carrying  to  his  room  a  huge  folio  in  Latin, 
or  a  set  of  the  Greek  classics,  under  the  hallucination 
that  scholarly  culture  must  have  some  such  unknown 
and  unknowable  beginning  in  order  to  he  scholarly? 
Profuse  and  promiscuous  reading  often  results  from 
such  affectation  of  literary  aims. 

One  of  the  humiliating  confessions  which  we  have 
to  make  for  educated  men  is,  that  there  is  not  a  little 
of  affected  taste  among  them.  This  is  of  so  great  im- 
portance to  a  youthful  scholar,  that  it  demands  notice 
by  an  excursus  from  the  line  of  the  present  discussion. 
You  will  discover,  as  you  extend  the  range  of  your 
reading,  that  there  is  a  class  of  authors  who  at  first 
awe  you  by  their  prodigious  learning,  by  their  glib  use 
of  the  technical  dialect  of  scholarship,  and  by  their 
oracular  opinions.  But  they  are  among  the  authors 
whom  you  most  quickly  outgrow.  The  conviction 
soon  forces  itself  upon  you  that  they  are  pretentious. 
Their  dialect  is  not  necessitated  by  their  thinking: 
their  reading  has  been  discursive,  not  penetrative,  and 
their  productions  are  too  heavily  indebted  to  their  com- 
/non-place  books.  You  find  that  other  authors,  less 
t^cluminous,  with  a  less  gaudy  parade  of  the  tackling 
of  science,  and  with  a  more  simple  style,  move  you 
more  profoundly,  and  their  influence  lives  longer  in 
your  mental  growth. 

Religion  and  religious  men  suffer  often,  at  the  hands 
of  the  men  of  books,  from  the  charge  of  cant.  The 
charge  is  too  often  true.  But  it  is  my  firm  belief,  that 
among  any  number  of  plain  Christian  men  and  women 


196  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xiii. 

clios^n  at  random,  there  will  be  f'yiind  less  of  that  mor- 
bid affection  than  can  be  found  F.mong  an  equal  number 
of  literary  and  scientific  authois  and  literary  amateurs 
chosen  at  random.  What  is  cant  in  religion?  It  is 
nothing  but  affectation  of  unreal  virtue  ;  not  conscious 
hypocrisy,  but  unconscious  self-deceit.  As  a  mental 
phenomenon  it  is  not  confined  to  religion.  The  same 
thing  essentially  vitiates  manners  in  society.  It  is 
witnessed  in  the  enthusiasm  of  travelers,  in  the  raptures 
of  connoisseurs  of  art,  in  the  patriotism  of  politicians, 
and  in  the  conscientiousness  of  obstinate  minorities. 
It  infects  as  well  the  aspirations  of  authorship  and 
the  early  enthusiasm  of  readers.  It  is  a  ubiquitous 
infirmity  of  human  nature.  Indeed,  do  we  not  distrust 
ourselves  more  in  this  respect,  the  more  we  know  of 
ourselves  ?  But  a  fragment  of  our  experience,  proba- 
bly, is  absolutely  free  from  affected  virtue.  That 
fragment  is  commonly  purified  of  this  taint  by  the 
discipline  of  emergencies.  Yet  even  death  does  not 
press  it  out  of  some  natures.  They  die  as  they  have 
lived,  deceivers  and  deceived,  or,  to  speak  more  exactly, 
deceived,  and  therefore  deceivers.  Authors  who  make 
the  most  showy  parade  of  mental  integrity  are  often 
guilty  of  some  glaring  sign  of  its  opposite.  Carlyle 
has  been  the  severest  censor  of  the  English  public 
for  its  insincerity  in  every  thing;  yet  Carlyle's  style 
in  the  very  utterance  of  his  invectives  is  one  of  the 
most  disingenuous  specimens  of  quackery  in  modern 
authorship. 

It  is  no  marvelous  thing,  then,  if  we  find  cant  in 
boo^4s  in  which  we  least  expect  it.  Critics  who  have 
an  honest  culture  complain  of  it  in  all  the  great  litera- 
tures of   our  day.     Addison  complained  of   it  in  his 


LECT.  xiri.]  LITERARY  JUGGLERS.  197 

contemporaries.  It  was  the  butt  of  Dr.  Johnson's 
sarcasm ;  yet  the  old  elephant  was  not  free  from  it 
himself  when  he  tried  to  dance.  Menzel  and  Niebuhr 
stigmatize  it  in  the  German  literature.  Guizot  has 
scorned  it  in  one  department  of  the  French  literature. 
Niebuhr  flatly  charges  it  upon  some  of  his  literary  con- 
temporaries, that  whole  pages  of  references  to  authori- 
ties were  copied  from  others,  a  few  here  and  a  few 
there,  with  no  attempt  at  verification,  but  purely  to 
impose  on  the  reader  by  a  parade  of  extensive  reading. 
Such  is  the  jugglery  of  scholarship. 

I  could  name  two  celebrated  writers  of  this  country 
who  belong  to  the  class  of  literary  jugglers.  In  one 
case,  if  he  ever  read  his  footnotes  in  their  original 
connections,  he  would  have  found  some  of  them  to  be 
hostile,  and  some  of  them  irrelevant,  to  his  own  posi- 
tions. As  I  do  not  suppose  him  to  have  been  con- 
sciously a  knave,  the  most  charitable  construction  of 
his  error  is  that  he  borrowed  them,  and  imposed  them 
on  his  readers,  trusting  to  their  ignorance  as  he  had 
to  his  own.  In  the  other  case,  a  theological  controver- 
sialist was  hard  pressed  by  an  opponent  more  learned 
than  himself.  He  "  read  up,"  as  we  call  it,  for  the  exi- 
gency, and  gave  to  the  public  a  rejoinder  in  which  Avere 
heaped  together  mediaeval  names  which  his  readers  had 
never  heard  of,  and  he  probably  had  not  heard  of  till 
then.  As  authorities,  some  of  them  were  worth  little 
more  than  the  London  "Punch."  His  opponent  saw 
through  the  trick  at  a  glance,  and  never  answered  what 
he  doubtless  deemed  an  affectation  which  was  beneath 
him.  That  is  a  ruse  which  is  never  perpetrated  with- 
out being  discovered  by  somebody. 

Keturning,  now,  from  the  excursion  we  have  taken 


198  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xiii. 

from  the  point  in  hand,  let  us  observe,  that,  if  grave  and 
mature  authorship  is  capable  of  such  affectations,  the 
taste  of  youthful  readers,  till  it  is  chastened  by  breadth 
of  culture,  may  be  at  least  in  equal  peril.  We  need, 
therefore,  to  guard  ourselves  against  extent  of  reading 
which  would  be  gained  at  the  expense  of  scholarly 
reading.  Variety  is  not  scholarly,  if  it  is  not  so  thor- 
ough as  to  result  in  symmetrical  culture,  so  far  as  it 
goes.  It  is  unscholarly,  for  instance,  ever  to  read  a 
book  for  the  sake  of  talking  of  it,  or  to  be  able  to 
say  that  one  has  read  it,  or  to  be  able  to  quote  from  it 
in  one's  own  production. 

The  real  culture  of  a  man  shows  itself  in  his  original 
thinking,  not  in  that  which  he  prates  about,  and  puts 
on  parade.  Give  us  your  thought,  man,  your  thought ! 
That  is  the  proof  to  us  of  what  you  have  lived  in  your 
own  mental  being.  That  tells  us  what  you  are.  Who 
cares  for  any  thing  else  you  have  to  give  ?  Sly  hints 
of  prodigality  in  the  use  of  books  go  for  nothing.  Do 
not  be  awed  by  them  when  you  encounter  them  in  the 
authors  you  read.  You  can  provide  all  such  pabulum 
for  yourself,  and  then  you  will  know  what  it  is  worth. 
Do  not  allow  an  author  to  impose  it  upon  you  for  any 
higher  worth  than  it  would  have  if  it  came  from  your 
own  pen. 

A  noteworthy  fact  in  this  connection  is,  that  one's 
reading,  and  one's  use  of  reading  in  one's  own  produc- 
tions, will  act  and  re-act  upon  each  other.  What  the 
one  is,  the  other  is  apt  to  be.  Therefore,  freedom  from 
affectation  in  your  use  of  books  in  sermons  will  tend 
to  secure  the  same  freedom  in  the  reading  of  books. 
Make  no  display  of  learning  or  of  varied  culture.  The 
loopholes  tlirough  which  a  hearer  can  look  into  your 


LECT.  xrii.]  MENTAL  INTEGRITY.  199 

library  should  be  made  as  few  as  possible  in  your 
preaching.  A  thorough-bred  traveler  does  not  boast 
of  his  ti  ivels.  He  is  mindful  of  Lord  Chesterfield  s 
advice  to  his  son,  not  to  begin  every  fragment  of  his 
conversation  with,  "When  I  was  in  Japan."  So  a 
genuine  scholar  does  not  pry  open  the  crevices  through 
which  the  extent  of  his  reading  can  be  seen. 

A  young  man  has  gained  one  of  the  prime  elements 
of  scholarship,  when  he  has  learned  the  worth  of  art- 
lessness  in  his  literary  dealings  with  himself.  Play  no 
tricks  upon  yourself  Do  not  be  hoodwinked  into  an 
imitation  of  the  tricks  of  authors.  Be  honest  in  your 
secret  literary  habits.  Keep  yourself  always  on  the  safe 
side  of  plagiarism  in  your  sermons.  Be  assured  that 
you  ivill  plagiarize  unconsciously  quite  as  much  as  is 
consistent  with  the  rights  of  authorship.  As  a  specimen 
of  the  care  which  should  be  practiced  in  this  respect, 
if  you  quote  in  your  sermon,  see  to  it  that  you  put  the 
signs  of  quotation  into  your  delivery  as  well  as  into  your 
manuscript.  In  a  word,  be  yourself  in  literature  as  in 
religion.  Let  your  reading  be,  and  appear  to  be,  in 
your  use  of  it,  the  symbol  of  a  real  life.  There  is  such 
a  thing  as  intellectual  integrity.  The  price  of  it  is 
above  rubies.  If  you  will  plan  your  reading,  and  use  it 
with  this  kind  of  truthfulness  to  yourself,  the  range  of 
your  reading  and  the  symmetry  of  your  culture  will  be 
exponents  of  each  other.  The  variety  of  your  reading 
will  grow  to  meet  the  wants  of  your  culture.  Beyond 
that,  it  is  of  no  imaginable  use  to  you  or  to  others. 

But,  while  protection  against  affectation  of  literary 
culture  is  the  first  need  of  a  youthful  writer,  there  is, 
on  the  other  hand,  an  obvious  value  in  that  variety  of 
study  which  is  a  genuine  index  of  symmetry.     Let  the 


200  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect,  xiii, 

fact  be  ol' served,  therefore,  that  all  the  excellences  of 
literature  are  not  to  be  found  in  any  narrow  group  of 
writers.  Every  great  mind  is  great  by  virtue  of  some 
sort  of  individuality.  That  individuality  represents  a 
power.  But  no  mind  represents  all  such  individuali- 
ties. The  universal  genius  is  a  fiction  :  it  can  be  real- 
ized only  in  a  mind  of  infinite  capacities.  We  speak 
of  Shakspeare  as  if  he  were  such  a  genius ;  but  it  is 
hyperbole.  If  he  is  the  first  of  poets  for  his  excellences, 
he  is  the  first,  also,  for  his  faults.  Intensity  in  author- 
ship generally  exhibits  itself,  in  part,  by  violations  of 
taste. 

Only  by  varied  reading,  therefore,  can  we  combine 
in  our  own  tastes  any  very  wide  range  of  excellences. 
We  must  achieve  our  object  as  a  bee  gathers  honey. 
Apiarists  tell  us  that  no  two  honeycombs  have  pre- 
cisely the  same  flavor.  A  bee  can  not  concoct  the  most 
delicate  honey  from  any  one  species  of  flora.  Diver- 
sities of  the  saccharine  element  must  be  distilled  from 
species  which  are  opposites,  some  of  which  are  even 
antidotes  to  each  other.  So  the  finest  culture  is  the 
transfusion  of  the  greatest  breadth  of  literature.  Oppo- 
sites and  antidotes  in  thought  may  blend  in  mental 
character,  and  produce  a  flavor  which  no  other  com- 
pounds can  imitate. 

The  principle  involved  here  is  not  impaired  in  value 
by  any  degree  of  richness  which  one  may  find  in  a  few 
favorite  authors.  There  is  a  virtue  in  variety  for  the 
sake  of  variety.  The  illustrious  Literary  Club,  to 
which  Dr.  Johnson  belonged,  included,  besides  him, 
Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  and  Edmund  Burke,  the  latter 
the  most  profound  thinker  of  the  age.  But  Goldsmith 
expressed  a  practical  want,  even  in  the  society  of  such 


LECT.  XIII.]  CULTURE  SYMPATHETIC.  201 

men,  when  lie  advocated  the  enlargement  of  the  club 
by  the  introduction  of  new  members,  "because,"  he 
said,  "the  origin  d  members  had  traveled  over  each 
other's  minds  so  often  and  so  thoroughly."  So  it  is 
with  our  culture  from  books,  even  the  wisest  and  most 
quickening.  We  appropriate  from  them  in  time  all 
that  our  affinities  can  appropriate.  We  must  have 
fresh  food  to  keep  the  mind  new  and  progressive  in  its 
tastes. 

Further :  a  certain  variety  of  knowledge  is  necessary 
to  the  perfection  of  any  one  species  of  knowledge. 
An  old  book  often  receives  a  new  power  to  enlighten 
or  to  quicken  us  from  our  perusal  of  a  new  one.  Still 
more  is  diversity  of  mental  character  necessary  to  per- 
fection in  any  one  quality.  Culture  is  sensitively  sym- 
pathetic: it  is  a  compound  of  sympathies.  Diseased 
culture  in  one  respect  generates  disease  in  other  re- 
spects. Amaurosis  in  one  eye  may  cause  the  other  eye 
to  weep  itself  blind :  so  a  contracted  culture  is,  for  that 
reason,  a  shallow  one.  Of  two  authors,  for  instance, 
we  appreciate  one  the  better  for  appreciating  the  other 
justly.  Of  two  departments  of  a  library,  we  penetrate 
the  one  the  more  profoundly  for  every  glimpse  of 
insisfht  which  we  obtain  into  the  other.  Of  two  na- 
tional  literatures,  we  have  a  mastery  of  the  one  in  some 
degree  proportionate  to  our  conquest  of  the  other.  In 
all  nature  every  thing  helps  every  other  thing.  In  the 
ultimate  products  of  mind  there  are  no  rival  litera- 
tures nor  antagonist  departments :  they  are  mutual 
auxiliaries.  The  history  of  human  thought  is  a  history 
of  greit  alliances.  Breadth  of  reading,  therefore,  pro- 
motes depth  of  descent  in  any  one  spot. 

Again :  it  is  a  calamity  to  a  public  speaker  to  subject 


202  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [leci.  xiii. 

his  culture  to  the  exclusive  influence  of  £.  .y  one  author, 
or  group  of  authors.  Mental  servitude  often  follows 
extravagant  enthusiasm  for  one  writer,  or  for  the  writers 
of  one  school.  Individuality  of  character,  then,  is  sac- 
rificed. Not  merely  is  independence  of  opinion  lost: 
indeed,  that  may  not  be  sacrificed  perceptibly,  and, 
because  it  is  not,  the  student  may  imagine  that  his 
mental  freedom  as  a  whole  is  unimpaired.  Not  so :  his 
culture  is  literally  sub-jected.  It  lies  under  the  hoof 
of  a  contracted  authorship.  Such  a  mind  has  no  catho- 
licity of  taste.  It  reveres  notliing  which  does  not  come 
within  the  vision  of  the  few  minds  to  whom  it  looks 
up  as  oracles. 

Cicero  tyrannized  thus  at  one  time  over  a  class  of 
Italian  scholars.  Erasmus  describes,  in  a  dialogue 
which  he  satirically  calls  "  Ciceronianus,"  a  man  who 
for  seven  years  read  no  book  but  Cicero.  He  had  only 
Cicero's  bust  in  his  library,  and  sealed  his  letters  with 
a  seal  engraved  with  Cicero's  head.  He  had  composed 
"  three  or  four  huge  volumes,  in  which  he  had  criticised 
every  word  of  Cicero,  every  variation  of  every  sense 
of  every  word,  and  every  foot  or  cadence  with  which 
Cicero  began  or  closed  a  sentence." 

Dr.  Johnson  tyrannized  over  a  class  of  educated 
minds  in  England.  Even  so  robust  a  mind  as  that 
of  Robert  Hall  confessed  to  having  worked  through  a 
period  of  servitude  to  Johnson  in  his  early  discipline. 
Coleridge  has  more  recently  swayed  another  class  of 
readers  with  an  authority  which  no  man  should  con- 
sciously submit  to  for  an  hour. 

In  the  pulpit.  Dr.  Chalmers,  for  a  time,  was  an  autocrat 
over  a  large  class  of  admirers.  Few  men  have  appeared 
in  the  modem  pulpit  whose  faults   and  virtues  have 


LECT.  XIII.]  LITERARY  SERVILITY.  203 

more  frequently  been  copied  entire.  I  do  not  say 
reproduced,  but  copied ;  for  the  spirit  of  a  great  mind 
is  never  reproduced  in  us  till  we  have  either  lived 
through  or  overleaped  a  servile  admiration  of  him,  and 
become  consciously  independent.  Soon  after  Chalmers 
published  his  "Astronomical  Discourses,"  a  swarm  of 
little  Chalmerians,  if  I  may  coin  the  word,  appeared 
in  the  pulpits  of  Scotland  and  America.  The  pulpit  of 
Scotland  has  not  entirely  recovered  from  that  influencb 
to  this  day. 

Carlyle  has  given  a  similar  lurch  to  a  class  of  minds 
in  our  own  literature.  Twenty  or  thirty  years  ago 
American  taste,  as  represented  by  a  considerable  group 
of  writers,  reeled  under  the  blow  of  Carlyle's  tyranny, 
from  which  it  has  never  yet  fully  righted  itself. 

In  this  country  one  man  is  to-day  exercising  autocracy 
over  a  class  of  youthful  writers  and  scholars.  Scarcely 
a  year  passes  in  which  I  do  not  find  evidences  of  this 
in  manuscript  sermons.  It  is  difficult  to  convince  a 
man  by  criticism  of  his  subjection  to  a  contemporary 
author.  I  often  make  such  criticism  when  I  know 
that  it  will  be  rejected  now,  but  that  the  subject  of  it 
will  surely  see  the  truth  of  it  eventually.  This  is  true 
of  the  present  sway  of  the  author  in  question  over  a 
certain  class  of  minds.  Few  things  appear  to  me  so 
sure  in  the  future  of  American  literature  as  that  the 
educated  mind  of  this  country  will  outgrow  its  adula- 
tion of  him  and  his  works.  His  is  a  diseased  mind, 
and  the  world  is  sure  to  find  it  out.  Some  of  you  will 
live  to  witness  a  change  of  literary  opinion  of  him  not 
unlike  that  which  has  overtaken  the  literary  fame  of 
Byron.  In  both  cases  you  are  safe  in  assuming  the 
existence  o_^  distorts  d  literary  tastes  from  the  distortion 


204  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lEv^t.  xiil 

of  religious  faith.  It  was  not  possible  for  Byron  to 
be  a  true  literary  guide  while  his  rebellion  against  reli- 
gious restraint  was  what  it  was.  A  worse  than  any 
literary  bondage  inthralled  him.  So  of  the  author  I 
have  in  mind :  pure  as  his  private  life  is,  it  is  impossible 
for  his  intellect  to  be  a  great  and  true  literary  seer 
so  long  as  he  hesitates  whether  or  not  to  apply  to  the 
being  of  God  the  personal  pronoun. 

Sometimes  servitude  to  authors  takes  the  form  of 
subjection  to  one  school  in  philosophy.  Then  a  young 
scholar  trusts  nothing,  reveres  nothing,  knows  nothing, 
sees  nothing  candidly,  which  conflicts  with  the  school  in 
which  he  has  been  tutored.  He  looks  at  every  thing 
under  the  shadow  of  the  school.  He  apes  the  dialect 
of  the  school.  The  truths  of  common  sense,  which 
other  men  can  express  in  the  language  of  common 
sense,  he  puts  into  the  formulae  of  the  school.  The 
most  simple  elements  of  belief  he  must  transmute  in 
the  laboratory  of  the  school.  Nothing  seems  literary 
to  his  taste,  nothing  puts  on  the  glamour  of  literary 
associations,  so  as  to  excite  his  respect,  till  it  has  been 
fused  in  the  alembic  of  the  school. 

Such  subservience  to  one  or  to  few  models  of  thought 
is  a  sad  folly,  an  enormous  folly.  But  one  book  in 
the  world  deserves  such  submission  of  the  intellect, 
and  that  book  never  claims  it  in  respect  to  literary 
taste.  A  young  man  should  check  the  beginnings  of 
s"ach  a  folly  in  his  own  consciousness.  An  amateur  in 
the  cultivation  of  orange-trees  tells  me  that  the  fruitage 
of  the  tree  depends  on  the  size  of  the  box  in  which 
you  pack  its  roots  when  it  is  young.  Cramp  them  then, 
and  you  can  never  make  other  than  a  dwarf  of  it. 
Give  them  large  room  to  expand,  and  the  quality,  as 


LECT.  XIII.]  FASTIDIOUS  CRITICISM.  205 

well  as  abundance,  of  the  fruit,  will  reward  your  fore- 
thought. So  it  is  with  a  young  scholar's  early  tastes. 
By  an  agile  effort  of  good  sense  he  can  rid  them  of  a 
narrow  prejudice  when  it  is  new.  Later  in  life  he  can 
only  live  it  through  at  the  expense  of  a  great  deal  of 
contraction  of  usefulness,  and  alloy  of  pleasure. 

Some  minds  never  do  live  through  their  self-subjec- 
tion to  a  one-sided  authorship.     In  the  weaker  class  of 
minds  the  effects  of  such  a  period  of  enslavement  sink 
dee]),  and  become  a  second  nature.     They  become  as 
inevitable  and  involuntary  as  the  distinction  between 
the  right  and  left  hands,  —  a  distinction  which  physi- 
ologists now  declare  to  be  entirely  unnecessary,  if  the 
physical  mechanism  could  only  be  started  into  volun- 
tary use  without  it.     It  is  said  that  our  right-handed 
habit  of  body  has  the   effect,  upon  a  man  lost  in  a 
forest,  of  insensibly  twisting  him  around  to  the  left,  to 
thp  extent  of  eventually  moving  in  a  circle,  throuo-h 
tho   mere   instinct  of  the  right   side  to  take  the  lead 
of  the   left,  and   that   the   circle,  other  things   being 
equal,  will  always  be  described  in  one  way, — from  right 
to  left.     Such  a  monotonous  circle  does  the  life's  cul- 
ture of  some  men  become,  who  are  never  emancipated 
from  a  one-sided  twist  received  in  their  early  discipline. 
They  never  learn  to  do   even-handed  justice,  in  their 
literary  judgments,  to  ajiy  broad  fraternity  of  authors. 
They  never  learn  to  enjoy  any  wide  range  of  scholar- 
ship.    They  never  become,  therefore,  men  of  generous 
culture  in  their  own  development.     They  are  always 
lost   in   the   forest,  and   always  trampmg  in  a  spiral. 
Ruskin  says  that  a  false  taste  may  be  known  by  its 
fastidiousness.     "It  tests  all  things,"  he  says,  "by  the 
way   they  fit  itr     But  a  true  taste,  he  contends,  is 


206  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [iect.  xuh 

"  reverent  and  unselfish,"  for  ever  learning,  for  ever 
growing,  and  "  testing  itself  by  the  way  it  fits  thiiigs,^'* 
This  is  as  true  in  literature  as  in  art. 

Let  us,  then,  be  jealous  of  the  influence  of  schools 
in  any  thing.  Be  watchful  of  the  power  of  favorite 
authors  over  you.  Professor  Reed  says  he  has  known 
a  man  "  late  in  life  to  lose  the  power  of  sound  literary 
judgment  and  enjoyment,"  through  "bigotry  in  the 
choice  of  books."  It  seems,  at  the  first  sight,  to  be 
an  ungenerous  caution  to  a  young  writer ;  but  it  is  a 
very  necessary  one.  Beware  of  your  favorites  in  any 
thing, — your  favorite  author,  your  favorite  preacher, 
your  favorite  instructor,  the  head  of  your  sect,  the 
originator  of  your  school  in  philosophy,  the  leading 
expounder  of  your  type  of  theology,  the  representative 
man  in  your  beau  ideal  of  culture.  Stand  off,  and 
measure  them  all.  Wait  a  wliile :  let  your  judgment 
of  them  take  years  in  the  forming.  Receive  trustfully 
and  gratefully  whatever  they  give  you  which  satisfies 
the  varied  cravings  of  your  nature,  and  helps  your 
culture  to  an  even  balance,  but  hold  in  suspense  for 
a  time  any  influence  from  them  which  surfeits  some 
tastes,  and  leaves  others  to  starve. 

There  must  come,  in  the  lives  of  us  all,  a  period  at 
which  we  revise  our  early  enthusiasms,  and  smile  sadly 
at  some  of  them.  A  blessing  to  us  are  those  authors 
and  those  men,  whom,  after  that  ripening  period,  we 
find  that  we  have  not  outlived.  The  blessing  will  be 
proportionate  to  their  number  and  to  the  range  of 
culture  which  >hey  represent. 


LECTURE    XIV. 

BEEADTH    OF    RANGE    EST    PASTORAL    STUDY,    CON- 
TINUED.—  THE   STUDY   OF   LIVING   SPEAKERS. 

Before  we  leave  the  topic  of  breadth  of  range  in 
our  studies,  an  excursus  deserves  a  brief  consideration, 
upon  the  fact  that  the  clergy  are  under  peculiar  temp- 
tations to  narrow  discipline.  Not  all  is  true  which  is 
often  affirmed  of  the  literary  bigotry  of  the  ministry. 
Yet  the  fact  of  the  peril  is  a  reality. 

The  intellectual  intensity  of  the  clerical  profession  is 
one  source  of  the  peril.  It  demands  intense  concentra- 
tion of  mind.  Like  other  men  of  sense,  the  clergy 
must  be  about  their  business.  They  must  work  at  it 
in  dead  earnest.  Reading,  therefore,  is  at  the  best  but 
an  appendage  to  professional  duty.  A  very  large 
portion  of  a  pastor's  waking  hours  must  be  given  to 
mental  production,  not  to  accumulation,  not  to  the 
culture  which  books  give.  The  temptation  follows 
inevitably  to  be  content  with  a  contracted  range  of 
reading ;  if  not  with  professional  reading  alone,  with  a 
range  of  other  reading  which  has  no  freshening  variety. 

Again :  intensity  of  77ioral  excitement  in  the  ministry 
enhances  the  peril.  Professional  duty  in  the  ministry 
draws  deep  and  exhaustively  upon  the  moral  sensibili- 
ties. It  absorbs  vitality,  as  white-heat  does  oxygen. 
A  pastor,  therefore,  is  often  in  danger  of  having  no 

207 


2U«  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xiv. 

spirit  left  in  him  for  literature  which  does  not  contrib- 
ute directly  and  palpably  to  professional  service.  No 
other  profession  equals  the  ministry  in  respect  to  this 
moral  pressure  from  above  and  aroun*^,  crowding  it 
down  and  inward  upon  its  peculiarities.  No  other 
enlists  such  forces  of  conscience  in  behalf  of  its  pecu- 
liarities. 

Further :  unenlightened  convictions  of  conscience  in 
the  ministry  sometimes  enhance  the  peril  of  a  con- 
tracted culture.  Impulse  of  conscience  must  often  be 
balanced  by  good  sense,  before  it  will  permit  a  clergy- 
man to  engage  happily  in  any  very  broad  range  of 
reading.  Conscientious  prejudices  against  learning 
constitute  one  of  the  perpetual  burdens  of  the  church. 
The  clerical  right  to  culture  has  been  purchased  at  an 
immense  cost  of  conflict  with  unenlightened  consciences. 
I  have  known  a  clergyman  who  had  passed  through  a 
collegiate  and  professional  training  of  seven  years,  who, 
at  the  end  of  it,  thought  it  not  right  for  a  minister  to 
read  Shakspeare.  When  the  Rev.  Edwards  A.  Park, 
D.D.,  occupied  this  rhetorical  chair,  he  formed  among 
the  students  a  Shakspeare  Club,  for  the  elaborate 
discussion  of  the  style,  the  philosophy,  the  plots,  and 
the  theology  of  Shakspeare.  It  encountered  so  much 
opposition  from  timid  consciences,  in  the  seminary  and 
out  of  it,  that  he  thought  it  necessary  to  deliver  a  lec- 
ture on  the  "  propriety  of  studying  Shakspeare,  and  the 
special  usefulness  of  the  study  to  ministers." 

It  is  to  be  conceded  that  the  danger  apprehended 
by  some  fervent  pastors,  of  a  spiritual  chill  from  intel- 
lectual enthusiasm,  is  n^  t  wholly  imaginary.  Periods 
have  occurred  in  which  some  sections  of  the  church 
ha^e  suffered  thus.    Such  was  the  case  with  the  Church 


LECT.  XIV.]  CONSCIENCE  IN   STUDY.  209 

of  Scotland  in  that  portion  of  the  eighteenth  century 
in  which  the  characteristic  representatives  of  lier  pulpit 
were  such  men  as  Dr.  Blair  and  Dr.  Robertson.  They 
were  eminent  in  the  literature  of  Scotland,  but  of  arctic 
temperament  in  her  pulpit.  Such  periods  are  singu- 
larly alike  everywhere.  A  lenient  morality  supplants 
fervid  piety ;  doctrinal  Christianity  is  held  esoterically 
as  a  thing  to  be  believed,  but  not  preached ;  truisms 
and  commonplaces  make  up  the  staple  of  sermons ;  the 
clergy  give  themselves  to  other  avocations  than  that  oi 
apostolic  preaching ;  and  the  great  bulk  of  the  people 
slumber  in  religious  torpor.  The  awakened  mind  of 
Scotland  gave  to  such  a  ministry  a  name  which  is  fittmg 
to  it  in  all  times,  by  calling  it  "Moderate."  Every 
ministry  of  every  age  needs  protection  against  the 
danger  of  a  "  moderate  "  pulpit.  We  must  admit  the 
danger,  and  be  fore-armed  against  it. 

But  this  need  not  prevent  our  recognition  of  the 
opposite  peril.  Our  profession  appeals  so  powerfully 
to  the  religious  part  of  our  nature,  that  often  a  young 
minister  is  obliged  to  instruct  and  to  discipline  his  con- 
science, and  to  crowd  it  to  a  liberal  action,  before  he 
can  peacefully  pursue  lines  of  study  which  are  essential 
to  his  intellectual  growth,  and  therefore  to  his  profes- 
sional success.  Probably  we  have  all  felt  a  momentary 
thrill  of  sympathy  with  the  rule  of  a  certain  evangel- 
ist, to  read  no  book  but  the  Bible.  Yet  one  sequence 
of  that  rule  was,  that  his  range  of  materials  for  the 
pulpit  was  so  limited,  that  he  was  obliged  to  ask  the 
reporters  not  to  report  his  sermons.  A  pastor  should 
not  cherish  a  conscience  which  must  be  coddled  at  such 
a  sacrifice  of  his  intellectual  breadth.  The  laws  of  God 
require  it  as  little  as  the  canons  of  good  taste.  A 
good  conscience  is  always  good  sense. 


210  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xiv. 

In  the .  3  several  modes,  through  the  mental  intensity 
of  clerical  duties,  through  the  intensity  of  moral  excite- 
ment attending  them,  and  through  false  convictions  of 
conscience,  the  clergy  are  exposed  to  peculiar  tempta- 
tions to  a  contracted  culture.  Therefore  we  should  not 
read  professional  literature  alone.  Even  in  professional 
literature  we  should  not  confine  ourselves  to  school  or 
sect.  One  cause  of  awkwardness  and  monotony  in  ser- 
mons is  often  that  their  authors  read  little  but  sermons 
and  kindred  theological  writings.  For  the  full  vigor  of 
the  pulpit  we  need  a  cross  of  sermons  with  other  forms 
of  literature.  Then,  diversity  of  school  and  of  sect  is 
vital.  The  Church  of  England  has  furnished  a  very 
different  order  of  preachers  from  those  of  Scotland. 
The  Methodist  and  the  Presbyterian  types  of  preaching 
are  almost  antipodes.  The  Congregational  Church  of 
New  England  has  a  type  of  its  own.  You  might  search 
the  continent  of  Europe  over,  and  not  find,  in  all  its 
history  of  all  its  sects,  a  preacher  like  Dr.  Emmons,  or 
another  like  Dr.  Bushnell. 

We  must  be  generous,  then,  in  our  appreciation  of 
diversities.  No  other  bigotry  is  so  degrading  as  bigotry 
in  culture.  It  underlies  opinions,  and  insures  bigotry 
there.  Be  our  reading  much  or  little,  we  should  read 
always  in  the  spirit  of  respect  for  varieties,  even  oppo- 
sites,  in  literary  character.  I  can  not  more  fitly  close 
this  review  of  the  necessity  of  variety  in  our  reading 
than  by  quoting  the  opinion  of  Dr.  Thomas  Arnold  of 
Rugby.  He  thought  more  profoundly  upon  the  whole 
theory  and  practice  of  education  than  any  other  man 
of  our  times. 

In  a  letter  on  the  studies  of  a  clergyman,  he  expresses 
himself  as  follows ;  viz.,  "  I  would  entreat  every  man 


LECT.  XIV.]  UNWRITTEN  LITERATURE.  211 

with  whom  I  had  any  influence,  that,  if  he  reads  at  all, 
he  should  read  widely  and  comprehensively;  that  he 
should  not  read  exclusively  what  is  called  divinity. 
Learning  of  this  sort,  when  not  mixed  with  that  com- 
prehensive study  which  alone  deserves  the  name,  is,  I 
am  satisfied,  an  actual  mischief  to  a  man's  mind.  It 
impairs  his  simple  common  sense.  It  makes  him  nar- 
row-minded, and  fills  him  with  absurdities.  If  a  man 
values  power  of  seeing  truth,  and  judging  soundly,  let 
him  not  read  exclusively  those  who  are  called  divines. 
With  regard  to  the  fathers,  in  all  cases  preserve  the 
proportions  of  your  reading.  Read,  along  with  the 
fathers,  the  writings  of  men  of  other  times  and  of 
different  powers  of  mind.  Keep  your  view  of  men 
and  things  extensive.  He  who  reads  deeply  in  one 
class  of  writers  only,  gets  views  which  are  sure  to  be 
perverted,  and  which  are  not  only  narrow,  but  false.  If 
I  have  a  confident  opinion  on  any  one  point  connected 
with  the  improvement  of  the  human  mind,  it  is  on 
this." 

(8)  The  principles  already  named  should  be  quali- 
fied b}^  another,  which  is  that  a  scholarly  ideal  of  study 
includes  the  study  of  unwritten  literature.  The  habit 
which  is  practicable  to  a  pastor  in  tliis  respect  is  not 
the  appropriation  of  a  great  amount  of  time  to  the  ■ 
purpose,  but  the  cultivation  of  professional  vigilance  in 
improving  such  opportunities  as  fall  in  his  way.  Do 
not  waste  them  by  making  entertainments  of  them. 
Make  them  tributary  to  your  stock  of  oratorical  knowl- 
edge. A  great  oration,  a  masterly  constitutional  argu- 
ment, a  powerful  forensic  plea,  a  fini /hed  sermon, 
Tittered  by  the  living  voice,  belong,  as  much  as  our 
libraries  do,  to  the  literature  of  the  age.     A  preacher's 


212  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xiv. 

culture  must  suffer,  if  he  ignores  them.  Generally,  a 
young  man's  first  awakening  to  the  dignity  of  a  schol- 
aiY  life  is  the  result  of  his  listening  to  an  oral  address. 
My  own  first  conceptions,  which  have  never  been  essen- 
tially changed,  of  excellence  in  English  style,  I  owe  to 
my  hearing,  at  the  age  of  sixteen  years,  an  oration 
by  Edward  Everett,  at  a  Commencement  of  Amherst 
College.  Our  debt  to  such  literary  models  we  often 
imdervalue,  because  they  are  not  a  book.  We  do  not 
see  them  on  our  library-shelves.  Several  things  con- 
cerning them  deserve  attention. 

This  unwritten  literature  is  of  great  magnitude  and 
variety.  Very  little,  comparatively,  of  the  bulk  of 
cultivated  thought,  finds  its  w^ay  to  the  press.  The 
most  voluminous  and  the  weightiest  part  of  it  is  speech, 
not  writing.  I  say  deliberately  the  weightiest  litera- 
ture of  the  world  is  spoken,  not  written.  That,  and 
that  only,  is  literature,  which  is  power  in  thought  as 
expressed  in  language.  Thought  moving  other  minds 
at  the  will  of  him  who  utters  it,  —  this  is  literature. 
The  weightiest  volume  of  it  is  not  in  our  libraries. 
Our  schools  have  little  direct  concern  with  it.  True, 
it  is  a  paradox  to  denominate  it  literature;  but  the 
paradox  is  not  deceptive,  and  no  other  word  expresses 
it  as  well. 

Earnest  conversation  is  full  of  this  unwritten  litera- 
ture. The  table-talk  of  many  other  men  besides  Luther 
and  Coleridge  and  Johnson  is  as  worthy  as  theirs  of 
a  place  on  our  bookshelves.  Emerson  says,  "  Better 
things  are  said,  more  incisive,  more  wit  and  insight  are 
dropped  in  talk  and  forgotten  by  the  speaker,  than  gets 
into  books.  The  problem  of  both  the  talker  and  the 
rra'o  '  are  the  same." 


LECT.  XIV.]        LITERATURE  IN  CONVERSATION.  218 

Dr.  Johnson  became  a  scholarly  authority  in  Eng- 
land by  his  conversation  more  than  by  his  writino:s. 
His  sway  of  English  literature  proceeded  from  the  club- 
house rather  than  from  the  printing-house.  Hence  tliat 
sway  is  in  our  day  becoming  a  myth.  We  do  not  find 
good  reason  for  it  in  his  writings.  Walter  Scott  talked 
more  poetry,  and  Edmund  Burke  more  eloquence,  than 
they  ever  wrote.  Men  used  to  part  with  Dr.  Arnold 
at  midnight,  mourning  over  the  loss  to  the  press  of 
the  materials  of  literature  which  they  had  heard  from 
his  lips  in  the  few  hours  before.  The  "Autocrat  of 
the  Breakfast-Table  "  grew  out  of  the  request  of  the 
friends  of  Dr.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  that  he  would 
print  some  of  his  conversations.  There  is  a  humble 
pastor  in  Essex  County,  Massachusetts,  who  has  been 
repeatedly  petitioned  by  his  clerical  brethren  to  save 
for  them  in  permanent  form  the  seeds  of  prolific 
thought  which  he  has  scattered  at  random  among  them 
in  meetings  of  ministerial  associations.  The  Rev. 
Henry  Ward  Beecher  is  said  to  have  talked  more  and 
sounder  theology  than  he  knows  how  to  preach. 

Home-life  in  many  cultivated  families  abounds  with 
unwritten  literature.  It  is  often  full  of  healthy  criti- 
cism of  books,  of  art,  of  music,  of  material  nature,  and 
full  of  more  than  golden  links  of  suggestion  which 
bind  these  to  life  and  to  eternity.  A  record  of  the 
select  hours  in  many  cultivated  households,  through 
any  period  of  five  years'  continuance,  would  form  a 
volume  of  literature  as  vital  as  any  in  the  world. 

Specially  in  crises  of  history,  it  does  not  require 
knowledge  of  libraries  to  create  the  materials  of  libra- 
ries. In  critical  periods,  like  those  of  the  rise  of 
Christianity,  the  Crusades,  the  Reformation,  the  civil 


214  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xiv. 

wars  in  England,  the  English  Commonwealth,  the 
American  Revolution,  the  overthrow  of  American 
slavery,  men  aiid  women  who  have  nothing  that  the 
world  calls  litera  y  culture  live  literature  in  thousands 
of  humble  homes.  They  talk  literature,  though  it  may 
be  ungrammatically.  Families  by  thousands,  during 
the  war  of  the  Rebellion,  lived  books  like  that  of  the 
"  Schonb erg-Co tta  Family." 

In  a  similar  manner,  the  colloquial  instructions  of 
schools,  the  interviews  of  pastors  with  their  parish- 
ioners, the  emotive  utterances  of  meetings  for  religious 
conference,  contain  the  richest  germs  of  literature. 
They  contain,  often,  the  latest  and  the  wisest  and  the 
most  hearty  developments  of  that  which  makes  power  in 
books.  Say  what  we  may  of  the  dullness  of  prayer- 
meetings,  churches  are  sometimes  sensible  of  an  intel- 
lectual as  well  as  a  spiritual  quickening  in  them,  which 
they  do  not  get  from  an  equal  amount  of  discourse 
from  the  pulpit.  Some  pastors  are  nearer  to  the  very 
magazine  of  literary  power:  they  draw  more  heat 
straight  from  central  fires  in  their  plain  talks  on  a 
sabbath  evening  than  in  the  sermons  of  the  day.  The 
people  know  nothing  of  either  as  literature ;  but  they 
feel  the  difference  none  the  less.  The  difference  is  just 
that  which  they  feel  between  the  reading  of  a  bright 
book  and  the  reading  of  a  dull  one.  A  pastor  in  the 
city  of  Boston  has  been  heard  to  say,  "If  I  must 
choose  one  to  the  exclusion  of  the  other,  between  the 
pulpit  and  the  dais  of  the  conference-room,  give  me  the 
conference-room.  On  the  latter,  I  and  my  audiences 
are  ten  feet  nean^r  to  each  other  in  more  senses  than 
one." 

I  once  inquired  of  an  alumnus  of  this  seminary   what 


LECT.  XIV.]  HOMELY  LITERATURE.  215 

lived  in  his  memory  as  having  been  the  most  powerful 
mental  stimulus  to  him  in  the  curriculum  of  the  semi- 
nary. He  answered  without  hesitation,  "  The  Wednes- 
day evenmg  conference."  He  specified  particularly  the 
conferences  conducted  by  one  professor.  Not  all  the 
rest  of  the  instructions  he  received  here  had  laid  him 
under  so  deep  an  obligation  as  the  plair,  extempora- 
neous talks  of  that  one  man.  In  a  vast  variety  of 
these  homely  forms  are  found  unwritten  volumes.  I 
am  not  insensible  of  the  ease  with  which  this  view  may 
be  burlesqued.  It  may  seem  to  be  ludicrously  dis- 
proved in  the  very  next  prayer-meeting  you  attend.  I 
concede  drawbacks,  but  claim  that  a  residuum  remains 
which  is  worthy  of  our  libraries.  Put  into  type  the 
very  thoughts  which  fly  like  shuttles  back  and  forth 
among  living  minds  in  their  homeliest  intercourse  about 
almost  any  thing  in  which  they  are  in  dead  earnest,  and 
you  have  in  the  result  books  which  would  live  by  the 
side  of  venerable  names  in  folios. 

It  deserves  note,  therefore,  that  a  literary  man  makes 
a  fundamental  mistake,  who  neglects  to  observe  litera- 
ture in  these  homely,  unwritten  forms.  No  matter  how 
aspiring  he  may  be  in  his  aims,  he  can  not  afford  to 
ignore  these  low  grounds  of  literary  expression.  No 
author  can  afford  to  lose  the  discipline  of  conversation 
with  illiterate  men.  It  supplies  a  stimulus,  and  in  some 
respects  a  model,  which  he  can  obtain  nowhere  else. 
Sir  Walter  Scott  expressed  his  opinion  on  the  subject 
extravagantly;  but  he  was  right  in  the  principle  for 
which  he  contended,  that  men  are  original  thinkers  and 
talkers  on  that  which  is  the  business  of  their  lives. 
The  professors  of  Edinburgh,  dining  out,  were  recre- 
ating :  the  merchants  of  Edinburgh,  in  their  counting- 


216  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xiv. 

rooms,  were  working  t)  the  extreme  of  tlieir  mental 
tension.  This  made  the  difference  to  Sir  Walter 
between  dulhiess  and  earnestness.  No  man  is  dull  who 
is  really  in  earnest  about  any  thing,  be  it  but  the  twist 
of  a  pin's  head. 

Why  does  literary  seclusion,  if  long  unbroken,  induce 
unhealthiness  of  mind?  Why  does  literary  monasti- 
cism  always  fail  in  its  aims  ?  Why  was  "  Brook  Farm  " 
a  failure  ?  Poets,  philosophers,  scholars,  seers,  went 
there,  expecting  to  pass  their  evenings  in  "high  con- 
verse "  of  kindred  souls.  But  I  have  been  told,  as 
coming  from  one  of  them  after  he  had  outlived  the 
dream,  that  they  sometimes  went  out  at  sunset,  in  the 
desperation  of  their  mental  vacuity,  and  leaned  over 
the  pig-sty,  thrusting  sticks  at  the  swine  for  occupation. 
This  is  a  caricature,  doubtless;  yet  it  is  quite  in  the 
order  of  nature  that  its  equivalent  should  have  occurred. 
Literary  culture  revolts  from  such  seclusion  as  heartily 
and  inevitably  as  religion  does  from  the  monastery  and 
the  convent.     It  is  not  good  for  man  to  be  alone. 

Specially  is  it  true  that  a  public  speaker  can  not 
afford  to  be  ignorant  of  speech  as  practiced  by  those 
who  hear  him.  A  preacher  can  not  afford  to  part  with 
a  knowledge  of  speech  as  it  exists  in  the  homes  of  his 
people.  If  you  become  men  of  power  in  the  pulpit,  — I 
mean  if  you  become  spiritual  chiefs,  and  not  merely 
conventional  figure-heads  to  your  churches,  —  you  will 
owe  your  power  in  part  to  the  very  men  and  women 
and  children  who  feel  it  from  you.  The  power  comes 
in  part  from  them  to  you,  before  it  goes  back  as  power 
f.om  you  to  them.  When  our  Lord  would  teach  his 
disciples  a  great  principle  in  the  philosophy  of  religion, 
"  he  set  a  little  child  in  the  midst  of  them."     So  do  the 


LECT.  xiv.l  ELOQUENCE  REPRESENTATIVE.  217 

great  principles  of  truth  in  many  other  things  come 
into  clearest  light  by  illnstration  in  the  most  artless 
and  unconscious  exemplars.  Common  things  illustrate 
profound  things.  Common  people  are  often  the  most 
original.  Therefore  you  will  discover,  that,  to  move 
them  with  your  thought,  you  must  know  and  respect 
theu"  thought.  To  reach  them  with  your  style,  you 
must  master  their  style.  I  do  not  say  must  use  their 
style,  but  must  master  it.  To  reach  them  at  all,  you 
must  know  what  their  mental  experience  is,  what  they 
have  lived  through,  and  what  experiment  of  life  they 
are  trying,  when  you  try  your  power  upon  them.  Their 
mental  life  and  your  mental  life  must  run  in  parallels 
not  wide  apart  from  each  other.  Otherwise  your  speech 
can  never  bridge  over  the  gulf  between.  Thinking 
men  will  hear  you  incredulously  ;  good  women  will  sit 
solitary  under  your  ministry  ;  and  children  will  look  at 
you  from  the  corners  of  their  eyes. 

Yet  again :  unwritten  literature  has  a  representative 
character.  Whenever  it  succeeds,  it  represents  a  mass 
of  unwritten  thought  which  lies  below  it.  The  great 
orator  in  real  life  is  the  spokesman  of  those  who  hear 
him.  He  utters  thoughts  which  are  floating  in  dimmer 
conceptions  and  more  homely  words  in  their  hearts.  He 
is  the  interpreter  to  them  of  their  own  souls.  Therein 
lies  his  power  over  them.  He  plays  upon  an  instru- 
ment which  is  tuned  by  a  more  cunning  hand.  Listen- 
ing to  such  a  man,  therefore,  gives  insight  into  the 
thought  of  the  living  generation.  It  is  studying  litera- 
ture in  the  very  process  of  its  formation.  What  would 
we  not  give,  if  we  could  listen  to-day  to  Edmund  Burke 
on  the  impeachment  of  Warren  Hastings,  or  to  Robert 
Hall  on  the  death  of  the    Princess  Charlotte,   or  to 


218  ME.^  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xrr. 

Webster  in  his  reply  to  Hayne  ?  To  study  these  phe- 
nomena in  the  very  process  of  their  evolution  would 
give  to  our  culture  what  no  books  contain.  It  would 
be  like  watching  the  crystallization  of  the  Kohinoor. 

But  such,  in  kind,  are  the  processes  of  the  oral  litera- 
ture of  our  own  times.  They  are  forming  deposits, 
some  of  which  will  be  permanent.  The  next  genera- 
tions will  read  them,  as  we  now  read  Burke  and  Jeremy 
Taylor.  They  Avill  regret  that  they  never  heard  the 
living  orators  and  preachers  of  to-day,  as  we  regret  that 
we  never  heard  those  whose  names  bore  a  halo  in  our 
youth.  You  have  heard  men  say  that  it  would  be  a 
lifelong  regret  to  them  that  they  never  heard  Webster, 
Clay,  and  Calhoun,  the  great  triumvirate  of  the  United- 
States  Senate.  Let  us  prize  while  we  have  them  the 
opportunities  of  hearing  the  models  of  living  eloquence 
in  our  day.  They  are  the  chief  representatives  of  that 
immense  collection  of  literature  which  real  life  is  creat- 
ing in  unwritten  forms. 

Moreover,  an  oral  address  is  a  form  of  literature 
which  can  not  be  completely  represented  by  the  press. 
The  old  idea,  —  as  old  as  eloquence  itself,  —  that  the 
living  voice  is  above  all  other  media  of  communicating 
thought,  is  confirmed  by  all  the  ages.  This  superiority 
to  the  press  is  the  birthright  of  the  pulpit.  The  press, 
with  its  thundering  enginery,  can  not  represent  the 
man  in  an  oral  address.  Yet  the  man  is  the  soul  of 
the  oral  address.  His  physical  framework  is  part  of  it. 
Attitude,  gesture,  tone,  eye,  lip,  the  muscular  varieties 
of  countenance,  all  that  goes  to  make  up  what  the 
ancients  called  ti.e  vivida  vultus,  and  that  secret  mag- 
netic emanation  from  the  whole  person,  the  origin  of 
which  we  can  not  locate  in  any  one  member  or  feature, 


LECT.  XIV.]  ELOQUENCE  OP  PANTOMIME.  219 

—  these  are  all  symbols  of  a  speaker's  thought  as  truly 
as  his  words  are. 

In  the  old  Greek  pantomime  not  a  word  was  uttered ; 
yet  it  sometimes  aroused  an  audience  to  such  excite- 
ment, that,  on  certain  subjects,  it  was  forbidden  by 
law.  King  Ferdinand  of  Naples,  after  the  revolution^ 
ary  movements  of  1822,  addressed  the  lazzaroai  from 
the  balcony  of  the  palace,  in  the  midst  of  tumultuous 
shouting,  and  used  no  language  but  that  of  signs,  and 
yet  made  himself  entirely  intelligible.  "  He  reproached, 
threatened,  admonished,  forgave,  and  finally  dismissed 
the  rabble  as  thoroughly  persuaded  and  edified  by  the 
gesticulations  of  the  royal  Punch,  as  an  American 
crowd  would  have  been  by  the  eloquence  of  Webster." 
Much  more  may  vocalized  thought  in  the  oral  address 
surpass  written  thought  in  a  book.  As  a  type  of  lit- 
erature the  oral  production  must  have  peculiarities 
which  the  press  can  not  preserve  to  us. 

This  is  illustrated  in  the  standing  fact  of  historic 
eloquence,  that,  as  recorded,  it  commonly  disappoints 
us.  The  great  orators  of  the  past  seldom  or  never 
in  the  reading  equal  our  expectations.  Who  feels  that 
the  orations  of  Demosthenes  equal  the  reputation  of 
the  first  orator  of  Greece  ?  His  name  could  never  have 
held  the  place  it  has  in  modern  criticism,  were  it  not 
for  the  momentum  given  to  his  fame  by  Athenian 
opinion.  Our  best  judgments  of  the  orators  of  the 
past  are  the  historic  judgments  :  they  are  the  opinions 
of  them  which  criticism  has  inherited.  If  we  had 
picked  up  the  works  of  Cicero  in  a  nameless  scroll  on 
the  coast  of  Siam,  it  is  doubtful  whether  we  shoiid 
have  discovered  for  ourselves  their  superlative  excel- 
lence.     So  of  the  Earl  of  Chatham:   his  speethcs  do 


220  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xiv. 

not  explain  to  us  why  the  House  of  Commons  should 
have  quailed  before  his  utterance  of  the  word  "  sugar." 
All  that  remains  of  Patrick  Henry  leaves  a  shadow 
of  mystery  over  his  reputed  power  with  the  House  of 
Burgesser  of  the  Old  Dominion. 

Among  preachers  none  disappoint  us  more  than 
the  most  illustrious  of  them.  We  can  not  discover 
Whitefield  and  Robert  Hall  in  their  published  sermons. 
We  have  to  accept  the  traditions  of  their  unintelligible 
success.  Of  any  one  of  Whitefield's  sermons  it  is  lit- 
erally true,  that,  though  we  have  every  word  of  it  in 
print,  we  have  but  a  fragment.  The  major  part  of  the 
symbols  of  his  thought  are  not  in  his  words.  The  man 
is  not  there.  The  soul  of  the  orator  is  not  there.  The 
spiritual  witness  to  the  union  of  his  soul  with  the  souls 
of  his  hearers  is  not  there.  These  were  intangible  and 
evanescent.  The  audience  felt  them,  but  no  invention 
of  science  could  transmit  them.  One  can  scarcely  read 
a  sermon  of  Whitefield's,  with  a  remembrance  of  the 
effects  it  wrought,  without  a  feeling  akin  to  that  which 
one  has  in  looking  upon  a  body  which  is  awaiting  its 
resurrection.  A  living  oratory,  therefore,  should  be 
regarded  as  a  type  of  literature  which  can  be  thor- 
oughly known  in  no  other  form. 

Once  more :  a  study  of  printed  literature  alone  may 
give  us  false  conceptions  of  what  oral  eloquence  is. 
Some  excellences  of  printed  thought  are  not  adapted 
to  oral  speech.  You  have  heard  it  said  of  a  sermon, 
"  That  will  read  better  than  it  sounds."  It  is  a  severe 
criticism.  An  oral  address  ought  not  to  read  better 
than  it  sounds:  if  it  does  so,  it  is  an  essay,  not  a 
speech.  On  one  occasion,  when  a  speech  in  the  House 
of  Commons  was  highly  praised  in  the  hearing  of  Mr. 


LKCT.  XIV.]  SPEECH  AND  ESSAY.  221 

Fox,  he  inguired,  "Does  it  read  well ? "  —  "  Yns,  grand- 
ly," was  the  answer.  "Then,"  said  Mr.  Fox,  "it  was 
not  a  good  speech."  The  principle  is  a  subtle  one,  but 
the  facts  of  parliamentary  eloquence  confirm  it.  The 
converse  of  the  principle  is  equally  true,  —  that  a  pro- 
duction which  does  7iot  read  well  may  for  that  reason 
have  been  a  good  speech. 

From  this  principle  it  follows  that  a  man  who  studies 
only  printed  literature  may  obtain  a  false  theory  of  oral 
eloquence.  This  peril  is  no  fiction.  It  is  working  evil 
in  the  living  ministry.  Scores  of  ministers  are  preach- 
ing after  the  model  of  the  essay.  They  are  literally 
"  talking  like  a  book."  They  are  not  orators.  They 
will  not  be  such,  till  they  form  an  ideal  of  eloquence 
which  involves  the  act  of  imagining  an  audience,  and 
constructing  thought  for  expression  to  the  ear. 

Here  let  a  brief  excursus  be  indulged  upon  the  ques- 
tion, often  asked,  "What  is  it  in  oral  speech  which 
distinguishes  it  from  the  essay?"  I  can  not  answer 
this  very  perspicuously  by  definitions ;  but  perhaps  it 
can  be  answered  by  a  contrast  of  examples.  The 
following  is  an  extract  from  a  recent  essay  on  the 
"  End  of  God  in  Creation :  "  — 

"What  was  the  final  cause  of  creation?  The  transition  from 
the  nnconditioned  to  the  conditioned  is  incomprehensible  by  the 
human  faculties.  What  that  transition  is,  and  how  it  cculd  take 
l^lace,  and  how  it  became  an  actualized  occurrence,  it  is  (  onfessed 
on  all  hands  are  absolutely  incomprehensible  enigmas.  We  can 
not  reasonably  imagine,  then,  that,  if  we  are  thus  ignorant  of  the 
nature  and  the  mode  of  this  stupendous  fact,  we  can  nevertheless 
comprehend  its  primitive  ground,  can  explore  its  ultimate  reasons, 
can  divine  its  final  motive.  Nor  can  we  thmk  to  unveil  the  Infinite 
Soul  at  that  moment,  when,  according  to  our  conceptions,  the  eter- 
nal uniformity  was  interrupted,  and  a  new  mode  of  being,  abso- 


222  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [leot.  xiv. 

lutely  uniiitelligible  to  us,  was  first  introduced.  We  can  not 
think  to  grasp  all  tlie  views  which  were  present  to  that  Soul, 
extending  from  the  tmbeginning  past  to  the  unending  future,  and 
to  fathom  all  its  purposes,  and  to  analyze  all  its  motives.  If  any- 
where, we  must  here  repel  every  thing  like  dogmatic  interpretation 
of  the  phenomena,  and  admit  whatever  is  put  forth  only  as  con- 
jectm-al  in  its  nature,  or  at  all  events  partial,  and  belonging  far 
more  to  the  surface  than  to  the  interior  of  the  subject." 

This  is  essay.  Listening  to  it,  one  can  not  fail  to  see 
that  it  needs  to  be  read  in  order  to  be  appreciated. 
To  a  hearer  it  is  dull ;  to  some  hearers,  obscure.  Yet 
are  not  some  sermons  constructed  on  this  model?  Are 
they  not  inevitably  delivered  with  intonations  and  a 
cadence  which  almost  compel  the  sense  of  humdrum  in 
the  listener? 

Take,  now,  the  same  theme,  and  the  same  leading 
thoughts,  and  the  same  succession  of  thoughts,  but 
expressed  in  the  following  style :  — 

"  Why  did  God  create  the  universe  ?  Creation  is  incomprehen- 
sible to  man.  What  is  creation  ?  How  was  it  possible  ?  How 
did  it  ever  come  to  be?  I  can  not  answer.  Can  you?  Every 
man  of  common  sense  confesses  his  ignorance  here.  But  if  we 
are  ignorant  of  what  creation  is,  and  how  it  is,  can  we  imagine 
that  we  understand  why  it  is?  Shall  we  ihink  to  unveil  the  mind 
of  God  in  the  stupendous  act?  That  moment  when  God  said, 
'  Let  there  be  light,'  was  a  moment  of  which  we  can  know  nothing 
but  that 'there  was  light.'  Shall  we  think  to  see  all  that  God 
saw?  Can  we  look  through  the  past  without  beginning,  and  the 
future  without  end,  and  fathom  all  his  purposes  and  all  his  mo- 
tives ?  Can  we  by  searching  find  out  God  ?  If  we  must  repel 
assertion  anyA;\'here,  we  must  do  so  here.  WTiatever  we  may  think, 
it  is  but  little  more  than  guess-work.  At  the  best,  it  can  be  but 
knowing  in  part.  The  most  we  can  know  must  be  on  the  surface. 
It  can  not  penetrate  to  the  heart  of  the  matter." 


LECT.  XIV.]  PREACHING  ESSAYS.  223 

Is  not  this  speech,  as  distinct  from  essay  ?  Is  not  the 
difference  obvious  ?  Is  it  not  vital  to  oral  style  ?  Some 
critics  would  underrate  it.  They  would  pronounce  it 
superficial,  because  it  has  not  the  ponderous  structure, 
and  the  swelling  cadence,  of  the  original.  They  would 
call  it  popular,  as  distinct  from  scholarly,  because  it 
can  be  appreciated  in  the  hearing. 

Whatever  may  be  true  of  such  criticism,  my  point  is, 
that  oral  speech  to  any  class  of  hearers  requires  certain 
peculiarities  which  do  not  belong  to  the  essay,  and 
are  not  largely  illustrated  in  printed  forms  of  thought. 
Therefore,  by  studying  those  forms  alone,  a  preacher 
may  obtain  false  ideas  of  oral  eloquence.  The  natural 
fruit  of  such  a  training  is,  that  a  preacher  should  read 
essays  from  the  pulpit  all  his  life  without  knowing  it. 
The  mystery  of  his  ministry  to  him  may  be,  that  he 
can  interest  his  people  so  much  more  effectively  out  of 
the  pulpit  than  in  it.  But  the  mystery  is  no  mystery. 
It  is  simply,  that,  out  of  the  pulpit,  he  speaks^  and  in  it 
he  essays.  This  is  the  reason  why  preachers  are  so 
often  requested  to  repeat  or  to  publish  their  extempo- 
raneous sermons,  while  their  written  sermons,  of  vastly 
more  solid  worth,  lie  unhonored  in  their  desks.  This 
is  the  secret  reason  why  the  conference-room  sometimes 
sustains  the  pulpit  which  stands  in  ponderous  dignity 
above  it.  It  is  because  in  the  one  the  preacher  talks, 
and  in  the  other  he  soliloquizes.  In  the  one  he  is 
eloquent  therefore;  in  the  other  —  what  shall  I  call  it? 


LECTURE   XV.  1 

THE  STUDY  OF  THE  SCBIPTTIRES  AS  LITERARY 
CLASSICS. 

(9)  One  remaining  principle,  by  which  other  prin- 
ciples of  selection  in  our  study  of  books  should  be 
qualified,  is  that  we  should  study  the  Scriptures  as 
literary  models.  It  furnishes  a  cheering  solution,  in 
part,  to  the  problem  of  the  practicability  of  scholarly 
culture  to  a  pastor,  that  a  very  vital  portion  of  that 
culture  may  be  derived  from  the  one  volume  which  is 
central  to  his  professional  labors.  No  other  profession 
finds  in  its  most  necessary  and  vital  work  such  a 
stimulus  to  intellectual  depth  and  breadth  as  that 
which  the  pulpit  finds  in  the  study  of  the  Scriptures. 
Good  cheer  is  this  to  an  overburdened  pastor. 

Allusion  was  made  to  some  of  the  biblical  writers, 
in  speaking  of  the  choice  of  authors  who  have  been 
controlling  powers  in  history.  I  have  purposely  re- 
served the  consideration  of  the  study  of  the  Bible  as 
a  whole,  because  its  study  as  a  collection  of  literary 
productioas  may  be  advocated  by  reasons  peculiar  to 
itself. 

Let  me  ask  you  to  note   first  —  without  comment, 

1  Portions  of  the  lectures  on  the  Study  of  the  Scriptures  have  beeu 
alreatly  published  in  a  lermon  preached  before  the  government  of 
Massachusetts. 
224 


LECT.  XV.]  THE  SCRIPTURES  IGNORED.  225 

for  the  point  is  so  obvious  —  the  distinction  between 
the  study  of  the  Bible  as  a  religious  revelation  and  the 
study  of  it  as  a  literary  classic. 

This  suggests  immediately  the  singular  neglect  of 
the  Bible  by  modern  literary  taste.  It  is  one  of  the 
subtle  collateral  evidences  of  human  depravity,  that 
the  republic  of  letters  has  so  generally  ignored  the 
Scriptures  as  a  literary  production.  Such  is  the  habit 
of  the  scholarly  thought  of  our  times,  that,  when  the 
idea  of  a  model  of  such  thought  is  first  suggested  to 
us,  it  is  in  connection  wholly  with  uninspired  names. 
If  a  stranger  at  a  university  were  to  ask  one,  on  the 
spur  of  the  moment,  to  give  the  names  of  ten  models 
of  the  first  class  in  the  history  of  the  press,  the  reply 
would  doubtless  be  entirely  oblivious  of  the  writers  of 
the  Bible. 

As  purely  literary  labor,  and  for  scholarly  purposes 
alone,  where  is  criticism  of  the  Bible  ever  taught, 
outside  of  theological  schools?  By  the  common  con- 
sent of  scholars,  commentaries  on  the  Scriptures  are 
relegated  to  the  curriculum  of  professional  study. 
Even  there  they  are  often  regarded  as  provincial,  not 
to  say  unscholarly.  Would  the  literary  study  of  the 
Bible,  think  you,  be  welcomed  at  Harvard  College  with 
the  same  respectful  enthusiasm  with  which  a  course  of 
lectures  on  Shakspeare,  by  an  expert  in  Shakspearean 
literature,  would  be  received  ?  Could  a  biblical  club  for 
the  literary  criticism  of  the  Pentateuch  be  sustained  at 
Yale  College  as  vigorously  as  the  Chaucer  Club  was 
sustained  at  Andover  a  few  years  ago  ?  This  is  one  of 
the  developments  of  what  I  have  elsewhere  denomi- 
nated the  cant  of  literature.  The  secret  and  uncon- 
scious antipathy  of  the  human  mind  to  the  moral  aim 


226  MEN  AND  BOd  KS.  [lect.  xt  . 

of  the  Scriptures  betrays  itself  in  that  vanity  cf  scholar- 
ship wliich  affects  to  despise  or  ignore  their  literary 
claims. 

Or  put  the  case  in  another  way.  One  can  easily 
imadne  what  a  stir  in  the  learned  world  would  be 
created,  if  certain  portions  of  the  Bible  were  recent 
antiquarian  discoveries,  claiming  no  inspired  authority. 
Suppose  that  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  had  been 
exhumed,  during  the  last  insurrection  in  India,  from 
the  ruins  of  an  old  temple  of  Vishnu.  Conceive  that 
the  Fifty-first  Psalm  had  been  just  deciphered  from  a 
hieroglyph  in  the  Pyramids.  Picture  to  j^ourself  the 
latest  importation  of  a  slab  from  Nineveh  as  contain- 
ing the  first  known  inscription  of  one  of  the  closing 
chapters  of  the  Book  of  Job.  Imagine  that  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount  had  just  come  to  light  from  a  lost  and 
recovered  book  of  Seneca,  or  had  been  found  among  the 
meditations  of  Aurelius  Antoninus.  What  an  ecstasy 
would  rouse  the  dignity  of  the  scholastic  world !  What 
an  inundation  we  should  have  of  literary  astonishment ! 
What  exultant  monographs  from  Westminster  Reviews. 
What  eager  quotations  from  the  revered  authors,  as  the 
peers  of  Confucius  and  Plato  !  Our  universities  would 
resound  for  a  decade  with  eulogiums  upon  the  resur- 
rection of  a  noble  antiquity. 

But  because  the  Scriptures  are  the  word  of  God, 
because  they  claim  authority  in  morals,  because  they 
press  close  upon  the  conscience,  the  literary  mind  of 
the  race  has  silently  turned  away  from  them  as  models 
of  literary  culture,  and  has  expended  itself  on  gods  and 
goddesses  of  its  own  creation , 

Our  current  systems  of  education  are  founded  in  part 
on  this  perversion  of  scholarly  taste.    They  assume  that 


LECT.  XV.]  THE  BIBLE  IN  COLLEGES.  227 

the  study  of  the  Bible  is  not  a  necessity  to  a  liberal 
education.  It  ranks  with  the  study  of  anatomy  or  of 
the  law  of  mortmain.  So  far  as  I  know,  the  only  ex- 
ceptions to  this  view  are  found  in  the  German  gym- 
nasia, where  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  are,  or  were 
a  few  years  ago,  criticised  and  taught  by  the  side  of 
Xenophon  and  Virgil.  The  study  of  the  Bible  in  our 
American  colleges  —  what  shall  I  say  of  it?  Do  I 
wrong  it  in  saying  that  it  is  an  expedient  of  collegiate 
police?  Is  it  not  sometimes  required  mainly  because 
the  authorities  do  not  know  what  else  to  do  with 
Monday  morning?  Such  at  least  was  the  usage  in  my 
time. 

The  fact  is  a  singular  one,  that  in  the  German  schools, 
where  the  inspiration  of  the  Bible  is  often  discarded, 
and  where  Ezekiel  and  St.  Paul  are  criticised  precisely 
as  criticism  deals  with  Aristophanes  and  Juvenal,  the 
literature  of  the  Bible  is  restored  to  respectable  appre- 
ciation. It  is  recognized  as  a  model  of  scholarly  cul- 
ture. The  moment  the  weight  of  inspiration  is  taken 
off,  and  a  scholar  can  approach  the  Scriptures  with  no 
response  of  conscience  to  them  as  a  religious  authority, 
then  respect  returns  for  them  as  literary  classics. 

It  is  worthy  of  notice,  that  in  this  country  a  positive 
retrograde  has  taken  place  on  this  subject  in  the  col- 
legiate curriculum.  During  the  first  century  of  the 
existence  of  Harvard  College,  the  Greek  New  Testa- 
ment was  the  only  Greek  text-book  put  into  the  hands 
of  its  students.  The  time  was,  when  Hebrew  was  taught 
there  as  an  undergraduate  study.  The  professors  could 
some  of  them  converse  in  Hebrew.  How  much  do  the 
undergraduates  of  the  venerable  university  know  of 
Hebrew  now  ?  How  often  do  its  learned  faculty  regale 
themselves  in  Hebrew  colloquy? 


228  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xv. 

To  appreciate  the  Bible  ourselves,  then,  as  a  literary 
classic,  we  need  to  emancipate  ourselves  from  the  cur- 
rent opinion  of  educated  men  on  the  subject.  We  have 
probably  grown  into  that  opinion  unconsciously.  Un- 
educated Christians,  in  their  indiscriminate  reverence 
for  the  Scriptures,  may  be  nearer  the  truth  than  we  are 
in  our  scholarly  judgment.  We  may  have  a  process 
of  self-discipline,  more  severe  than  we  anticipate,  to  go 
through  in  restoring  the  Bible  to  its  true  place  in  our 
literary  estimate.  It  will  not  do  to  approach  it  with 
prepossessions  against  it  as  a  literary  model. 

But,  approaching  it  in  an  appreciative,  scholarly  spirit, 
we  find  incitement  to  the  literary  study  of  it  in  the 
fact  that  the  Bible  contains  the  oldest  literature  in  the 
world.  Interest  in  antiquity  for  its  own  sake  is  legiti- 
mate. That  interest  is  a  normal  fruit  of  education,  as 
well  as  a  natural  instinct  of  the  human  mind.  Every 
mind  has  roots  in  the  past.  A  thing  is  presumptively 
true,  if  it  is  old;  and  an  old  truth  men  will  revere. 
We  all  have  historic  feelers,  which  reach  out  for  some- 
thing to  lay  hold  of,  and  to  steady  our  faith,  amidst  the 
rush  of  events.  He  is  not  a  bold  man  who  can  tear 
himself  loose  from  the  underground  of  former  ages.  It 
would  be  an  irreparable  loss  to  the  edacating  forces  of 
Christendom,  if  the  faith  of  the  Christian  world  could 
be  destroyed  in  the  descent  of  the  existing  races  of 
men  from  one  pair ;  so  ennobling,  and  so  stimulating  to 
culture,  is  this  instinct  of  reverence  for  a  long-lived 
unity.  The  human  instinct  of  reverence  for  the  old 
story  of  a  paradise,  with  its  halo  of  the  golden  begin- 
ning of  things,  is  quickening  to  high  culture. 

Much  of  the  disciplinary  power  of  the  Greek  litera- 
ture comes  to  us  through  our  intuitive  reverence  for  the 


LECT.  XV.]  ANTIQUITY  OF  THE  BIBLE.  229 

long-lived.  So  long  as  Macpherson's  impostuie  was 
undiscovered,  and  his  works  were  received  as  the  veri- 
table productions  of  Ossian,  they  exerted  a  perceptible 
influence  upon  the  men  of  letters  in  England  through 
the  magnifying  power  of  their  reverence  for  ancient 
genius.  The  literary  firmament  was  ablaze  with  enthu- 
siasm for  the  great  Northern  poet.  It  was  like  the 
northern-lights,  as  transient,  indeed,  but,  while  it  lasted, 
as  enchanting.  Had  the  poems  of  Ossian  been  other 
than  an  imposture,  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that  they 
would  not  have  perpetuated  their  first  renown  till  this 
day,  so  sensitive  is  the  vision  of  literary  taste  to  any 
gleam  of  genius  from  a  bygone  age. 

With  all  the  abuses  to  which  this  susceptibility  of 
our.  nature  is  liable,  it  is  in  our  nature,  and  for  wise 
purposes.  Within  its  normal  limits,  and  kept  in  bal- 
ance by  the  spirit  of  inquiry,  its  operation  is  healthful. 
No  grand  elevation  of  society,  and  no  finished  culture 
of  the  individual,  is  ever  attained  without  its  aid.  We 
have,  then,  a  very  obvious  ground  of  literary  interest 
in  the  Scriptures,  which  is  altogether  independent  of 
their  inspiration  and  of  their  moral  uses,  in  the  fact  that 
they  contain  the  earliest  known  thoughts  of  our  race  in 
literary  forms.  To  give  definiteness  to  this  fact,  let 
several  specifications  be  observed  in  illustration  of  it. 

It  is,  for  instance,  a  fact,  the  significance  of  which 
infidelity  appreciates  if  we  do  not,  that  the  only 
authentic  history  of  the  world  before  the  deluge  is 
found  in  the  sacred  books  of  Christianity.  The  world 
of  the  future  never  can  know  any  thing  of  the  ante- 
diluvians except  from  the  Jewish  historian.  It  would 
be  worth  centuries  of  toil  to  the  socialism  of  Europe, 
if  it  could  blot  out  this  one  fact  in  the  relations  of 


230  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xv. 

the  world  to  the  Pentateuch.  The  late  Professor  B.  B. 
Edwards  thought  it  probable  that  we  have  also  in  the 
books  of  Moses,  what  no  other  literature  can  show,  a 
fragment  of  poetry  which  was  actually  composed  in 
the  antediluvian  infancy  of  the  race.  Does  it  not  help 
us  to  some  conception  of  the  venerableness  of  these 
volumes  to  recall,  that,  by  the  commonly  received  chro- 
nology, they  were  written  eleven  hundred  years  before 
Herodotus,  whom  the  world  has  consented  to  honor  as 
the  father  of  history? 

The  Hebrew  jurisprudence  is  by  the  same  chronology 
seven  hundred  years  older  than  that  of  Lycurgus,  and 
two  thousand  years  older  than  that  of  Justinian.  You 
have  heard  that  Thomas  Jeiferson  was  indebted,  for  his 
conception  of  our  American  government,  to  the  polity  of 
an  obscure  church  in  Virginia.  But  republicanism  was 
foreshadowed  in  the  Hebrew  commonwealth  nearly 
three  thousand  years  before  the  settlement  of  James- 
town. The  principle  of  the  New-England  town-meet- 
ing, in  which  De  Tocqueville  found  the  corner-stone  of 
our  free  institutions,  was  originated  by  Jethro,  the  ven- 
erable father-in-law  of  Moses. 

The  lyric  poetry  of  the  Hebrews  was  in  its  golden 
age  nearly  a  thousand  years  before  the  birth  of  Horace. 
Deborah  sang  a  model  of  a  triumphal  song  full  five 
hundred  years  before  Sappho  was  born.  The  author  of 
Ecclesiastes  discussed  the  problem  of  evil  five  hundred 
years  before  Socrates  in  the  Dialogues  of  Plato.  The 
Epithalamium  of  the  Canticles  is  nearly  a  thousand 
3' ears  older  than  Ovid's  "  Art  of  Love."  The  Book  of 
Esther  was  a  venerable  fragment  of  biography,  more 
strange  than  fiction,  at  least  twelve  hundred  years  old, 
at  the  dawn  of  the  romantic  literature  of  Europe.     The 


LECT.  XV.]  THE  BOOK  OF  JOB.  231 

Proverbs  of  Solomon  are  by  eight  hundred  years  more 
ancient  than  the  Treatises  of  Seneca. 

Dr.  Johnson  once  read  a  manuscript  copy  of  a  pas- 
toral story  to  a  group  of  friends  in  London.  They 
begged  of  him  to  inform  them  where  he  obtained  it, 
and  who  was  the  writer.  Imagine  their  amazement, 
if  he  had  told  them  that  it  was  an  ancient  treasure, 
written,  in  a  language  now  dead,  nine  hundred  years 
before  the  Georgics  of  Virgil,  seven  hundred  years 
before  the  Idyls  of  Theocritus,  and  twenty-five  hundred 
years  before  the  discovery  of  America,  and  that  it  had 
been  remarkably  preserved  among  the  archives  of  the 
Hebrews ;  for  it  was  no  other  than  the  Book  of  Ruth. 

Jeremiah  is  as  properly  pronounced  the  founder  of 
the  elegiac  school  of  poetry  as  Mimnermus,  to  whom 
its  origin  is  commonly  ascribed ;  for  they  were,  proba- 
bly, for  a  short  time,  contemporaries,  the  Hebrew 
prophet  being  by  half  a  century  the  senior. 

The  entire  bulk  of  the  prophetic  literature  of  the 
Hebrews;  a  literature  extraordinary;  one  which  has 
laws  of  its  own,  to  which  there  is  and  can  be  no 
parallel  in  any  uninspired  workings  of  the  human  mind 
—  this  mysterious,  often  unfathomable  compendium  of 
the  world's  future,  which  the  wisdom  of  twenty  cen- 
turies has  not  exhausted,  was,  the  whole  of  it,  anterior 
to  the  Augustan  age  of  Rome.  Even  the  writers  of 
the  New  Testament  are  all  of  them  of  more  venerable 
antiquity  than  Tacitus  and  Plutarch,  and  Pliny  the 
Younger. 

What  shall  be  said  of  the  Book  of  Job?  Bi)lical 
scholars  only  conjecture  its  age ;  but  the  argument  for 
its  great  antiquity  appears  to  me,  though  not  by  any 
means  conclusive,  at  least  as  strong  as  that  for  it»  latei 


232  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xv. 

origin.  If  the  first  hypothesis  be  true,  this  is  the  oldest 
volume  now  existing,  at  least  eight  hundred  years 
older  than  Homer.  It  was  already  an  ancient  poem 
when  Cecrops  is  conjectured  to  have  founded  Athens. 
When  Britain  was  invaded  by  the  Romans,  it  was  more 
time-worn  than  the  name  of  Julius  Csesar  to-day  is  to 
us.  Natural  philosophers  now  turn  to  its  allusions  as 
the  only  recorded  evidence  we  have  of  the  state  of  the 
arts  and  sciences  from  three  to  four  thousand  years  ago. 
A  modern  commentator  on  the  book  has  collated  from 
it  hints  of  the  then  existing  state  of  knowledge  respect- 
ing astronomy,  geography,  cosmology,  meteorology, 
mining,  precious  stones,  coining,  writing,  engraving, 
medicine,  music,  hunting,  husbandry,  modes  of  travel, 
the  military  art,  and  zoology.  Any  work,  surely,  which 
should  be  so  fortunate  as  to  be  of  uninspired  author- 
ity, and  should  give  to  the  world  the  obscurest 
authentic  hints  of  the  state  of  these  sciences  and  arts 
forty  centuries  back,  would  be  hailed  as  a  treasure 
worthy  of  a  nation's  purchase.  In  the  study  of  such  a 
volume  we  may  legitimately  feel  the  same  enthusiasm 
which  Napoleon,  in  the  campaign  of  Egypt,  sought  to 
arouse  in  his  soldiers,  when  he  exclaimed  to  them, 
''  Forty  centuries  look  down  upon  you." 

Whatever  is  becoming  to  a  scholarly  spirit,  then,  in 
a  love  of  ancient  literature,  for  the  sake  of  the  stimu- 
lating and  ennobling  effect  of  its  antiquity,  we  have 
reason  to  cherish  for  the  Scriptures,  considered  merely 
as  literary  classics. 

We  find  another  inducement  to  the  literary  study  of 
the  Scriptures,  in  ^>he  fact  that  they  sustain  a  regenera- 
tive connection  with  Oriental  civilization.  Two  things 
comprise  the  i)oints  essential  to  this  aspect  of  the 
subject. 


LECT.  XV.]  ORIENTAL  CIVILIZATION.  233 

One  is,  that  the  Oriental  mind  is  giving  no  signs  of 
having  finished  its  work  in  history.     What  is  the  law 
of  Providence  respecting  nations  and  races  which  have 
finished  their  work  as  powers  in  the  world's  destiny  ? 
It  is  a  law  of  doom.      Such   nations   and   races   die. 
Christianity,  which  is  the  flower  and  fruitage  of  Provi- 
dence, has  always  been  prophetic  in  its  instincts.     It 
has  never  bound  itself  to  the  soil  anywhere.     The  law 
of  its  being  is,  that  it  shall  pass  away  from  superannu- 
ated to  youthful  races,  from  decadent  to  germinant  na- 
tions, from  expiring  to  nascent  languages,  from  senile  to 
virile  literatures.    Then  those  races,  nations,  languages, 
and   literatures   which   represent    its    abandoned    con- 
quests die,  if  they  have  in  them  no  recuperative  power 
to  fit  them  for  future  use.     Under  this  law  of  divine 
operation  the  entire  Oriental  stock  of  mind,  if  it  has 
no  Christian  future,  ought  now  to  be  evincing  signs  of 
dissolution.     But  this  is  by  no  means  true  of  it.     The 
nations  which  represent  it  are  not,  as  a  whole,  dying 
out.      They  are  not  visibly  approximating  their  end. 
More  than  one  of  the  Asiatic  races  seem  to  be  as  full- 
blooded,  and  as  virile  in  their  physical  make,  and  as 
likely  to  endure  for  thirty  generations,  as  they  did  a 
thousand  years  ago.     They  seem  to  be  waiting  in  grand 
reserve,  as  the  beds  of  anthracite   have  waited  with 
latent  fires,  for  futurn  use.     That  ancient  development 
of  man  which  began  on  the  plains  of  Shinar  bids  fair 
to  live  by  the  side  of  its  Occidental  rival,  even  if  it 
does  not  outlive  this  by  reason  of  its  calmer  flow  of 
life. 

If  it  does  thus  live,  all  analogy  would  lead  us  to 
believe  that  there  is  something  in  it  which  deserves 
to  live.     There  is  something  in  it  which  Providence 


234  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect   xv. 

has  a  use  for  in  the  luture.  It  has  energy;  it  has 
resources ;  it  has  faculty ;  it  has  manly  tastes  and  pro- 
clivities; it  has  something  or  other,  which,  under 
divine  regeneration,  will  be  a  cause  of  growth,  if  in- 
fused into  the  life-blood  of  the  Western  races.  The 
circle  of  Occidental  development  may  be  enlarged  by 
it.  The  channel  in  which  our  civilization  is  moving 
may  be  thus  widened  and  deepened. 

The  other  fact  bearing  upon  the  topic  before  us  is, 
that,  if  new  systems  of  thought  are  to  grow  up  among 
the  Asiatics,  with  any  function  of  control  in  the  world, 
they  must  be  the  creations  of  the  Bible.  Nothing  else 
represents  the  Oriental  mind  in  any  form  which  can 
ever  rouse  it  to  its  utmost  of  capacity.  No  tiling  else, 
therefore,  can  ever  make  it  a  power  in  the  future  civ- 
ilization. None  but  a  visionary  can  look  for  a  rejuve- 
nescence of  Asia  in  coming  ages  from  any  internal 
forces  now  acting  there  independently  of  the  Scrip- 
tures. The  history  of  the  East  contains  nothing  which 
can  ever  be  to  the  world,  for  instance,  what  the  revived 
literatures  of  Greece  and  Rome  were  to  the  middle 
ages  of  Europe.  Explorers  find  nothing  there  out  of 
which  great  libraries  can  grow.  They  find  nothing 
that  calls  for  or  promises  to  the  future  great  universi- 
ties, or  new  systems  of  philosophy,  or  advanced  scien- 
tific researches.  The  East  is  the  land  of  pyramids  and 
sphinxes.  Whatever  that  immense  territory  has  to 
contribute  to  the  civilization  of  the  future  must  come 
from  the  germination  of  biblical  thought.  It  must 
be  the  working  of  biblical  inspiration  in  the  spiritual 
renewal  of  Oriental  character,  which  nothing  but  the 
religion  of  the  Sc  riptures  can  produce. 

Why  should  it  be  deemed  visionary  to  look  for  this 


tECT.  XV.]  ORIENTAL  LITERATURES.  235 

as  oue  of  the  results  of  the  infusion  of  European  mind 
now  going  on  in  Western  and  Central  Asia?  Already 
the  germs  of  Christian  universities  and  libraries  exist 
there  which  may  one  day  allure  literary  travel  front 
the  West,  as  those  of  England  and  Germany  do  to-day. 
Inspired  prophecy  aside,  it  is  no  more  visionary  to 
predict  the  re-creation  of  Oriental  mind  in  forms  of 
new  literatures  superior  to  any  the  world  has  yet 
known,  through  the  plastic  influence  of  the  Scriptures, 
than  it  was  to  anticipate  the  birth  of  the  three  great 
literatures  of  Europe  as  the  fruit  of  the  modern  revival 
of  the  literatures  of  Greece  and  Rome.  The  minds  of 
nations  move  in  just  such  immense  waves  of  revolu- 
tion. Reasoning  a  priori,  they  seem  impossible :  so 
do  geologic  cataclysms  to  a  race  which  lives  in  quiet 
over  slumbering  volcanoes.  .But,  reasoning  a  posteriori, 
they  are  only  the  natural  effect  of  a  great  force  gen- 
erating great  forces.  They  seem  as  gravitation  does 
to  a  race  which  has  no  conception  of  what  it  would 
be  to  exist  without  it.  The  diurnal  revolutions  of  the 
earth  are  not  more  normal  or  more  sure. 

The  Asiatic  races  have,  indeed,  a  fairer  intellectual 
prospect  than  Europe  had  at  the  time  of  the  revival 
of  letters;  and  this  for  the  reason  that  they  are  to 
receive  their  higher  culture  in  Christian  instead  of 
Pagan  forms.  Conceive  what  a  difference  would  have 
been  created  in  the  destinies  of  Europe,  what  centuries 
of  conflict  with  barbarism  would  to  human  view  have 
been  saved,  if  the  Greek  and  Roman  literatures  could 
have  come  into  the  possession  of  the  modern  European 
mind  freighted  with  Christian  instead  of  Pagan  thought, 
and  if,  thus  Christianized,  they  cc  ild  have  been  wrought 
into  European  culture ! 


236  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xv. 

Yet  this,  to  a  very  large  extent,  appears  likely  to  be 
the  process  of  intellectual  awakening  to  which  the 
immense  forces  of  Asiatic  mind  are  to  be  subjected. 
Asiatic  literatures  of  the  future  are  to  be  the  direct 
product  of  centuries  of  Christian  culture  in  other  lands. 
They  are  to  have  no  Paganism  to  exorcise,  as  European 
civilization  had,  from  the  very  models  which  are  to 
inspire  them.  In  Asia,  Paganism  is  to  represent  in 
the  future,  not  only  dead  institutions,  oppressive  gov- 
ernments, degrading  traditions,  and  popular  wretched- 
ness, but  a  puerile  literature  as  well.  It  can  never 
there,  as  it  did  in  Europe,  go  into  solution  with  Chris- 
tianity through  the  force  of  a  Pagan  culture  so  beau- 
tiful and  so  lofty  as  to  command  the  reverence  of  all 
scholarly  minds. 

With  this  view  of  the  future  of  the  Oriental  world, 
it  is  certainly  a  remarkable  feature  of  the  divine  plan 
that  Revelation  should  be  for  ever  stereotyped,  as  it  is 
so  largely,  in  an  Oriental  mold.  It  looks,  does  it  not, 
as  if  the  Oriental  type  of  the  race  were  yet  to  be  a 
power  in  the  world  through  the  Scriptures,  as  the  only 
vital  nexus  between  its  future  and  its  past. 

Napoleon  used  to  say  that  the  only  theater  fit  for 
great  exploits  was  the  East.  Europe,  he  said,  was 
contracted :  it  was  provincial.  The  great  races  were 
beyond  the  Mediterranean.  They  were  in  the  ancient 
seats  of  empire,  because  the  numbers  were  there. 
There  may  be  more  of  truth  in  this  than  he  meant  to 
utter.  The  grandest  intellectual  and  moral  conquests 
of  the  world  may  yet  follow  the  track  of  Alexan- 
der. 

From  this  train  of  suggestion,  the  inference  is  obvi- 
ous, that  the  time  can  not  be  distant  when  enterprising 


LECT.  XV.]  THE  FUTURE  OF  LITERATURE  237 

scholarship  will  not  be  content  tc  omit  the  Hebrew  and 
Christian  Scriptures  from  its  resources  of  culture.  A 
mind  which  is  imbued  with  biblical  learning  has  a  home 
in  the  future  of  literature,  and  among  the  majorities  of 
cultivated  races,  which  no  mind  can  have  without  it. 


LECTURE  XVI. 

THE  DEBT  OF  LIVING  LITERATURES  TO  THE  BIBLE. — 
INTRINSIC   SUPERIORITY  OF   BIBLICAL  MODELS. 

If  the  relation  of  the  Scriptures  to  the  future  of 
Oriental  civilization  should  seem  to  be  a  distant  motive 
to  biblical  culture,  let  us  observe  one  Avhich  is  more 
immediate  in  its  influence,  in  the  fact  that  the  Bible  is, 
to  a  large  extent,  incorporated  into  all  the  living  litera- 
tures of  the  world;  not  into  all  of  them  in  equal 
degrees,  but  into  all  sufficiently  to  be  felt  as  a  power. 
When  we  speak  of  the  literary  sway  of  European  and 
American  mind,  we  speak  of  the  conquests  of  the  Scrip- 
tures. The  elemental  ideas  of  the  Bible  lie  at  the 
foundation  of  the  whole  of  it.  Christianity  has 
wrought  such  revolutions  of  opinion,  it  has  thrown  into 
the  world  so  much  original  thought,  it  has  organized  so 
many  institutions,  customs,  unwritten  laws  of  life,  it 
has  leavened  society  with  such  a  potent  antiseptic  to 
the  putrescent  elements  of  depravity,  and  it  has,  there- 
fore, created  so  much  of  the  best  material  of  humanity, 
that  now  the  noblest  scholarship  can  not  exist  but  as  a 
debtor  to  the  Christian  Scriptures. 

The  debt  of  literature  to  the  Bible  is  like  that  of 
vegetation  to  light.  No  other  volume  has  contributed 
so  much  to  the  great  organic  forms  of  thought.  No 
other  IS  fusing  itself  so  widely  into  the  standards  of 

238 


LECT.  XVI.]      POWER  OF  THE   BIBLE  OVER  MIND  239 

libraries.  Homer  and  Plato  and  Aristotle  were  long 
since  absorbed  in  it  as  intellectual  powers.  This  vol- 
ume has  never  yet  numbered  among  its  religious 
believers  a  fourth  part  of  the  human  race,  yet  it  has 
swayed  a  greater  amount  of  mind  than  any  other  vol- 
ume the  world  has  known.  It  has  the  singular  faculty 
of  attracting  to  itself  the  thinkers  of  the  world,  either 
as  friends  or  as  foes,  always,  everywhere.  The  works 
of  comment  upon  it  of  themselves  form  a  literature  of 
which  any  nation  might  be  proud.  It  is  more  volumi- 
nous than  all  that  remains  to  us  of  the  Greek  and 
Roman  literatures  combined.  An  English  antiquarian, 
who  has  had  the  curiosity  to  number  the  existing  com- 
mentaries upon  the  Scriptures,  or  upon  portions  of 
them,  found  them  to  exceed  sixty  thousand.  Where  is 
another  empire  of  mind  to  be  found  like  this  ? 

Here  is  a  power,  which,  say  what  we  may  of  its 
results,  has  set  the  Christian  world  to  thinking,  and 
has  kept  it  thinking  for  nearly  two  thousand  years. 
The  unpublished  literature  of  the  Christian  pulpit  sur- 
passes in  volume  all  the  literatures  of  all  nations.  "•  If 
the  sermons  preached  in  our  land  during  a  single  year 
were  all  printed,"  says  a  living  scholar,  "  they  would 
fill  a  hundred  and  twenty  millions  of  octavo  pages." 
The  Bible  is  read  to-day  by  a  larger  number  of  edu- 
cated minds  than  any  othei  book.  The  late  revision  of 
the  New  Testament  in  our  own  language  is  not  yet  one 
year  old ;  yet  its  circulation  amounts  to  two  millions 
and  a  half  of  copies.  This  sale,  unprecedented  in  the 
history  of  any  other  volume,  indicates  an  immense 
reserve  of  interest  in  the  book,  which,  till  now,  has  had 
no  such  means  of  expressing  itself.  The  mind  of  the 
English-speaking  races  must  have  been  saturated  with 


240  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xvi. 

biblical  tliougbt,  and  to  a  great  extent  with  bib'acal 
faith,  for  a  long  time,  to  account  for  such  a  phenome- 
non. Multitudes  are  poring  over  the  book,  and  are 
feeling  its  elevating  influence,  who  never  think  of  it 
otherwise  than  as  an  authority  for  their  religious  faith. 

Our  own  language  owes,  in  part,  the  very  structure 
it  has  received  to  our  English  Bible.  No  Englishman 
or  American  knows  well  his  mother-tongue  till  he  has 
learned  it  in  the  vocabulary  and  the  idioms  of  King 
James's  translation.  The  language  first  crystallized 
around  this  translation  as  the  German  language  did  in 
less  degree  around  Luther's  Bible.  In  English  form 
the  Bible  stands  at  the  head  of  the  streams  of  English 
conquests  and  of  English  and  American  colonization 
and  commerce.  It  must  control,  to  a  great  extent,  the 
institutions  which  are  to  spring  up  on  the  banks  of 
those  streams  the  world  over. 

It  is  interesting  to  observe  how  the  influence  of  the 
Bible  trickles  down  into  crevices  in  all  other  litera- 
ture, and  shows  itself,  at  length,  in  golden  veins,  and 
precious  gems  of  thought,  which  are  the  admiration  of 
all  observers.  The  late  Professor  B.  B.  Edwards,  in 
illustration  of  this  fact,  notices  the  following  details; 
viz.,  "  An  essay  has  been  written  to  prove  how  much 
Shakspeare  is  indebted  to  the  Scriptures.  The  Red 
Cross  Knight  in  the  '  Faerie  Queene  '  of  Spenser  is 
the  Christian  of  the  last  chapter  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Ephesians.  The  'Messiah'  of  Pope  is  only  a  para- 
phrase of  some  passages  in  Isaiah.  The  highest  strains 
of  Cowper  in  the  '  Task '  are  an  expansion  of  a  chap- 
ter of  the  same  prophet.  The  'Thanatopsis  '  of  Bryant 
is  indebted  to  a  passage  from  the  Book  of  Tob.  Lord 
Byron's  celebrated  poem  on  '  Darkness '  was  founded 
on  a  passage  in  Jeremiah." 


LECT.  xvi.l       THE  BIBLE  IN  MODERN  POETRY  241 

Worcsworth's  criticism  of  Milton,  that,  "however 
imbued  the  surface  might  be  with  classical  literature, 
he  was  a  Hebrew  in  soul,"  is  true  of  very  much  that  is 
most  inspiring  and  most  durable  in  our  modern  poetry. 
Wordsworth's  "  Ode  on  Immortality  "  could  never  have 
been  written  but  for  the  creative  effect  upon  the  poet's 
imagination  of  such  Scriptures  as  the  fifteenth  chapter 
of  the  First  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians  and  the  eighth 
chapter  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans.  Pantheism  has 
a  cool  way  of  appropriating  a  great  deal  of  Christian 
poetry.  Thus  it  claims  Wordsworth.  But  the  most 
autobiographic  passages  in  "  The  Excursion,"  descrip- 
tive of  the  communion  of  his  soul  with  nature,  could 
never  have  been  conceived  but  by  a  mind  which  was 
permeated  by  the  inspiration  of  the  One  Hundred  and 
Forty-eighth  Psalm. 

"  In  such  access  of  mind,  in  such  high  hour 
Of  visitation  from  the  living  God," 

is  the  language  in  which  he  himself  describes  that 
communion. 

Shakspeare's  conception  of  woman  is  another  illus- 
tration to  the  same  effect.  De  Quincey  claims  it  as  an 
absolute  original  by  no  other  genius  than  Shakspeare. 
But  in  the  last  analysis  Shakspeare's  ideal  is  only 
the  Christian  ideal,  which  suffuses  with  refinement  our 
modern  life.  We  owe  it  ultimately,  not  to  poetry,  nor 
to  the  drama,  but  to  the  biblical  fact  of  the  atonement. 
Nothing  else  has  made  the  conception  possible  of  a 
Desdemona  or  an  Ophelia  growing  out  of  a  sex  de- 
graded in  all  other  than  Christian  literatures. 

The  hymnology  of  all  modern  languages  has  been 
absolutely   created    by   the    Hebrew   psalmody.      The 


242  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xvi. 

ancient  classics  have  not,  so  far  as  I  know,  contributed 
a  stanza  to  it.  Not  a  line  of  it  lives,  through  two 
generations,  in  which  the  genius  of  the  Psalms  of 
David  does  not  overpower  and  appropriate  all  other 
resources  of  culture.  The  old  English  and  Scottish 
ballads  never  exerted  on  the  national  mind  a  tithe  of 
the  influence  of  the  Hebrew  psalm.  The  common- 
wealth of  England  owed  its  existence,  in  part,  to  the 
psalm-singing  of  Cromwell's  armies.  On  the  continent 
of  Europe,  also,  the  whole  bulk  of  the  despotism  of 
the  middle  ages  went  down  before  the  rude  imitations 
of  the  Hebrew  psalmody  by  Clement  Marot  and  Hans 
Sachs.  The  battle-song  of  Gustavus  Adolphus  was 
originally  published  with  this  title,  "  A  Heart-cheering 
Song  of  Comfort  on  the  Watchword  of  the  Evangelical 
Army  in  the  Battle  of  Leipsic,  Sept.  7,  1631.  God 
with'^Us." 

The  Bible  has  also  formed  the  best  standards  of  de- 
liberative eloquence  in  modern  times.  The  Earl  of 
Chatham  was  sensible  of  his  own  indebtedness  to  it. 
Patrick  Henry  and  James  Otis  were  often  likened  in 
their  lifetime  to  the  Hebrew  prophets.  Lord  Brougham 
and  Daniel  Webster  both  acknowledged  their  obliga- 
tions to  the  same  models.  Webster  was  for  years  the 
biblical  concordance  of  the  United-States  Senate.  His 
ablest  opponents,  in  preparing  their  speeches,  used  to 
resort  to  him  to  furnish  them  with  scriptural  passages 
and  metaphors  to  point  their  weapons  against  him. 
Such  was  his  command  of  the  same  resources,  that 
he  could  afford  to  give  them  liberally,  and  without 
upbraiding. 

To  all  departments  of  modern  literature  the  Scrip- 
tures have  been  what  they  have  been  to  modern  art. 


LECT.  XVI.]     THE  BIBLE  IN  INFIDEL  WRITINGS.  245 

It  lias  been  said  that  the  single  Christian  conc(,ption 
of  a  virgin  and  her  child  has  done  more  for  the  eleva- 
tion of  art  than  all  the  exhumed  models  of  Greece  and 
Rome.  It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  nothing  in  art 
itself  succeeded  in  crushing  out  the  moral  abomina- 
tions which  many  of  those  models  expressed  until  the 
Christian  religion  flooded  the  whole  realm  of  beauty 
with  more  intense  ideas;  so  that,  to  the  purest  taste, 
the  Greek  Venus  has  become  imbecile  by  the  side  of 
the  Christian  Madonna.  So  are  the  literary  models 
of  the  Scriptures  working,  as  germs  of  power  in  modern 
literature,  beyond  the  depth  of  Greek  and  Roman 
thought  in  its  choicest  and  most  durable  forms. 

I  will  name  but  one  other  form  in  which  the  obliga- 
tions of  modern  literature  to  the  Scriptures  is  illus- 
trated :  it  is  that  of  the  unconscious  debt  of  infidelity 
to  biblical  resources.  The  infidel  literature  of  our 
times  owes  nearly  all  the  vitality  it  has  to  its  pilferings 
of  Christian  nutriment.  It  lives  by  its  unconscious 
suction  from  Christian  fountains.  "  The  Cotter's  Sat- 
urday Night "  is  not  more  palpably  indebted  to  the 
Scriptures  than  are  some  of  the  finest  passages  in 
Shelley's  "Queen  Mab."  The  "Paradise  Lost"'  and 
the  "  Pilgrim's  Progress  "  are  not  more  really  the  out- 
growth of  the  old  Hebrew  soul  than  are  some  of  the 
sublimest  conceptions  of  Lord  B^Ton's  "  Cain."  Xo 
man  could  have  written  "  Cain "  or  "  Queen  Mab "' 
whose  genius  had  not  been  developed  by  a  Christian 
civilization,  and  w^hose  infidelity  had  not  been  fired  by 
collision  with  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans.  The  power 
to  he  so  blasphemous  grew  out  of  Christian  knowledge ; 
and  the  power  to  express  the  blasphemy  with  such 
lurid  grandeur  sprang  from  the  culture  which  Chiis- 
tianitv  had  created. 


244  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xvi 

The  atheism  of  Great  Britain,  which  is  working  so 
disastrously  among  the  artisan  chisses  of  the  kingdom, 
owes  its  chief  resources  of  power  over  the  popular 
mind  to  the  fact  that  it  holds  on  to  so  much  of  scrip- 
tural thought.  Its  capital  ideas  are  biblical  ideas. 
Strip  it  of  these,  and  it  would  have  no  chance  of  a 
hearing  in  the  workshops  of  Birmingham.  What  else 
than  Christianity  ever  gave  to  the  human  conscience 
spring  enough  to  enable  it  to  conceive  of  such  a  thing 
as  a  practical  religion  without  a  God?  Yet  this  is 
English  atheism  to-day.  It  is  not  vice ;  it  is  not  con- 
scious blasphemy;  it  is  not  moral  nihilism:  it  is  an 
aim  at  morality,  moral  culture,  moral  principle,  moral 
progress,  even  moral  worship,  after  its  kind,  —  all  which 
it  audaciously  proposes  to  support  without  a  God  for 
the  center  of  the  moral  instincts.  When  did  the  hu- 
man soul  ever  before  get  force  enough  of  moral  instincts 
to  conceive  of  such  a  project  as  that  ? 

Similar  to  the  lesson  taught  by  the  atheism  of  Great 
Britain  is  that  taught  by  the  most  powerful  phases  of 
infidelity  in  this  country.  It  would  be  entertaining, 
if  it  were  not  too  painfully  solemn,  to  observe  the 
depth  to  which  Christian  thought  has  penetrated,  and 
the  extent  to  which  Christian  colorings  of  speech  have 
suffused  the  culture  exhibited  by  the  most  brilliant  of 
the  infidel  lecturers  and  writers  among  us.  Mark  it 
anywhere,  —  on  the  platform,  in  the  newspapers,  in 
magazines,  in  books:  the  materials  of  thought  which 
these  men  are  wielding,  to  the  saddest  hurt  of  an  un- 
thinking faith,  are  at  bottom  Christian  products.  No 
other  class  of  literary  men  are  so  profoundly  indebted 
to  the  Scriptures,  yet  so  profoundly  oblivious  ")f  the 
debt. 


LECT.  XVI.]  THEODORE  PARKER.  245 

Open  one  of  their  books,  turn  to  its  most  captivating 
pages,  sift  its  style,  weigh  its  thought;  and  what  clo 
you  find  of  good  sterling  worth?  Wherever  you  find 
clear  ideas  held  in  honest  Saxon  grip,  you  find  them 
vitalized  by  something  or  other  which  they  owe  to 
Christianity.  Here  it  is  a  truth  as  old  as  Moses ;  tliere 
it  is  the  power  to  conceive  of  the  opposite  of  a  truth  : 
again  it  is  an  antithesis  of  half-truths ;  farther  on  it  is 
a  dislocated  quotation,  or  a  warped  and  twisted  allu- 
sion :  now  it  is  a  fungus  overgrowing  a  germ  of  truth 
which  gives  it  its  power  to  grow ;  then  it  is  a  Pantheis- 
tic turn  to  language  which  Pantheism  never  originated, 
but  which,  in  its  original.  Christian  souls  love.  Even 
down  to  the  indefinable  ingenuities  of  style,  you  find 
at  work  the  alert  and  sinewy  fingers  of  a  Christian 
culture.  The  very  sentences  which  express  or  imply 
semi-Paganism  in  theology,  but  the  structure  of  which 
makes  them  play  in  the  very  heavens  of  beauty  like 
the  coruscations  of  the  northern-lights,  are,  as  speci- 
mens of  style,  the  product  of  our  Oriental  yet  Saxon 
Bible.  Are  Confucius,  Zoroaster,  Socrates,  at  the  root 
of  the  thoughts  and  the  forms  which  you  feel  in  such 
pages  ?  No :  it  is  Moses ;  it  is  Isaiah ;  it  is  David ;  it 
is  St.  John ;  it  is  Christ.  Take  away  the  elements  of 
culture  which  these  have  contributed  to  such  literature, 
and  no  man  would  care  what  heroes  or  philosophers 
might  claim  the  residuum. 

The  most  striking  illustration,  in  my  judgment,  which 
has  exhibited  the  truth  of  the  fact  before  us  in  our 
own  country,  is  that  given  by  the  Rev.  Theodore 
Parker.  For  twenty  years  the  most  vital  infidelity  in 
this  land  was  personified  in  him.  He  brought  to  tho 
solitary  altar  at  which  he  ministered  in  Boston  a  gen- 


246  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xvl 

erous  scholarship,  a  mercurial  genius^  a  versatile  com- 
mand of  thought,  and  a  fascinating  style.  Taking 
him  all  in  all,  his  was  a  more  earnest  character  than 
that  of  any  other  man  who  has  gained  any  thing  like 
equal  eminence  in  the  ranks  of  active  hostility  to  what 
he  called  "the  popular  theology  of  New  England." 
The  purity  of  his  life  was  almost  ascetic.  For  one,  I 
a  n  compelled  to  concede  the  power  of  the  man  in  his 
lifetime,  whatever  may  be  true  of  it  now.  I  do  not 
think  that  any  candid  man  among  us  who  knows  the 
classes  of  mind  which  were  reached,  and  the  momentum 
given  to  them,  for  twenty  years,  from  that  Twenty- 
eighth  Congregational  pulpit,  will  feel,  that,  as  a  friend 
of  truth,  he  can  afford  to  ignore  that  power,  or  to 
underrate  it. 

But  it  was  not  the  power  of  his  infidelity:  it  was 
the  power  of  his  unconscious  obligations  to  truth.  His 
vital  and  vitalizing  ideas  were  Christian  ideas.  He 
owed  them  to  the  Book  which  he  disowned.  He  drank 
them  in  from  all  the  living  literatures  which  he  mas- 
tered. He  maligned  religion  as  we  conceive  of  it. 
He  ridiculed  Scriptures  which  to  us  are  sacred.  He 
denounced  as  barbaric  the  ground-work  of  our  hope  of 
heaven.  He  scoffed  at  our  ideal  of  a  Redeemer.  He 
uttered  words  which  from  our  lips  would  be  blasphemy. 
Yet  the  interior  forces  which  bore  up  as  on  an  oceanic 
ground-swell  this  mass  of  error  were  forces  every  one 
of  which  sprung  from  that  ocean  of  inspired  thought 
whose  great  deeps  were  broken  up  in  the  civilization 
around  him. 

What  were  some  of  those  forces?  In  what  ideas 
did  they  find  their  origin  ?  They  were  such  as  these : 
She  fatherhood  of  God,  the  unity  of  the  human  brother- 


LECT.  XVI.]      INSPIRATION  AND  LITERARY  MERIT.  247 

hood  before  God,  the  dignity  of  manhood,  the  inten- 
sity of  life  as  the  prelude  to  immortality,  and,  more 
than  all  else,  the  application  of  these  ideas  to  social 
and  national  reforms.  These  were  the  forces  which 
he  wielded.  Without  them  the  world  would  not  have 
heard  of  him.  Yet  these  are,  every  one  of  them,  bib- 
lical forces.  He  owed  them  to  the  Christian  Scrip- 
tures; and  he  owed  the  susceptibility  to  them  in  the 
popular  mind  on  which  he  worked  so  disastrously  to 
that  interpretation  of  the  Scriptures  which  has  ex- 
pressed itself  in  our  New-England  theology.  Thus  it 
is  with  every  development  of  infidelity  which  has  force 
enough  to  make  it  respectable.  It  feeds  on  Christianity 
itself,  and  grows  lusty  therefore. 

To  the  views  thus  far  advanced  respecting  the  lit- 
erary claims  of  the  Bible  should  be  added  the  fact  that 
the  Bible  contains  within  itself  models  of  thought  and 
expression  which  are  intrinsically  superior  to  other 
literature.  What  do  we  mean  when  we  speak  of  the 
literary  pre-eminence  of  the  Scriptures  ?  This  involves 
two  inquiries. 

The  first  is.  What  is  the  bearing  of  inspiration  on 
literary  merit?  I  answer.  It  is  not  such  that  pre- 
eminence in  literary  forms  follows  from  inspiration  as 
a  thing  of  course.  Inspiration  does  not  save  from 
literary  defects  even.  It  does  not  necessitate  uniform 
excellence  in  taste,  the  most  perfect  conciseness,  force, 
purity,  precision,  beauty,  of  style.  It  does  not  even 
protect  against  false  syntax.  The  Scriptures  are  open 
to  criticism  in  these  respects,  like  any  other  book.  It  is 
in  the  substance  and  the  spirit  of  the  volume  chiefly, 
that  its  supremacy  appears.  Literary  defects  arise 
necessarily   from   the   freedom   of   the   inspired   mind. 


248  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xvi. 

In  the  laws  of  inspiration  God  has  exercised  the  same 
care  for  human  freedom  that  is  displayed  in  all  other 
divine  adjustments.  So  jealous  is  the  divine  mind  of 
the  integrity  of  that  inclosure  within  which  a  human 
mind  is  itself  a  creator^  that,  even  in  the  anomaly  of 
inspiration,  the  human  mind  is  not  automatic.  In  the 
process  of  constructing  a  revelation  the  inspired  mind 
is  left  to  act  out  itself.  A  human  coloring  suffuses 
the  material  of  the  inspired  production,  because  a  free, 
self-acting  will  is  concerned  in  it.  Hence  come  literary 
defects. 

The  central  fact  in  this  matter  is,  that,  in  the  inspired 
record,  God  has  secured  the  best  literary  forms  possible 
to  the  instruments  he  chose  to  work  with.  He  has 
inspired  St.  Paul  to  write  as  well  as,  under  the  condi- 
tions of  his  work,  St.  Paul  could  write.  He  has  in- 
spired David  and  Isaiah  to  speak  as  well  as,  under  the 
conditions  existing,  they  could  speak.  In  neither  case 
has  he  taken  from  the  man  his  identity.  It  is  no 
irreverence,  therefore,  it  is  only  a  recognition  of  the 
divine  plan  of  procedure,  to  say  that  the  Bible  makes 
no  claim  to  immaculate  excellence  in  classic  forms. 

Again :  a  pretended  revelation,  of  scholastic  origin, 
would  have  been  very  apt  to  claim  absolute  perfection. 
Mahomet  did  this  for  the  Koran :  Jewish  bibliolatry 
did  this  for  the  Pentateuch.  It  is  an  incidental  sign 
of  the  divine  origin  of  the  Scriptures,  that  they  never 
do  this  for  themselves.  The  Scriptures,  therefore,  come 
to  us  in  forms  of  very  unequal  literary  merit.  They 
resemble  in  this  the  works  of  uninspired  genius.  Ge- 
nius elsewhere  never  claims  perfection.  It  never  thinks 
of  its  own  work  as  literature.  It  throws  itself  into 
its   creations  with   self-abandonment.      In   its   noblest 


LECT.  XVI.]  BIBLICAL  INTENSITY.  249 

works  it  is  unconscious  of  its  nobility.  The  very  inten- 
sity of  its  conceptions  creates  defects  when  crowded 
into  human  language.  So  it  is  with  inspiration  acting 
through  the  agency  of  a  human  mind :  if  the  Scrip- 
tures did  not  exhibit  these  diversities,  the  strongest 
possible  philosophical  argument  would  be  established 
that  they  are  not  the  work  of  the  men  who  profess  to 
be  their  authors. 

The  second  of  the  two  inquiries  suggested  is,  What 
are  the  things  in  which  the  Bible  does  exhibit  the 
superiority  claimed  for  it  ?  You  will  readily  recall 
them.  I  name  them  only  to  give  definiteness  to  them 
as  excellences  in  literature,  and  not  as  moral  virtues 
alone,  involved  vaguely  in  the  gift  of  inspiration,  and 
therefore  outside  of  our  scholarly  regard. 

The  fidelity  of  the  Bible  to  the  loftiest  ideals  which 
the  human  mind  can  form  of  truth  and  purity  is  a 
literary  excellence.  It  is  a  requisition  of  good  taste, 
as  well  as  of  the  moral  instincts.  That  the  Scriptures 
utter  no  falsehood,  minister  to  no  vice,  truckle  to  no 
conventional  corruption,  do  not  ignore  the  moral  affin- 
ities of  the  intellect,  never  confound  moral  rectitude 
with  beauty,  but,  in  a  word,  subordinate  intellectual 
to  moral  integrity,  —  these  are  exponents  of  literary 
dignity  which  the  cultured  taste  of  the  world  must 
sooner  or  later  learn  to  esteem  as  it  does  not  now. 
They  would  give  to  any  other  literature  a  dignity 
which  would  command  the  admiration  of  all  scholarly 
minds. 

The  iyitensity  of  the  biblical  style  of  thought  is  a 
literary  excellence.  Contrast  tlxis  with  the  immense 
amount  of  frivolous  and  aimless  thought  in  all  other 
literature.     Inspiration  ne  ver  trifles,  never  dallies  with 


250  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lj:ct   xvi. 

truth,  never  sports  with  "the  eternities,"  never  per- 
petrates a  pun,  never  fawns  upon  great  men,  never 
flatters  woman,  never  deals  in  comedy,  never  created 
such  a  character  as  that  of  Shakspeare's  "  Falstaff,"  or 
the  universal  clown  of  the  modern  stage.  As  a  collec- 
tion of  literary  productions,  the  Scriptures  look  inward 
to  a  great  central  tragedy.  An  intellectual  intensity, 
therefore,  broods  over  them,  which  is  altogether  unique. 
Those  portions  of  Shakspeare's  dramas  which  exhibit 
the  same  quality  are  those  on  which,  mainly,  his  fame 
rests.  In  him  we  do  not  restrict  it  as  a  quality  of  form 
only:  it  is  the  very  substance  of  all  that  we  admire 
in  a  great  tragic  poem.  The  same  is  true  of  it  as  a 
quality  of  biblical  thought. 

The  originality  of  biblical  thought  is  a  literary  excel 
lence.  This  we  can  not  appreciate  till  we  throw  our 
minds  back  of  the  Scriptures  themselves,  back  of  the 
whole  intellectual  training  for  which  we  are  indebted 
to  them,  and  think  of  the  mass  of  novel  truth  which 
the  Bible  has  given  to  the  world,  and  the  mass  of  pre- 
extant  truth  which  it  has  freshened  and  vitalized.  Con- 
trast it  with  the  paucity  of  ideas  in  Homer,  and  are 
you  not  sensible  of  the  magnitude  of  the  one  and  the 
littleness  of  the  other?  If  the  Greek  mind  had  had  a 
volume  containing  such  a  mass  of  ideas  before  unknown 
and  inconceivable,  temples  would  have  been  built  for 
its  teaching  as  the  gift  of  immortal  gods. 

As  the  fruit  of  its  originality,  in  part,  the  aptness  of 
the  Bible  to  germinate  in  uninspired  literature  is  a  lit- 
erary virtue.  Regarded  as  a  fertilizing  power  to  other 
products  of  the  human  mind,  no  other  volume  can  be 
compared  with  it.  It  is  marvelously  reproductive  of 
kindred  thought.     The  germs  of  epic  poems,  of  systems 


LEOT.  XVI.]  THE  BIBLE  AND  LIBERTY.  251 

of  philosophy,  of  political  constitutions,  and  of  the 
eloquence  which  sways  nations  in  crises  of  history,  are 
the  common  thoughts  of  the  inspired  authors.  The 
seeds  of  such  culture  as  that  which  effloresces  in  a 
Milton,  a  Bacon,  a  Chatham,  a  Burke,  are  here  ideas 
thrown  out  by  men  speaking,  as  if  on  the  spur  of  the 
moment,  in  friendly  letters,  in  talks,  to  unlettered 
minds  and  to  children. 

The  sympathy  of  the  Scriptures  with  human  liberty 
is  an  excellence,  which,  in  equal  degree,  would  redu- 
plicate to  the  echo  the  fame  of  any  other  literature  in 
the  world.  History  is  largely  made  up  of  struggles 
for  freedom.  Free  thought,  free  speech,  a  free  press, 
free  soil,  free  men,  free  government,  are  the  objects  for 
and  against  which  the  great  conflicts  of  the  race  have 
been  waged.  Much  of  the  scholarly  thought  of  the 
world  has  been  committed  to  the  service  of  autocratic 
and  aristocratic  privilege.  Authors  have  been,  to  a 
considerable  extent,  the  retainers  of  noblemen.  Some- 
times they  have  been,  like  Horace,  the  slaves  of  feudal 
superiors.  Against  the  main  drift  of  national  litera- 
tures the  liberty  of  man  has  often  been  compelled  to 
contend  for  its  existence.  Some  of  the  living  stand- 
ards in  our  libraries  to-day  are  the  product  of  a  muz- 
zled press. 

Not  a  trace  of  sympathy  with  such  a  condition  of 
things  is  found  in  the  literature  of  the  Bible.  The 
bent  of  its  genius  is  all  on  the  side  of  those  institu- 
tions for  which  free  men  have  fought,  and  women  have 
suffered.  The  Bible  is  pre-eminently  the  manual  of 
liberty.  Those  words  which  have  been  the  watchwords 
of  sanguinary  revolutions  for  the  deliverance  of  nations 
from  oppression  express  tJie  favorite  ideas  of  biblical 


252  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xvi 

jurisprudence  and  song  and  prophecy.  That  rulers 
exist  for  the  people ;  that  the  poor  are  in  law  the 
peers  of  the  rich,  and  the  ignorant,  of  the  wise ;  that 
mankind  are  one  brotherhood,  with  equal  claims  upon 
the  fatherhood  of  God  and  the  fraternity  of  each  other, 
—  are  the  familiar  and  central  thoughts  of  biblical 
poets,  historians,  lawgivers,  prophets,  and  apostles. 
The  whole  strain  of  the  volume  is  one  long  protest 
against  the  oppressor,  and  one  perpetual  song  of  cheer 
to  the  slave.  No  other  literature  is  in  this  respect  so 
uncompromising  and  so  self-consistent.  It  is  an  incen- 
diary volume  to  slaveholders  everywhere.  Popes  place 
it  at  the  head  of  the  list  of  books  anathematized. 

Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Bible  is  equally  the 
manual  of  temperate  and  bloodless  reform.  It  gives  no 
place  to  the  malign  emotions  in  warfare  against  oppres- 
sion. Fanatics  expurgate  and  denounce  it  no  less 
bitterly  than  tyrants.  It  tolerates  wrong,  and  incul- 
cates long-suffering,  rather  than  to  invite  convulsive 
revolutions.  It  trusts  to  time,  and  the  omnipotence  of 
truth,  for  the  emancipation  of  mankind.  It  subordi- 
nates civil  to  spiritual  liberty,  —  a  thing  which  fanatical 
reform  has  never  done,  and  for  the  want  of  which  it 
has  always  failed.  If  the  spirit  of  biblical  literature 
had  held  sway  in  history,  there  would  never  have  been 
a  servile  war,  never  would  a  race  or  a  nation  have 
been  emancipated  by  the  sword.  Yet  the  cause  of 
human  liberty  would  have  been  centuries  in  advance 
of  its  condition  to-day.  The  equipoise  of  opposing 
truths,  and  the  consequent  smoothness  and  stillness  of 
beneficent  revolutions,  are  characteristic  of  biblical 
thought  as  opposed  to  the  eternal  war-song  of  all  other 
literature.      The   ultimate   culture   of  the  world   will 


LECT.  XYi.]  BIBLICAL  STYLES.  253 

transpose  the  passive  and  the  active  virtues  in  its 
literary  judgments. 

The  symmetry  of  the  biblical  system  of  truth  is  a 
literary  excellence.  With  no  system  in  form,  it  is 
everywhere  suggestive  of  system  in  fact.  The  biblical 
scholar  degrades  his  own  work  who  discerns  in  the 
Bible  no  implications  of  a  self-consistent  structure  of 
theology.  It  is  in  this  respect  what  every  man's  real 
life  is,  —  a  plan  of  God.  Every  thing  in  it  fits  every 
other  thing.  What  other  literature  not  founded  upon 
it  has  such  balancing  of  opposite  truths,  such  adjust- 
ments of  the  relations  of  truth,  such  diversity  in  unity, 
such  unity  in  diversity,  such  a  grand  march  of  progress 
in  the  evolution  of  truth  ?  In  one  sense  the  Bible  is 
a  fragment,  made  up  of  fragments ;  but  it  is  fragmen- 
tary as  the  segment  of  a  circle  is  fragmentary. 

The  number  and  diversity  of  literary  styles  in  the 
Scriptures  deserve  mention.  Although  immaculate 
form  is  not  one  of  their  claims,  yet  incidentally  to 
their  loftiness  of  thought,  and  purity  of  character, 
excellence  of  form  often  appears  as  if  by  spontaneous 
creation.  The  style  of  some  portions  of  the  Epistles, 
art  has  never  tried  to  improve.  Who  has  ever  thought 
to  improve  the  form  of  the  Beatitudes  or  the  Lord's 
Prayer?  What  reformer  or  censor  of  public  morals 
has  ever  attempted  to  improve  the  style  of  some  of  the 
Hebrew  prophets?  The  narrative  style  of  the  evan- 
gelists, the  lyric  poetry  of  the  Psalms,  the  epic  grandeur 
of  the  Book  of  Job  —  what  adventurous  critic  has 
ever  assumed  to  equal  these?  They  are  as  nearly 
perfect  as  human  language  permits.  Poetic,  didactic, 
philosophic,  narrative,  illustrative,  allegorical,  episto- 
lary,   dramatic,    oratorical,    prophetic,    styles    are    all 


'2M  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xvi. 

illustrated    in   the    Bible    by   specimens   of   the    first 
order  of  merit. 

As  the  sequence  of  some  of  the  foregoing  qualities, 
a  certain  power  in  the  literature  of  the  Bible  to  project 
itself  into  the  future  is  worthy  of  remark.  The  mate- 
rials of  extant  literatures  may  in  one  view  be  classified 
as  literatures  of  the  past  and  literatures  of  the  future. 
Some  standards  of  our  libraries  are  only  monuments. 
We  admire  them,  but  we  never  use  them.  Practically 
the  world  has  done  with  them.  To  high  culture  the 
study  of  them  has  become  a  recreation  only.  They  are 
receding  from  the  earnest  life  of  the  world  more  and 
more  distantly  with  every  generation. 

The  Bible,  as  a  literary  power,  is  no  such  monu- 
mental structure.  Though  the  oldest,  it  is  still  the 
freshest,  literature  extant.  Covering  all  the  past,  it 
reaches  over  a  longer  and  grander  future.  A  favorite 
idea  of  critics  is  that  of  the  immortality  of  literature. 
The  Bible  is  the  only  volume  which  is  sure  of  that. 
The  future  belongs  to  it  as  to  nothing  else  wliich  the 
world  now  reveres  in  libraries.  Its  own  prophecies  are 
a  fair  symbol  of  the  prospective  vision  which  illumines 
it,  and  assures  to  it  an  undying  youth. 

Such  are  some  of  the  salient  points  definitive  of  our 
conceptions  of  the  Bible  as  a  literary  classic.  The 
majority  of  them  occur  to  our  thought  first  and  most 
positively  as  moral  excellences  only;  but  good  taste 
approves  them  as  well.  The  affinities  between  our 
intellectual  and  our  moral  nature  are  such,  that  to 
ignore  either  involves  deterioration  of  the  other.  An 
eminent  English  critic  says  that  Lord  Byron,  in  the 
lack  of  a  keen  conscience,  suffered  the  lack  of  the 
first  quality  necessary  to  a  true  poet.     A  more  subtle 


LECT.  XVI.]       MORAL  AND  LITERARY  VIRTUES.  255 

illustration  of  the  same  kind  of  aflSnity  is  seen  in  the 
power  of  a  lofty  morality  to  elevate  the  very  vocabu- 
lary of  a  language,  and  the  opposite  power  of  degraded 
morals  to  degrade  a  language  also.  On  the  same  prin- 
ciple, certain  qualities  in  the  Bible  which  first  strike  us 
as  moral  qualities  only,  we  claim  as  literary  virtues 
as  well.  They  augment  immensely  the  power  of  the 
volume  as  an  educating  force  in  the  discipline  of  a 
scholarly  mind.  I  do  not  dwell  upon  them  at  greater 
length,  because  they  are  familiar ;  and  to  expand  them 
might  easily  degenerate  into  unmeaning  eulogy. 


LECTURE  XVII. 

THE  PEOFESSIONAL  VALUE  OF  BIBLICAL  MODELS  TO 
A  PKEACHER. 

The  claims  of  biblical  study  upon  a  pastor  would 
be  but  incompletely  treated,  if  no  mention  were  made 
of  its  direct  professional  service.  No  other  single  prin- 
ciple of  success  in  the  work  of  the  pulpit  surpasses 
this,  of  its  dependence  on  the  models  of  the  Bible  as 
guides  to  both  the  theory  and  practice  of  preaching. 

Every  careful  student  of  theology  discovers  the  dis- 
tinction between  truth  as  it  appears  in  uninspired  forms 
of  statement,  and  the  same  truth  as  it  appears  in  the 
biblical  forms.  It  is  not  cliiefly  the  forms  which  attract 
us  in  the  Scriptures :  it  is  the  truth  itself,  qualified  and 
assisted  by  the  relations  in  wliich  it  is  uttered,  by  its 
antecedents  and  consequents  in  the  biblical  collocation 
of  materials,  by  the  objects  for  which  it  is  spoken,  by 
the  illustrative  elements  by  which  it  is  pictured,  by 
the  frequency  with  which  it  is  repeated,  bj  the  atmos- 
phere which  is  thrown  around  it  by  the  religious 
feeling  of  the  writer,  and  by  the  moral  authority 
which  it  derives  from  the  reader's  faith  in  its  inspi- 
ration. These  often  change,  by  refraction,  the  per- 
spective in  which  the  truth  is  seen.  It  is  a  vast 
variety  of  such  things  which  makes  truth  appear  truth- 
ful in  the  biblical  conception  and  statement  of  it.     It 

256 


LECT,  XVII.]  HISTORIC  CREEDS.  257 

pul  5  on  a  different  look  when  taken  out  of  the  locality 
in  which  inspiration  has  adjusted  it  to  its  inspired  pur- 
pose. In  a  word,  truth  in  the  Scriptures  seems  to  have 
been  livedo  not  said  only.  A  soul  breathes  in  it  which 
speaks  as  never  man  spake.  The  same  qualities  in 
tlie  biblical  representations  of  truth  which  give  to  an 
unlettered  reader  a  spiritual  quickening  give  to  a 
preacher  a  kind  of  culture  which  is  a  powerful  aux- 
iliary to  his  intellectual  preparation  for  professional 
service.     No  man  needs  that  culture  more. 

For  the  sake  of  definiteness  of  conception  on  this 
topic,  let  us  follow  it  in  an  excursus  from  the  main 
subject  upon  the  contrast  between  the  ultimate  impres- 
sion of  certain  truths  in  the  biblical  teaching,  and  that 
of  the  same  truths  in  the  forms  of  science  and  in  a 
certain  class  of  sermons. 

Our  systems  of  theology  do  an  invaluable  service  to 
a  preacher.  No  man  can  preach  the  Bible  truthfully, 
who  does  not  preach  it  with  fidelity  to  a  system  of 
truth  which  pervades  it.  If  we  preach  it  in  methods 
which  are  reckless  of  an  underlying  system,  we  are 
sure  to  derive  from  it  extremes  of  truth  which  are  not 
truthful.  The  best  biblical  preaching,  therefore,  is  the 
best  theological  preaching.  The  contemptuous  treat- 
ment of  dogmatic  theology,  sometimes  heard  from  men 
of  pettifogging  scholarship,  does  not  deserve  refutation. 
Still  our  theological  systems,  as  represented  in  the 
great  historic  creeds,  are  all  of  them  polemic  in  their 
origin.  They  have  a  belligerent  look ;  they  are  skele- 
tons in  coats  of  mail.  They  have  been  formed  in  times 
when  some  one  truth,  or  class  of  truths,  was  believed  to 
be  in  peril :  they  have,  therefore,  an  outlook  in  some 
directions  more  eager  and  defiant  than  in  others.     The 


258  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xvn. 

majority  of  them  are  compromises,  in  which  contending 
parties  placed  each  its  own  construction  upon  ambigu- 
ous language.  Therefore,  to  a  later  age,  they  often  bear 
the  look  of  contradiction. 

This  is  specially  noticeable  in  the  drift  of  our  most 
scholarly  confessions  upon  doctrines  which  involve  the 
freedom  of  the  human  will.  On  this  subject,  truth  has 
been  of  slow  and  toilsome  growth.  She  has  crept  and 
limped  up  the  great  highway  of  human  opinion.  "With 
a  great  sum  "  have  we  "  obtained  this  freedom."  Pagan 
theology  everywhere  has  been  saturated  to  the  point  of 
stupor  with  fatalism.  The  early  Christian  thought  was 
drugged  with  the  same  poison.  The  clear  enunciation 
of  the  liberty  of  the  human  will,  and  of  the  theological 
corollaries  from  it,  has  been,  in  the  main,  the  product 
of  the  Christian  thinking  of  the  last  two  hundred  years. 
We  owe  it  largely  to  the  political  and  civil  history  of 
the  Netherlands. 

Many  of  the  historic  creeds  of  Christendom,  there- 
fore, are  wofully  disproportioned  on  this  class  of  doc- 
trines. In  some  of  them,  these  doctrines  are  set  over 
against  their  related  truths  in  language  which  gives  to 
both  classes  the  look  of  contradictions.  They  are 
stated  on  the  principle  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  that 
"  the  way  to  solve  contradictions  is  to  affirm  both  sides 
stoutly."  But  more  frequently  these  correlated  truths 
are  so  stated  as  to  depress  the  fact  of  human  freedom. 
Divine  sovereignty  is  emphasized ;  human  responsibility 
is  mumbled.  The  doctrine  of  decrees  is  thundered; 
that  of  man's  ability  is  whispered.  In  all  that  renders 
God  august  and  terrible  the  sound  is  the  blast  of  a 
trumpet;  in  all  that  should  quicken  man's  conscious- 
ness of  moral  dignity  and  duty  the  voice  is  but  the 
f  cho  of  an  echo. 


LEcr.  xviT.]  BIBLICAL  THEOLOGY.  259 

As  monuments  of  historic  theology,  the  great  creeds 
of  the  church  are  all  the  more  valuable  for  being  just 
what  they  are.  They  mark  the  struggling  faith  of 
believers  from  theologic  infancy  upward.  We  study 
them  with  much  of  the  same  interest  with  which  one 
would  study  the  Pinakothek  and  Glyptothek  of  Munich, 
in  which  is  represented  the  complete  history  of  paint- 
ing and  sculpture.  It  is  no  strange  thing  that  they  are 
often  illogical,  and  very  far  from  self-consistent.  This 
is  inevitable  in  the  structure  of  any  document  which 
must  express  the  convictions  of  many  independent 
minds.  Macaulay  says  that  "  some  of  the  most  useful 
political  instruments  in  the  world  are  among  the  most 
illogical  compositions  ever  penned."  The  same  is  true 
of  some  religious  creeds.  It  grows  out  of  the  nature 
of  compromise,  in  which,  from  the  necessities  of  the  case, 
the  creeds  of  historic  importance  have  been  framed. 
Compromise  of  great  and  sincere  beliefs  borders  hard 
on  contradiction.  All  honor,  then,  to  these  monumen- 
tal structures  of  our  faith.  They  have  done  for  the 
church  all  that  they  were  ever  meant  to  do. 

But  who  of  us  have  not  been  sensible  of  a  more  power- 
ful educating  force  emanating  from  the  same  truths,  as 
they  are  expressed  for  a  moral  purpose,  in  their  biblical 
forms?  It  seems  as  if  the  human  mind,  in  direct  con- 
verse with  the  thought  of  the  Infinite  Mind,  can  not 
obtain  its  most  formative  conceptions  of  truth,  except 
through  the  medium  of  moral  sensibilities  and  a  moral 
aim.  Hence  it  is  that  we  experience  such  a  supreme 
educating  power  in  the  writings  of  the  Hebrew  seers, 
and  of  the  apostles,  and  in  the  discourses  of  our  Lord. 

Are  we  not  sensible  often  that  a  doctrine  of  ou  *  faith 
in  even  a  masterly  theologic  treatise  is  a  different  thing 


•260  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xyii. 

from  the  same  doctrine  in  the  Bible  ?  It  makes  a  dif- 
ferent impression.  It  may  be  stated  with  such  refined 
analysis  and  with  s  ich  exactest  choice  of  speech,  and 
set  in  the  frame  of  a  system  so  symmetrical,  that  you 
feel  unable  to  add  to  it  or  subtract  from  it  as  a  theo- 
logic  formula ;  yet,  in  the  whole  treatise  built  upon  it, 
it  has  a  different  ring  from  that  given  by  the  apostles 
with  the  same  instrument.  It  leaves  a  different  reso- 
nance in  the  ear.  It  starts  a  different  quivering  of  the 
sensibilities. 

Sermons  are  sometimes  constructed  after  the  model 
of  scientific  theological  treatises,  and  therefore  exhibit 
the  same  contrast  with  biblical  teachings.  Have  you 
not  listened  to  discourses  on  eternal  punishment,  to 
the  theory  of  which  you  could  not  urge  valid  objec- 
tion, but  which  produced  a  totally  different  impression 
from  that  of  the  blended  sternness  and  benignity  of 
the  teachings  of  our  Lord?  Where  do  the  Scriptures 
authorize  such  a  final  impression  of  the  doctrine  as 
that  of  President  Edwards's  sermon  on  the  text,  "  Their 
feet  shall  slide  in  due  time  "  ?  Who  ever  derived  from 
the  Bible  such  merciless  conceptions  on  the  subject, 
couched  in  such  relentless  forms  of  statement,  as  are 
found  in  some  of  the  sermons  of  Mr.  Spurgeon  ? 

Have  you  not  heard  discourses  on  the  sovereignty 
of  God,  and  responsibility  of  man,  not  a  paragraph  of 
which  3^ou  would  erase  as  in  itself  untrue,  which  yet 
left  an  impression  unlike  that  of  the  ninth  chapter  of 
the  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  interlined  with  the  eigh- 
teenth chapter  of  Ezekiel?  Who  ever  received  from  the 
Bible  the  idea  which  is  embossed  on  so  many  brazen 
sermons,  that  God's  sovereignty  is  sheer  will,  almighty 
will  asserting  its  almightiness  ?  and,  on  the  other  hand. 


LECT.  xvn.]      PREACHING  ON  THE  ATONEMENT.  261 

that  human  freedom  is  an  omnipotence  of  will  which 
God  is  impotent  to  control?  Where  in  the  Scriptures  is 
the  thought  ever  uttered  or  painted,  even  in  the  wild- 
ness  of  Oriental  hyperbole,  which  was  declared  by  one 
of  our  American  preachers,  that,  "  in  the  repentance  of 
a  sinner,  man  is  the  giant,  and  God  is  but  an  infant "  ? 
Have  you  never  listened  to  preaching  on  the  doctrine 
of  the  atonement,  to  which  you  could  not  object  that 
any  single  statement  was  untrue,  but  which  still  you 
felt  to  be,  in  its  ultimate  impression,  out  of  sympathy 
with  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  ?  Who  ever  received 
from  the  scriptural  imagery  of  Christ's  relation  to  the 
Father  in  the  work  of  atonement,  that  conception  of 
the  Father's  vengeance  which  Dr.  Watts  has  versified 
in  a  stanza,  which,  if  it  had  been  sung  of  the  Greek 
Nemesis,  would  have  surpassed  any  equal  number  of 
lines  in  Homer  ?  — 

"  Rich  were  the  drops  of  Jesus'  blood 
Which  calmed  his  frowning  face, 
Which  sprinkled  o'er  the  burning  throne, 
And  turned  the  wrath  to  grace." 

Our  inherited  type  of  preaching  on  the  doctrine  of 
sin  is  unscriptural  in  this  respect,  that  it  starts  with 
the  idea  of  the  mercilessness  of  a  holy  God.  It  assumes 
that  forgiveness  is  not  the  original  and  spontaneous 
action  of  the  Divine  Mind.  Such  is  the  nature  of  sin, 
that  the  primary  notion  must  be,  in  a  holy  mind,  that 
it  can  not  be  forgiven.  This  is  the  idea  which  is 
wrought  into  the  most  profound  discussions  of  Pagan 
tneology.  It  is  the  very  life  of  the  Greek  idea  of  fate. 
It  was  the  finality  of  the  theology  of  Socrates.  The 
same  conception  pervades  much  of  the  later  literature 


262  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xvn. 

of  the  world.  Turn  to  one  of  its  latest  and  most  origi- 
nal productions, —  Hawthorne's  "Marble  Faun."  You 
find  this  notion  of  the  implacableness  of  innocence 
towards  the  guilty  in  his  appalling  picture  of  the  rela- 
tions of  Hilda  and  Miriam.  Hilda  the  pure,  and 
Miriam  the  fallen  —  an  impassable  gulf  yawns  between 
them,  which  eternity  can  never  bridge  over.  The  fallen 
one  stands  doomed  to  an  "infinite,  shivering  solitude," 
in  which  she  can  not  come  "  close  enough "  even  "  to 
human  beings  to  be  warmed  by  them."  "  Standing  on 
the  utmost  verge  of  that  dark  chasm,  she  might  stretch 
out  her  hand,  and  never  clasp  a  hand  of  theirs.  She 
might  strive  to  call  out,  '  Help,  friends,  help  ! '  but,  as 
with  dreamers  when  they  shout,  her  voice  would  perish 
inaudibly  in  the  remoteness  that  seemed  such  a  little 
way." 

This  notion  has  often  congealed  the  heart  of  the 
pulpit.  Therefore,  in  preaching  even  on  the  doctrine 
of  the  atonement,  we  have  failed  to  represent  the  spon- 
taneousness  of  the  love  of  God  as  the  Scriptures  do. 
We  have  fettered  it  with  limitations.  We  have  quali- 
fied it  by  elections.  We  have  obscured  it  by  figures  of 
bargain  and  sale.  We  have  counted  the  elect  as  if 
there  were  danger  that  too  many  souls  should  be  ran- 
somed by  the  price  paid.  The  inevitable  impression  on 
the  common  mind  has  been,  that  the  love  of  God  in 
redemption  acts  under  repression,  and  with  divided  or 
wavering  purpose.  All  this  is  just  what  the  Scriptures 
do  not  teach  in  their  expression  of  the  love  of  God  in 
the  atoning  work.  There  all  is  free  and  whole-souled. 
The  way  to  the  heart  of  God  is  wide  open.  There  is 
no  conflict  in  the  mind  of  Godhead.  No  antagonism 
of   nature  or  of  purpose  separates   God  from  Chriw^t. 


LECT.  xvir.]  THE  SWEDISH  CATECHISM.  263 

God  gives  his  Son;  Christ  gives  himself:  the  purpose 
oi  redeeming  love  is  original  with  both,  ^tod,  above 
all  other  beings  in  the  universe,  is  a  sinner's  friend ; 
the  whole  Godhead  is  a  sinner's  friend.  A  preacher 
comes  into  a  different  atmosphere  from  that  of  the 
religion  of  nature,  as  soon  as  his  mind  takes  in  the 
unbroken  strain  of  the  responses  which  the  Scriptures 
make  to  the  inquiry  "  What  must  I  do  to  be  saved  ?  " 

So  of  any  doctrine  which  has  been  hotly  contested 
in  the  schools.  How  few  discussions  of  such  a  doctrine 
are  there,  which  a  Christian  heart,  when  in  the  most 
filial  communion  with  God,  and  reverent  fellowship  with 
Christ,  feels  to  be  honestly  and  artlessl}^  truthful  to  the 
Scriptures  as  a  whole,  breathing  the  same  spirit,  and 
leaving  the  same  impression,  without  abatement  and 
without  hyperbole ! 

You  will  recognize,  therefore,  the  pertinence  of  the 
injunction,  that  a  preacher  needs  to  imbibe  the  spirit  of 
the  biblical  models  as  an  addition  to,  yet  distinct  from, 
that  of  the  theologic  models.  I  say,  "  an  addition  to  " 
these,  not  in  abrogation  of  them ;  because  theologic 
science  must  do,  and  has  magnificently  done,  a  work /or 
the  pulpit  which  can  not  be  brought  into  the  pulpit. 
We  must  study  philosophic  truth  in  its  exactness  for 
the  purpose  of  concinnity  of  faith,  and  then  we  must 
come  back  and  drink  in  the  spirit  of  the  same  truth  in 
its  inspired  artlessness  of  form  for  the  purposes  of 
preaching. 

Some  striking  information  to  the  point  here  is  found 
in  an  account,  published  a  few  years  ago,  of  the  reli- 
gious state  of  Sweden.  It  appears  that  it  was  a  feature 
in  the  organic  law  of  Sweden,  that  the  schools  should 
teach  all  the  youth  of  the  kingdom  the  Lutheran  Cate 


264  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xvn. 

cliism:  as  the  Swedish  pastors  termed  it,  the  schools 
should  "teach  religion"  to  the  children.  Accordingly, 
every  Swedish  child  of  suitable  age  was  "  taught  reli- 
gion" by  catechetical  drill  supervised  by  the  pastor 
of  his  parish.  Probably  there  was  not  then,  if  there 
is  now,  another  country  on  the  globe  where  this  duty 
was  so  scrupulously  attended  to  as  there.  But,  at  the 
time  referred  to,  the  complaint  was  universal  among 
the  clergy  and  the  thoughtful  laity  of  Sweden,  that  the 
vitality  of  the  old  faith  was  dying  out.  In  hundreds 
of  parishes  the  youth  droned  through  the  Catechism  as 
a  necessity  to  their  civil  standing  in  after-life  ;  but  the 
ancient  faith  no  longer  breathed  in  the  ancient  form. 

Side  by  side  with  this  admirably  compacted  system 
of  catechetical  routine,  there  sprang  up  an  obscure  sect 
of  "  Lascari,"  as  they  were  termed ;  that  is,  "  readers," 
as  I  understand  the  title.  They  resembled  in  spirit 
the  Methodists  of  England.  They  derived  their  name 
from  the  fact  that  their  religious  teachers,  with  no 
ecclesiastical  status  recognized  by  either  Church  or 
State,  were  simply  readers  of  the  Bible.  They  erected 
plain  meeting-houses,  like  barns,  to  evade  the  laws  of 
the  realm  against  the  unlicensed  erection  of  churches. 
The  people  forsook  the  old  temples  of  their  fathers,  and 
flocked  in  thousands  to  the  cheerless  barns  of  the 
Lascari,  to  hear  the  Bible  read.  The  clergy  stood 
upon  their  dignity.  They  scolded  the  people  from 
their  pulpits.  The  entire  respectability  of  the  kingdom 
frowned  upon  the  innovation.  But  still  the  people 
thronged  the  meeting 3  of  the  "Readers."  Again  they 
repeated  the  old  sto  y  of  Christian  reform,  —  that,  as 
Dr.  Chalmers  said,  Christianity  is  not  a  power  of 
respectability    only,    but    a    power    of    regeneration. 


LECT.  XVII.]  ROMISH  THEOLOGIANS.  265 

Awakened  men  and  women  from  far  and  near  came 
together  to  hear  the  voice  whicli  had  raised  them  as 
from  the  dead.  Some  of  them  journeyed  from  ten  to 
sixty  miles  for  the  purpose.  Many  gave  evidence  of 
spiritual  conversion.  The  traveler  who  published  the 
account  in  this  country  expressed  the  opinion  that 
the  hope  of  Protestantism  in  Sweden  was  no  longer  in 
the  old  church  of  Gustavus  Adolphus :  it  was  in  the 
despised  Lascari. 

The  providence  of  God  teaches  a  significant  lesson 
to  the  pulpit  by  such  a  social  phenomenon  as  this.  It 
is,  that  to  the  popular  heart  there  is  no  other  preaching 
like  that  which  is  baptized  in  the  fountains  of  inspired 
thought  and  feeling.  The  pulpit  which  is  built  upon 
the  soundest  platform  of  systematic  divinity,  and  that 
only^  goes  down  before  the  living  man  who  invites  men 
to  listen  to  the  words  of  God.  It  is  true  no  man  can 
build  up  in  the  popular  faith  the  best  ideal  of  Christian 
truth,  who  has  not  mastered  systematic  theology  in  its 
most  scholarly  forms  ;  but  it  is  equally  true  that  no 
man  can  build  that  ideal  who  has  studied  truth  in  those 
forms  alone. 

This  view  is  confirmed  by  an  acknowledgment  which 
Orestes  A.  Brownson  has  made  respecting  the  catena  of 
Roman-Catholic  theologians.  He  says,  "  The  fathers 
studied  and  expounded  the  Scriptures,  and  they  were 
the  strong  men,  the  great  men,  the  heroes  of  their 
times.  The  mediaeval  doctors  studied,  systematized, 
and  epitomized  the  fathers ;  and  they,  though  still 
great,  fell  below  those  who  were  formed  by  the  study 
of  the  Scriptures  themselves.  The  theologians  fol- 
lowed, and  gave  compendiums  of  the  doctors,  and  fell 
still  lower.     Modern  professors  content  themselves  witli 


266  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xvii. 

giving  compendiums  of  the  compendiums  gi  ren  by  the 
theologians,  and  have  fallen  as  low  as  possible  without 
falling  into  nothing,  and  disappearing  in  the  inane." 

This  would  be  a  libel,  if  affirmed  of  the  brilliant  suc- 
cession of  Protestant  scholars  who  have  represented 
the  progressive  theological  thought  of  the  last  three 
centuries.  It  is  specially  untrue  of  those  of  our  own 
country.  But  of  the  Romish  schools  it  expresses,  from 
one  who  may  be  accepted  as  an  authority,  the  tendency 
to  a  deterioration  of  culture  which  will  be  always 
found  where  theological  science  has  been  divorced  from 
a  study  of  the  Scriptures. 

This  tendenc}^  is  sometimes  witnessed  in  the  pulpit, 
when  dogmatic  theology  is  allowed  to  monopolize  its 
ministrations.  Then  logic  tyrannizes  over  rhetoric. 
Theological  system  overbears  homiletic  variety  and  the 
adaptations  of  suasive  speech.  In  confirmation  of  this, 
it  deserves  to  be  noted  that  the  most  cumbrous  and 
least  profitable  kind  of  serial  preaching,  unless  it  be 
executed  by  a  man  of  rare  power  in  popularizing  ab- 
stract thought,  is  that  in  which  a  series  of  sermons  is 
founded  upon  the  church  creed.  That  was  a  deserved 
rebuke  which  a  pastor  in  Boston  once  received,  when, 
in  the  midst  of  such  a  series  on  the  Catechism,  a  dele- 
gation from  his  sabbath  school  waited  upon  him  to 
inform  him  that  a  religious  awakening  was  in  progress 
in  the  Bible  classes,  and  that  they  needed  other  instruc- 
tion than  that  which  he  was  giving  them ;  not  other 
truths,  but  in  other  and  more  versatile  forms. 

This  fact  suggests  another,  that  no  other  proportions 
of  truth  tally  so  well  with  the  purest  type  of  reviva?s 
of  religion  as  the  proportions  found  in  the  Scriptures. 
I  can  not  but  regard  some  kind  of  sevei^ance  of  truth 


LECT.  XVII.]  HYSTERIA  IN  REVIVALS.  267 

from  the  biblical  ways  of  putting  it  as  one  reason  of 
the  pathological  affections  Avhich  have  brought  revivals 
into  discredit  among  thinking  men.  I  refer  to  the 
whole  class  of  phenomena  which  medical  science  would 
classify  under  the  titles  of  hysteria  and  catalepsy.  An 
epidemic  of  them  at  the  West,  many  years  ago,  received 
the  popular  name  of  "  the  jerks."  Something  resembling 
St.  Vitus's  dance  attacked  perfectly  able-bodied  men 
under  the  tempestuous  preaching  of  the  time.  Athletio 
men  from  the  backwoods  of  Kentucky,  who  sought  the 
Presbyterian  camp-meetings  with  angry  challenge  of 
"the  jerks,"  were  thrown  to  the  ground  before  the 
sermon  was  half  finished,  and  wallowed  there  till  they 
were  borne  out  into  the  air,  swearing  that  "  the  devil 
was  in  it."  Probably  in  some  sense  he  was.  But  no 
such  phenomena  are  recorded  as  attending  apostolic 
preaching,  except  those  which  are  expressly  ascribed  to 
miraculous  gifts.  Biblical  truth  in  biblical  proportions 
tends  always  to  a  certain  equipoise  of  effects.  The 
whole  man  is  reached  by  it.  It  produces  a  quickening 
of  so  many  and  such  varied  sensibilities,  that  each 
balances  another.  Opposites  limit  and  regulate  each 
other.  Paroxysmal  excitement  is  impossible.  "  Peace 
I  leave  with  you"  is  the  message  which  symbolizes  the 
spiritual  economy  in  the  working  of  biblical  truth  in 
its  biblical  adjustments. 

To  the  views  thus  far  presented,  I  would  add,  if  the 
time  would  permit,  a  more  extended  notice  of  one  other 
topic  which  I  will  now  name,  with  only  a  synopsis  of 
the  train  of  thought  which  it  suggests.  It  is  that  the 
study  of  the  Bible  as  a  literary  classic  has  a  tendency 
to  blend  scholarship  with  Christian  sensibility  in  such 
proportions  as  to  render  each  a  help  to  the  other  in  the 


268  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  x\n 

growtli  of  character.  The  prominent  thov.ghts  on  this 
topic  are  the  following ;  viz.,  the  difficulty  which  Chris- 
tian scholars  often  experience  in  harmonizing  in  their 
own  character  accomplished  scholarship  and  religious 
faith  ;  the  fact  that  the  ministry  contains  men  of  reli- 
gious ardor  but  imperfectly  regulated  by  scholarly  dis- 
cipline ;  the  opposite  fact,  that  it  contains  also  men  of 
superior  scholarship,  who  sympathize  but  feebly  with 
the  popular  developments  of  religious  fervor ;  the  fact 
that  historically  these  two  elements  of  character  are 
actively  combined  in  the  most  vigorous  periods  in  the 
life  of  the  church,  and  signally  so  in  the  most  useful 
men  ;  the  fact  that  disaster  always  follows  any  marked 
and  prolonged  disproportion  between  them  in  the  ad- 
ministration of  the  pulpit ;  the  fact  that  no  other  clerical 
study  is  so  healthfully  regulative  in  this  respect  as 
that  of  the  literary  models  of  the  Scriptures;  and  the 
fact  that  a  biblical  discipline  of  piety  thus  blended 
with  scholarly  culture  will  work  its  own  way  to  the 
most  essential  principles  of  art  in  public  speech. 


LECTURE  XVIII. 

METHODS  OF  LITER AEY  STUDY.  —  PRELIM  fNARIES. —i 
CRITICAL  READING.  —  PHILOSOPHICAL  METHOD.  — 
DIVISION  OF  LABOR. 

3d,  Having  thus  far,  in  our  discussion  of  a  pastor's 
literary  studies,  considered  the  objects  of  the  study  and 
the  selection  of  authors,  we  now  proceed  to  observe 
the  methods  of  literary  study  by  a  pastor. 

It  is  necessary  here,  at  the  expense  of  repetition,  to 
recall  and  re-apply  the  two  preliminaries  which  were 
named  at  the  outset  of  our  discussion  of  the  selection 
of  authors;  viz.,  that  the  principles  bearing  upon  the 
subject  must  in  practice  qualify  each  other,  any  one 
of  them  by  itself  constituting  an  impracticable  basis 
of  culture ;  and  that,  even  with  this  qualification,  the 
principles  collectively  constitute  at  the  best  only  a 
theoretic  ideal  of  study. 

These  preliminaries  are  even  more  significantly  true 
of  methods  of  study  than  of  the  selection  of  authors. 
No  one  principle  can  have  a  monopoly.  All  combined 
give  us  only  an  ideal :  the  realization  of  it  is  a  matter 
of  degrees.  A  nearer  approach  to  it  is  practicable  in 
some  cases  than  in  others;  but  in  all  cases  it  is  of 
value  to  have  it  as  an  ideal.  It  is  worth  much  to 
know  what  is  scholarly  reading.  If  it  is  but  partially 
practicable  to  a  man,  it  is  worth  something  to  him  to 

269 


270  MElf  AND  BOOKS.  [iect.  xvm. 

know  that;  to  be  able,  therefore,  to  adjust  his  plans 
to  that.  It  is  worth  much  to  save  time  and  force 
from  useless  struggles,  and  specially  to  save  himself 
from  the  narrowness  of  underrating  a  high  ideal,  be- 
cause he  has  tried  it,  and  found  it  impracticable.  I 
repeat,  therefore,  that  these  preliminaries  are  more 
necessary  as  qualifications  of  the  principles  we  are 
now  about  to  consider  than  of  those  named  respecting 
the  selection  of  authors. 

1.  Bearing  them  in  mind,  let  us  observe,  that  the 
ideal  of  scholarly  reading  is  critical  reading.  Here, 
again,  the  distinction  between  reading  and  study  is 
elemental.  It  lies  at  the  foundation  of  the  whole 
business.  In  mere  reading  the  mind  is  passive:  in 
study  the  mind  works.  In  reading  we  drift :  in  study 
we  row. 

If  Professor  Stuart  in  his  prime  had  been  asked  how 
many  hours  in  a  day  he  studied,  he  would  have  said, 
"  Three  and  a  half."  But  he  spent  at  his  study-table 
ten,  often  twelve,  hours.  Such  was  the  difference  in 
his  estimate  between  study  and  reading.  A  young 
man  wrote  to  me  not  long  ago  that  he  was  studying 
fourteen  hours  a  day.  From  my  knowledge  of  his 
temperament  and  habits,  and  from  the  fact  that  he 
adds  that  he  is  "  growing  fat  upon  it,"  I  doubt  whether 
he  is  studying  two  hours  in  a  day.  A  man  does  not 
grow  fat  upon  fourteen  hours  of  study  in  a  day. 

Critical  reading  establishes  acquaintance  with  an 
author.  It  discloses  also  the  very  process  of  his  lit- 
erary work.  Every  author's  work  is  a  panorama  of 
his  mental  processes  to  one  who  has  the  ( ritical  insight 
by  which  to  discover  them.  They  are  more  easily  dis- 
covered in   some   than  in   others.      Some  writers  are 


LECT.  xviii.]  READING  AND  STUDY.  271 

secretive :  they  do  not  let  themselves  loose  in  their 
speech.  But  these  are  inferiors  in  literary  power. 
The  great  minds  liberate  themselves;  they  move  on 
winged  utterances ;  they  throw  the  whole  force  of 
their  own  being  into  their  creations.  Then,  like  other 
works  of  creation,  the  thing  created  bears  the  image  of 
the  creator.  It  is  impossible,  for  instance,  to  read  with 
scholarly  care  the  sonnets  of  Shakspeare,  or  Byron's 
"  Cain,"  without  discovering  somewhat  of  the  personal 
life  and  character  of  the  author.  Even  a  heedless 
reader  can  not  escape  the  discovery  of  the  hidden 
character  of  the  author's  mind  in  reading  Hawthorne's 
"  Marble  Faun  "  or  ''  The  Scarlet  Letter."  They  pre- 
sent a  still  picture  of  the  man  which  is  more  suggestive 
than  an  autobiography. 

That  is  unscholarly  reading  for  a  professional  man, 
reading  for  his  own  culture  as  a  public  speaker,  which 
does  not  disclose  somewhat  of  the  process  of  author- 
ship. Not  the  man  only,  but  his  work,  needs  to  be 
made  visible.  To  achieve  this  requires  study,  as  dis- 
tinct from  reading.  The  majority  of  educated  men 
read  a  vast  deal  more  than  they  study.  The  old  adage, 
"  Commend  me  to  the  man  of  one  book,"  was  founded 
upon  the  invaluable  worth  of  critical  reading.  We  do 
a  permanent  evil  to  our  own  minds,  if  we  read  a  valua- 
ble book  as  we  skim  the  newspapers.  It  is  impossible 
to  appreciate  an  athletic  literature  without  some  degree 
of  the  strain  of  a  mental  athlete  in  the  study  of  it. 
Specially  is  this  true  of  that  mastery  of  the  process  of 
authorship  which  a  public  speaker  needs  to  ace  aire  by 
his  reading. 

To  illustrate  this  critical  method  in  reading  for  pro- 
ftjssional  discipline,  we  should  observe  such  things  as 


272  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  x\:n. 

the  following.  Respecting  the  materials  of  thought, 
Are  they  true  ?  are  they  relevant  ?  are  they  original  ? 
are  they  intense?  are  they  the  obvious  outflow  of  a 
full  mind?  are  they  suggestive  of  reserved  force?  do 
they  mark  a  candid  thinker,  a  sympathetic  thinker, 
a  mind  which  puts  itself  en  rapport  with  the  reader? 
Respecting  the  style  of  the  work,  such  points  as  these 
need  attention :  Is  the  style  clear,  concise,  forcible,  pic 
turesque?  Are  the  sentences  involved?  Does  a  Latin, 
or  a  German,  or  a  Saxon  model  prevail  in  their  struc- 
ture? Do  laconic  sentences  abound?  interrogatives ? 
antitheses?  parentheses?  rhythmic  clauses?  clauses  in 
apposition  ?  quotations  ?  epithets  ?  long  words  ?  short 
words  ?  obsolete  words  ?  archaic  words  ?  euphonious 
words?  synonyms?  monosyllabic  words?  Is  the  vo- 
cabulary affluent,  or  stinted  ?  Is  the  style  as  a  whole 
that  of  oratory,  or  of  the  essay?  Is  it  as  a  whole  natu- 
ral to  the  subject  and  the  discussion  ?  Is  it  as  a  whole 
peculiar  to  the  author,  or  imitative  of  other  authors? 
Does  it  indicate  in  the  author  the  habit  of  weiofhingf 
well  the  forces  of  language?  Does  it  contain  frag- 
ments void  of  thought?  Robert  Hall's  well-known 
criticism  of  his  own  production,  which  a  friend  was 
reading  to  him  for  the  purpose,  illustrates  critical  study 
of  style:  "'Pierce'  is  the  word:  I  never  coald  have 
meant  to  say  'penetrate'  in  that  connection.'' 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  this  critical  reading  is  a 
pettifogging  process,  —  the  mind  is  contracted  by  it. 
Not  so,  if  the  v  ^lume  in  hand  is  one  of  great  and 
enduring  power.  A  great  mind  works  as  the  great 
powers  of  nature  do  in  producing  a  multitude  of  di- 
minutive creations.  We  can  not  neglect  these,  and 
yet  know  that  mind  thoroughly  in  its  beft  moods  of 


LECT.  XVIII.]         THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  SPIRIT.  273 

authorship.  Lord  Bacon  says,  "  He  that  can  not  con- 
tract the  sight  of  his  mind,  as  well  as  disperse  and 
dilate  it,  wantetli  a  great  quality."  Reading  in  this 
manner,  one  acquires  not  only  a  knowledge  of  an  au- 
thor's mental  character  and  habits  of  thinking,  out 
somewhat  of  the  very  process  of  production  in  the 
case  in  hand.  Even  a  little  of  such  acute  reading  will 
create  a  new  perceptive  power  in  all  other  reading. 
The  knowledge  gained  will  approach  the  accuracy  and 
intricacy  of  self-knowledge. 

Are  there  not  some  authors  with  whom  already  you 
have  formed  this  kind  of  personal  intimacy  ?  If  you 
should  happen  upon  an  anonymous  extract  from  them 
which  you  had  never  seen  before,  you  could  pronounce 
confidently  upon  their  origin.  You  know  it  by  a  word, 
a  tone  of  thought,  an  idiomatic  sentence  or  illustration, 
as  you  recognize  a  friend  in  the  distance  by  his  gait,  or 
the  swing  of  his  arm.  The  authorship  of  the  "  Waverley 
Novels "  was  detected  by  readers  of  the  "  Scottish 
Ballads  "  and  "  The  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,"  long 
before  Walter  Scott  acknowledged  the  authorship. 
This  critical  reading  which  makes  it  impossible  for  an 
author  to  secrete  himself  from  readers  is  the  basis  of 
all  mastery  of  books. 

2.  Scholarly  reading  is  reading  in  the  spirit  of  philo- 
sophical inquiry. 

There  is  a  difference  between  literary  curiosity  and 
literary  inquiry.  Curiosity  contents  itself  with  facts : 
inquiry  seeks  for  the  principles  which  underlie  the 
facts.  Curiosity  asks  "  What  ?  "  inquiry  asks  "  Why  ?  " 
Why  is  one  discussion  masterly,  and  another  feeble? 
Why  does  one  volume  suggest  material  for  two  ?  Why 
is  one  order  of   thought  superior  to  another?     Why 


274  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xvtii. 

does  one  page  require  a  second  reading?  Why  does 
one  structure  of  discourse  excel  another?  Why  is  one 
style  of  illustration  more  vivid  than  another  ?  Why  is 
one  construction,  one  length,  one  emphasis,  of  a  sen- 
tence, more  effective  than  another  ?  Why  is  one  word 
better  than  another?  Why  say  "pierce,"  and  not 
''  penetrate  "  ? 

Some  anomalies  in  literature  force  upon  a  critic  the 
philosophical  inquiry.  Let  us  note  an  illustration  of 
this.  Has  it  never  occurred  to  you  what  a  singular 
violation  of  congruity  occurs  in  the  first  stanza  of  one 
of  the  dearest  hymns  of  the  church,  perhaps  the  hymn 
which  above  all  others  has  won  the  affection  of  Chris- 
tian hearts?  On  what  principle  can  criticism  justify 
such  lines  as  these  ?  — 

"  There  is  a  fountain  filled  with  blood 
Drawn  from  Immanuel's  veins, 
And  sinners  plunged  beneath  that  flood 
Lose  all  their  guilty  stains." 

Do  we  ever  fill  a  fountain?  Is  there  no  jar  upon 
aesthetic  feeling  in  the  anatomical  specification  of  veins? 
Would  any  thing  but  the  necessities  of  rhyme  induce  a 
poet  to  prefer  that  image  to  the  "  heart "  ?  Is  the  pic- 
ture, when  finished,  an  attractive  or  an  impressive  one 
to  the  imagination  ?  Is  there  any  congruity  in  an  inter- 
change of  the  images  of  "flood  "  and  "  fountain  "  ? 

These  aesthetic  difficulties  have  been  submitted  to 
several  of  the  most  accomplished  Christian  critics  of  the 
country.  They  were  unanimous  in  condemning  the 
incongruities  on  aesthetic  grounds,  yet  as  unanimous  in 
saying  that  no  art  can  improve  the  stanza  on  moral 
ground?.     James  Montgomery  was  so  sensitive  to  these 


LECT.  XVIII.]  LITERARY  ANOMALIES.  2  <  0 

imaginative  defects  of  the  h3'mn,  that  he  once  published 
it  revised  by  his  own  hand,  with  this  stanza  adjusted  to 
the  demands  of  taste.  But  who  has  ever  sung  the 
revised  edition  ?  In  what  collections  of  psalmody  has 
it  ever  found  a  place  ?  It  has  fallen  still-born.  Chris- 
tian worship  clings  to  Cowper's  original.  Christian 
hearts  will  love  it  in  all  its  gesthetic  deformity;  and 
more,  Christian  feeling  denies  the  deformity,  let  criti- 
cism say  what  it  will. 

There  is  a  reason  for  such  an  apparent  anomaly  as 
this.  Genuine  taste  and  Christian  sensibility  never 
conflict  in  reality.  The  following  explanation  has  been 
suggested  by  a  living  scholar  whose  aesthetic  taste  and 
religious  sensibility  both  entitle  him  to  a  hearing.  He 
says  substantiall}^  that  the  whole  conception  of  the 
atoning  work  of  our  Lord  is  so  august  and  so  myste- 
rious, that  the  mind  does  not  demand  in  a  lyric  expres- 
sion of  it  the  sharpness  of  congruity  which  it  would 
demand  in  the  expression  of  a  less  solemn  or  a  less 
obscure  thought.  The  whole  idea  of  the  atonement  is 
an  anomaly.  Esthetic  anomalies  are  in  keeping  with 
it.  It  overawes  aesthetic  feeling  in  its  common  forms. 
It  exalts  the  moral  sensibility  in  the  place  of  that 
feeling.  An  Oriental  confusion  of  metaphor,  arising 
out  of  luxuriance  of  imagery,  is  therefore  invited  by 
the  strange  abnormal  character  of  the  thing  expressed. 
The  poetic  mind  declines  to  trace  such  a  thing  in 
imagery  exact  and  finished,  like  that  in  which  it  would 
paint  a  rainbow,  or  fringe  a  cloud.  In  such  a  mind 
the  Christian  feeling  which  loves  the  stanza  as  it  is,  i'' 
more  truthful  than  the  aesthetic  feeling  which  would 
condemn  it.  Whether  or  not  this  is  a  satisfactory 
explana'*:ion  of  this  example,  the  example  itself  illus- 


276  MEN  Ai>D  BOOKS.  [lect.  xvin. 

tralee  the  working  of  philosophical  criticism,  and  the 
necessity  of  it  in  the  explanation  of  anomalies. 

Again :  philosophical  inquiry  gives  dignity  to  criti- 
cism. By  means  of  it  criticism  constantly  makes  incur- 
sions into  mental  science.  The  rhetorical  force  of  one 
word  may  be  attributable  to  a  fundamental  principle 
in  philosophy.  The  words  "  power,"  "  cause,"  "  ought," 
are  unanswerable  arguments  for  certain  philosophical 
truths.  The  existence  of  those  words  is  a  philosophi- 
cal fact.  The  true '  philosophy  of  mind  can  not  be 
evolved  without  them.  Yet  the  proper  use  of  them  is 
one  of  the  things  with  which  rhetorical  criticism  con- 
cerns itself.  This  is  but  one  of  a  multitude  of  ways 
in  which  criticism  and  mental  science  work  into  each 
other's  domains. 

Moreover,  philosophical  criticism  often  reverses  our 
first  judgment  of  authors.  A  search  for  the  reason  of 
an  opinion  will  often  lead  a  candid  mind  to  give  up  the 
opinion.  So  our  judgments  of  authors  are  often  heredi- 
tary judgments.  In  our  maturer  culture  we  can  not 
defend  them ;  and  we  discover  this  by  asking  why  we 
attribute  to  such  authors  the  qualities  we  revere.  Our 
first  impressions  of  authors  are  also  often  our  juvenile 
impressions.  We  find  that  our  literary  manhood  does 
not  support  them ;  and  we  either  discover  this,  or  are 
confirmed  in  it,  by  raising  the  philosophical  inquiry, 
Why?  The  glare  of  a  false  literature  is  often  thus 
found  out,  when  a  more  indolent  criticism  would  be 
dazzled  for  a  lifetime. 

3.  The  most  useful  reading  is  done  by  a  scholarly 
division  of  labor.  By  this  I  mean,  that  critical  attention 
should  be  directed  to  one  thing  at  a  time.  We  can  not 
wisely  bring  to  critical  reading  the  habits  we  form  in 


LECT.  XVIII.]  ANALYTIC  READING.  277 

accumulative  reading.  Deep  boring  must  be  done  in 
spots.  The  surface  we  cover  with  our  reading  should 
be  dotted  over  with  points  at  which  we  sink  a  shaft  of 
critical  inquiry.  An  inspection  of  your  present  habits 
of  reading  will  probably  disclose  to  you  that  they  have 
thus  far  been  almost  wholly  acquisitive  and  discursive 
in  their  character.  You  have  read  for  information  and 
entertainment,  not  for  critical  culture. 

Acquisitive  reading  for  critical  purposes  is  wearisome, 
because  it  is  unproductive  of  results.  No  man  will 
long  continue  it.  Did  you  ever  attempt  to  xlrag  a  tree 
through  a  narrow  gateway,  with  the  branches  headed 
to  the  front ;  and  did  you  not  discover  a  very  conven- 
ient principle  of  mechanics  when  the  bright  thought 
occurred  to  you  to  turn  it  end  for  end  ?  The  single 
trunk  obeyed  you,  and  drew  after  it  the  supple  branches 
which  were  so  refractory  before.  Like  such  a  juvenile 
error  are  attempts  to  carry  a  great  diversity  of  critical 
processes  along  side  by  side  in  our  reading.  The  diver- 
sity bewilders.  The  objects  of  our  critical  attention 
straggle  out  on  this  side  and  on  that.  Our  thought 
seizes  one  and  another  at  random,  and  drops  each  to 
attend  to  a  third,  till,  by  dint  of  tug  and  heat,  we  ad- 
vance by  inches  to  the  discovery  that  we  are  losing  all 
pleasure,  and  gaining  no  discipline  but  such  as  is  the 
common  lot  of  saints.  At  last,  bruised  and  irritated, 
we  give  it  up  in  despair.  Reverse  the  process,  fix 
attention  on  one  thing  at  a  time,  and  you  advance  with 
ease  and  with  the  consciousness  of  progress. 

For  the  sake  of  definiteness  in  our  conception  of  this 
method,  let  several  applications  of  it  be  noticed.  Thus 
division  of  labor  may  be  applied  to  the  study  of  diver- 
sities in  kind  of  literature.     For  example,  the  essays 


278  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xyui. 

of  our  language  form  a  department  by  themselves. 
Stud}^  tliem  as  such.  Get  a  clear  idea  of  the  English 
essay,  —  what  it  is,  what  is  its  relation  to  other  depart- 
ments of  our  literature,  when  it  originated,  who  are 
its  chief  masters,  what  are  their  peculiarities,  and  what 
is  the  control  of  the  essay  over  modern  opinion.  Do 
not  burden  your  study  of  the  essay  by  trying  to  carry 
abreast  with  it  in  your  reading  English  poetry,  history, 
biography,  philosophy.  Let  each  of  these  monopolize 
your  time  in  turn.  One  week,  or  its  equivalent,  de- 
voted to  a  study  of  the  essay  alone,  will  give  you  a 
very  valuable  knowledge,  even  to  some  extent  a  crit- 
ical knowledge  of  it,  which  will  assist  you  in  the  studies 
of  a  lifetime. 

Division  of  labor  may  be  applied  to  criticism  of  sin- 
gle authors,  if  they  deserve  it.  Study  an  author  by 
installments.  Study  first  the  sentiment,  then  the  con- 
struction, then  the  illustrative  materials,  then  the  style, 
and,  finally,  his  place  in  the  fraternity  of  authors  and 
in  the  history  of  his  times.  The  severest  labor  of  such 
reading  is  near  the  beginning.  One  advances  in  it 
with  accelerated  speed.  You  are  constantly  taking 
side-glances,  also,  at  other  things  which  you  can  not 
help  noticing,  as  you  see  things  out  of  the  corners  of 
your  eyes.  This  relieves  the  monotony  of  your  work, 
without  burdening  your  attention  with  unmanageable 
varieties. 

This  analytic  method  of  study  may  be  applied  to 
the  several  parts  of  a  discourse  or  of  a  poem.  It  is 
the  method  usually  adopted  in  lectures  on  the  struc- 
ture and  composition  of  a  sermon.  We  study  texts 
by  themselves ;  introductions  are  considered  alone ; 
propositions,  divisions,  conclusions  —  each  receives  dis 


tECT.  XVIII.]  ANALYTIC  READING  279 

cussion  in  its  place.  The  same  division  of  labor  may 
be  applied  to  other  species  of  composition,  —  to  ora- 
tions, to  works  of  fiction,  to  histories.  This  principle 
of  division  of  labor  is  the  one  on  which  we  pursue  all 
other  intelligent  courses  of  study:  we  study  theolog;y 
by  topics ;  we  read  history  by  periods,  by  royal  reigns 
and  dynasties ;  medical  science  is  studied  by  classifi- 
cation of  diseases :  why  should  not  the  criticism  of 
literature  be  facilitated  by  the  same  principle?  This 
method  in  the  study  of  books  tends  to  secure  profound 
knowledge  at  the  vital  points  of  literary  history.  We 
can  not  otherwise  discover  the  vital  points;  for  we 
shall  not  otherwise  study  any  one  thing  long  enough 
to  discover  its  relations  to  other  literature.  But,  with 
a  few  things  thus  thoroughly  mastered,  we  shall  know 
that  our  culture  is  well  anchored.  We  can  trust  our- 
selves :  gales  of  false  taste  will  not  drag  us  from  safe 
moorings.  What  we  know,  we  know;  and  we  know 
that  we  know  it.  If  our  judgments  differ  from  those 
of  others,  we  can  afford  to  wait  for  the  decisions  of 
time. 

By  this  method,  ultimately,  even  the  extent  of  our 
literary  knowledge  will  be  most  effectually  enlarged. 
The  chief  objection  to  this  painstaking  stud/  is  that 
the  work  is  slow.  But  in  truth  it  is  the  best  method 
for  acquisitive  study  in  the  end.  Dr.  Johnson,  in  liis 
"Lives  of  the  Poets,"  says  that  the  reason  why  the 
ancients  surpassed  the  moderns  in  literary  acquisitions 
is,  that  they  had  a  more  truthful  conception  of  the 
limitations  of  human  powers,  and  confined  themselves 
to  one  thing.  The  measure  of  our  knowledge  is  not 
so  much  that  of  what  we  gain  as  of  what  we  hold 
and  use.     In  war,  military  policy  is  not  to  conquer  a 


280  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xvin. 

strategic  point  till  force  enough  is  at  command  to  hold 
it.  So,  in  literary  pursuits,  conscious  mastery  at  a  few 
points  will  soon  extend  itself  to  others.  The  points 
of  conquest  will  soon  begin  to  communicate  with  each 
other.  There  are  certain  signals  in  a  man's  conscious- 
ness of  knowledge  by  which  mastery  in  one  thing  helps 
mastery  in  another.  An  interchange  of  tribute  is  car- 
ried on,  by  which  knowledge  assists  all  other  knowl- 
edge. We  are  not  conscious  of  that,  except  through 
profound  and  thorough  scholarship :  nothing  less  than 
that  deserves  the  name  of  culture. 


LECTURE  XIX. 

METHODS  OF  STUDY,  CONTINUED. — LITERARY  COMPARI- 
SONS.—  CULTURE  OF  WEAK  TASTES.  —  COLLATERAL 
READING. 

4.  Continuing  the  discussion  of  the  scholarly  ideal 
of  reading,  I  remark  that  it  involves  studious  compari- 
son of  authors  with  each  other. 

Literary  comparisons  are  often  involuntary.  One 
can  not  read,  even  cursorily,  two  such  authors  as  Adam 
Smith  and  John  Ruskin,  or  two  such  as  Jeremy  Taylor 
and  Robert  South,  without  unconsciously  instituting 
comparisons  between  them.  We  obtain  a  more  definite 
conception  of  each  by  contrast  with  the  other.  From 
time  immemorial  the  two  gre'at  orators  of  antiquity 
have  lived  in  literary  criticism  chiefly  by  means  of 
such  comparison.  We  know  Cicero  and  Demosthenes 
to-day  mainly  in  the  fact  that  each  was  what  the  other 
was  not.  The  literary  mind  of  to-day  would  never 
have  known  Plato  as  it  does  but  for  the  existence  of 
Aristotle. 

This  law  of  comparison  rules  even  our  judgment  of 
national  literatures.  We  have  a  conception  of  the 
Greek  literature  which  we  never  could  have  had,  if 
the  Roman  literature  had  not  been  superinduced  upon 
it.  The  Greek  idea  of  beauty  is  more  vivid  in  our 
thoughts  than  it  could  have  been  but  for  the  Roman 

281 


282  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xix 

idea  of  law.  The  German  and  the  English  and  the 
French  literatures  are  thus  illuminating  each  other  in 
modern  critical  judgment.  Is  the  allegory  of  the 
three  artists,  illustrative  of  the  differences  in  the  three 
national  minds,  too  well  known  to  deserve  rehearsal? 
The  legend  reads  that  three  painters  —  an  Englishman, 
a  Frenchman,  and  a  German  —  wero  commissioned  to 
paint  a  picture  of  a  lion.  The  Frenchman  started  the 
next  day  for  Africa,  and  there  drew  his  picture  of  a 
lion  from  the  life.  The  Englishman  went  to  the  British 
Museum,  and  painted  his  picture  from  the  authorities 
he  found  in  the  library  of  natural  science.  The  Ger- 
man shut  himself  up  in  his  own  library,  and  evolved  a 
lion  from  the  depths  of  his  own  consciousness.  The 
caricature  will  live  a  long  time  as  a  representative  of 
the  tliree  literatures  and  the  national  minds  which 
they  express. 

Comparisons  connect  different  departments  of  litera- 
ture. We  see  the  structure  of  Edmund  Burke's  mind 
the  more  clearly  for  our  knowing  his  early  passion 
for  the  poetry  of  Milton.  The  eloquence  of  Massil- 
lon  is  the  more  intelligible  to  us  when  we  learn  his 
predilection  for  the  poetry  of  Homer.  The  dramatic 
power  of  Whitefield  we  understand  when  we  are  told 
of  his  youthful  studies  of  Shakspeare.  Criticism  would 
be  deprived  of  one  of  its  most  powerful  auxiliaries,  if 
it  were  dissevered  from  this  study  of  resemblances  and 
contrasts  by  comparison  of  authors. 

The  value  of  this  expedient  is  seen,  also,  in  the  fact 
that  comparisons  have  associated  certain  names  in  lit- 
erature with  certain  names  in  art,  in  current  literary 
opinion.  Criticism  often  expresses  its  most  profound 
judgment  of  an  author  by  saying,  that,  if  he  had  not 


LECT.  XTX  ]  SIMILITUDES  OF  GENIUS.  283 

been  an  author,  he  would  have  been  equally  eminent 
in  pamting  or  in  sculpture.  Canova's  remark  respect- 
ing Pitt  and  Fox  was  founded  on  the  law  of  mental 
resemblances.  To  the  Athenian  mind,  Pericles  and 
Phidias  were  of  the  same  stock  of  mental  character; 
though  it  is  not  known  that  the  one  ever  handled  a 
chisel,  or  the  other  ever  spoke  in  public.  "Paradise 
Lost "  has  suggested  to  more  than  one  reader  the  fres- 
cos of  Michael  Angelo.  Disraeli  observes  that  jMilton, 
Michael  Angelo,  and  Handel  are  parallels  to  each  other 
in  their  respective  arts.  Each  represents  the  same 
epoch  in  the  history  of  his  art.  Dante's  "  Inferno " 
and  the  painting  of  "The  Last  Judgment"  have  a 
deeper  ground  of  reciprocal  suggestion  than  similarity 
of  theme.  One  of  the  keenest  of  modern  critics  has 
characterized  the  poetry  of  Shelley  by  likening  it  to 
the  coloring  of  Titian.  The  relics  we  have  of  the 
speeches  of  several  great  generals  to  their  armies  con- 
firm the  criticism  which  their  military  exploits  alone 
have  suggested,  that  they  might  have  been  great  ora- 
tors. Many  lovers  of  eloquence  have  regretted  that 
Caesar  and  Napoleon  were  not  restricted  by  force  of 
circumstances  to  the  senates  of  nations,  rather  than  to 
their  battlefields.  Mr.  Everett,  characterizing  Daniel 
Webster,  compares  him  to  the  Prince  of  Conde,  on  the 
eve  of  the  battle  of  Rocroi,  and  to  Alexander  before 
the  battle  of  Arbela.  These  are  not  fanciful  sugges- 
tions :  they  are  founded  on  real  similitudes  of  genius. 
They  illustrate  the  value  of  literary  comparisons  as 
auxiliaries  to  critical  knowledge  of  authors. 

The  most  delicate  qualities  of  authors  are  scarcely 
di.icoverable  without  the  aid  of  comparisons.  Delicate 
distinctions  of   color  you   can  not  discern,  except  by 


284  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xix. 

placing  them  side  by  side.  So  it  is  in  the  study  of 
books.  Wholesale  criticisms  of  authors,  either  in  praise 
or  censure,  are  almost  sure  to  be  false,  because  they 
overlook  the  refinements  of  criticism.  They  would  be 
corrected  often  by  more  patient  comparisons.  Criticism 
is  often  like  color-blindness,  by  reason  of  its  inability 
to  see  the  lights  and  shadows  of  literary  character. 

This  was  the  defect  in  Jeffrey's  criticism  of  Words- 
worth. One  must  have  accustomed  one's  taste  to  enjoy 
serene  and  lunar  models  of  beauty  before  one  can  come 
to  a  poet  like  Wordsworth  with  an  appreciative  spirit. 
This  can  not  be  gained  without  a  considerable  range 
of  comparative  criticism. 

Comparison  of  authors  assists  us  to  a  true  estimate 
of  the  relative  value  of  different  qualities  in  literature. 
Not  all  the  qualities  of  good  writing  are  equally  valua- 
ble. Mr.  Webster  owed  much  of  his  success  in  oratory 
to  the  justness  of  his  estimate  of  strength  as  superior 
to  beauty  in  argumentative  debate.  Men  of  the  first 
order  in  senatorial  discussion  often  choose  abruptness 
of  speech,  so  that  their  power  shall  not  be  inwreathed, 
and  therefore  entangled  and  impeded,  by  appendages 
of  beauty.  Edmund  Burke  failed  in  public  speech, 
because  of  his  failure  to  appreciate  the  qualities  of  oral 
as  compared  with  those  of  written  address.  Burke's 
speeches  are  essays.  His  friend  Sheridan  was  a  more 
powerful  debater  in  his  day ;  yet  Lord  Brougham  says 
that  he  played  to  the  galleries,  and  indulged  in  clap- 
trap. If  JUirke  had  brought  the  solidity  of  his  genius 
to  a  fair  expression  by  those  qualities  which  Sheridan 
exaggerated,  he  would  have  been  to  the  English  Par- 
liament what  Demosthenes  was  to  the  Greek  republics. 
Yet  such  balancing  of  opposite  virtues  in  composition 


LECT.  XIX.]  SYMMETRY  OF  CULTURE.  285 

is  not  gained  otherwise  tliaa  by  critical  and  candid 
comparison  of  authors  distinguished  for  each. 

5.  As  far  as  possible,  our  reading  should  be  made 
tributary  to  the  correction  of  our  own  known  deficien- 
cies in  literary  production. 

Variety  in  selection  of  authors  is  not  sufficient  to 
insure  symmetry  of  culture.  Our  existing  tastes  may 
tyrannize  over  our  reading  so  far  as  to  defeat  the  object 
of  that  variety.  Let  your  mind  swing  loose  in  the  act 
of  reading,  and  you  will  inevitably  be  swayed  by  your 
tastes  in  appropriating  what  you  read.  You  will  appro- 
priate only  those  elements  which  are  kindred  to  your 
present  tastes.  An  imaginative  mind  will  coin  fancy 
out  of  metaphysical  definitions,  if  it  reads  passively. 
A  prosaic  mind  will  fashion  a  creed  out  of  poetic  im- 
agery, if  it  exercises  no  control  of  itself  in  reading. 
It  requires  often  self-denial  to  restrain  our  ruling  tastes, 
and  to  seek,  by  dint  of  patient  criticism,  for  those  things 
which  we  most  need,  but  do  not  want.  Few  scholars 
achieve  this  self-conquest  whose  literary  enthusiasm  is 
not  largely  pervaded  by  religious  principle. 

Observe  an  illustration  of  the  need  of  the  principle 
before  us  to  remedy  one  of  the  most  common  defects  of 
preachers;  viz.,  the  want  of  illustrative  power.  There 
is  a  class  of  preachers  who  are  men  of  good  sense,  who 
have  read  extensively,  who  are  well-informed  as  men 
of  the  world,  whose  discourses  are  clear,  consecutive, 
well-aimed,  and  enforced  by  an  earnest  spirit.  Yet 
they  do  not  preach  breathing  sermons.  They  can  not 
make  truth  vivid;  they  can  not  freshen  stale  truths. 
They  are  not  live  men  in  the  pulpit:  therefore  their 
preaching  is  humdrum.  Pious  hearers  who  carry  in 
their  own  souls  a  coal  from  a  burning  altar  will  call 


286  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xiX. 

it  "  good  preaching ; "  but  they  are  not  really  moved 
by  that  preaching  any  more  than  the  wicked  and  the 
indifferent  are,  who  call  it  stupid.    They  are  self-moved. 

Such  a  preacher  has  no  right  to  quiet  his  conscience 
by  the  self-assurance  that  he  has  done  his  duty  because 
he  has  preached  the  truth.  He  has  not  preached  the 
truth  truthfully;  he  has  not  preached  it  scripturally. 
In  the  Scriptures  truth  is  alive.  It  is  all  aglow  with 
vitality  made  to  appear  vital  by  the  dramatic  resources 
and  the  quickened  sensibilities  of  the  writer.  Our 
friend  the  preacher  has  a  new  process  of  culture  to  go 
through.  The  imaginative  element  in  him  needs  to 
be  aroused,  and  his  reading  needs  to  be  so  directed  as 
to  achieve  this.  He  needs  to  study  the  great  poets, 
the  dramatic  masters,  the  picturesque  historians,  biog- 
raphers, essayists,  of  our  language,  and  the  most  dra- 
matic orators  and  preachers.  By  such  a  process  of 
self-discipline  the  most  prosaic  mind  may  acquire  some- 
what of  the  genius  of  an  orator.  Every  man  has  that 
genius  in  his  nature :  every  man  will  show  it,  if  his 
house  takes  fire.  The  elements  of  eloquence,  of  dra- 
matic power,  of  painting,  of  whatever  is  vivid  in  con- 
ception, and  forcible  in  utterance,  are  in  the  germ  in 
every  human  soul.  They  need  development  in  every 
preacher  to  make  the  pulpit  a  throne  of  power. 

This  principle  is  sometimes  needful  to  remedy  a 
defect  the  opposite  to  that  just  named ;  viz.,  an  in- 
ability to  preach  logical,  direct,  and  severe  discourses. 
This,  though  a  less  frequent  defect,  is  by  no  means 
uncommon.  It  often  results  from  a  neglect  to  cultivate 
dormant  tastes.  I  can  best  develop  this  by  an  instance 
which  came  under  my  own  observation.  A  young  man 
began  his  ministry  with  me  who  possessed  some  of  the 


LECT.  XIX.;;  OVERGROWN  TASTES.  287 

choicest  elements  of  character  which  it  has  ever  been 
my  lot  to  witness  in  one  of  his  years.  He  was  passion- 
ately attached  to  the  ministry  as  his  life's  work.  The 
only  lamentation  he  uttered  on  his  death-bed  was  that 
his  disease  would  cost  him  his  profession. 

The  chief  defect  of  his  character  was  a  beauty  devel- 
oped into  a  deformity.  He  was  by  nature  a  poet,  and 
by  culture  he  had  made  himself  nothing  more.  All 
truth  to  his  mind  assumed  imaginative  forms,  and  ex- 
pressed itself  in  rhythm.  The  sternest  truths  of  religion 
dissolved  into  images  of  beauty.  Law,  predestination, 
sin,  retribution,  put  on  a  roseate  hue.  On  themes 
kindred  to  his  overgrown  tastes  he  could  preach,  to  a 
solitary  and  dreaming  hearer  here  and  there,  with  the 
voice  of  a  charmer.  But  the  majority  of  his  hearers 
were  not  moved  even  to  a  cold  admiration  of  sermons 
into  which  he  poured  his  whole  soul.  His  materials, 
his  methods  of  division,  his  style,  his  indirect,  imagina- 
tive, shrinking  appeals,  were  too  ethereal  for  this  home- 
spun and  corrupt  world.  To  the  masses  his  was  an 
unknown  tongue. 

Some  subjects  he  could  not  discuss  at  all :  it  was  not 
in  him.  Retribution,  depravity,  decrees,  he  would 
never  have  preached  upon  definitely  to  the  end  of  time. 
He  probably  never  made  a  direct  appeal  to  a  hearer's 
conscience.  For  robust  talk  in  the  pulpit  he  seemed 
to  have  no  heart.  Yet,  strange  as  it  may  seem,  he  had 
by  no  means  an  effeminate  nature.  In  defense  of  an 
unpopular  opinion  he  was  lion-hearted.  In  times  of 
persecution  he  would  have  been  sure  to  be  in  the 
minority  and  a  martyr.  He  could  never  have  been 
Luther,  but  he  would  have  been  Melanchthon  :  Luther 
would  have  loved   and   leaned   upon   him.      His   few 


288  MEl^  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xix, 

friends  revered  him  for  his  purity  of  character.  Men 
who  experienced  none  of  the  difficulty  which  he  had 
in  obtaining  a  pulpit  felt  self-reproached  when  they 
communed  with  him. 

The  thing  which  he  needed  to  make  him  a  preacher 
was  more  hardihood.  He  should  have  forced  it.  He 
ought  to  have  studied  Edwards  on  the  Will.  He  should 
have  read  Dr.  South,  and  the  prose  of  Milton,  and 
Cromwell's  speeches.  He  ought  to  have  taken  as  his 
models  John  Knox  and  Richard  Baxter  and  President 
Finney.  He  should  have  gone  upon  the  wharves,  and 
talked  to  sailors.  His  brethren  in  the  ministry  felt 
relieved,  for  his  sake,  when  God  removed  him :  we 
thought,  in  reverent  remembrance  of  him,  of  that  fea- 
ture in  the  felicity  of  the  redeemed  which  seems  in  the 
Scriptures  to  represent  them  as  instructors  of  angels. 
He  appeared  to  be  better  fitted  to  that  service  than  to 
any  demanded  in  a  world  like  this. 

By  the  views  here  expressed,  it  is  not  meant  that 
natural  tastes  are  to  be  suppressed.  Symmetry  is  not 
worth  the  loss  of  vitality.  A  motionless  equilibrium 
of  tastes  is  more  fatal  than  a  vivacious  distortion  of 
them.  No  fault  is  greater  than  a  tame  faultlessness. 
But  there  is  a  practicable  regulation  of  one-sided  pro- 
clivities, which  is  not  the  extinction  or  the  enslavement 
of  tliem.  Within  reasonable  limits  let  the  natural 
tastes  have  their  way,  but  develop  the  dormant  tastes : 
that  is  the  point,  and  it  is  practicable.  Defects  can  be 
so  far  corrected,  that,  while  you  will  always  do  some 
things  better  than  others,  you  can  still  do  "^he  others 
well.  No  man  of  common  sense  in  the  pulpit  needs 
to  be  dumb  on  some  subjects,  and  imbecile  to  some 
hearers,  for  the  want  of  the  tastes  requisite  to  "become 


i^ECT.  XIX.]  COLI^iTERAL  READING.  289 

all  things  tu  all  men."  Still  less  need  any  man  ^^hG  is 
called  of  God  to  the  ministry  be  such  a  deformed  man 
that  he  must  make  a  one-sided  preacher.  Put  your 
culture  into  the  weak  points  of  your  intellect,  as  you 
put  your  principle  into  the  weak  points  of  your  char- 
acter. You  are  in  no  danger  in  either  case  of  landing 
upon  a  dead  level. 

6.  A  scholarly  ideal  of  reading  includes  a  study  of 
the  biographies  of  authors  and  the  history  of  their 
times.  A  book  is  part  of  an  author's  life.  In  itself  it 
is  incomplete  ;  by  itself  it  may  be  false  :  we  need  to  see 
it  as  a  part  of  the  man.  It  is,  therefore,  a  good  general 
rule  not  to  read  an  anonymous  book.  Now  and  then 
an  exception  occurs,  like  "  Ecce  Homo ; "  but  exceptions 
are  rare.  Still  more  significantly  is  an  author  a  fixture 
of  his  age.  He  is  set  in  the  age  like  a  stone  in  an  arch. 
It  is  never  true  literally  that  men  write  for  future  times. 
They  write  for  their  own  times :  they  are  made  by  their 
own  times.  The  avenue  to  immortality  for  any  man's 
influence  lies  through  the  life-blood  of  a  living  genera- 
tion. Matthew  Arnold  means  just  this  when  he  says, 
that,  "  for  the  creation  of  a  master-work  of  literature, 
two  powers  must  concur,  —  the  power  of  the  moment 
and  the  power  of  the  man :  the  man  is  not  enough 
without  the  moment."  The  law  of  nature  is  inexora- 
ble in  this  conjunction  of  the  man  with  the  time.  Even 
the  literature  of  inspiration  is  not  free  from  its  work- 
ing. The  Bible  is  intensely  a  local  book :  it  is  historic 
in  its  structure.  To  be  understood,  and  still  more  to 
be  felt  as  a  power,  it  must  be  studied  in  its  historic  sur- 
roundings. Isolate  it  from  those  surroundings,  and  you 
have  one  of  the  most  unintelligible  of  volumes. 

So  it  is  with  uninspired  authorship  :  it  CJin  not  shoot 


290  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xix, 

over  its  own  age.  Every  author  is  the  growth  of  his 
own  times :  the  roots  of  his  thinking  are  there.  If  we 
would  know  him  well,  we  must  see  him  there  in  his 
natural  birthplace,  in  the  very  homestead  of  his  literary 
being.  We  must  first  see  him  as  his  contemporaries 
saw  him ;  then  we  are  prepared  to  see  him  with  eyes 
which  they  had  not. 

One  or  two  illustrations  of  this  principle  will  indicate 
the  importance  of  it  in  the  history  of  the  pulpit.  In 
the  age  of  the  Reformation  and  that  next  succeeding, 
few  preachers,  so  far  as  I  know,  preserved  strictly  what, 
in  modern  homiletics,  would  be  regarded  as  unity  of 
discourse.  Often  the  whole  system  of  grace  was  pre- 
sented in  one  sermon.  A  preacher  would  have  sub- 
jected his  evangelical  spirit  to  suspicion,  if  he  often 
discoursed  without  introducing  the  doctrine  of  justifi- 
cation by  faith.  It  was  then  that  the  old  homiletic  rule 
was  originated,  that  a  man  should  never  preach  without 
saying  so  much  of  the  gospel,  that  if  a  hearer  should 
never  hear,  and  had  never  heard,  another  sermon,  he 
should  not  be  ignorant  of  the  way  of  salvation. 

Modern  homiletic  science  has  abrogated  that  rule. 
The  taste  of  modern  congregations  would  soon  weary 
of  the  sameness  of  the  preaching  which  that  rule  would 
create.  But  how  does  such  preaching  appear  when  seen 
in  the  times  which  created  it  ?  Set  it,  like  a  picture, 
in  the  frame  of  its  age,  and  it  seems  the  most  becom- 
ing, because  the  most  necessary,  style  of  preaching. 
The  people  were  emerging  from  Romanism.  The  doc- 
trines of  grace  were  a  novelty.  Preaching  itself  had 
become  a  rare  accomplishment.  Elementary  views  of 
doctrines,  and  those  often  reiterated,  were  demanded  by 
the  intellectual  knowledge  and  the  religious  culture  of 


i,ECT.  XIX.]  PEDANTRY  IN  SERMONS.  291 

the  times.  It  was  more  tliLii  pardonable,  therefore,  if 
Luther  and  his  contemporaries  repeated  and  reiterated 
the  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith,  and  preached  it  by 
remote  connection  with  other  themes,  and  dragged  it 
without  connections  into  their  conclusions.  The  emer- 
gencies of  the  times  demanded  this  homiletic  lawless- 
ness, and  the  rude  taste  of  the  people  did  not  condemn 
it.  To  have  forced  upon  the  pulpit  of  that  age,  with 
Athenian  severity  of  taste,  the  homiletic  canons  of  later 
times,  would  have  been  neither  good  preaching  nor 
good  sense.    The  people  of  the  age  were  not  Athenians. 

Take  an  illustration  from  the  English  pulpit  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  A  certain  preacher  in  the  reign 
of  the  first  king  James  selected  for  a  text  the  words  : 
"There  are  spots  in  your  feasts  of  charity."  He  an- 
nounced his  subject  thus,  "  Maculce  in  Epulis^  He 
proceeded  to  divide  his  discourse  as  follows :  1.  "  Mensa 
Syharitica ;''  2.  '•'•  Mensa  Centaurica ; ''  3.  ^'' Mensa  Thy- 
estea^  Then,  by  way  of  contrast,  he  considered,  1. 
'•'' Convivium  spirituale ;^^  2.  ^^Convivium  sacraiyientale ;''^ 
3.  ^' Convivium  eoeleste  ;^'  which  last  division  is  ampli- 
fied as  being  "  eTzovQanoa-evcoxta,^^  which  is  still  more  mag- 
nificently developed  by  the  subdivisions  of  "  visio 
divinarum^'^  "  societas  angelorum^^  and  "  consortium  sanc- 
torum J' 

True,  he  translated  this  gibberish.  But  our  modern 
criticism,  in  its  impatience,  says  that  he  must  have  been 
a  fool.  Perhaps  not.  Turn  to  Bishop  Latimer,  whose 
power  in  the  pulpit  was  such  that  his  enemies  did  not 
know  what  to  do  about  it,  except  to  burn  the  man  to 
ashes.  Yet  we  find  him  guilty  of  the  same  pedantry. 
The  text  of  his  famous  "Sermon  of  the  Card,"  he 
announces   in   Latin,    "Quis   es?"     Turn   to    Jeremy 


292  MEN  AND  EOOKS.  [lect.  xrx. 

Taylor, — no  fool  surely,  —  and  you  find,  that  in  sermons 
which  he  artlessly  tells  us  were  preached  to  "  the  family 
and  domestics  of  his  patron,  with  a  few  cottagers  of  the 
neighborhood,"  there  occurs  a  profusion  of  classical 
allusion,  which  seems  like  the  echo  of  an  Oxford  lec- 
ture-room. Quotations  from  Plautus  and  Homer  occur 
in  a  singular  medley  with  others  from  Cicero  and 
Seneca. 

As  sensible  men,  we  must  condemn  all  this ;  and  we 
marvel  that  he  had  not  the  good  sense  to  condemn  it 
also.  But  we  do  him  great  injustice,  if  we  judge  him 
by  the  tastes  of  this  age.  One  of  the  most  curious 
inlets  to  the  character  of  the  English  pulpit  of  those 
times  is  located  just  here.  Not  only  is  it  true  that  this 
pedantry  accorded  with  the  scholastic  taste  of  that  age, 
but  the  popular  taste  refused  to  respect  preaching 
which  was  not  sprinkled  with  it.  I  open  almost  at 
random  the  sermons  of  a  contemporary  of  Jeremy 
Taylor,  and  I  find  the  text  quoted  in  Latin,  two  Greek 
quotations  on  one  page,  and  four  Latin  extracts  on 
another.  Reverence  for  the  classic  languages  had 
descended  to  the  seventeenth  century  from  a  century 
earlier,  when  there  was  no  literature  to  speak  of  in  the 
vernacular  tongues  of  Europe.  Erasmus  risked  his  life 
in  a  mob,  because  he  would  not  talk  Italian.  He  aban- 
doned a  benefice  offered  to  him  in  England,  because  he 
would  not  stoop  to  learn  the  English  language.  He 
often  refused  to  converse  in  German,  though  he  knew 
the  language  expertly.  He  thought  the  Reformation 
degraded  by  Luther's  preaching  and  writing  in  German. 
This  was  the  general  taste  of  the  scholars  of  his  age. 
Erasmus  was  the  most  liberal  of  them  all.  They  looked 
upon  the  classic  tongues  as  the  only  tongues  in  which 
a  scholarly  literature  could  ever  exist. 


uxn.  XIX.]  POPULAR  SCHOLASTICISM.  293 

The  common  people,  therefore,  did  their  best  to  ape 
the  folly  of  their  betters.  Through  that  whole  period, 
down  to  a  time  long  after  Jeremy  Taylor,  this  was  the 
inherited  taste  of  the  people.  They  could  not  read  or 
understand  Latin  and  Greek ;  but  they  could-  hear  it, 
and  their  ears  were  elongated  by  that.  The  relics  of 
that  taste  remained  to  our  own  day.  So  lately  as  in 
the  last  decade  of  the  eighteenth  century,  Clarkson  pub- 
lished a  pamphlet  in  England  against  the  slave-trade, 
which  he  thought  it  politic  to  publish  in  Latin,  lest  he 
should  not  attract  the  attention  of  the  learned  men  of 
Europe.  It  is  within  the  remembrance  of  men  now 
living  that  German  scholars  began  generally  to  think 
it  respectable  to  write  commentaries  in  German. 

In  the  time  of  Jeremy  Taylor  this  taste  for  pedantry 
was,  in  one  aspect  of  it,  a  virtue  in  the  people,  what- 
ever it  was  in  the  scholars  of  the  age.  In  the  people 
it  was,  in  part,  the  natural  expression  of  their  respect 
for  learning.  They  objected  to  the  learned  Edward 
Pocock,  professor  of  Arabic  at  Oxford,  that  he  was 
"  a  plain,  honest  man,  but  no  Latiner."  Even  modest 
George  Herbert,  when  he  began  to  preach,  thought  it 
necessary  to  awe  the  people  by  preaching  to  them  a 
prodigiously  learned  sermon,  in  which  he  showed  them 
that  he  was  equal  to  the  best  as  a  "Latiner;"  but  in 
his  pious  simplicity  he  informed  them  that  he  should 
not  generally  preach  to  them  so  learnedly  as  that,  but 
henceforth  he  should  try  to  save  their  souls. 

These  illustrations  show  the  practical  necessity  of  the 
princij^le  before  us  to  a  sound  judgment  of  literature. 
To  know  an  author  well,  we  must  know  the  man ;  and, 
to  know  the  man  well,  we  must  know  the  times  of  which, 
by  an  irrevocable  law  of  nature,  he  was  the  representa- 
tive and  the  child. 


294  MEN  AND  BOOKS  [lect.  xix. 

Collateral  reading  will  often  disclose  to  us  the  secret 
of  otherwise  inexplicable  effects  of  literature  in  the  age 
when  it  was  written.  Contemporary  influence  is  often 
the  mystery  of  the  next  age.  Our  American  pulpit 
already  contains  remarkable  illustrations  of  this.  Presi- 
dent Edwards's  sermons,  as  we  read  them,  do  not  ex- 
plain to  us  the  astonishing  effects  of  some  of  them. 
His  elocution  had  almost  no  concern  with  them,  except 
to  moderate  their  fiery  pungency.  No  audience  of 
to-day  could  be  plunged  into  an  incontrollable  fit  of 
weeping  by  the  sermon  on  the  text,  "  Their  feet  shall 
slide  in  due  time."  An  eye-witness  testifies  that  Mr. 
Spurgeon's  audiences  listen  to  sermons  from  him  which 
resemble  that  one  from  President  Edwards,  not  only 
without  a  tear,  but  with  signs  of  the  most  stolid  indif- 
ference. To  explain  the  experience  of  the  church  at 
Enfield,  we  must  take  note  of  the  idiosyncrasies  of  that 
age  as  they  are  pictured  in  the  history  of  the  "  Great 
Awakening." 


LECTURE   XX. 

ASSOCIATION  OF   STUDY  WITH  COMPOSITION.  —  ITS  II E- 
CESSITY. — ITS   METHODS. 

7.  A  PEINCIPLE  fundamental  to  a  preacher's  study 
of  literature  is  that  it  should  be  accompanied  with 
habitual  practice  in  composition. 

If  rightly  conducted,  a  pastor's  compulsory  habits 
of  production  are  rather  a  help  than  a  hinderance  to 
the  scholarly  character  of  his  reading.  Criticism  and 
production  re-act  favorably  upon  each  other.  Nothing 
else  is  so  powerful  a  tonic  to  the  mind  as  composing: 
in  certain  condition.;  of  the  cerebral  system  it  is  a  direct 
tonic  to  the  brain,  if  conducted  on  the  principle  of 
alternation.  Composition  is  creation.  It  is  athletic 
exercise.  The  weakest  minds  are  the  most  active  ab- 
sorbents, with  the  least  capacity  of  production.  The 
working  of  a  healthy  mind  in  study  is  like  respiration : 
inhalation  and  exhalation  are  reciprocal.  Without  such 
reciprocity,  a  very  large  portion  of  our  reading  must 
be  useless.  It  passes  through  the  mind,  but  does  not 
remain  there.  The  power  of  retention  needs  the  stimu- 
lus of  production. 

What  knowledge  is  that  which  is  most  indelibly  fixed 
in  your  memory,  —  that  which  you  have  learned  only, 
or  that  which  you  have  taught  ?  What  accumulations 
are  mi^st  perfectly  at  your  command,  —  those  which  are 

295 


296  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xx 

stored  by  tlie  dead-lift  of  memoiy,  or  those  which  you 
have  used  by  reproduction?  The  discovery  is  often 
disheartening,  but  it  is  healthful,  that  one  is  making  a 
mere  valve  of  one's  mind,  opening  it  for  a  stream  of 
reading  to  run  through,  and  shutting  it  upon  nothing. 

Again :  study,  without  mental  production,  creates  in 
the  mind  itself  inferior  habits  of  thinking.  We  think 
very  differently  in  the  two  cases,  of  thinking  for  the 
purpose  of  expression,  and  thinking  passively.  We 
think  more  clearly  and  less  discursively  when  we  think 
for  the  purpose  of  communication;  we  analyze  more 
accurately ;  we  individualize  more  sharply ;  we  picture 
thought  more  vividly ;  we  are  more  apt  to  tliink  in 
words. 

Test  this  view  by  your  own  experience.  Why  is  it 
that  reverie  has  such  a  debilitating  effect  upon  your 
mental  energy  ?  Why  is  it  that  nothing  else  so  surely 
unfits  you  for  a  morning's  work  in  composing  as  to 
begin  it  with  a  waking  dream?  /  nd  why  is  it  that 
nothing  else  breaks  up  the  dream  so  sternly  as  the  act 
of  thinking  with  the  pen  ?  Some  of  the  most  accom- 
plished writers  have  formed  the  habit  of  taking  the 
pen  in  hand  as  the  most  efficient  aid  to  quick,  con- 
secutive, clear,  profound,  and  vivid  thinking.  Robert 
Southey  says,  "  It  is  the  very  nose  in  the  face  of  my 
intellect  that  I  never  enter  into  any  regular  train  of 
thought  unless  the  pen  be  in  hand." 

Professor  Stuart,  who  was  one  of  the  most  fluent 
composers  of  his  time,  once  told  me,  that,  when  he 
was  a  young  man,  he  was  often  compelled  to  quit  his 
sermon,  and  walk  in  his  garden,  in  sheer  vacuity  of 
thought,  not  knowing  what  to  say  next.  "  But  now," 
said  he,  "  my  mental  working  is  all  instantaneous  and 


LECT.  xx.J  COMPOSING  AND  INVENTION.  297 

incessant.  Results  flash  upon  me.  I  draft  a  plan  of 
a  sermon  as  rapidly  as  I  can  move  a  pen.  I  could  keep 
a  dozen  pens  in  motion,  if  I  had  as  many  right  hands." 
He  attributed  that  state  of  mental  productiveness  to 
his  lifelong  habit  of  associating  study  with  composing. 

Mental  production,  when  reduced  to  a  habit,  pro- 
motes originality  of  thinking.  In  a  perfectly  healthy 
mind  the  act  of  composing  is  a  stimulus  to  invention. 
The  mental  state  in  composing  is  an  elevated  state  ; 
the  mind  then  has  a  masterly  sweep  of  vision.  Sir 
"Walter  Scott  says,  "  My  imagination  is  never  so  full 
of  a  new  work  as  when  I  approach  the  end  of  one  in 
hand."  Clergymen  often  say  that  they  are  never  so 
ready  for  their  week's  work  in  sermonizing  as  on  Sun- 
day evening.  Dr.  Thomas  Brown,  the  celebrated  pro- 
fessor of  mental  science  at  Edinburgh,  was  so  confident, 
from  his  experience,  of  the  power  of  composing  to 
stimulate  his  invention,  that  he  at  last  trusted  to  it 
for  the  suggestion  of  his  most  original  thoughts.  His 
lectures  were  written  chiefly  in  the  evening  before 
their  delivery.  Many  of  his  most  brilliant  trains  of 
reasoning  never  came  to  him  in  his  calmer  hours. 
They  were  originated  by  the  extemporaneous  tug  of 
composition,  and  he  lost  them  if  he  did  not  use  them 
then.  President  Edwards  somewhere  laments  the  loss 
of  a  thought  which  came  to  liim  while  composing  a 
sermon,  but  which  he  did  not  pause  to  note  down,  and 
which  he  mourns  over  as  so  much  mental  treasure  lost 
for  ever. 

This  is  the  secret  of  the  most  brilliant  extemporane- 
ous eloquence.  When  Henry  Ward  Beecher's  "Life- 
Thoughts  "  were  first  presented  to  him  in  manuscript, 
he   said  he   'was   not   ashamed    of    them  :    he   would 


298  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xx 

*'  father  them,  if  he  had  ever  had  them."  But  many  of 
them  he  did  not  recognize.  They  had  come  to  him  in 
moments  of  extemporaneous  exhilaration,  and  had  gone 
from  him.  All  such  phenomena  of  literary  experience 
illustrate  the  secret  and  unconscious  spur  which  com- 
posing gives  to  invention. 

Further  :  study  without  composition  destroys  the 
natural  proportion  of  executive  power  to  critical  taste. 
True,  in  a  scholarly  mind  critical  taste  will  always  be 
in  advance  of  executive  power.  Ever}?-  studious  man 
knows  better  than  he  can  do.  Still  there  is  a  certain 
proportion  between  these  two  things,  which  can  not  be 
impaired  with  impunity  to  executive  genius.  Destroy 
that  proportion,  and  you  create  a  morbid  taste  respect- 
ing every  thing  which  you  do  yourself.  Thus  fettered, 
a  man  becomes  a  fastidious  and  discouraged  critic  of  his 
own  productions.  The  excellences  of  authors  do  not 
inspire,  they  only  intimidate  him.  His  own  failure  is 
always  a  foregone  conclusion.  They  affect  him  as  the 
first  study  of  Alexander's  campaigns  affected  Caesar. 
His  sensibility  becomes  diseased;  and  his  own  efforts 
of  executive  skill  cease  to  be  elastic,  because  they  cease 
to  be  hopeful.  There  is  in  all  intellectual  experience  a 
principle  corresponding  to  that  moral  principle  which 
gives  efficacy  to  prayer.  The  mind  must  have  faith  in 
order  to  achieve  any  thing. 

With  such  disproportion  between  taste  and  executive 
power  comes  the  temptation,  almost  irresistibly,  to 
relapse  into  the  habits  of  an  amateur,  and  abandon 
original  composition  altogether.  A  similar  weakness  has 
infected  other  departments  of  labor.  It  was  such  an 
excess  of  critical  taste  which  led  Leonardo  Da  Vinci 
and  Washington  Allston  to  leave  so  many  unfinished 


LECT.  XX.]  COMPOSING  AND  CRITICISM.  299 

paintings.  It  is  notorious  that  the  majority  of  Ameu- 
can  artists  who  go  to  the  galleries  of  Italy  become  only 
copyists :  they  cease  to  attempt  original  production. 
Said  one  of  the  most  eminent  portrait-painters  in  this 
country,  after  a  year's  residence  in  Florence,  "I  can 
paint  no  more.  These  fellows  are  painters ;  not  I." 
Even  of  Michael  Angelo  it  is  said  that  he  worked  in  a 
frenzy  while  the  fever  of  his  first  conceptions  was  at 
its  height,  but  that,  when  a  work  was  finished,  he  re- 
lapsed into  a  chill,  and  his  work  disgusted  him.  His 
ideals  and  his  works  were  thus  in  incessant  conflict  in 
his  mind. 

I  suspect  that  the  secret  of  the  unwieldy  style  of 
Dr.  Chalmers  is  discovered  in  the  fact,  which  he  con- 
fesses, that  the  difference  between  his  ideal  and  his 
execution  "  produced  a  constant  strain."  His  style  is 
just  that,  —  the  straining  of  a  mind  in  painful  labor.  It 
is  not  the  bounding  of  a  mind  at  ease,  drinking  in  the 
exhilaration  of  its  work.  He  never  writes  as  if  he 
loved  to  write.  Robert  Southey  speaks  of  his  own 
good  fortune  in  not  discovering  certain  faults  in  his 
own  work  too  soon.  He  says,  "I  might  have  been 
spoiled,  like  a  good  horse,  by  being  broken  in  too 
early."  Tasso  came  near  refusing  to  publish  his 
"Jerusalem  Delivered,"  because  of  the  painful  sense 
he  had  of  its  failure  to  equal  his  own  critical  standard. 
Dr.  Arnold  speaks  of  a  certain  subject  on  which  he 
must  write ;  and  he  says,  "  I  groan  beforehand  when  I 
think  how  certainly  I  shall  fail  to  do  it  justice."  Such 
a  state  of  mind  is  debilitating,  like  a  south  wind.  No 
man  can  do  his  best  on  a  theme  which  he  approaches, 
"  groaning  beforehand."  When  such  debility  becomes 
chronic,  a  man  is  in  peril  of  a  permanent  prosti'ation  of 


300  MEN  AND   BOOKS.  [lect.  xx. 

the  executive  forces,  so  that  compositior  shtall  never  be 
to  him  other  than  a  drudgery  and  a  sorr(;w.  The  evil  is 
never  outgrown  by  neglect  of  composition ;  and  culture 
by  other  means  than  composition  only  aggravates  it. 

Let  us  now  observe  some  of  the  methods  by  which 
the  study  of  books  may  be  associated  with  practice  in 
composition  most  successfully.  Of  these,  certain  meth- 
ods of  imitation  of  authors  deserve  mention.  These  are 
of  long  standing,  and  of  high  repute  among  rhetorical 
writers.  One  is  that  of  translation  from  a  standard 
author  to  one's  own  language.  The  method  is  to  take 
a  page  from  Macaulay,  for  example,  and  by  a  few  read- 
ings familiarize  your  mind  with  the  materials,  and  then 
reproduce  them  in  your  own  words.  Another  of  these 
ancient  methods  is  that  of  translation  from  one  stand- 
ard author  to  another.  The  idea  is  to  take  a  passage, 
as  before,  and,  instead  of  reproducing  it  in  your  own 
language,  to  reproduce  it  in  a  style  imitative  of  another 
distinguished  author.  Transfer  thus  a  page  from  Mil- 
ton into  a  page  from  Hume.  A  third  of  these  ancient 
methods  is  that  of  originating  your  own  materials,  but, 
in  the  expression  of  them,  imitating  one  or  more 
authors  of  good  repute. 

These  methods  agree  in  the  principle  of  imitation. 
They  have  been  practiced  from  time  immemorial  by 
masters  of  composition.  In  ancient  times,  when  the 
literature  of  the  world  was  less  abundant  than  now,  it 
would  have  been  deemed  folly  to  dispense  with  such 
elaborate  methods  of  self-discipline  in  the  education  of 
a  public  speaker.  You  will  recall  the  example  of 
Demosthenes  in  the  study  of  Thic\^dides,  and  of  Cicero 
in  the  study  of  several  Greek  a  jthors.  On  the  revival 
of  the  ancient  literatures  in  the  middle  ages,  this  imittt- 


LECT.  XX.]  IMITATIVE  COMPOSING.  301 

tive  study  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  classics  was  carried 
to  an  almost  fabulous  extent. 

In  our  own  times,  Daniel  Webster,  Rufus  Choate, 
Edward  Everett,  and  John  C.  Calhoun  all  submitted 
to  this  kind  of  drill.  They  owed  to  it,  in  part,  their 
marvelous  command  of  English  style.  Webster  ac- 
quired such  skill  in  imitation,  that  his  reproduction  of 
John  Adams  in  one  of  his  orations  has  been  supposed 
by  many  well-informed  critics  to  be  a  quotation.  In- 
deed, some  fragments  of  it  were  quotations  from  the 
letters  of  Mr.  Adams  to  his  wife ;  but  they  were  not 
so  extensive  or  important  as  to  affect  Mr.  Webster's 
title  to  the  authorship  of  the  passage  in  question.  Ed- 
mund Burke's  imitation  of  Lord  Bolingbroke,  in  his 
"  Vindication  of  Natural  Society,"  Bolingbroke's  edit- 
ors thought  it  necessary  to  disown  by  a  card  to  the 
public. 

It  will  not  do  to  ignore,  still  less  to  sneer  at,  these 
methods,  which  are  supported  by  such  names  and  such 
success.  Yet  I  do  not  recommend  them  to  preachers, 
and  this  for  the  reason  that  they  are  impracticable  to 
preachers.  They  presuppose  leisure.  But  the  early 
years  of  a  pastor  give  no  such  leisure  as  that  which 
commonly  attends  the  early  years  of  a  young  man  in 
any  other  profession.  I  have  never  known  these 
methods  of  discipline  to  be  adopted  by  a  young  pastor. 
I  doubt  whether  a  preacher  has  ever  given  them  a  fair 
trial.  I  pass  them,  therefore,  to  notice  a  more  practi- 
cable method. 

It  is  the  habit  of  preparing  the  mind  for  daily  com- 
posing by  the  daily  reading  of  a  favorite  author.  In 
the  suggestion  of  this  method  I  have  specially  in  view 
the  necessary  habits   of  preachers.      Preachers   must 


302  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lbjt.  xx. 

be  prolific  writers :  they  can  not  depend  on  favorable 
moods  for  composing.  They  have  before  them,  not  a 
life  of  literary  leisure,  but  a  life  of  professional  toil, 
the  chief  burden  of  which  is  mental  production.  Said 
one  of  the  most  eminent  pastors  of  Massachusetts  in  a 
recent  lecture  to  candidates  for  the  ministry,  "  I  have 
been  twenty  years  in  the  pastoral  office ;  and  in  all  that 
time  I  have  done  but  one  thing,  —  to  get  ready  for  next 
Sunday."  So  the  work  appears  to  successful  preachers. 
They  can  not  afford  to  spend  much  time  as  if  in  a 
Friends'  meeting,  waiting  for  impulses  of  speech.  They 
must  live  in  a  state  of  mental  production ;  and,  for  this, 
daily  composing  is  the  most  natural  and  the  most  suc- 
cessful expedient.  It  has  been  adopted  by  the  most 
prolific  authors  and  the  most  laborious  preachers.  Lu- 
ther's rule  was  "  nulla  dies  sine  lineaJ^ 

Assuming,  then,  daily  composing  as  the  usual  habit 
of  a  preacher,  the  plan  here  recommended  is  to  com- 
mence each  day  with  an  hour  or  more  of  studious  read- 
ing, and  then  to  pass,  without  interval,  from  that 
reading  to  the  w^ork  of  composing.  The  advantages 
of  this  method  are  numerous.  One  is,  that  it  is  practi- 
cable, and  is  therefore  more  likely  to  be  adopted  than 
the  more  laborious  methods  which  imply  ample  leisure. 
Another  is,  that  it  is  an  agreeable  method,  and  there- 
fore easily  becomes  habitual.  A  third  is,  that  it  can 
be  made  to  fall  in  with  other  objects  of  study.  It  can 
be  made  both  critical  and  accumulative  in  its  character. 
In  the  act  of  quickening  the  mind  for  its  own  produc- 
tive labor,  you  can  multiply  your  resources  of  thought. 

A  fourth  and  the  chief  advantage  is  the  direct  stim- 
ulus which  the  mind  may  thus  obtain  for  its  own  work. 
A  wise  selection  of  authors  may  render  this  stimulus 


LECT.  XX.]  STIMULATIVE  READING.  303 

almost  invariable.  Do  not  the  majority  of  young 
writers  spend  an  hour  before  composing  in  the  mental 
toil  of  uplifting  the  mind  to  the  level  of  its  work,  and 
concentrating  its  attention?  That  hour  given  to  a 
suggestive  author  will  commonly  achieve  the  object 
much  more  easily,  with  less  wear  of  the  nervous  system, 
and  with  less  of  spasmodic  action  in  the  work  of 
composing. 

Let  it  be  added,  in  leaving  this  topic,  that  the  method 
in  question  is  supported  by  the  practice  of  many  emi- 
nent authors.  Voltaire  used  to  read  Massillon  as  a 
stimulus  to  production.  Bossuet  read  Homer  for  the 
same  purpose.  Gray  read  Spenser's  "  Faerie  Queene  " 
as  the  preliminary  to  the  use  of  his  pen.  The  favorites 
of  Milton  were  Homer  and  Euripides.  Fenelon  re- 
sorted to  the  ancient  classics  promiscuously.  Pope 
read  Dryden  as  his  habitual  aid  to  composing.  Cor- 
neille  read  Tacitus  and  Livy.  Clarendon  did  the  same. 
Sir  William  Jones,  on  his  passage  to  India,  planned 
five  different  volumes,  and  assigned  to  each  the  author 
he  resolved  to  read  as  a  guide  and  an  awakener  to  his 
own  mind  for  its  work.  Buffon  made  the  same  use  of 
the  works  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton.  With  great  variety  of 
tastes,  successful  authors  have  generally  agreed  in 
availing  themselves  of  this  natural  and  facile  method 
of  educating  their  minds  to  the  work  of  original  crea- 
tion. 

8.  One  principle  remains  to  be  noticed,  by  which 
other  principles  should  be  affected  in  our  methods  of 
study,  which  relates  to  the  spirit  of  criticism.  It  is 
that  in  our  studies  a  generous  appreciation  of  the  genius 
of  others  should  be  balanced  by  a  just  estimate  of  our 
own. 


304  MEN  AKD  BOOKS.  [lect.  xx. 

Two  opposite  errors  are  suggested  liere,  against 
which  we  need  to  be  fore-armed.  The  first  is  that  of 
censorious  and  illiberal  criticism.  Gibbon  classifies  bad 
critics  in  three  divisions,  —  those  who  see  nothing  but 
beauties,  those  who  see  nothing  but  faults,  and  those 
who  see  nothing  at  all.  If  you  see  nothing  but  faults 
in  a  great  writer,  you  are  in  no  mood  to  receive  schol- 
arly culture  from  him.  De  Quincey  says  that  a  surly 
reader  is  inevitably  a  bad  critic.  A  sarcastic  spirit  in 
study  is  its  own  punishment.  The  truth  is  not  in  such 
a  spirit.  That  spirit  is  receptive  only  of  what  is  mean 
and  degrading.  "  One  can  never  know  how  small  a 
small  man  can  look  till  he  has  seen  him  trying  to  look 
down  upon  a  great  one." 

Dr.  Arnold  says  of  historians,  "  If  a  historian  be  an 
unbeliever  in  all  heroism,  if  he  be  a  man  who  brings 
every  thing  down  to  the  level  of  a  common  mediocrity, 
depend  upon  it,  the  truth  is  not  found  in  him."  The 
seat  of  the  scoffer  is  not  the  seat  of  wisdon.  The  late 
Professor  Reed  of  Philadelphia  illustrates  the  spirit 
with  which  a  young  man,  or  any  man,  should  read  the 
great  lights  of  literary  history.  In  a  letter  to  a  friend 
he  says,  "  I  have  just  finished  a  lecture  on  Hamlet. 
My  reverent  admiration  for  the  myriad-minded  man 
has  deepened  by  this  study  of  his  dramas :  in  the  lowest 
deep  a  lower  deep.  John  Milton  is  before  me  in  awful 
grandeur  for  Monday  next."  Carlyle  says  that  "  great 
souls  are  always  reverent  to  that  which  is  over  them : 
only  small,  mean  souls  are  otherwise."  Prescott  the 
historian,  by  years  of  genial  study,  acquired  such  an 
affectionate  reverence  for  the  great  minds  in  the  history 
of  literature,  that  he  requested,  that,  when  he  came  to 
die,  his  remains  might  be  arrayed  for  the  grave,  and  left 


LECT.  XX.]  SELF-DEPRECIATION.  305 

for  a  while  alone  in  his  library,  in  the  midst  of  the  vol- 
umes in  which  he  had  found  the  scholarly  companion- 
ship of  his  life.  By  that  loving  fiction  he  would  pay 
his  last  tribute  to  the  friends  who  had  cheered  him  in 
his  blindness.     Such  is  the  spirit  of  a  genuine  scholar. 

But  an  error  opposite  to  that  of  illiberal  and  sar- 
castic reading  is  that  of  self-depreciation  in  the  contrast 
with  illustrious  men.  I  have  already  spoken  of  this  as 
the  result  of  a  want  of  exercise  of  one's  own  powers. 
Sometimes  the  cause  of  it  lies  deeper  than  that :  it  is 
innate.  A  young  writer  does  not  trust  his  own  pen, 
because  he  does  not  trust  himself  in  any  thing.  The 
very  thought  of  literary  greatness  oppresses  him :  there- 
fore he  does  not  let  himself  loose  in  composing.  He  is 
an  ascetic,  practicing  upon  himself  a  severity  of  criti- 
cism under  which  no  abilities  can  expand  freely. 

Walter  Scott,  speaking  of  Campbell  the  poet,  said, 
"  What  a  pity  it  is  that  Campbell  does  not  give  full 
sweep  to  his  genius!  He  has  wings  that  would  bear 
him  to  the  skies.  He  does  now  and  then  spread  them 
grandly ;  but  he  folds  them  up  again,  and  resumes  his 
perch,  as  if  afraid  to  launch  away.  The  fact  is,  he  is 
a  bugbear  to  himself."  Often  is  it  true  that  discerning 
critics  see  in  a  young  man  powers  which  success  has 
not  yet  brought  out  into  the  light  of  his  own  con- 
sciousness. 

These  two  elements  —  reverence  for  greatness  in 
others,  and  respect  for  one's  own  powers  —  are  correla- 
tive parts  of  one  virtue :  neither  is  healthy  without  the 
other.  I  have  observed  so  many  instances  of  the  latter 
of  these  two  evils,  that  I  venture  to  give  you  in  a 
brief  excursus  two  or  three  suggestions  for  its  correc- 
tion.     You  will  anticipate   me   in   the   thought   that 


306  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xx. 

liberty  m  original  production  is  not  to  be  gained  by  a 
permanent  sacrifice  oi  your  own  ideals.  Cling  to  your 
best  ideal  of  any  tiing.  Fail  with  it,  if  need  be,  rather 
than  sacrifice  it  to  success.  "  Be  true  to  the  dreams 
of  your  youth." 

A  second  thought  is,  that,  in  a  state  of  mental  dejec- 
tion through  self-depreciation,  you  should  write  with 
temporary  recklessness.  The  chief  thing  needed  in  such 
a  state  of  servitude  is  to  write.  Do  something :  create 
something.  The  servitude  must  be  broken  through  at 
all  costs.  Try  your  own  abilities :  give  them  a  chance 
to  prove  themselves.  Create,  somehow,  a  little  inde- 
pendent history  of  effort  to  stand  upon.  Till  you  can 
obtain  that,  you  have  no  "  mv  ozco  "  for  the  fulcrum  of 
your  self-respect.  If  you  can  not  obtain  it  under  law, 
seize  it  without  law.  Be  an  outlaw  in  the  world  of 
letters.  Violate  the  rules ;  defy  principles ;  get  loose 
from  shackles;  clear  your  mind  of  the  gear  of  the 
critics ;  write  defiantly.  Give  the  rein  to  your  powers 
of  utterance  :  let  them  career  with  you  where  they  will. 
Criticise  their  wild  work  in  your  after-thoughts,  but 
try  them  again.  Apply  the  curb  as  they  will  bear  it, 
but  put  the  coursers  to  their  speed. 

By  such  a  passionate  practice  you  may  develop  the 
germs  of  your  natural  forces  in  composing,  be  they 
what  they  may.  You  will  discover  them ;  not  much, 
probably,  to  speak  of,  and  less  to  boast  of,  but  some- 
thing worth  having  and  trusting.  One  Being  has 
thought  them  worth  an  act  of  creation.  You  will 
know  that  you  have  them.  The  training  of  them  will 
come  in  due  time.  Robert  Southey  says,  "  Write  rap- 
idly ;  correct  at  leisure."  Of  one  of  his  own  poems  he 
says,  " '  Madoc '  would  be  a  better  poem  if  written  in 


laccT.  XX.]  PERSISTENCE  IN  COMPOSING.  307 

six  months  than  if  six  years  were  given  to  it."  If  be 
had  said  six  weeks,  instead  of  six  months,  he  would 
have  been  nearer  the  truth. 

A  third  suggestion  is,  that,  in  a  state  of  mental 
despondency,  you  should  write  with  dogged  resolution. 
Dr.  Johnson  says  that  any  man  can  write  who  will  keep 
doggedly  at  it.  Never  yield  the  point  that  you  can 
write,  and  write  well.  Be  indebted  to  obstinacy,  if 
need  be.  Pluck  is  a  splendid  virtue.  Not  only  striL  e 
when  the  iron  is  hot,  but  make  it  hot  by  striking. 
Mind,  like  iron,  is  full  of  latent  heat.  It  is  more 
malleable  in  some  cases  than  in  others ;  but  in  all  it  is 
susceptible  of  white-heat.  Therefore  make  it  an  inva- 
riable rule  not  to  give  up  a  subject  of  a  sermon  on 
which  you  have  begun  to  write.  A  vast  amount  of 
waste  of  clerical  effort  is  caused  by  succumbing  to  dis- 
couraged effort.  The  wasted  introductions  of  sermons 
are  "  an  exceeding  great  multitude."  When  indicative 
of  a  habit,  they  signify  mental  debility.  Finish,  there- 
fore, every  thing  you  undertake,  for  the  sake  of  the 
mental  discipline  of  success.  Make  something  of  the 
refractory  theme  and  the  barren  text.  The  process  will 
not  intoxicate  you  by  its  results.  You  will  often  floun- 
der tlu-ough  the  sermon,  not  much  wiser  at  the  end 
than  at  the  beginning,  and  hardly  knowing  how  you 
got  through.  You  will  be  sometimes  reminded  of 
Aaron's  luckless  attempt  at  statuary.  You  need  not 
dance  around  it;  perhaps  you  will  dash  it  in  pieces; 
but  go  through  the  process  of  making  of  it  a  likeness 
to  some  living  thing  in  the  heavens,  or  in  the  earth,  or 
under  the  earth.  You  will  be  the  stronger  in  will- 
power over  difficult  themes,  if  in  nothing  else. 

Take  encouragement  from  the  example  of  Sir  Wil- 
liam Hamilton :  — 


308  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xx. 

"  There  is  scarcely  a  case  on  record  where  there  existed  a  greater 
antagonism  between  in  author  and  his  pen  than  in  the  case  of  Sir 
William  Hamilton.  In  reading  his  pure  and  limpid  language,  it  is 
hard  to  realize  that  he  was  not  a  ready  writer.  But  even  while 
occupying  the  chair  of  logic  and  metaphysics  in  the  University  of 
Edinburgh,  and  every  day  delivering  from  it  those  lectures  on 
metaphysical  science  which  have  made  him  famous  throughout  the 
world,  he  could  never  take  his  pen  at  any  time,  and  write  a  certain 
required  amount.  Indeed,  he  always  took  up  his  pen  with  extreme 
reluctance.  Owing  to  this  aversion  to  composition,  he  was  often 
compelled  to  sit  up  all  night  in  order  to  prepare  the  lecture  which 
was  to  be  the  wonder  and  admiration  of  every  person  who  heard 
it  the  next  day.  This  lecture  he  wrote  roughly  and  rapidly,  and 
it  was  copied  and  corrected  by  his  wife  in  the  next  room.  Some- 
times it  was  not  finished  by  nine  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  the 
weary  wife  had  fallen  asleep,  only  to  be  wakeful  and  leady,  how- 
ever, when  he  appeared  with  fresh  copy." 

One  other  suggestion  is,  that  you  should  trust  the 
predisposition  of  the  world  to  receive  favorably  the 
work  of  a  young  man.  You  have  nothing  to  fear  from 
the  world's  criticism,  unless  you  invite  it  by  self-con- 
ceit. The  severity  of  criticism  falls  on  middle-aged 
and  old  men.  A  young  man,  and  specially  if  he  is  a 
clergyman,  has  every  facility  he  can  reasonably  ask  for 
for  a  successful  beginning  of  his  life's  work.  Wait  ten 
years,  and  you  will  yourself  marvel  at  the  patience  of 
your  first  parish.  The  "  dead  line  "  of  "  fifty  years  "  is 
a  long  way  off.  If  you  live  to  reach  it,  you  may  have 
achieved  a  success  which  will  make  you  indifferent  to 
it.  If  you  have  not,  it  will  not  be  owing  to  any  want 
of  generosity  in  the  verdict  of  your  contemporaries 
upon  you  as  a  youthful  preacher. 


LECTURE  XXI. 

THE  PRACTICABILITY    OF   LITERARY  STUDY  10  A  PAS 
TOR.  —  PRELBUNARY   SUGGESTIONS. 

4th,  I  HAVE  thus  far  endeavored  to  give  you  some 
ideal  of  the  true  study  of  literature  in  respect  to  its 
objects,  the  selection  of  authors,  and  the  methods  of 
the  study. 

The  peril  attending  any  such  endeavor  is,  that  it  will 
only  awaken  in  you  a  sense  of  the  impracticability  of 
the  study  to  one  who  is  immersed  in  the  cares  of  a 
pastor's  life.  That  is  a  profitless  kind  of  advice  which 
only  impresses  upon  its  recipients  a  sense  of  its  useless- 
ness  to  them.  I  wish  to  make  the  hints  I  have  given 
you  a  real  help  to  you,  if  possible.  Therefore,  before 
leaving  this  subject,  I  propose  to  add  some  suggestions 
upon  the  2^'t^cicticahiUty  of  literary  study  to  a  pastor. 

1.  Let  me  ask  you  to  observe  several  preliminary 
suggestions  respecting  a  plan  of  scholarly  reading. 

(1)  It  is  frankly  conceded,  as  has  been  already  re- 
marked in  the  preface  to  this  volume,  that  any  scholarly 
plan  of  study  must,  to  the  majority  of  pastors,  be,  to 
a  greater  or  less  extent,  an  ideal  one.  The  practica- 
bility of  it  is  a  matter  of  degrees,  exceedingly  variable 
at  different  times,  as  well  as  to  different  persons.  The 
ideal  element  must  enter  largely  into  any  plan  that 
shall  be  largely  useful.     If  there  are  any  to  whom  it 

309 


310  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xxi. 

can  be  only  an  ideal,  it  is  not  therefore  useless,  even  to 
them.  The  negative  value  of  a  loftj  ideal  of  scholarly 
life  is  not  to  be  despised.  It  may  act  as  a  censor  of  a 
preacher's  sermons,  keeping  alive  a  taste  which  will 
exclude  unscholarly  methods  and  material  which  he 
knows  to  be  such,  but  which  he  will  not  avoid,  except 
through  a  silent  respect  for  his  dumb  library.  The 
very  sight  of  a  library  of  a  thousand  volumes  well 
chosen  is  a  stimulus  to  a  pastor  who  for  months  may 
not  be  able  to  read  a  volume.  Says  Bishop  Hall  on 
"  The  Sight  of  a  Great  Library,"  "  Neither  can  I  cast 
my  eye  casually  on  any  of  these  silent  masters  but  I 
must  learn  somewhat." 

But  the  large  majority  of  educated  pastors  can  read 
something,  if  they  will.  Evidences  abound  that  they 
do  read  very  considerably.  The  charge  can  not  be 
sustained  against  our  American  clergy,  certainly  not 
against  the  clergy  of  New  England,  that  they  cease  to 
be  scholars  when  they  become  pastors.  Look  at  tlie 
reports  of  "  ministers'  meetings,"  and  clerical  "  associa- 
tions," and  at  the  pastoral  contributions  to  the  weekly 
and  quarterly  press.  The  subjects  there  discussed  show 
that  our  pastors  are  men  of  books  as  well  as  men  of 
affairs.  In  the  meridian  of  their  labors,  and  at  the 
head  of  large  and  exacting  parishes,  they  do  not  turn 
the  key  upon  their  libraries.  They  are  vigilant  ob- 
servers of  the  current  of  scientific  and  theological 
thought  around  them.  The  only  question  is,  whether 
their  reading  is  regulated  by  the  wisest  economy  in 
choice  and  methods.  One  does  not  beat  the  air,  then, 
who  endeavors  to  give  to  youthful  preachers  a  high  and 
enduring  ideal  of  a  scholarly  life.  They  are  entering 
into  a  fraternity  of  scholars  who  find  time  and  mental 
force  for  some  ideal. 


LECT.  XXI.]  READING   AT  RANDOM.  311 

If  further  evidence  is  needed  on  this  point,  Ice k  to 
the  puljjits  of  other  lands  and  times.^  Calvin  was  as 
laborious  in  the  pulpit  as  out  of  it.  He  often  preached, 
for  weeks  together,  every  day  in  the  w^eek ;  yet  there 
are  his  immense  folios  to  speak  for  him  as  a  scholar. 
Bochart  ministered  daily  while  building  his  "Phaleg" 
and  "  Hierozoicon."  Owen  was  incessant  in  preaching 
while  his  exposition  of  the  "  Hebrews"  was  in  progress. 
Lightfoot  was  faithful  to  his  pastoral  duty  while  he  was 
amassing  his  wealth  of  Talmudic  learning.  Lardner 
and  Pye  Smith  and  Hartley  Home  had  pastoral  charges 
in  London.  Bloomfield  was  a  vicar.  Trench,  Alford, 
and  Ellicott  were  among  the  working  clergy  when  they 
planned  their  learned  works,  and  published  a  part  of 
them.  Stier  was  a  pastor:  so  was  Ebrard.  Henry, 
Scott,  Doddridge,  Adam  Clarke,  were  laborious  and 
able  ministers.  Kingsley  was  a  hard-working  pastor: 
so,  at  one  time,  was  Stanley.  These  men  illustrate,  by 
their  union  of  pastoral  duties  with  a  scholarly  life,  that 
where  there  is  a  will  there  is  a  way. 

But  much  is  gained,  if  the  presence  of  a  scholarly 
ideal  in  the  furniture  of  a  pastor's  mind  achieves  no 
more  than  to  arrest  the  habit  of  reading  at  hap-hazard. 
This  is  the  bane  of  the  existing  habit,  probably,  of  the 
large  majority  of  educated  men.  The  time  we  spend 
in  reading  print  of  some  kind  is  more  considerable  than 
the  majority  of  us  suppose.  I  once  inquired  of  a  hard- 
worked  metropolitan  pastor  how  much  time  daily,  on 
the  average,  he  spent  in  reading  of  all  sorts,  aside  from 
that  directly  necessary  to  his  preparation  for  the  pulpit. 
He  replied,  "  Not  an  hour."  Then,  correcting  his  hasty 
count,  he  said,   "Two  hours."     Again  reflecting,  said 

1  See  North  British  Review  for  1860. 


312  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xxi 

he,  "I  read  the  magazines.  Yes:  three  hours  and  a 
half  would  cover  it  all."  Well,  a  great  deal  can  be 
done  in  three  hours  and  a  half  a  day.  A  distinguished 
commentator  wrote  five  volumes  of  commentary  in  less 
than  three  years,  working  but  three  hours  and  a  half 
a  day.  The  Rev.  Albert  Barnes  wrote  sixteen  volumes 
in  less  than  an  equal  number  of  years,  devoting  to  them 
only  the  hours  before  breakfast. 

But  the  precious  three  hours  and  a  half  dwindle  to 
a  very  small  fragment,  if  one  hour  is  given  to  the  news- 
paper, and  another  to  the  magazine.  They  are  largely 
wasted  time,  through  the  habit  of  reading  without  plan. 
More  than  time  is  wasted  by  it.  Mental  force  is  wasted, 
and  mental  debility  is  invited  in  the  place  of  it.  It  is 
worth  a  great  deal  to  a  man's  whole  character  as  a  man 
of  culture,  if  that  waste  is  forbidden  by  a  scholarly 
ideal  of  what  good  reading  is.  Be  it  so  that  scholarly 
reading  would  restrict  a  pastor  to  few,  some  to  very 
few,  volumes  in  a  year ;  better  that  than  the  wasteful 
and  debilitating  effect  of  reading  at  random.  Be  it 
that  a  pastor  can  read  but  ten,  five,  three  volumes  in 
a  year:  those  few,  well  chosen  and  well  read,  may 
make  all  the  difference  between  a  scholar  and  a  boor 
in  his  mental  tastes  and  professional  habits.  A  good 
ideal  of  scholarly  reading  is  not  useless,  if  it  can  regu- 
late T^■isely  an  imperfect  culture. 

One  good  book  is  a  great  power  in  the  making  of  a 
youthful  mind.  Is  there  not  somewhere  one  man  to 
whom  you  expect  to  be  grateful  for  ever  for  his  forma- 
tive power  over  the  development  of  your  mind  ?  What 
is  one  hook  but  the  mental  being  of  one  man?  Why 
may  not  your  obligations  to  tt  e  book  be  as  incalculable 
as  to  t]ie  man?     Reverently  read  the  one  buok,  then, 


LECT.  XXI.]  PROFESSIONAL  VIGILANCE.  313 

if  you  can  do  no  more.  Better  this  than  none  at  all. 
Better  thi^  by  far  than  the  slipshod  mode  of  life  which 
befits  only  indolent  minds,  and  invites  an  oblivion  of 
libraries.  Oblivion  of  libraries  is  akin  to  softening  of 
the  brain. 

To  bring  to  a  definite  point  this  vexed  question,  is 
it  too  much  to  claim  that  every  educated  pastor  not 
disabled  by  disease  can  perpetuate  in  active  life  the 
amount,  if  not  the  kind,  of  literary  culture  ivhicli  Ids 
collegiate  curriculum  once  created  in  him?  Is  it  not  a 
decline  from  that  level  which  commonly  creates  the 
''dead  line  of  fifty"?  And  is  that  decline  ever  a  ne- 
cessity. '''-  Incredulus  odi^  In  proof  I  could  name  to 
you  an  eminent  pastor,  for  forty  years  in  the  city  of 
New  York,  whose  habit  through  all  that  time,  with  rare 
and  brief  suspensions,  was  to  read  daily  at  least  ten 
lines  in  some  Greek  or  Latin  classic.  That  simple  expe- 
dient drew  after  it,  and  made  practicable  to  him,  other 
expedients  of  culture  which  kept  his  mind  rich  and 
full  and  strong  till  the  day  of  his  death.  At  seventy 
years  he  had  found  no  "  dead  line." 

(2)  The  study  of  books  need  not  be  made  impracti- 
cable by  the  study  of  men,  which  has  been  so  earnestly 
recommended.  The  latter  study  does  not  require  re- 
tirement and  mental  concentration.  It  is  discursive. 
One  may  pursue  it  in  the  streets.  Pastoral  duty  gives 
large  opportunity  for  it.  It  requires  chiefly  the  mental 
habit  of  professional  vigilance.  Let  a  pastor  live  in  a 
state  of  alertness  towards  all  resources  of  oratorical 
knowledge,  and  he  will  find  them  in  every  thing  that 
he  sees  and  every  thing  that  he  hears.  That  habit 
of  literary  lookout  which  led  Walter  Scott  to  pause  in 
the  street  to  make  note  of  a  new  word,  and  which  led 


814  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xxi. 

Stothard  to  travel  with  a  pencil  tied  to  his  finger,  with 
which  he  iiade  a  drawing  of  every  apple-tree  he  met 
with  in  a  journey,  illustrates  the  state  of  professional 
watchfulness  which  a  pastor  needs  in  his  sti  dy  of  men. 
Caixy  thus  the  image  of  your  pulpit  always  with  you. 
Never  give  way  to  an  idle  mind.  Never  vegetate. 
Hours  of  physical  recreation  aside,  that  is  never  neces- 
sary to  a  healthy  man.  Be  for  ever  on  the  lookout  for 
tribute  to  your  pulpit.  You  will  find  it  in  every  thing, 
ever}  where.  One  preacher  was  once  led  to  correct  an 
ungainly  posture  in  the  pulpit  by  observing  the  crooked 
gait  of  a  lame  man  in  the  street.  Another  was  set 
upon  a  course  of  voice-building  by  noticing  the  resem- 
blance of  his  natural  tone  to  the  quacking  of  a  duck. 
Live  in  such  a  state  of  professional  outlook,  and  you 
may  pursue  the  study  of  men  daily,  and  yet  not  take 
an  hour  from  the  time  consecrated  to  your  library. 

(3)  It  should  be  remarked,  further,  that  some  plan 
of  scholarly  reading  must  be  made  practicable,  if  a 
pastor  would  save  himself  from  intellectual  decline. 
The  chief  peril  of  a  pastoral  office  is  that  of  a  busy 
intellectual  stagnation  for  the  want  of  persistence  in 
liberal  studies.  This  was  the  peril  which  was  so  fatal, 
as  Professor  Tholuck  thought  a  quarter  of  a  century 
ago,  to  the  Protestant  clergy  of  Prussia.  It  can  not 
be  said  to  be  unknown  in  this  country.  In  my  judg- 
ment, the  existence  of  the  "  dead  line  of  fifty  "  is  not 
wholly  but  chiefly  due  to  it. 

It  should  therefore  be  a  foregone  conclusion,  when 
a  young  man  enters  the  ministry,  that  some  pLin  of 
literary  study  shall  be  made  practicable.  Sacrifices 
must  be  made  to  it,  —  sacrifices  of  ease,  sacrifices  of 
needless  recreation,  sacrifices  of  notoriety,  and  sacrifices 


LECT.  XXI.]  EXECUTIVE  MISCELLANIES.  315 

of  pecuniary  interests.  If  a  young  man  does  not  value 
it  sufficiently  to  make  such  sacrifices  to  it,  it  is  imprac- 
ticable to  him. 

(4)  The  best  culture  for  success  in  the  pastoral  office 
is  not  consistent  with  the  appropriation  of  any  large 
proportion  of  time  to  the  miscellanies  of  the  church. 

I  refer  here  to  that  department  of  clerical  labor 
which  is  made  up  of  executive  affairs.  A  certain 
amount  of  this  is  necessary  to  the  fellowship  of  the 
churches :  therefore  every  pastor  must  so  far  supervise 
it.  It  would  be  dishonorable  to  shirk  it.  But,  outside 
of  the  individual  church  and  its  immediate  sisterhood, 
there  is  an  amount  of  executive  duty,  which,  as  many 
practice  it,  becomes  a  profession  by  itself,  to  which  the 
pulpit  and  its  tributary  studies  are  subordinated.  The 
management  of  institutions,  the  direction  of  societies, 
the  care  of  the  denominational  press,  leadership  in  eccle- 
siastical assemblies,  membership  of  innumerable  com- 
mittees, of  boards  of  trust,  of  special  commissions,  al] 
inflicting  an  endless  amount  of  correspondence,  — these 
form  a  distinct  department  of  clerical  labor,  and  create 
a  distinct  class  of  clerical  workers.  There  are  men,  as 
you  well  know,  whose  chief  usefulness  is  in  this  line 
of  service.  Their  pulpits  are  secondary  to  it,  and  their 
libraries  are  more  distant  still  from  their  chief  ambition. 
If  one  of  them  were  called  to  account  for  the  neglect 
of  his  library,  he  could  only  plead,  as  did  the  ancient 
prophet  of  Judaea,  "Thy  servant  was  busy  here  and 
there." 

It  need  not  be  said  that  this  class  of  clerical  wcikers 
are  performing  a  very  useful  and  necessary  labor,  which 
somebody  must  do.  Those  who  drift  into  it  are  com- 
monly men  whose  tastes  and  tact  enable  them  to  do  it 


316  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xxi. 

well.  They  djserve  commendation  unqualified.  But 
the  point  I  press  at  present  is  this,  that  this  department 
of  our  pjofession  is  not  intrinsically  congenial  with  the 
genius  of  a  preacher  and  the  tastes  of  a  scholar.  As 
a  rule,  therefore,  it  must  be  conducted  at  a  loss  of  the 
highest  clerical  discipline.  Eminence  in  it  can  not  be 
combined  with  eminence  in  the  pulpit.  Some  of  its 
duties  can  as  well  be  discharged  by  laymen. 

Exceptions  to  the  rule  occur,  as  in  the  case  of  Dr. 
Chalmers,  who,  both  as  a  preacher  and  as  an  executive, 
was  a  genius.  But  such  cases  are  not  numerous  enough 
to  affect  the  rule.  Every  young  pastor,  therefore, 
should  canvass  and  decide  for  himself  the  question 
whether  his  mission  of  usefulness  to  the  church  lies 
in  seeking  or  accepting  any  large  amount  of  this  kind 
of  work.  The  inquiry  should  be  answered  early  in 
his  professional  career.  I  very  well  remember  the  form 
in  which  it  presented  itself  to  my  own  mind  in  my  early 
manhood.  I  trust  to  the  freedom  of  the  lecture-room 
in  referring  to  it  for  the  sake  of  the  glimpse  it  will  give 
you  of  the  opinions  on  the  subject  entertained  by  a 
considerable  class  of  the  older  ministry. 

The  question  lay  between  my  immediate  entrance 
upon  a  pastoral  charge,  and  my  taking  a  fourth  year 
of  study.  The  ecclesiastical  body  under  whose  direc- 
tion I  was  studying  so  kindly  interested  themselves  in 
my  plans  as  to  appoint  a  committee  to  express  to  me 
their  judgment  that  I  should  accept  the  pastoral  ser- 
vice without  delay.  The  argument  of  the  committee 
was,  that  a  certain  moderate  average  of  power  in  the 
pulpit,  subordinated  to  a  large  inventive  faculty  in  mis- 
cellaneous labors,  was  a  more  useful  ideal  of  the  clerical 
life  than  that  of  a  more  able  pulpit  to  which  learning 


LECT.  X351.]  EXECUTIVE  MISCELLANIES.  817 

and  studious  habits  should  pay  tribute.  Letters  froia 
several  very  estimable  pastors  confirmed  that  counsel. 
Said  one,  "The  church  needs  workers,  not  students."^ 
A  judge  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  Massachusetts  sent 
a  message  to  me,  saying,  "It  does  not  require  many 
books  to  convert  souls."  Of  them  all,  but  one  man 
dissented  from  the  general  drift  of  opinion.  He  advised 
a  fourth  year  of  preparatory  study.  "Lay  a  broad 
foundation,"  said  he,  "and  then  build  high." 

I  saw  that  the  problem  covered,  not  merely  one  year 
or  two,  but  the  whole  character  of  my  ministry ;  in 
fact,  it  was  whether  I  should  be  a  preacher,  with  the 
tastes  and  the  studious  habits  which  a  preacher's  life 
requires,  or  should  make  the  pulpit  an  appendage  to 
a  life  of  miscellaneous  activities.  I  chose  the  pulpit 
and  the  study.  The  fourth  year  at  the  seminary  was 
a  fraction  of  a  life's  plan.  I  have  no  inducement  to 
speak  of  the  results  of  my  choice  any  further  than  to 
say  that  I  should  repeat  it  if  the  same  alternative  were 
again  before  me. 

The  same  question  will  force  itself  upon  you  sub- 
stantially, though  the  form  may  vary.  The  miscellany 
and  the  study  will  array  themselves  before  you  as 
rivals,  and  you  must  choose  between  them.  The  board 
of  directors,  the  board  of  trustees,  the  ecclesiastical 
council,  the  prudential  committee,  the  managers  of 
this,  and  the  delegation  to  that,  will  stand  before  you 
as  competitors  of  your  pulpit,  and  you  must  make 
your  selection.  Will  you  be  a  committee-man,  or  will 
you  be  a  preacher  ?  Will  you  be  a  man  of  affairs,  or 
will  you  be  a  scholar  ?  Will  you  be  in  demand  as  the 
ubiquitous  delegate  to  councils,  or  the  executive  leader 
of  your  presbytery,  or  will  you  be  a  prince    in  your 


818  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xxl 

pulpit,  with  the  accessories  of  culture  which  that  im- 
plies ?  Every  pastor  should  decide  the  question  with 
an  enlightened  polic}^  knowing  what  he  gives  up,  and 
why.  Mediocrity,  I  admit,  can  be  gained  in  both 
departments  of  service.  But  ought  any  young  man 
to  plan  for  mediocrity?  The  world  is  not  suffering  for 
the  want  of  that  commodity. 

I  think  I  have  seen  more  deplorable  waste  of  minis- 
terial force  in  needless  dissipation  of  time  upon  execu- 
tive miscellanies  than  in  any  other  form  which  has  come 
under  my  notice,  which  did  not  involve  downright  indo- 
lence. For  one  thing,  you  will  soon  discover,  if  you 
go  into  this  kind  of  work  to  any  great  extent,  that  it 
costs  a  large  amount  of  time  for  ten  men  to  do  the 
work  of  one.  When  did  ever  a  committee  of  ten  men 
on  any  thing  work  fast  ?  William  Jay,  the  celebrated 
pastor  at  Bath,  once  said,  that,  if  Noah's  ark  had  been 
intrusted  to  a  committee  for  the  building  of  it,  it  would 
still  be  on  the  stocks.  It  is  inherently  difficult  to  secure 
unanimity  among  an  able  committee,  so  that  work  can 
go  on  rapidly.  Remember  always  that  j^our  most  brisk 
and  efficient  work  must  be  solitary  work.  One  hour 
in  your  study  is  worth  three  in  the  committee-room. 
You  do  this  miscellaneous  work,  if  at  all,  at  this  enor- 
mous cost  of  time. 

In  this  dissuasion  from  excessive  labor  upon  the  mis- 
cellanies of  the  church,  you  will  understand  that  I 
speak  of  the  policy  of  pastors  in  old  and  organized 
settlements,  to  which  the  majority  of  you  wDl  minister. 
Missionary  labor,  and  work  on  the  frontier,  must,  of 
course,  come  under  a  different  regime^  because  they 
must  meet  different  necessities.  One  such  frontiersman 
I  could  name  to  you,  who  is  a  hero  beyond  all  earthly 


LEOT.  XXI.]       CONSECRATION  TO  THE  PULPIT.  319 

fame.  He  might  have  been  the  man  of  whom  the 
preacher  said,  "  One  man  among  a  thousand  have  I 
found." 

The  cvmclusion  of  the  whole  matter,  then,  is  this: 
if  in  God's  providence  you  are  called  to  the  charge  of 
a  well-established  church  in  the  midst  of  such  churches, 
and  if  you  are  led  by  God's  teaching  to  believe  that  the 
pulpit  is  the  throne  of  power  for  you,  give  yourself  to 
that  pulpit.  From  it  you  may  speak  to  less  than  a 
hundred  souls.  Remember  that  Jeremy  Taylor  did 
that  at  Golden  Grove.  Dr.  Chalmers  did  that  at  Kil- 
many.  President  Edwards  did  it  at  Stockbridge.  You 
may  have  as  clear  a  self-knowledge  in  this  respect  as 
Richard  Hooker  had  when  he  wrote  to  his  ecclesiastical 
superior,  Archbishop  Whitgift,  "I  am  weary  of  the 
noise  and  oppositions  of  this  place.  God  and  nature 
did  not  intend  me  for  contentions,  but  for  study  and 
quietness."  And  he  proceeds  to  pray  that  he  may  be 
removed  to  "some  quiet  parsonage,  where,"  he  saj^s, 
"  I  may  see  God's  blessings  spring  out  of  mother-earth." 
It  was  this  modest  but  true  self-knowledge  which  put 
it  into  his  power  afterwards  to  write  the  "  Ecclesiastical 
Polity,"  which  has  brought  his  name  down  to  our  times. 

I  repeat,  therefore,  if  it  is  given  you  to  see  that  the 
pulpit  is  your  throne,  give  yourself  to  it  and  to  the 
scholarly  life  which  is  essential  to  it.  Ally  your  study 
with  it,  and  make  your  home  there.  Leave  executive 
bishoprics  of  the  church  universal  to  other  hands. 
There  are  men  enough  who  can  do  that  service,  whose 
tastes  develop  genially  towards  it,  and  whose  success 
shows  that  they  were  created  for  it.  It  will  never 
suffer  for  the  want  of  aspirants.  When  did  ever  an 
oftice  of  executive  duty  in  the  church  go  begging  ?     li 


320  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lf^t.  xxi. 

you  have  been  created  for  the  other  thing,  do  that  thing. 
Preach ;  let  other  men  govern.  Preach ;  let  other  men 
organize.  Preach ;  let  other  men  raise  funds,  and  look 
after  denominational  affairs.  Preach;  let  other  men 
hunt  up  heresies,  and  do  the  theological  quiddling. 
Preach;  let  other  men  ferret  out  scandals,  and  try 
clerical  delinquents.  Preach ;  let  other  men  solve  the 
problems  of  perpetual  motion  of  which  church  history 
is  full.  Then  make  a  straight  path  between  your  pul* 
pit  and  your  study,  on  which  the  grass  shall  never  grow. 
Build  your  clerical  influence  up  between  those  two 
abutments. 

(5)  Any  plan  of  clerical  study  will  fail  which  is  not 
founded  upon  a  stern  physical  discipline.  You  must 
know  the  laws  of  health,  and  must  observe  them,  if 
you  would  succeed  in  a  lifelong  plan  of  literary  effort. 
High  culture,  like  high  attainments  in  piety,  depends 
largely  on  a  subordination  of  the  body  to  the  mind. 
The  body  needs  a  gentle  training  to  the  endurance  of 
brain-work.  By  patient  training  we  can  educate  the 
body  to  endure  double  the  amount  of  intellectual  labor 
which  is  generally  possible  to  it  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
five  years.  I  need  hardly  say  that  no  great  intellectual 
success  can  be  attained  by  a  man  whose  body  is  in 
subjection  to  any  appetite. 

(6)  Any  plan  has  little  probability  of  success  which 
is  not  assisted  by  certain  moral  virtues.  You  can  not 
work  well  with  your  brains  and  your  heart  in  conscious 
conflict  with  each  other.  Especially  your  intellectual 
aspirations  must  have  the  approval  of  your  conscience. 
If  questions  of  conscience  about  any  thing  in  your 
intellect  lal  life  are  yet  unsettled,  settle  them  as  the 
very  first  duty  you  have  to  perform.     Agree  with  thine 


LECT.  XXI.]  UNITY  OF  SPIRIT,  321 

adversary  quickly.  Your  chariot  will  drag  more  heavi- 
ly than  Pharaoh's  in  the  Red  Sea,  if  your  conscience 
blocks  the  wheels. 

Of  the  special  virtues  necessary  to  a  pastor's  success 
in  literary  pursuits,  the  chief  are,  reverence  for  literary 
work  as  religious  work,  persistence  in  your  own  work 
as  that  for  which  God  created  you,  patience  with  your- 
self, incessant  prayer  for  success,  and  trust  in  divine 
promises  of  success.  The  whole  business  of  ministerial 
culture  needs  to  be  thus  baptized  in  the  religious  spirit 
as  absolutely  as  the  administration  of  the  Lord's  Supper. 
Do  not  begin  it  till  you  can  see  the  truth  of  this. 

Without  such  moral  auxiliaries  as  these,  you  must 
become  an  ungodly  man  in  order  to  succeed.  You 
must  gain  unity  of  soul  in  one  direction  or  the  other. 
One  reason  for  the  brilliant  success  in  literature  of 
some  intensely  irreligious  men  is  that  they  had  rid 
themselves  of  all  religious  scruples.  Their  whole  being 
was  a  unit  in  literary  pursuits.  Goethe  and  Byron  and 
Lord  Macaulay  seem  to  have  been  instances  of  this: 
hence  their  marvelous  literary  acquisitions,  and  power 
of  execution.  One  reason  for  the  success  of  Satan  in 
the  dominion  of  this  world  is  the  absolute  intellectual 
singleness  of  his  being.  He  concentrates  power,  with  no 
drawbacks  caused  by  conscientious  relentings,  doubts, 
scruples.  In  a  moral  being,  intellectual  force  pure  and 
simple,  unregulated  by  moral  sensibilities,  is  Satanic  force. 

(7)  No  plan  will  probably  succeed  which  is  not  in 
Bome  miportant  features  your  own.  You  can  not  wisely 
import  whole  into  your  culture  the  literary  advice  of 
another  mind.  Take  the  advice,  but  take  it  for  what 
it  is  worth  to  you.  Scarcely  two  men  can  execute 
well  the  same   plan   of  a   scholarly  life.      Some  men 


322  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lfct.  xxi. 

have  more  carburet  of  iron  —  the  stuff  that  steel  is 
made  of — in  their  blood  than  others.  Their  mental 
constitution  is  affected  by  it.  Each  man,  therefore, 
must,  in  some  respects,  frame  his  own  plan.  All  that 
an  instructor  can  do  is  to  give  you  hints,  principles, 
facts  from  the  experience  of  others.  The  question  is 
not  what  is  absolutely  the  superior  plan,  but  what  is 
the  best  for  you,  with  your  health,  with  your  power 
of  mental  appropriation,  with  your  amount  of  time  for 
literary  work,  in  your  parish,  and  at  your  age. 

The  yeomen  of  the  Carolinas  framed  out  of  their 
own  experience  and  common  sense  a  better  plan  of 
civil  government  than  John  Locke  framed  for  them 
with  the  most  profound  philosophy  of  the  age,  and  a 
thousand  years  of  European  experiment  in  government 
at  his  command.  So  you  are  in  some  respects  wiser 
than  the  most  learned  of  your  teachers  concerning 
what  you  can  do  in  literary  culture.  You  need  also 
the  discipline  of  forming  your  own  plan  to  qualify  you 
to  execute  any  plan. 

(8)  No  plan  will  be  likely  to  succeed  which  is 
founded  upon  a  scholastic  ideal  alone.  The  scholastic 
mind  can  not  be,  without  amendment,  a  model  for  the 
professional  mind.  Yours,  from  the  nature  of  the  case, 
must  be  the  professional  mind.  It  must  be  scholarly, 
yet  not  scholastic.  Leibnitz,  Gibbon,  Descartes,  Cole- 
ridge, Wordsworth,  Southey,  were  by  profession  literati. 
They  were  nothing  else.  The  experience  of  such  men 
needs  to  be  tested  by  the  professional  judgment,  before 
they  are  applied  to  men  in  a  profession  to  which 
literary  pursuits  must  be  but  an  appendage.  A  pastor 
ishould  frame  a  plan  adapted  to  professional  necessities, 
and  then  he  should  respect  that  plan  as  profoundly  as 
if  it  had  tlie  imprint  of  a  score  of  universities. 


rJiCT-  XXI.]  CONDITIONS  OF  BRAIN-FORCE.  823 

(9)  You  should  so  ai range  your  plan  of  study  as  to 
secure  as  much  concentration  of  effort  as  is  practicable. 
It  is  not  wise  to  have  more  than  one  or  two  great  lines 
of  study  planned  and  in  operation  at  one  time.  A  day 
can  not  be  of  much  value  for  studious  labor,  if  it  is 
whittled  up  into  shavings  of  time.  Different  depart- 
ments of  study  must  be  pursued  in  succession,  time 
enough  being  allotted  to  each  to  secure  the  benefit  of 
continuity.  The  details  of  such  a  plan  every  man  must 
devise  for  himself ;  but  the  principle  is  invariable,  — 
that  the  plan  be  so  adjusted  as  to  obtain  mental  con- 
centration ;  and  for  concentration  you  must  have  time 
for  continuity  of  impression. 

Recent  psychological  investigations  into  the  condi- 
tions of  brain-force  disclose  the  fact,  that  the  most 
effective  force  of  the  brain  in  continuous  labor  requires 
duality  of  objects  of  pursuit.  Rest  of  brain  does  not 
require  cessation  of  work,  but  change  of  work.  Change 
is  more  restful  than  idleness.  This  indicates  that  the 
true  economy  of  power  in  study  is  found  in  having  two 
lines  of  study  between  which  the  mind  may  interplay. 

(10)  You  should  so  form  your  plan  of  study  that  it 
can  sustain  interruptions.  Any  plan  of  study  in  pas- 
toral life  must  be  interrupted.  Times  will  occur  when 
it  must  be  suspended.  Awakenings  of  the  popular  con- 
science may  absorb  all  the  mental  energy  of  a  pastor 
in  perpetual  production.  Our  profession  is  one  which 
abounds  with  emergencies.  These  must  be  anticipated. 
A  power  of  sustained  purpose  must  be  cultivated, 
which  can  hold  study  in  reserve  when  study  is  imprac- 
ticable, and  not  be  demoralized  by  the  suspension.  We 
must  plan  for  interregnums,  so  that  they  shall  not 
result  in  anarchy. 


324  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xxi. 

(11)  Your  courage  in  pursuing  any  plan  you  may 
devise  sliould  be  sustained  by  the  certainty  of  your 
mental  growth.  You  will  not  always  be  what  you  are 
now  in  point  of  intellectual  strength.  Growth  is  your 
destiny.  Your  professional  labors  will  compel  growth. 
They  are  more  productive  of  mental  enlargement  than 
the  life  of  a  literary  man  without  a  profession.  The 
kind  of  growth  which  they  v/ill  necessitate  in  you  will 
re-act  with  a  power  which  will  surprise  you  upon  your 
efficiency  as  a  reader.  Your  power  of  mental  appro- 
priation will  increase  marvelously :  hence  will  come 
the  faculty  of  rapid  reading.  Nothing  is  more  sure  to 
disclose  itself  as  a  result  of  years  of  scholarly  reading, 
and  professional  composing  in  alternation,  than  the  gift 
of  rapid  mastery  in  both.  As  you  will  write  sermons 
rapidly,  so  you  will  appropriate  books  to  your  stock  of 
thought  rapidly.  Some  volumes  which  now  would  cost 
you  a  second  reading  you  will  by  and  by  master  with 
one.  Some  which  now  require  a  full  and  cautious 
study,  by  and  by  you  will  appropriate  by  their  tables 
of  contents  and  their  prefaces  only. 

This  destiny  of  growth  should  be  largely  trusted  by 
a  youthful  preacher.  Without  it,  his  life  would  be 
hopelessly  overladen.  I  well  remember,  that,  when  I 
began  my  ministry,  a  good  doctor  of  divinity  said  to 
me,  "  Be  content  to  work  hard  for  ten  years,  and  then 
you  can  take  it  easy."  His  advice  was  on  a  level  with 
his  grammar.  He  should  have  said,  "Be  content  to 
work  hard  for  ten  years,  and  then  you  can  begin  to 
work  harder ;  but  it  will  be  with  more  cheering  results." 
No  other  work  of  God  in  creation  was  so  grand  as  the 
creation  of  a  man :  so  notliing  else  in  11^3  is  so  grand  a 
thing  aa  the  growth  of  a  man. 


LECTURE   XXn. 

A     PLAN     OF     PASTORAL     STUDY     LCT     ENGLISH 
LITERATUEE. 

2.  Passing  now  from  the  preliminary  suggestions 
already  made,  I  wish  to  apply  as  far  as  possible  the 
principles  advanced  in  the  preceding  Lectures  to  a  plan 
for  the  study  of  English  literature.  My  aim  here  is  to 
give  you  a  method  by  which  substantially  the  majority 
of  pastors  can  make  practicable,  by  dint  of  self-disci- 
pline, a  lifelong  study  of  the  literature  of  our  language, 
which  shall  be  sufficiently  productive  of  results  to  save 
them  from  intellectual  decline. 

(1)  Run  a  line  of  professional  reading  through  the 
history  of  the  literature.  A  line  of  professional  read- 
ing should  be  the  backbone  of  every  clergyman's  lit- 
erary life.  I  have  not  here  in  view  the  bulk  of  the 
professional  literature,  but  a  historic  line  of  it  only,. 
The  advantages  of  this  may  all  be  summed  up  in  one, — 
its  naturalness.  It  is  natural  for  a  professional  man  to 
make  his  profession  the  center  of  his  culture.  This  is 
only  adjusting  your  studies,  in  form  and  by  design,  to 
what  they  will  be,  and  must  be  in  fact.  This  is  the 
principle  of  all  wise  methods  in  real  life.  Necessities 
must  be  first  cared  for.  The  spinal  cord  of  real  life  is 
labor  to  meet  necessities.  So  it  should  be  with  literary 
pursuits   in  the  midst  of  professional  avocations.      A 

325 


326  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xxn. 

pastor  will  obtain  his  most  valuable  knowledge  of  our 
literature  by  building  it  up  gradually  alongside  of  the 
clerical  profession. 

(2)  Pursue  collateral  lines  of  reading  as  they  are 
suggested  by  professional  studies.  Any  great  trunk  of 
literature,  like  that  formed  by  one  of  the  professions, 
will  be  dense  with  branches  running  out  from  either 
side,  into  which  study  will  diverge  naturally.  For 
instance,  you  can  not  familiarize  yourself  with  the  Eng- 
lish pulpit  of  the  seventeenth  century  without  discov- 
ering that  you  must  acquaint  yourself  also  with  that 
most  creative  period  of  English  history.  The  Revolu- 
tion, the  Commonwealth,  and  the  Restoration  are  in 
the  heart  of  it. 

By  the  law  of  literary  association,  collateral  lines  of 
reading  will  branch  out  in  all  directions.  You  will  be 
surprised  to  find  how  large  a  portion  of  the  entire  body 
of  the  literature  is  covered  by  the  immediate  and 
obvious  lines  of  collateral  study.  Let  me  illustrate 
this  by  a  single  example.  At  the  first  view  it  appears 
unnatural  to  associate  the  pulpit  with  the  stage.  How 
can  a  pastor's  professional  reading  lead  him  naturally 
to  the  study  of  Shakspeare  ?  I  answer.  No  two  things 
are  more  indissolubly  connected  in  English  history 
than  the  sermon  and  the  drama.  There  are  one  oi 
two  periods  in  the  history  of  the  English  pulpit  in 
which  we  can  not  judge  well  of  it  Avithout  taking  into 
account  the  taste  of  the  people  for  theatrical  displaj's. 
Whitefield  and  Shakspeare  are  thus  brought  hand  to 
hand.  The  sermons  of  Bishop  Latimer  can  not  be 
appreciated  otherwise. 

(3)  Portions  of  our  literature  which  are  remotely 
connected  with  the  pulpit  should   be  read  by  depart- 


LECT.  XXII.]     STUDY  OF  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  327 

ments.  Do  not  read  the  plays  of  Ben  Jonson  to-day, 
and  Izaak  Walton  to-morrow,  and  Charles  Lamb  on 
Wednesday.  Read  contmuously  for  a  while  by  depart- 
ments. English  poetry,  for  instance,  forms  a  depart- 
ment by  itself.  A  few  great  divisions  will  classify  the 
whole  of  it.  A  very  few  names  should  be  its  nuclei. 
Beginning  with  Chaucer  (who  died  in  A.D.  1400),  ad- 
vance two  centuries,  and  you  come  to  Spenser  and 
Shakspeare,  contemporaries.  Proceed  half  a  century, 
and  you  overtake  Milton,  and,  a  quarter  of  a  century 
later,  Dryden,  who  died  precisely  three  hundred  years 
after  Chaucer.  A  century  and  a  half  farther  on,  you 
find  Wordsworth,  who  died  four  hundred  and  fifty  years 
from  Chaucer.  English  poetry  can  all  be  gathered  in 
clusters  around  these  names  ;  and  it  is  of  little  moment 
with  which  of  them  one  begins  one's  study  of  that 
department. 

(4)  Generally  plan  to  occupy  fragments  of  time 
with  standard  literature.  In  a  pastor's  life,  fragments 
of  time  must  be  utilized,  or  the  loss  in  the  aggregate 
is  immense.  Do  not  be  prodigal  of  Monday  mornings  : 
there  is  no  need  of  it.  We  should  keep  at  hand  in 
our  own  libraries,  on  our  study-tables,  such  authors 
as  the  four  great  poets,  such  prose-writers  as  Bacon, 
Hooker,  Milton,  Burke,  Butler,  Macaulay.  The  habit- 
ual intercourse  of  our  minds  with  a  dozen  of  the 
leading  spirits  of  our  libraries,  in  the  freedom  of  frag- 
mentary reading,  will  create  innumerable  little  feeders 
to  our  culture,  which  will  keep  it  full  and  rich  and 
pure. 

(5)  Much  of  the  light  literature  of  the  language 
may  be  naturally  reserved  for  periods  of  relief  from 
professional  labor.     English  fiction  has  become  a  very 


328  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xxn. 

vital  department  of  the  national  thought.  Clergymen 
used  to  ignore  it.  That  is  no  longer  wise,  if  it  ever 
was  so.  We  must  know  it ;  but  we  need  not  give  to  it 
our  most  valuable  time.  It  is  wasteful  to  read  Charles 
Dickens  in  the  midst  of  a  winter's  campaign  of  profes- 
sional toil.  A  healthy  mind  in  a  healthy  body  does 
not  need  such  costly  recreation :  reserve  it  for  vaca- 
tions. More  than  economy  of  time  is  thus  gained :  we 
gain  sympathy  of  daily  pursuits.  Seek  mental  recrea- 
tion from  change  of  mental  labor.  Do  not  unbend  to 
the  extreme  every  day.  That  is  not  natural  relief  to 
spring  from  extreme  to  extreme.  A  well-trained  mind 
husbands  its  strength  most  effectively  by  passing  from 
a  greater  to  a  less  degree  of  mental  tension,  not  to 
no  tension  at  all.  Remember  the  physiological  law  of 
duality.  We  must  dare  to  be  ignorant  of  light  litera- 
ture till  the  natural  time  for  it  comes  in  our  plan  of 
life. 

(6)  I  pass  on  now  to  give  you  a  line  of  professional 
reading  as  illustrated  from  the  history  of  the  English 
and  American  pulpit,  from  which  the  most  that  I  ex- 
pect is,  that  it  may  be  suggestive  to  you  of  some  more 
minute  plan,  or  some  other,  yet,  for  the  purpose,  an 
equivalent  plan  of  your  own. 

In  the  following  pages  I  attempt  to  combine  four 
feat'jres ;  viz.,  to  distinguish  the  most  eminent  of  Eng- 
glish  and  American  preachers,  to  group  these  in  historic 
clusters,  to  assist  your  memory  of  our  literature  as  a 
whole  by  associating  these  clerical  names  with  their 
secular  contemporaries,  and  to  arrange  these  groups  in 
chronological  order.  I  select  only  representative  names, 
and  from  the  most  strongly  marked  periods  in  the  his- 
tory of  oui'  pulpit.     Of  course  a  multitude  of  eminent 


LECT.  XXII.]        ENGLISH  PULPIT  A.D.  1350-1550.  329 

names  must  be  omitted.  Of  the  names  which  I  recite, 
I  will  ask  you  to  underscore  those  which  I  shall  desig- 
nate as  specially  deserving  of  study,  either  as  profes- 
sional representatives  or  as  literary  standards. 

The  dates  I  arrange  as  nearly  as  possible  in  the  cen- 
ter of  the  public  life  of  the  authors  clustered  around 
them,  reckoning  a  quarter  of  a  century  on  either  side 
of  the  date  specified.  This  method  is  sufficiently 
accurate.  You  will  generally  find  it  convenient,  in 
your  attempts  to  fix  dates  of  authors  in  your  memory, 
to  associate  the  name  with  some  central  date  of  author- 
ship, rather  than  the  date  of  birth  or  death  ;  unless  Dne 
of  these  happens  to  synchronize  with  the  beginning,  or 
middle,  or  end,  of  a  century,  as  is  the  case  with  Chaucer 
and  Dryden  and  Wordsworth. 

Beginning,  then,  with  the  earliest  period  of  the  British 
pulpit,  the  first  date  I  name  is  A.D.  1350.  This  being 
long  before  the  Reformation,  the  pulpit  had  scarcely  an 
existence  in  England.  But  one  name  deserves  mention 
in  so  condensed  a  catalogue  as  I  am  attempting  to  form. 
Within  a  quarter  of  a  century  on  either  side  of  this 
date  lay  the  public  life  of  Johk  Wickliffe.  Under- 
score his  name  as  the  only  representative  of  the  infancy 
of  the  English  pulpit.  It  may  assist  our  mastery  of 
the  secular  literature  of  the  language  to  note  that 
Wickliffe  was  contemporary  with  Geoffrey  Chaucer; 
the  one  sustaining  to  English  preaching  the  same  rela- 
tion that  the  other  did  to  English  poetry. 

From  this  period  nothing  appears  to  our  purpose  for 
about  two  hundred  years.  Note  the  date  A.D.  1550. 
Within  twenty -five  years  of  this  date,  before  and  after, 
lay  the  major  part  of  the  public  life  of  William  Tyn- 
dale,  Miles  Coverdale,  John  Knox,  Hugh  Latimer, 


330  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [i.ect.  xxn. 

Thomas  Cranmer,  John  Fox,  and  William  Cart- 
w  right. 

The  most  vital  literary  activity  of  the  reign  of  Henry 
VIII.  was  concentrated  upon  the  translation  of  the 
Bible.  Upon  that  the  revival  of  the  pulpit  hung  sus- 
pended. It  was  a  question  of  life  and  death  to  preach- 
ing. To  very  few  men  are  the  English  and  American 
churches  so  much  indebted  through  all  time  as  to  Tyn- 
dale.  The  "  blasphemous  beast,"  as  Sir  Thomas  More 
called  him,  gave  to  the  church  the  chief  model  of  King 
James's  Bible.  Underscore  the  name  of  Tyndale  as 
the  pioneer  in  the  work  of  translating  the  Scriptures, 
that  of  Knox  as  the  father  of  the  Scottish  Reforma- 
tion, that  of  Latimer  as  one  of  the  earliest  martyrs  to 
the  liberty  of  the  pulpit,  and  that  of  Cranmer  as  the 
founder  of  the  Anglican  Church. 

It  may  assist  uh,  in  connecting  the  religious  with  the 
secular  literature  of  this  period,  to  remark  the  fact  that 
these  men  were  wholly,  or  in  part,  contemporary  with 
Sir  Philip  Sidney,  the  author  of  the  "  Art  of  Poesy," 
and  Roger  Ascham,  the  father  of  English  educators; 
and  to  this  and  the  succeeding  period  belongs  the  name 
of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh. 

The  next  date  of  importance  is  A.D.  1600.  The 
half-century  of  which  this  is  the  center  covers  substan- 
tially the  public  life  of  a  very  small  group,  of  which 
Richard  Hooker,  Dr.  Donne,  Bishop  Hall,  and 
George  Herbert  are  the  chief.  Through  the  whole  of 
the  long  reign  of  Elizabeth  the  pulpit  had  to  struggle 
for  leave  to  be  at  all.  Brilliant  as  the  age  was  in  other 
departments,  the  literature  of  the  pulpit  was  meager 
in  the  extreme.  Queen  Elizabeth  did  not  take  kindly 
to  preachers :  she  *oaid  that  two  in  a  diocese  were  an 


LECT.  xxir.]  ENGLISH  PULPIT  A.D.   1550.  331 

ample  supply.  In  London  many  churches  were  closed 
for  the  want  of  preachers.  Says  Bishop  Sandys, 
preaching  before  the  Queen,  "  Many  there  are  who  do 
not  hear  a  sermon  in  seven  years,  I  might  say  in  seven- 
teen." In  Cornwall,  Neal  says  there  was  not  one  man 
capable  of  preaching  a  sermon.  At  one  time  the  Uni- 
versity of  Oxford  had  but  three  preachers,  and  these 
were  all  Puritans. 

This  state  of  things  was  the  inheritance  which  the 
Church  of  Rome  had  bequeathed  to  the  Church  of 
England.  The  depreciation  of  preaching  in  the  Church 
of  England  which  exists  to-day  had  its  origin  then. 
Hence,  also,  arose  the  extreme  poverty  of  the  pulpit  at 
the  date  before  us.  Hooker,  the  darling  of  the  Church 
cf  England  to  this  day,  is  declared,  by  one  of  the  best- 
informed  critics  of  English  literature,  to  sustain  to 
English  prose  somewhat  of  the  same  relation  that 
Chaucer  sustained  to  English  poetry ;  he  having  writ- 
ten the  first  solid  prose-Avork  of  logical  structure,  and 
clear,  forcible  style.  Bishop  Hall  was  one  of  the  earli- 
est writers  of  laconic  and  racy  English :  he  has  been 
called  the  "  English  Seneca."  The  gentle  George  Her- 
bert, the  humble  country  parson,  will  live  long  after 
his  infidel  brother.  Lord  Herbert,  is  forgotten.  This 
little  group  of  clerical  writers  were  surrounded  by 
Shakspeare,  Spenser,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  Philip 
Massinger,  and  Ben  Jonson,  of  dramatic  fame ;  and 
Lord  Bacon  was  their  contemporary. 

Passing  on  a  little  more  than  half  a  century,  let  us, 
for  the  convenience  of  the  synchronizing  with  the 
Restoration  of  the  Stuarts,  select  the  date  A.D.  1660. 
This  year  is  in  the  heart  of  the  most  eventful  period 
of  English  history,  and  of  the  golden  age  of  the  pulpit 


832  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xxii. 

as  well.  Within  a  quarter  of  a  century  of  the  Resto- 
ration, en  either  side,  we  find  two  parallel  columns  of 
great  names.  In  the  Established  Church  appear  Arch- 
bishop Leighton,  Jeremy  Taylor,  Isaac  Barrow, 
Archbishop  Tillotson,  Robert  South,  Edward  Still- 
ingfleet,  and  William  Sherlock,  all  of  them  men  of 
great  power  in  their  day,  and  some  of  them  authors 
of  standards  in  literature  which  will  live  as  long  as  the 
language  lives.  Among  the  nonconformists  we  num- 
ber Joseph  Calamy,  Richard  Baxter,  John  Owen, 
John  Flavel,  John  Bunyan,  Stephen  Charnock, 
and  John  Howe.  England  has  not  seen  since  their 
day  an  equal  number  of  men  of  equal  rank  in  her 
pulpits.  Contemporary  with  these  galaxies  of  clerical 
genius,  it  will  help  our  memory  of  the  period  as  a 
whole,  to  recall  John  Locke,  Sir  William  Temple,  Sir 
Thomas  Browne,  Abraham  Cowley,  Samuel  Butler, 
John  Dryden,  and,  princeps  inter  pares^  John  Milton. 

A  sad  decline  appears  as  we  advance  another  half- 
century.  The  revolution  of  1688,  with  the  oppressions 
which  preceded  it,  and  the  confusion  which  followed  it, 
and  the  outbreak  of  infidelity  in  the  persons  of  Hobbes, 
Shaftesbury,  and  Bolingbroke,  greatly  depressed  the 
pulpit.  Its  ablest  productions  were  controversies  with 
infidelity.  The  close  of  the  seventeenth  century  was 
a  dark  day  for  the  spiritual  vitality  of  both  England 
and  Scotland. 

AdDpting  the  year  A.D.  1700  as  the  next  center,  we 
find  before  and  after  it  Bishop  Lowth,  Bishop  Atter- 
bury,  Samuel  Clarke,  Bishop  Hoadley,  Ralph 
Erskine,  Bishop  Butler;  and,  on  this  side  of  the 
Atlantic,  we  note  the  first  name  which  lifts  the 
American  pulpit  to  the  level  of  that  of  the  mother- 
country,  in  the  person  of  Cotton  Mather. 


LECT.  XXII.]         ENGLISH  PUI.PIT  A.D.  1750-1800.  333 

Contemporary  with  these,  wholly  or  in  part,  were 
the  essayists  who  founded  "The  Spectator,"  Addison 
and  Richard  Steele ;  the  originators  of  the  English 
novel,  Richardson,  Fielding,  and  Smollett ;  also  Pope, 
Gay,  and  Prior,  noted  as  the  Jacobite  wits  of  the  day ; 
Ilobbes,  Bolingbroke,  and  Shaftesbury,  the  trio  of  noted 
freethinkers ;  and  Congreve,  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  and 
Bishop  Berkeley.  Isaac  Watts  deserves  mention  as 
the  first  man  who  redeemed  English  hymnology  from 
doggerel,  although  he  wrote  not  a  little  of  it  himself. 

Advancing  another  half-century,  we  reach  the  date 
A.D.  1750.  This  was  the  age  of  tame  politeness  in  the 
Church  of  England,  and  the  secession  of  Methodism 
from  it.  Within  twenty-five  years  of  this  date  comes 
the  public  life  of  Dr.  Hugh  Blair,  Bishop  Horsley, 
Dr.  William  Paley,  and,  outside  of  the  Establish- 
ment, Philip  Doddridge,  John  Wesley,  George 
Whitefield,  the  senior  Edwards,  Joseph  Bellamy, 
Samuel  Hopkins,  and  Samuel  Davies. 

These  numbered  among  their  contemporaries  the 
club  of  which  Dr.  Johnson  was  the  autocrat,  including 
Goldsmith  and  Edmund  Burke ;  the  three  great  histo- 
rians of  the  empire,  Hume,  Robertson,  and  Gibbon ; 
William  Cowper,  who  wrought  a  revolution  in  English 
poety ;  Dr.  Reid,  the  father  of  the  Scotch  philosophy ; 
the  elder  Earl  of  Chatham,  who  stood  at  the  head  of 
parliamentary  eloquence  ;  and  Benjamin  Franklin. 

Advancing  to  the  beginning  of  the  present  century 
(A.D.  1800),  we  find  not  one  man  in  the  Church  of 
England  who  deserves  to  rank  with  the  following 
names  out  of  it :  Andrew  Fuller,  Robert  Hall,  John 
Foster,  Thomas  Chalmers,  and,  in  this  country, 
Dr.  Timothy  Dwight,  Dr.  Nathaniel  Emmons,  Dr. 


334  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xxn. 

Jonathan  Edwards,  Dr.  John  M.  Mason,  Dr.  Edward 
Payson,   Dr.    Edward   Griffin,    and   Dr.    William   E. 

C  BANNING. 

To  this  period,  for  the  most  part,  belong,  in  secular 
literature,  Robert  Burns  and  Samuel  Rogers ;  the  Lake 
Poets,  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  and  Southey ;  also  the 
earlier  group  whose  names  commonly  occur  together, 
Walter  Scott,  Lord  Byron,  Shelley,  and  Keats ;  Charles 
Lamb,  Thomas  Moore,  Thomas  Campbell ;  and,  in  the 
Scotch  philosophy  Dugald  Stewart,  and  Dr.  Thomas 
Brown.  The  chief  literary  revolutions  of  the  time 
were  Scott's  originating  of  the  historical  romance,  and 
Wordsworth's  simplifying  and  humanizing  of  English 
poetry.  The  latter  movement  has  affected  all  the 
literature  of  the  language  since  that  day:  Charles 
Dickens  could  not  have  existed  but  for  the  advent  of 
Wordsworth. 

Adopting  one  more  date,  A.D.  1850,  we  come  into 
groups  of  names,  some  of  which  are  fragrant  in  the  mem- 
ory of  the  living  :  William  Jay ;  Dr.  Edward  Pusey, 
the  father  of  the  ritualistic  re-action  in  England ; 
William  Archer  Butler ;  Archbishop  Whately  ;  Dr. 
Henry  Melville  ;  Frederick  Robertson  ;  Dr.  Thomas 
Guthrie ;  Mr.  Spurgeon ;  and,  in  this  country,  Albert 
Barnes;  Dr.  Lyman  Beecher;  Dr.  Nathaniel  W.  Tay- 
lor, the  father  of  the  so-called  "  New-Haven  Divinity ; " 
Horace  Bushnell  ;  Dr.  Charles  Finney,  the  most 
noted  revivalist  of  modern  times  ;  Dr.  Gregory  Bedell ; 
Dr.  Stephen  Olin ;  Dr.  Francis  Wayland  ;  Dr.  James 
Alexander ;  and  Dr.  James  H.  Thornwell,  the  most 
eminent  pulpit  orator  of  the  southern  half  of  our 
Republic. 

Contemporary  with  these  names  should  be  associated 


LECT.  XXII.]  OTHER  PIISTORIC  LINES.  33§ 

those  of  Alison,  IMackintosh,  Hallam,  Prescott,  and 
Motley,  as  historians  ;  Macaulay,  Carlyle,  Jeffrey, 
Sydney  Smith,  Talfourd,  De  Quincey,  and  Washington 
Irving,  as  essayists ;  Cooper,  Thackeray,  Dickens,  and 
Hawthorne,  as  novelists ;  Tennyson,  Bryant,  Longfel- 
low, and  Whittier,  as  poets;  and  Sir  William  Hamiltoii 
as  a  metaphysician. 

This  catalogue  of  clerical  names,  you  will  understand, 
I  give  3^ou  as  only  a  representative  one,  with  which  it 
is  desirable  to  be  acquainted  as  far  as  possible.  Of 
these,  I  have  distinguished  about  thirty  names  of  men 
whose  writings  and  memoirs  would  give  you  a  very 
fair  knowledge  of  the  entire  history  of  the  pulpit  in 
our  language,  so  far  as  that  is  extant  in  libraries. 
These  thirty  names  a  pastor  at  the  meridian  of  his 
labors  can  make  himself  acquainted  with,  even  if  he  will 
give  to  them  only  fragments  of  time.  It  is  a  kind  of 
study  which  does  not  necessarily  demand  the  severest, 
long-continued,  and  unbroken  application.  A  man  of 
affairs  can  make  it  a  supplement  to  his  professional 
life. 

I  would  not  be  understood  to  limit  our  method  of 
beginning  the  study  of  English  literature  to  the  study 
of  the  pulpit.  I  advise  this  only  as  the  most  natural 
one  to  a  pastor  in  active  life.  It  is  natural  to  build  the 
literature  around  the  profession  as  its  center.  But 
some  may  find  an  equally  suggestive  help  in  an  historic 
line  of  English  philosophers  from  Lord  Bacon  down- 
ward. A  similar  line  of  suggestion  might  be  framed  on 
the  history  of  the  English  essay.  A  very  superior  one 
might  be  drawn,  making  English  poetry  the  historic 
center  from  Chaucer  to  Wordsworth. 

The  least  valuable  method,  in  my  judgment,  is  that 


836  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xxn. 

which  is,  perhaps,  the  most  frequentl};  chosen.  It  is  the 
basis  of  many  abortive  attempts  to  master  the  bulk  of 
our  literature.  I  allude  to  that  which  arranges  the 
contents  of  English  libraries  along  the  line  of  political 
history,  and  associates  the  illustrious  names  with  the 
royal  dynasties  of  England.  This  method,  plausible 
in  theory,  will  be  found  cumbrous  in  the  experiment. 
Better  by  far  is  it  to  follow  some  historic  line  drawn 
within  the  literature  itself,  and  then  make  excursions 
from  that  laterally  into  other  departments. 

It  is  of  less  importance  than  at  first  appears,  what 
specific  line  be  made  central.  I  have  chosen  that  of  the 
pulpit.  But  our  profession  suggests  others  of  perhaps 
nearly  equal  value.  Theological  science  is  splendidly 
developed  in  our  language.  An  historic  line  drawn 
in  that  department  would  command  the  professional 
enthusiasm  of  many  pastors,  for  the  purposes  of  study, 
more  powerfully  than  the  homiletic  line.  The  history 
of  churchly  organization  may  be  more  stimulating  to 
another.  The  liturgic  development  in  the  history  of 
English  thought  may  be  attractive  to  some.  The  line 
of  English  commentary  on  the  Bible  may  be  the  more 
awakening  to  others.  The  sway  of  the  English  Scrip- 
tures over  our  entire  literature  is  very  marked.  The 
very  structure  of  our  language  has  been  in  part 
modeled  by  them.  It  matters  little  what  be  chosen 
as  the  central  line  of  research,  except  that  it  should, 
in  the  majority  of  cases,  be  vrithin  the  natural  range  of 
the  profession,  so  as  to  command  the  zest  of  profes- 
sional enthusiasm,  and  the  unity  of  mental  life,  which 
the  labors  of  the  profession  create.  Find  such  a  line 
of  central  development  in  something.  Such  are  the 
natural  affiliations  of  all  great  departments  of  thought, 


LECT.  XXII.]  AUXILIARY  SUGGESTIONS.  3dT 

that  any  one  will  be  found  to  be  suggestive  of  every 
other  one.  There  have  been  no  isolated  developments 
of  the  national  mind;  therefore  there  are  no  isolated 
representations  of  it  in  books.  A  book  -which  is  a 
book  is  kindred  to  every  other  book.  Even  two  such 
diverse  expressions  of  genius  as  English  poetry  and 
English  art  are  in  close  sympathy  with  each  other.  We 
have  before  remarked  the  natural  affiliation  of  the 
English  pulpit  with  the  English  drama.  George  White- 
field  and  David  Garrick  were  mutual  helpers.  Build  a 
nest,  therefore,  for  your  thought  anywhere  in  an  Eng- 
lish library,  and  the  flight  from  it  to  the  whole  circum- 
ference will  not  be  unnatural,  or  on  weary  wings. 

I  add  in  closing,  without  extended  remark,  several 
auxiliary  suggestions. 

It  is  not  necessary  for  your  purpose  to  read  very 
largely  in  any  one  author,  except  those  of  inspired 
authority. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  read  an  equal  amount  in  all. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  read  in  chronological  order.  A 
beginning  can  be  made  in  the  middle.  One  method 
recommended  by  some  critics  is  to  begin  with  the 
present  time,  and  read  backward. 

The  more  distant  an  author  is  from  our  own  times, 
as  a  general  rule,  inspiration  aside,  the  less  important 
is  that  author  to  modern  culture.  This  is  the  reason 
why,  in  the  list  given  in  the  foregoing  pages,  the  most 
recent  group  is  the  most  numerous. 

In  some  instances,  the  preachers  named  in  this  cata- 
logue have  not  left  a  large  collection  of  sermons  in 
print.  This  is  true  of  Whitefield  and  Tyndale.  Our 
knowledge  of  their  public  ministry  must  be  obtained 
from   their   memoirs,  and   the  history  of  their  times. 


333  MEN  AND  BOOKS.  [lect.  xxn. 

Their  influence  on  the  history  of  the  pulpit  is  too 
important  to  permit  the  omission  of  their  names. 

In  the  reading  of  sermons,  a  few  specimens  thor- 
oughly criticised  are  more  valuable  to  our  culture  than 
volumes  read  for  purposes  of  literary  refreshment. 

For  mental  quickening  in  the  act  of  composing  ser- 
mons, one  should  follow  eclectically  one's  own  tastes. 
If  the  forty-seventh  proposition  of  Euclid  starts  your 
mind  upon  a  track  of  original  invention,  study  that 
proposition.  Find  out  by  experiment  what  will  arouse 
your  thinking  power,  and  make  it  articulate,  and  then 
study  that.  The  range  of  your  mental  affinities,  as  I 
have  before  remarked,  will  surely  widen.  The  floricul- 
turist sets  a  geranium  to  sprout  in  a  very  small  recep- 
tacle ;  but  it  soon  outgrows  its  birthplace.  So  an 
intellectual  taste  will  expand  beyond  the  scope  of  its 
germ.     Nothing  is  more  sure  to  grow. 

Pursuing  literary  study  by  any  plan  equivalent  to 
the  one  here  recommended,  you  will  not  fail  of  a  very 
encouraging  success.  Progress  will  be  slow  at  the 
first,  but  it  will  increase  in  speed  as  you  advance. 
Your  power  of  mental  appropriation  will  grow  im- 
mensely as  you  approach  middle  life.  It  is  no  cause 
for  discouragement,  if  its  full  growth  is  long  delayed. 
Some  of  the  richest  fruits  of  autumn  are  the  late  fruits. 
So  are  there  minds  which  are  richly  endowed  by  nature, 
but  which  develop  slowly.  Whenever  your  maturity 
does  appear,  be  it  late  or  early,  you  will  be  able  to  read 
rapidly.  Many  valuable  books  you  will  be  able  to 
master  without  a  plodding  pace  through  the  whole  of 
them.  Fragmentary  reading  of  them  will  suffice.  In 
the  maturity  of  a  man's  culture,  if  it  has  been  wisely 
regulated,  and   vigorously   nurtured,   very   few  books 


LECT.  XXII.]  IMAGINARY  CRITICS.  339 

demand  of  him  a  reading  entire.  That  which  he  brings 
to  a  book  will  often  be  so  large  a  proportion  of  what  he 
finds  in  it,  that  he  has  only  to  give  a  glance  of  recogni- 
tion to  many  pages,  and  pass  on. 

Even  a  little  of  such  reading  as  is  here  advised, 
though  sadly  unsatisfactory  to  your  growing  tastes,  will 
still  keep  alive,  as  nothing  else  can,  a  scholar's  vigilance 
over  your  sermons,  and  make  them  worthy  of  a  schol- 
ar's hearing.  One  of  the  most  eminent  of  the  Presby- 
terian pastors  of  New  York,  of  the  generation  just  now 
passing  away,  was  once  inquired  of  how  he  could  have 
made  his  habits  of  argument  in  the  pulpit  so  uniformly 
exact,  without  even  a  momentary  slip  in  his  logic ;  for 
such  was  the  reputation  of  his  masterly  pulpit.  He 
replied,  that  he  was  accustomed  to  imagine  a  legal  mind, 
like  that  of  Daniel  Webster,  among  his  hearers,  and 
he  aimed  never  to  present  in  his  pulpit  a  train  of  reas- 
oning to  which  the  great  jurist  could  object.  Every 
preacher  needs  such  imaginary  critics  of  his  sermons. 
We  can  find  them  in  the  silent  friends  who  throng  our 
libraries.  Make  a  friend  of  every  good  book  you  own. 
"  There  is  a  friend  that  sticketh  closer  than  a  brother." 


INDEX 


Accumulation  not  the  chief  object 
of  a  scholar's  life,  20. 

Acquisitive  reading  compared  with 
philosophical  methods,  279. 

Adaptation  to  professional  labor, 
111. 
one  object  of  literary  study,  111. 
the  study  of  it  must  form  the 
clergy,  112. 

Adaptations,  Jesuit  theory  of  them, 
111. 

Addison,  Joseph,  state  of  masses 
in  England  in  his  time,  37. 
his   charge   of    affectation   upon 
English  literature,  197. 

Adolphus,    Gustavus,    his    battle- 
song,  242. 

Affectations  in  literature,  195. 

Affinity,  law  of,  in  the  choice  of 
clerical  labor,  118. 

Africa,  life  of  a  missionary  in,  119. 

**  Agawam,    Simple    Cobbler   of," 
quoted,  153. 

Ages,  dark,  the  work  of  the  Euro- 
pean mind  at  that  time,  124. 

Alexander,  Dr.  James,  quoted,  61. 

Allegory  illustrative  of  the  three 
great  literatures  of  Europe,  282. 

Allston,  Washington,  his  fastidious 
taste,  298. 

Amateur  studies,  peril  of  selfish- 
ness in  them,  153. 

American  literature,  intrinsic  mer- 
its of  it,  178. 
its  English  affinities,  181. 
its  poetry  compared  with  that  of 
England,  179. 

American  poetry  in  action,  179. 

American   pulpit,  the  question  of 
its  decline,  180. 

American  theology  as  judged  by 
German  scholars,  190. 

American   theologians  have   been 
eminent  preachers,  187. 


Amusements,  Christian  theory  ol 

them,  22. 
Ancient  classics  in  the  American 
college,  149. 
ideal  of  a  liberal  education,  83. 
Analytic  reading,  276. 
Angelo,  Michael,  his  mode  of  pro- 
fessional working,  299. 
Anglicizing  foreign  literatures,  157. 
Anglo-Saxon  language  not  spoken 

out  of  Great  Britain,  163. 
Anomalies  in  literature,  274. 
Antiquity  of  biblical  history,  229. 
of  Hebrew  jurisprudence,  230. 
of  Hebrew  poetry,  230. 
of  Hebrew  prophetic  literature, 

231. 
of  the  Book  of  Job,  231. 
of  the  Book  of  Ruth,  231. 
reverence  of  the  human  mind  for 
it,  228. 
Aristotle  and  Plato  one  in  their 

final  influence,  108. 
Arnold,  Dr.  Thomas,  his  advice  to 
a  young  preacher,  210. 
affection  of  him  for  Aristotle,  104. 
his  conversational  powers,  213. 
his  opinion  of  censorious  critics, 

304. 
his  opinion  of  Coleridge's  "Lit- 
erary Remains,"  155. 
his  opinion  of  making  literature  a 

profession,  155. 
his   opinion   of  reading  inferior 

authors,  144. 
his  self-distrust,  299. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  his  opinion  of 
authors    in    relation    to    their 
times,  289. 
Art,  resemblances  between  it  and 

literature,  283. 
Artists,  American,  in  Italy,  299. 
Asiatic   literatures  in  comparison 
with  modern,  161. 

341 


342 


INDEX. 


Asiatic     races,    their    intellectual 

prospect,  2o5. 
Assassiuatiou  of  President  Lincoln, 

28. 
Assimilation,  identity  of  opinions 
not  necessary  to  it,  107. 
to  great  minds,  the  work  of  time, 

110. 
to  the  genius  of  authors,  105. 
essential  to  originality,  106. 
illustrated     in    the    history    of 
"  Christabel,"  106. 
Atheism,  its  character  in  England, 
244. 
its  obligation  to  the  Bible,  244. 
Athenian  architecture,  the  Doric 

column,  108. 
Athens,  relation  of  the  people  to 

the  drama,  43. 
Atonement,  unlimited,  262. 
unscriptural  ways  of  preaching 
it,  261. 
Author,  his  book  a  part  of  his  char- 
acter, 270. 
his   dependence  on  the  age  he 
lives  in,  289. 
Authors,  acquaintance  with  them 
in  their  works,  270,  273. 
compensation  to  them,  39. 
perpetuity  of  their  influence,  139. 
secretive  in  their  works,  270. 
"  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table," 

its  origin,  213. 
Awakenings,    religious,    begin    in 
the  lower  classes,  46. 
study  of  them,  11. 
Bacon,  Lord,  his  opinion  of  critical 

studies,  273. 
Barnes,  Albert,  his  habits  of  study, 

312. 
Beecher,      H.      W.,     his     "Life- 
Thoughts,"  297. 
Belles-lettres,  its  effeminate  mean- 
ing, 192. 
Bible,    the,    contains    the    oldest 
known  literature,  228. 
debt   of   English   atheism  to  it, 

244. 
debt  of  infidelity  to  it,  243. 
debt  of  living  literatures  to  it, 

238. 
debt  of  the  English  language  to 

it,  240. 
in  what  consists  its  literary  supe- 
riority, 249. 
its  educating  ]>ower,  259. 
its   influence  in  various  poems, 

240. 
its  influence  on  art,  243. 


Bible,  the,  its  influence  on  deliber, 
ative  eloquence,  242. 
its  influence  on  human  liberty, 

251. 
its  literature  a  literature  of  the 

future,  254. 
its  methods  of  reform,  252. 
its  prtwer  over  thinking  minds, 

239. 
its  professional  value  to  a  preach- 
er, 256. 
its  relation  to  Oriental  civilizar 

tion,  232. 
its  symmetry  of  doctrine,  253. 
its    variety    and    excellence    of 

styles,  253. 
the  intrinsic  superiority  of  bibli- 
cal models,  247. 
the  neglect  of  it  by  modern  lit- 
erary taste,  225. 
the    number    of    commentaries 

upon  it,  239. 
the  study  of  it  as  classic  literature, 

224. 
the  study  of  it  in  American  col- 
leges, 225,  227. 
theological    and    biblical    forms 

compared,  257. 
what  do  we  mean  by  its  literary 
superiority?  247. 
Bolingbroke,     Henry     St.     John, 

Burke's  imitation  of  him,  301. 
Books,  a  multitude  of  them  worth- 
less, 128. 
Bookworms,  their  uselessness,  132. 
Bossuet,   Jacques    B.,   his  use  of 

Homer,  303. 
Breadth  of  culture  promotes  depth, 

201. 
Britain,    Great,    intermingling    of 
races  in  its  population,  162. 
its  relation  to  the  Anglo-Saxon 
language,  163. 
"Brook  Farm,"  one  cause  of  its 

failure,  216. 
Brougham,  Henry,  criticism  by  and 
of,  103. 
his  opinion  of  Sheridan,  284. 
Brown^  Dr.  Thomas,  his  habit  of 

composing,  297. 
Brownson,  Orestes  A.,  his  opinion 

of  Catholic  theologians,  265. 
Bryant,  William  Cuiren,  indebted- 
ness of  the  "  Thanatopsis  "  to 
the  Scriptures,  240. 
Buffon,  George  L.,  his  rapture  in 

composing,  154. 
Burke,   Edmund,    compared   with 
Sheridan,  284. 


INDEX. 


843 


Burke,  Edmund,  his  early  passion 
for  Milton,  104. 
his  essay  on  "  Tlic  Sublime  and 

Beautiful,"  8(J. 
his    imitation    of    Bolingbroke, 

301. 
his   "Letter  to   the    Sheriffs    of 

Bristol,"  80. 
his  study  of  men,  80. 
the   cause   of   his   failure   as    a 
speaker,  284. 
Byron,  indebtedness  of  his  "  Cain  " 
to  the  Bible,  243. 
the  effect  of  "Christabel"  upon 

him,  107. 
the  indebtedness  of  his  "Dark- 
ness "  to  Jeremiah,  240. 
Calvinism  improved  bv  theologians 

of  New  England,  is<). 
Campbell,  Thomas,  Scott's  opinion 

of  him,  305. 
Canova,   Antonio,   his    ojDinion   of 

English  art,  IGi). 
Cant  in  literature,  195. 
in  religion  and  in  literature  com- 
pared, 196. 
Caricature  of  the  English  clergy, 
77. 
of  the  secular  parson,  25. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  his  address  at  the 
University  of  Edinburgh,  133. 
his  affectation  in  style,  190. 
his  opinion  of  great  men,  304. 
his  opinion  of  "The  Mayflower," 

179. 
servitude  of  some  literary  minds 
to  him,  203. 
Caste  in  churches,  an  example  of 

it,  80. 
Catechetical  instruction  in  Sweden, 

203. 
Catechism,  serial  preaching  on  it, 

260. 
Catholic  theologians  criticised  by 

Orestes  A.  Brownson,  2(55. 
Chalmers,  Dr.  Thomas,  his  early 
judgment  of  himself,  114. 
his  executive  abilities,  316. 
his  opinion  of  the  power  of  Chris- 

tianitv,  204. 
his  style,  299. 

servitude  of  the  Scottish  pulpit 
to  him,  202. 
Character,   a  preacher's    study   of 
his  own,  5. 
of    a  preacher  full  of  oratorical 

suggestions.  4. 
unreal  portraits  of  it  in  the  pul- 
pil ,  20. 


Chatham,  Earl  of,  disappointment 

in  reading  his  speeches,  21! ». 
"  Christabel,"  its  influence  on  other 

poets,  107. 
Christian  experience  and  scholar- 
ship, their  relation,  267. 
Christianity,  condescending  in  its 
aims,  60. 
false  applications  of,  to  real  life, 

23. 
its  influence  on  modern  civiliza- 
tion, 239. 
Choate,  Rufus,  his  style,  103. 
Church,  tluv   and  the   world,  dis- 
tinct, 70,  73. 
Churchly  distinction  obscured,  71. 
Cicero,   his    opinion  of    rhetorical 
study,  92. 
servitude  of  Italian  scholarship 
to  him,  202. 
"  Ciceronianus,"  by  Erasmus,  202. 
Clarkson,  Thomas,  his  publishing 

in  Latin,  293. 
Classes,  ambition  of  preachers  re- 
specting the  higher  classes,  117. 
mutual  repulsion  of,  80. 
"  Classic,"  limitation  of  the  term, 

150. 
Clergy,   the,    and  priesthood,    dis- 
tinct, 54. 
consequence  if  they  are  isolated 

from  the  people,  75. 
exclusive,  69,  73,  78. 
not  ex  oflcio  superiors  of  the  peo- 
ple, 63. 
of  England,  77. 

of  New  England  scholarly,  310. 
often  hostile  to  progress,  54. 
the  natural  leaders  of  the  people, 

52. 
their  ignorance  of  the  world  al- 
leged, 26. 
their  neglect  of  popular  changes, 

58. 
their  influence  reflexive,  67. 
their   temptations   to    a  narrow 

culture,  207. 
worldly  ambition  a  peril,  79. 
Clergymen,  eccentric,  the  study  of 

them,  33. 
Clerical  influence  moral  more  than 
intellectual,  63. 
office  more  than  a  profession,  119. 
Coffee-houses  of  London,  87. 
Coleridge,  S.   T.,   early  history  oi 
"  Christabel,"  106. 
his  opinion  of  great  authors,  140. 
his  opinion  of  Greek  literature, 
166. 


844 


INDEX. 


ColeriJi^e,   S.    T.,    his   opinion   of 
^YoVds\vo^th,  138. 
his  opinion  of  specific  preaching, 

29. 
his  translations  of  Schiller,  147. 
Dr.  Arnold's  opinion  of  his  "Lit- 
erary Remains,"  155. 
Collateral  reading;.  289. 
Collegiate  education,  ancient  class- 
ic's in,  149. 
Comfort,  the  mission  of,  29. 
Common  people,  a  preacher  must 

know  their  speech,  216. 
Comparison  of  authors  in  our  read- 
ing, 281. 
involuntary,  281. 
the  effect  of  it  on  our  views  of 

national  literatures,  281. 
the  effect  of  it  on  our  judgment 
of  departments   in   literature, 
282. 
unites  names  in  literature  with 
names  in  art,  282. 
Compensation  of  authors  for  their 

books,  40. 
Composite  mind  of  England,  162. 
Composition,    associatmg   it   with 
reading,  295. 
choice  hours  of  composing,  102. 
dailv    composition    a    necessity, 

302. 
executive  skill  in  it  a  high  art, 

102. 
persistence  in  difficult   compos- 
ing, 307. 
reckless,  306. 
promotes  invention,  297. 
Concentration  necessary  to  success 

in  study.  323. 
Conference-meeting  compared  with 

the  pulpit,  214. 
Conscience  in  study,  209,  320. 
unenlightened   in   the  ministry, 
208. 
Conservatism  of  the  clergy  often 

extreme,  54. 
Consociation  of  churches  in  Massa- 
chusetts in  liy6'2,  185. 
Controlling  minds  in  literature,  136. 
enumerated,  137. 
objection  to  reading  them,  146. 
in  classic  Greek  literature,  137. 
in  English  literature,  138. 
in  German  literature,  138. 
in  Hebrew  literature  137. 
in  Hellenistic  Greek  literature, 
137. 
Conversation,   Dr.    Johnson   as  a 
conversationalist,  213. 


Conversation,  eloquence   ahounds 
in  it,  212. 
of  illiterate  men,  one  form  of  lit- 
erature, 215. 
Cooper,  James  F.,  his  rank  as  a 

novelist,  180. 
Corneille,  Pierre,  his    use   of    the 

Latin  classics,  303. 
Cowper,     William,      criticism     of 
*'  There  is  a  fountain,'"  etc.,  274. 
Montgomery's     edition    of     his 

hymn,  275. 
obligations  of   "The    Task"    to 
the  Scriptures,  240. 
Creeds,  origin  and  character  of  the 
historic  creeds,  257. 
sermons  formed  under  their  in- 
fluence, 2G0. 
tested  by  the  common  sense  of 

the  people,  74. 
their    expression    of   human  re- 
sponsibility, 258. 
Crises  in  history,  their  power  to 
create  unwritten  literature,  213, 
Critical  reading,  270. 
illustrated.  272. 
not  petty,  272. 
Criticism.'censorious,  304. 
generous,  304. 
and  production  reciprocal  in  their 

action,  295. 
and  executive  power  dispropor- 
tioned,  298. 
Cross-purposes  in  the  ministry,  114. 
Cultivated  classes  grouped,  4*5. 
Culture,  enlarged  by  the  study  of 
the  best  authors,  141. 
not  ignored  by  the  Providence  of 

God,  51. 
its  relation  to  opinions,  109. 
sympathetic  with  all  other  cul- 
'ture,  201. 
Curran,  John  Philpot,  his  study  of 

men,  87. 
Curtis,  George  William,  his  opinion 

of  rhetorical  study,  93. 
Dante,    Prescott's  opinion  of   the 

"Inferno,"  147. 
Dark  ages,  state  of  the  European 

mind  at  that  time.  124. 
Delay  in  taking  the  lead  of  popu- 
lar reforms,  54. 
Demagogism  of  Patrick  Henry,  90. 
Democratic,    the    divine    way    of 

working,  52. 
De  Quincev,  Thomas,  extract  from 
his  "  Essay  on  Pope,"  KU. 
his  distinction  between  different 
literatures,  164. 


INDEX. 


345 


De  Quincey,  Thomas,  liis  opinion 

of  the  study  of  langua;?e,  150. 

Depravity    illustrated    in    literary 

neglect  of  the  Bible,  22G. 
Descartes,  liis  place  in  the  litera- 
ture of  France,  138. 
De  Tocqueville,  2;j0. 
Directness  in  the  pulpit,  29. 
Discovery  of  principles  of  efEective 

speech,  98. 
Disraeli,  Benjamin,  his  opinion  of 

extensive  reading,  122, 
Distinctions,  moral  subordinated  to 

social,  78. 
Division  of  labor  in  reading,  27G. 
illustrations  of  it,  277. 
influence  of    it  upon    extent  of 
knowledge,  279. 
Doctrine,  Christian,  the  clergy  its 

natural  guardians,  fX). 
Doric  column,  a  peculiarity  in  its 

structure,  108. 
Douglas,     Stephen   A.,   compared 

with  Edward  Everett,  10. 
Drama,    Guizot's    opinion    of    the 

French  and  English,  105. 
Dryden,  John,  his  indebtedness  to 

Tillotson,  104. 
Duality,  the  physiological  law  in 

study,  323. 
Earnestness,    all   men  in   earnest 

about  something,  213. 
Eccentric  ministers,  study  of  them, 

33. 
Economy  of  time  in  reading,  143. 
Educated  classes,  the  clergy,  when 

identifled  with  them,  oi. 
Education,   ideal  of  it  in  ancient 
times,  83. 
ideal  of  it  in  England,  84. 
ideal  of  it  in  the  middle  ages,  84. 
Edwards,      President,     Frederick 
Robertson's    opinion    of    him, 
190. 
the  power  of  his  preaching  mys- 
terious, 294. 
Edwards,  Professor,  B.  B,,  his  illus- 
trations of  the  influence  of  the 
Scriptures,  240. 
his  hint  respecting  antediluvian 
poetry,  230. 
Elizabeth,  Queen,  condition  of  the 

pulpit  in  her  reign,  .330. 
Eloquence  disappointing  to  subse- 
quent generations,  219. 
false     conceptions    of    it    from 

printed  literature,  220. 
its  representative  character,  217. 
of  real  life,  218. 


Eloquence  utters  the  thovight    of 

the  hearer,  217. 
Emergencies,    the    popular    judg- 
ment of   the   pulpit  in  them, 
69. 
Emerson,  R,  "W.,  his  use  of  trans- 
lations, 140. 
his     opinion    of    conversational 
literature,  212. 
England,  ideal  of  a  liberal  educa- 
tion in,  84. 
reception  of  Whitefield  in,  68, 
English  aristocracy,  their  admira- 
tion of  Homer,  38. 
English  authors    and  people  con- 
trasted, 39. 
English  language,  its  debt  to  the 

Scriptures,  240. 
English     literature,    a    Christian 
literature,  IGG. 
a     literature     of    constitutional 

freedom,  1G7. 
a  Protestant  literature,  167. 
a  well-balanced  literature,  160. 
an  approximation  to  a  popular 

literature,  172. 
an  expression  of  composite  order 

of  mind,  1G2. 
character  of  it,  37-40. 
compared   with   ancient    litera- 
tures, IGl. 
compared  with  the  French  and 

German,  173. 
Dr.  J.  H.  Newman's  opinion  ol 

it,  1G7. 
European  opinion  of  it,  165. 
intrinsic  superiority  of  it,  160. 
its  claim  to  the  title  "  classic." 

150. 
its  oratorical  department,  174. 
leading  representatives  of  it,  138. 
maturity  of  it,  171. 
plan  of  a  pastor's  studies  of  it, 

.325. 
predominance  of  it  in  a  pastor's 

studies,  148. 
restriction  of   reading  to  it  de- 
fended,  148. 
English  mind,  character  of  it,  16.3. 
English  neglect  of   the  fine  arts, 

Canova's  explanation,  169. 
English    poetry,  grouping    of   the 

great  poets,  327. 
English  pulpit  compared  with  the 
French  and  German,  175. 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  291. 
English  Revolution  of  1648,  com- 
pared with  the  French  of  1789, 
170. 


346 


INDEX. 


Ensclish  Universities,  state  of  litera- 
ture when  tbey  were  founded, 
14!). 
Enthusiasm,  professional,  193. 
Episcopal  Church,  its   relation  to 
the  educated  classes,  04. 
its  litany  more  powerful  than  its 
pulpit,  05. 
Erasmus,    his    prejudice     against 
modern  languages,  292. 
his  satire  on  the  literary  autoc- 
racy of  Cicero,  202. 
Essay  and  oral  speech,  the  differ- 
ence illustrated,  221. 
opinion  of  Charles  James  Fox, 
221. 
Everett,  Edward,  his  rank  as  an 
orator,  180. 
his     description     of      Webster, 

283. 
compared  with  Stephen  A.  Doug- 
las, 10. 
Exclusive  church  illustrated,  80. 
Exclusive  churches  their  working 

and  its  results,  62. 
Exclusive  ministry,   consequences 
of  it,  if  general,  78. 
effect  on  churchly  distinctions, 

73. 
has  no  power  of  conquest,  73. 
its  loss  of  power  over  all  classes, 

61. 
weakness  of  it,  69. 
"Excursion,  The,"  Jeffrey's  criti- 
cism of  it,  101. 
Excursus  on  literary  affectations, 
195. 
on  the  contrast  between  biblical 

and  theological  forms,  257. 
on  the  difference    between    the 

essay  and  the  speech,  221. 
on  the  evil  of  self-depreciation  in 

composition,  305. 
on  the  New-England    theology, 

185. 
on  the  peril  of  wasted  life  in  the 

ministry,  112. 
on  the  selfish  ideal  of  a  scholarly 

life,  153. 
on  the  temptations  of  the  clergy 
to  narrow  culture,  207. 
Executive     miscellanies     of     the 
church,  315. 
skill  in  composition  a  high  art, 
102. 
"  Faerie  Queene,"  the,  its  obliga- 
tions to  the  Scriptures,  240. 
Familiarity  with  principles  of  effec- 
tive speech,  101. 


Fanaticism  founded  always  on  a 
truth,  51. 

Fanatics  not  benefited  by  preach- 
ers of  their  own  class,  6. 

Favorite  authors,  their  influence, 
105. 

Favorites  in  literature  to  be  read 
with  caution,  200. 

Fenelon,  his  use  of  the  ancient  class- 
ics, 303. 

Ferdinand,  king  of  Naples,  hia 
speech  to  the  rabble  in  sign- 
language,  219. 

Fiction,  the  clergyman  of  the  novel- 
ist, 24. 

Fine  arts  in  England,  Canova's 
opinion  of  them,  109. 

Foreign    languages,  study  of,  De 
Quincey's  opinion  of,  159. 
literatures  Anglicized,  157. 
literatures,  the  i^rejudice  in  favor 

of  them,  148. 
missions,  the  original  idea  of  con- 
ducting them,  152. 

Forgiveness,  nature  and  the  Scrip- 
tures contrasted  respecting  it, 
202. 

Foster,  John,  quotation  from  him, 
38. 

Fox,  Charles  James,  his  opinion  of 
the   difference   between   essay 
and  speech,  221. 
his  study  of  men,  87. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  his  hearing  of 
Whitefield,  99. 

Freedom  of   the  human  mind  in 
inspiration,  248. 
of  the  will,  its  subjection  in  his- 
toric creeds,  258. 

French  boarding-schools  criticised, 
153. 

French  literature,  137. 
the  influence  of  Voltaire  on  it, 

137. 
not  a  popular  literature,  173. 

Fronde,  James,  his  opinion  of  mak- 
ing    literature     a    profession, 
155. 
his  opinion  of  works  of  genius, 
40. 

Gasparin  of  Barziza,  his  study  of 
Cicero,  125. 

Germany,  infidel  reforms  in,  56. 
popular  revolutions  in,  55. 

German  literature,  leading  repre- 
sentatives of  it,  137. 
its  affectations,  Menzel's  opinion, 

197. 
not  a  popular  literature,  173, 


INDEX. 


347 


Gibbon,  Edward,  his  classification 
of  critics,  304. 
his  metliod  of  reading,  134. 
Goldsmith,  Oliver,  and  the  **  Lit- 
erary Club,"  200. 
Gray,  Thomas,  his  use  of  Spenser's 

"  Faerie  Queene,"  303, 
Greek  drama,   resemblances  of  it 
to  the  pulpit,  43. 
literature,  leading  representatives 

of  it,  138. 
pantomime,  its  intelligibility  and 
power,  219. 
Griffin,    Edward    Dorr,    his    early 

judgment  of  himself,  114. 
Growth  of  the  power  of  mental  ap- 
propriation, 324. 
Guizot,  Fran(;ois  Pierre,  his  criti- 
cism of  Shakspeare,  85. 
his    opinion     of    affectation    in 

French  literature,  197. 
his  opinion   of   the  French  and 
English  drama,  IGo. 
Gymnasia  of  Germany,  criticism  of 

the  Scriptures  in  them,  227. 
Hall,  Bishop,  his  thought  on  the 

sight  of  a  library,  310. 
Hall,  Robert,  his  criticism  of  his 
own  style,  272. 
his  servility  to  Dr.  Johnson  in 
his  youth,  202. 
Hamilton,   Sir   William,  his    diffi- 
culty in  composing,  308. 
Harvard  College,  its  earlj'  teaching 

of  the  sacred  languages,  227. 
Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  his  charac- 
ter in  his  works,  271. 
his  place  in  English  literature, 

138. 
theology  of  the  "Marble  Faun," 
262. 
Hebrew  jurisprudence,  its  antiqui- 
ty, 230. 
literature,     leading     representa- 
tives of  it,  137. 
lyric  poetry,  its  antiquity,  230. 
prophetic  literature,  its  antiquity, 

231. 
psalmodv,  its  influence  on  Eng- 
lish history,  242. 
psalmody,  its  influence  on  mod- 
ern hy'mnology,  241. 
Hellenistic    Greek    literature,    its 

leading  representatives,  137. 
Hengstenberg,  Ernst  W.,  his  sup- 
port of  despotic  re-action,  56. 
Henry,  Patrick,  his  motto  respect- 
ing studies,  17. 
his  methods  of  studying  men,  90. 


Henry  VIII.   of   England,   litera- 
ture during  his  reign,  330. 

Hercules,  the  torso,  97. 

Herbert,  George,  his  use  of  Latin 
quotations,  293. 

Holmes,  Dr.  O.  W.,  his  conversa- 
tional power,  213. 
the  origin  of   "The  Autocrat  of 
the  Breakfast-table,"  213. 

Homer's  "  Iliad,"  admiration  of  the 
Englisli  aristocracy  for  it,  38. 

Homely  literature,  215. 

Hooker,  Richard,  estimate  of  his 
relation  to  Englisli  prose,  331. 
his  judgment  of  himself  and  his 
adaptations,  319. 

Humboldt,  Alexander,  his  opinion 
of  William  Prescott,  180. 

Hymnology,  its  debt  to  the  Hebrew- 
psalmody,  241. 

"Hypochondriac"  pastor,  an  ex- 
ample, 80. 

Hysteria  in  revivals,  267. 

Ideal  of   the  studies  of   a  pastor 
necessary  to  any  plan  of  study, 
309. 
the  negative  value  of  an  ideal 
plan  of  study,  310. 

Ignorance  of  the  world  among  the 
clergy,  26. 

Illustrative  power,  want  of  it  in 
preaching,  285. 
excess  of  it  in  preaching,  286. 

Imitation  of  authors  in  disciplinary 
composition,  300. 

Impracticable  plans  of  study,  315- 
322. 

Incidents,  biographical,  illustrating 
rhetorical  principles,  3. 

Individual  character  is  power  in 
speech,  8. 

Infidelity  and  reform,  54. 
in  Germany,  and  re-actions  from 

it,  56. 
in  the  United  States,  its  debt  to 
the  Scriptures,  244. 

Influence,  clerical,  the  law  of  it, 
119. 

Inspiration,    its    bearing    on    the 
literary  merit  of  the  Scriptures, 
247. 
not  a  protection  against  literary 
defects,  247. 

Integrity  of  intellect,  199 

Intellectualism,  those  who  preach 
it  not  moved  by  it,  7. 

Intensity  of  biblical  thought,  249. 
of  moral  excitement  in  the  min- 
istry, 207. 


348 


INDEX. 


Jay,  William,  his  opinion  of  com- 
mittees, 318. 
Jeffrey,   Frauds,  his  criticism    of 

Words wortli,  101,  284. 
"Jerks,  the,"  in  the  religious  ex- 
citements of  the  West,  267. 
Jesuits,  their  theory  of  adaptation 

between  men  and  work,  111. 
Job,  the    Book   of,  its  antiquity, 

231. 
Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  and  the  "  Lit- 
erary Club,"  200. 
his  colloquial  power,  213. 
his  opinion  of  the  acquisitions  of 

the  ancients,  279. 
his  opinion  of  the  English  vocabu- 
lary, 171. 
his  opinion  of  the  habit  of  dogged 

composing,  307. 
his  reading  the  story  of  Ruth,  231. 
his  tyranny  over  a  class  of  minds, 
202. 
Jones,  Sir  William,  his  method  of 

composing,  303. 
Jugglers,  literary,  examples,  197. 
Juvenile  culture,  characteristics  of 
it,  194. 
tastes,  99. 
Knowledge,  literature  of,  distinct 

from  that  of  power,  129. 
Kentucky      Presbyterian      camp- 
meetings,  267. 
Laplace's  "Mechanique    Celeste" 
used  for  mental  quickening,  98. 
Lascari,  the,  of  Sweden,  264. 
Latin  and  English,  example  of  dis- 
proportion, 95. 
Latimer,  Bishop,  his  use  of  Latin 

forms,  291. 
Laymen,  their  criticism  of  the  pul- 
pit, 31. 
Leadership  in  reforms,  a  preroga- 
tive of  the  clergy,  52. 
a  question  of  dates,  57. 
delay  in  assuming  it,  54. 
often  assumed  by  infidelity,  54. 
should  be  assumed  early,  57. 
Leadership,  spiritual,  sacrificed  by 

neglect  of  it  in  reforms,  61. 
Leading   minds    in    history,   their 

study  of  men,  83. 
Liberality  of  profound  culture,  109. 
Liberty, '  the  English  a  literature 

of,'  167. 
Tancoln,   President,  his  assassina- 
tion, 28. 
quotation  from  him,  48. 
Literary  jugglers,  197. 
labor  and  literary  leisure,  98. 


Literature,  American,  an  offshoot 
of  the  English,  181. 
and  science  not  distinct  in  the 

term  "  models,"  97. 
homely  forms  of  it,  215. 
in  conversation,  212. 
not  technically  restricted,  137. 
not  made  for  the  masses,  36. 
of  power  and  of  knowledge,  164. 
of  the  past  and  of  the  future,  254. 
the  good  sacrificed  to  the  better, 

144. 
the  object  of  its  study  is  disci- 
pline, 98. 
the  preacher's  culture  like  that 

of  other  professional  men,  97. 
theology  liberalized  by  it,  142. 
unwritten,      its      representative 

character,  217. 
unwritten,  should  be  studied,  211. 
unwritten,   the    magnitude    and 
variety  of  it,  212. 
Locke,  John,  his  plan  of  govern- 
ment for  the  Carolinas,  322. 
Lord's  Supper,  the  disuse  of  it  in 

some  churches,  71. 
Lytton,   Bulwer,   his  advice   to   a 

young  author,  11. 
Macaulay,  T.  B.,  his  opinion  of  cer- 
tain political  instruments,  259. 
his  opinion  of  rhetorical  study, 

92. 
his    opinion    of    revolutions    in 
England,  170. 
Mackintosh,   Sir  James,  his  judg- 
ment of  young  men,  123. 
Macpherson's    "Ossian,"   its    first 

influence,  229. 
"Madoc,"  Southey's  opinion  of  its 

composition,  306. 
"  Marble  Faun,"  its  doctrine  of  sin, 

262. 
Marot,   Clement,  influence   of   his 

hymns,  242. 
Marsh,  Dr.  G.  P.,  his  opinion  of 
original  races  of  Britain,  163. 
his    opinion    of   vernacular  lan- 
guages, 151. 
Masses,  the,  exclusion  of  authors 
and  readers  from  them,  37. 
in  the  time  of  Addison,  37. 
literature  not  made  for  them,  36. 
"Mayflower,  The,"  a  poem  in  act, 

179. 
Mental  integrity,  199. 

servility,  202. 
Menzel,  \Yolfgang,  his  opinion  of 
affectation   in   German  litera- 
ture, 197. 


INDEX. 


349 


Menzol,  "Wolfgang,  his  opinion  of 

bad  books,  128. 
Mctbods  of  a  pastor's  study,  209. 
Methodism,  its  ancient  spirit  im- 
paired, 79. 
Middle  ages,  the   ideal  of  educa- 
tion in  them,  84. 
Milton,  John,  Burke's  early  criti- 
cism of  him,  105. 
his  abandonment  of  his  journey 

to  Athens,  155. 
his  use  of  the  Greek  classics,  303. 
Wordsworth's  criticism  of  him, 
140. 
Ministry,  an  aggressive,  36. 

an  inefficient,  34. 
Mirabeau,  his  study  of  men,  87. 
Miscellanies  of  the  Church  a  hin- 

derance  to  study,  315. 
Misjudgments  of  one's  self,  121. 
Mission  chapels  a  doubtful  device, 

79. 
Missions,  foreign,  the  original  idea 

of  conducting  them,  152. 
Mistakes  in  the  choice  of  a  profes- 
sion, 112. 
Models,  extension  of  the  term,  96. 
not  limited  to  literature  as  dis- 
tinct from  science,  97. 
superior  to  rhetorical   treatises, 
104. 
"  Moderate"  ministry  of  the  Church 

of  Scotland,  209. 
Montgomery,  James,  his  edition  of 

Cowper's  hymn,  275. 
Moody,  evangelist,  68. 
Moral  virtues  necessary  to  success 

in  study,  320. 
Naples,  speech  of  King  Ferdinand 

in  the  language  of  signs,  219. 
Napoleon,  his  study  of  men,  88. 
his  opinion  of  the  Eastern  races, 
236. 
National  literatures,  exclusive,  con- 
trasted with  the  pulpit,  41. 
Negro  congregations,  their  criticism 

of  preachers,  66. 
New-England  Colonies,  absence  of 
large  libraries,  186. 
independent  character  of  the  col- 
onies, 185. 
theology  constructed  by  preach- 
ers, 187. 
theology    molded    by   religious 

awakenings,  188. 
not  Calvinism,  189. 
originality  of  it,  184. 
"  New  School  "  and  "  Old  School " 
theology  in  New  England,  185. 


New  Testament,  the  sale  of  the  re. 
vised  version,  239. 

Newman,  Dr.  J.  II.,  his  opinion  of 
English  literature,  167. 

Niebuhr,  his  opinion  of  affectation 
in  German  literature,  197. 

Novalis's  deiinition  of  painting, 
99. 

Numbers  the  chief  idea  in  the  di- 
vine estimate  of  man,  52. 

Objects  of  the  study  of  books,  96. 

Oblique  usefulness,  115. 

"  Old  Mortality,"  71. 

Opinions  and  culture,  their  relation 
to  each  other,  109. 

Opposites  in  literary  character, 
sympathy  with  them,  108. 

Optimism  and  Pessimism  illustrat- 
ed, 20. 

Oral  address  and  essay,  difference 
illustrated,  221. 
address  not  fully  represented  in 

print,  218. 
eloquence  disappointing  to    the 
next  generation,  219. 

Orator,  spokesman  of  his  hearers, 
217. 
the  first  in  the  order  of  time,  1. 

Oratorical  culture,  the  sources  of 
it,l. 
study,  opinions  adverse  to  it,  92. 

Oriental  civilization,  its  relation  to 
the  Scriptures,  232. 
mind,  its  future  destiny,  235. 
races  not  dying  out,  233. 

"  Ossian,"  its  first  influence  on  Eng- 
lish literary  taste,  229. 

Oxford  University,  preaching  in 
the  time  of  Queen  Elizabeth, 
331. 

Painting,  American  artists  in  Italy, 
299. 

Pantheon,  a  symbol  of  the  pulpit, 
42. 

Pantomime,  its  power  in  Greek  and 
in  Italian  usage,  219. 

Park,  Dr.  E.  A.,  his  Shakspeare 
Club,  208. 

Parker,  Theodore,  his   character, 
246. 
his  leading  ideas,  247. 
his  obligation  to  Christian  civili- 
zation, 246. 

Parliament,  English,  use  of  classic 
quotations,  182. 

Partisanship  in  culture  outgrown, 
109. 

Pascal,  Blaise,  his  change  of  profes- 
sion, 113. 


350 


INDEX. 


Pastoral  duty  auxiliary  to  the  pul- 
pit, 9. 
Pastors,  examples  of   scholarship 

among  them,  311. 
Pathological   phenomena   in  revi- 
vals, 267. 
Pedantry  in   sermons  illustrated, 

291. 
Perfunctory  preaching,  23,  24. 
Perpetuity  of  great  authors,  139. 
Persistence    in    difficult   composi- 
tion, 307. 
Personal    history,    neglect    of,   by 

preachers,  5. 
Pessimism  and  Optimism  illustrat- 
ed, 20. 
Philosophical    criticism,   its  effect 
on  juvenile  opinions,  276. 
method  of  reading,  273. 
servitude,  20i. 
Physiological   laws,  their  relation 

to  national  minds,  162. 
"  Pilgrim's  Progress,  The,"   early 

reception  of  it  in  England,  51. 
Plagiarism,  199. 

Plans  of  study  necessarily  ideal, 
309. 
negative  value  of  ideal  plans,  310. 
Plato  and  Aristotle  one  in  final  in- 
fluence, 108. 
Plato,  his  travels,  84. 
Pliny,  his  opinion  on  hooks,  145. 
Pocock,  Edward,  criticism  on  his 

preaching,  293. 
Poetry,     American    aad  English, 
compared,  179. 
English,  grouping  of  authors,  327. 
in  action,  179. 

mistaken  self-estimates  concern- 
ing it,  116. 
Police,  superintendent  of,  his  opin- 
ion of  the  clergy,  26. 
Political  preaching,'^27,  28. 
Pope,  Alexander,  De  Quincey's  es- 
say on  him,  164. 
his  use  of  Dryden,  303. 
obligation  of  "The  Messiah"  to 
the  Scriptures,  240. 
Popular  idea  of  a  clergyman,   21, 
26. 
literature,  none  exists,  36. 
mind,  its  unsettled  state,  49. 
revolutions  begin  in  lower  class- 
es, 45,  46. 
revolutions,  independent  of  the 

upper  classes,  44. 
revolutions,  relations  of  the  cler- 
gy to  them,  49-61. 
rights  balanced  by  duties,  53. 


Portraits  of  character  in  the  pul- 
pit, unreal,  26. 
Power,  literature  of,  distinguished 

from  that  of  knowledge,  164. 
Powers    of    control   in   literature, 
135. 
designated,  137. 
enumerated,  136. 
Practicability  of  study  to  a  pastor, 
309. 
examples,  311. 

some  plan  made  practicable,  314. 
not  conflict  with  study  of  men, 
313. 
Preacher,  his  experience  as  a  listen- 
er, 4. 
his  need  of   knowledge    of   the 

speech  of  the  people,  216. 
his  profession  and  life  in  conflict, 

24. 
often    deficient    in    illustrative 

power,  285. 
sometimes  excessive  in  illustra- 
tive power,  286. 
Preaching,  abstract,  72. 
direct,  29. 
essays,  223. 

in  times  of  excitement,  35. 
of  the  Reformers,  290. 
on  the  atonement,  262. 
pedantry  in,  291. 
side-issues,  72. 
to  the  church  and  to  the  ungodly, 

30. 
unphilosophical  methods  of  it,  6. 
untimely  forms  of  it,  72. 
Prescott,  \Villiam,  his  affection  for 
his  library,  304. 
his  opinion  of  the  "  Inferno,"  147. 
his  reading,  143. 

Humboldt's  opinion  of  him,  180. 
Present  age,  depreciation  of  it,  18. 
Priesthood  and  ministry  distinct, 

54. 
Priestly  notion  of  the  clergy,  22. 
Private  judgment,  the  right  of  it 
exercised  in  New  England,  186. 
Principles  of   speech,  unconscious 

use  of  them,  102. 
Probation  the  leading  idea  of  hu- 
man life,  31. 
Profession,  mistake  in  the  choioe 

of  one,  112. 
Professional  duties,  their  relation 
to  a  pastor's  studies,  192. 
enthusiasm,  193. 
reading    central    in    a   pastor's 

studies,  256. 
vigilance,  313. 


INDEX. 


J351 


Professions,  the,  and  literature,  155. 

Dr,  Arnold's  opinion,  155. 

Fronde's  opinion,  155. 
Proportion    between    ancient    and 
modern  classics,  150. 

biblical  projiortions  of  truth  tend 
to  equipoise,  2G7. 

in  preachiMf;  to  the  church  and  to 
the  world,  30. 

in  reading,  143. 

of    executive    power   to    critical 
taste,  208. 

of  rebuke  and  commendation  in 
preaching,  30. 

of  truth  in  the  Scriptures,  259, 
2GG. 

of  truth,  the  distortion  of  it  in 
revivals,  2GG. 
Pulpit,  American,  180. 

American,  question  of  its  decline, 
181. 

amount  of  literature  in  it  annu- 
ally, 239. 

and  pew,  the  distance  between 
them  widening,  27. 

compared  with  meetings  for  con- 
ference, 214. 

English,  as  related  to  the  drama, 
320. 

English,  at  the  restoration  of  the 
Stuarts,  321. 

English,  at  the  time  of  the  revo- 
lution of  1G88,  332. 

English,   in  the  reign  of  Eliza- 
beth, 330. 

French  and  German,  compared 
with  English,  175. 

idiosyncrasy  of  ,it,  42. 

its  policy  in  times  of  inquiry,  59. 

not  designed  for  select  audiences, 
42. 
Puritan  theology  of  New  England 
compared  with  that  of  Holland, 
184. 
"Queen  Mab,"  its  debt  to  Chris- 
tian ideas,  243. 
Quotation  restricted,  198. 
Quotations  by  Bishop  Latimer,  291. 

by    contemporaries    of    Jeremy 
Taylor,  292. 

by  George  Herbert,  293. 

from  Greek  and  Latin  authors, 
292. 

classic,   in    the    English    Parlia- 
ment, 182. 

classic,  in  United-States  Senate, 
182. 
Races  intermingled  in  Great  Brit- 
ain, 162. 


Reading,  breadtli  of  range  in  it,  194. 
classes  of  England,  37. 
collateral,  289. 
difference  between  it  and  study, 

270. 
for  mental  quickening,  examples, 

303. 
philosophically,  illustrated,  273, 
philosoi)hically,  necessary  to  ex- 
plain anomalies,  274. 
preliminary  to  composition,  301. 
variety  useless,  if  not  scholarly, 

194. 
with  generous  judgment  of  au- 
thors, 303. 
with  self-appreciation,  303. 
Real  life  the  medium  of  revealing 

truth,  18. 
Rebuke,  the  mission  of,  29. 
Recapitulation  of  the  argument  on 

the  study  of  men,  94. 
Reed,  Professor  Henry,  his  defini- 
tion of  literature,  130. 
his  meditations  on  libraries,  134. 
his  opinion  of  belles-lettres,  192. 
his  spirit  in  criticism,  .304, 
Reform,  biblical  reform  temperate, 
252. 
philosophy  of  it,  58. 
Reformation,  the,  preaching  of  the 

Reformers,  289. 
Representative  character  of  unwrit- 
ten literature,  217. 
Resemblances  in  literature,  282. 
Responsibility  of  man,  unscriptural 

modes  of  preaching  it,  2G0. 
Restoration  of  the  Stuarts,  state  of 

the  pulpit  at  the,  331. 
Restorationism,  increase  of  faith  in 

it,  59. 
Retribution,  biblical  and  scientific 
forms  of  the  doctrine,  260. 
effect    of     Spurgeon's     way     of 

preaching  it,  294. 
popular  opinions  on  the  doctrine 
revised,  59. 
Revision  of  the  New  Testament, 

its  sale,  239. 
Revival  of  letters,  125. 
Revivals,  books  on  them,  15. 
clergy    who    ignore    or    oppose 

them,  12,  IG. 
docility  in  the  study  of  them,  16. 
foreshadowed,  59. 
inquiries  respecting  them,  14. 
not  provincial,  11. 
pathological  affections  in  them, 

267. 
philosophy  of  them,  13. 


352 


INDEX. 


Revivals,  sought    for   by  unphilo- 
sophical  expedients,  6. 
study  of  tliem,  14. 
the  biblical  proportions  of  truth 

best  adapted  to  them,  266. 
value  of  them  to  the  Church,  16. 
EeviA'alists,  study  of  their  biogra- 
phies, 14. 
Revolution  of  1688,  English  pulpit 

at  that  time,  332. 
Revolutions,  the  divine  law  of  their 

working,  47,  48. 
Rhetorical  treatises,  adverse  opin- 
ions of  them,  92,  94. 
Right  and  left  hands  physiologically 

equal,  205. 
Rights,  popular,  balanced  by  duties, 

53. 
Robertson,  Frederick,  his  opinion 

of  President  Edwards,  190. 
Rogers,  Henry,  on  j)lans  of  reading, 

127. 
Roman   literature,  leading   repre- 
sentatives of  it,  137. 
Ruskin,  John,  his  description  of  a 

false  taste,  205. 
Sachs,     Hans,    influence    of    his 

hymns,  242. 
Sandys,  Bishop,  chaplain  to  Queen 

Elizabeth,  331. 
Satan,  his  mental  unity  a  cause  of 

his  power,  321. 
Scandinavian  literatures,their  place 
in  comparison  with  others,  161. 
Schiller,  Coleridge's  translations  of 

his  dramas,  147. 
Scholarship,  universal,  131. 
Scholasticism  in  the  pulpit,  32. 
Schoolmen,  great  men  not  such, 

141. 
Scotland,  her  pulpit  in  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  209. 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  circulation  of  his 
books,  39. 
his  experience  in  composing,  297. 
his  ideal  of  life  at  Abbotsford, 

154. 
his  opinion  of  Campbell,  305. 
his  opinion  of  common  people, 

90. 
his  opinion  of  literary  society,  89, 

215. 
his  study  of  men,  88. 
origin  of  the  "  Lay  of  the  Last 

Minstrel,"  107. 
the  authorship  of  "Waverley," 
273. 
Seclusion  of  the  clergy,  22. 
literary,  unhealthiness  of  it,  216. 


Secular  assemblies,  their  subjection 
to  eloquent  speech,  9. 
parson  described,  24. 
Selection  of  books,  128. 
Self-appreciation,  123. 

and  self-distrust,  305. 
Self-educated  men,  122. 
Self-distrust  of  Thomas  Campbell, 

305. 
Self-estimates,     errors     in    them, 

117. 
Selfishness,  literary,  153. 
Sensationalism,  ignorance  of  those 

who  crave  it,  65. 
Serial  preaching  on  the  Catechism, 

266. 
Servitude  to  philosophical  schools, 

204. 
Shakspeare  Club  in  the  Andover 
Seminary,  208. 
German  criticism  of  him,  165. 
his  ideal  of  woman,  241. 
his  study  of  men,  85. 
not  a  universal  genius,  200. 
Shelley,  Percy  B.,  effect  of  "  Chris- 
tabel "  upon  him,  107. 
his  resemblance  to  Titian,  283. 
indebtedness  of   "Queen  Mab" 
to  the  Scriptures,  243. 
Sheridan,    Richard   B.,   compared 

with  Burke,  284. 
Side-issues  in  preaching,  72. 
Similitudes  of  genius,  283. 
Simplicity  in  preaching  approved 

by  the  best  hearers,  64. 
Sin,  heathen  and  biblical  ideas  of 
its  forgiveness  contrasted,  261. 
Slavery,  American,  history  of  the 

controversy,  46. 
Southey,  Robert,  a  quotation  from 
him,  132. 
his   advice   respecting   composi- 
tion, 299,  306. 
his  criticism  on  "  Madoc,"  306. 
his  dependence  on  the  pen  for 
thought,  296. 
Sovereignty  of  God,  biblical  and 
scientific  ways  of  preaching  it, 
260. 
Spenser,    Edmund,    debt   of    the 
"  Faerie  Queene  "  to  the  Scrip- 
tures, 240. 
Spiritualism,  an  illustration  of  it, 
60. 
its  relation  to  popular  opinions 
of  retribution,  60. 
Spurgeon,  Charles  H.,  his  severe 
preaching  and  its  effect,  260, 
294. 


INDEX. 


353 


stereotype-plates,  opinion  of  them 

by  publishers  at  first,  39. 
Stothard,  Tlioiuas,  his  professional 

vigilance,  313. 
Stowe,  H.  B.,  her  rank  as  a  novel- 
ist, 180. 
Stuart,  Professor  Moses,  his  early 
judgment  of  himself,  114. 
his    early    poverty   of   thought, 

296. 
his  habits  of  reading  and  study, 
270. 
Stuarts,  restoration  of,  state  of  the 

pulpit  at  that  time,  331. 
Study    of   men,    examples  in  the 
practice  of  eminent  men,  83-92. 
preacher's  study  of  his  own  mind, 

3. 
preacher's  study  of  other  men,  8. 
Studies  of  a  pastor,  an  independent 
plan  necessary,  321. 
a  scholastic  plan  not  pertinent, 

322. 
encouraged  by  the  certainty  of 

growth,  324. 
habits  of  certain  European  pas- 
tors, 311. 
ideal  plan  necessary,  309. 
limitations  of  them,  133. 
negative  value  of  an  ideal  plan, 

310. 
practicability  of  them,  309. 
rapid  study  practicable  in  middle 

life,  324. 
so  conducted  as  to  admit  of  in- 
terruptions, 323. 
so  conducted  as  to  secure  concen- 
tration, 323. 
Style,  relative  value  of   strength 
and  beauty,  284. 
variety  and  excellence  of  it  in 
the  Scriptures,  253. 
Suffering  classes,  adaptation  of  the 

pulpit  to  them,  30. 
Sumner,  Charles,  contrasted  with 
Stephen  A.  Douglas,  10. 
his  use  of  classic  quotations,  182. 
Sweden,    catechetical  instruction, 
263. 
the  lascari,  264. 
Symmetry  of  culture,  285. 
of  culture  necessary  to  courage, 

20. 
of  the  biblical  system  of   truth, 
253. 
Sympathetic  character  of  high  cul- 
ture, 201. 
Table-talk,  its  value  in  many  fami- 
lies, 212. 


Tasso  Torquato,   his   self-distrust, 

299. 
Taste,  a  superlative  faculty,  100. 
its  working  in   mental   culture, 

101. 
not  virtue,  100. 
Ruskiu's  description  of   a  false 

taste,  205. 
without  executive  skill,  103. 
Tastes,  clerical,  demoralized,  41. 
juvenile,  99. 
natural,  not    to   be   suppressed, 

288. 
overgrown,  287. 
Taylor,   Jeremy,   pedantry  in  the 

pulpit  of  his  times,  293. 
"  Thanatopsis,"  its  indebtedness  to 

the  Scri])tures,  240. 
Theology,    biblical    and    scientific 
forms  of  it,  256. 
influence    of  literary  culture  in 

liberalizing  it,  142. 
of  New-England  original,  184. 
Third  class  of  minds  between  the 

church  and  the  world,  73. 
Tholuck,  Professor  F.  A.,  his  opin- 
ion of  Prussian  pastors,  314. 
Tillotson,    Archbishop,    Dryden's 

use  of  his  works,  104. 
Town-meeting   of   New   England, 
its  principle  suggested  by  Je- 
thro,  230. 
Translations,    Coleridge's  transla- 
tions of  Schiller,  147. 
the  reading  of  them  defended, 

147. 
use  of  them  by  R.  W.  Emerson, 
146. 
Tyndale,  William,  debt  of  the  Eng- 
lish Church  to  him,  330. 
Types  of  preaching,  denomination- 
al diversity  of  them,  210. 
Unity  of   discourse,  want  of  it  at 
the  Reformation,  290. 
of  spirit  necessary  to  success  iu 
study,  321. 
Universal  scholarship  a  fiction,  131. 
Untimely  preaching,  72. 
Unwritten  literature,  its  represen- 
tative character,  217. 
magnitude  and  variety  of  it,  212. 
should  be  studied,  211. 
crises  in  history  create  it,  213. 
Utah,  preaching  in,  28. 
Vacations,    reading    of   fiction  in 

them,  327. 
Variety  in  reading,  194. 
necessary  to  perfection  of  knowl* 
edge,  201. 


354 


INDEX. 


Variety  in  reading  useless,  if  not 
scholarly,  194. 
valuable  for  its  own  sake,  200. 
Vernacular    language.    Dr.  G.  P. 
Marsh's  opinion  of  it,  151. 
literature,  the  claims  of  it  to  as- 
cendency, 151. 
Vinci,  Leonardo  da,  his  fastidious 

taste,  298. 
Vocabulary,    English,   Dr.    John- 
son's opinion  of  it,  171. 
Voltaire,    his    influence    on    the 
French  literature,  137. 
his  influence  on  the  French  reva- 

lution,  170. 
his  use  of  Massillon,  303. 
"Walpole,    Horace,  his  opinion  of 

antiquarian  libraries,  129. 
"Wasteful  reading,  143. 
"Waste  of  power  in  the  pulpit,  31. 
"Watts,  Dr.  Isaac,  his  hymn  on  the 

atonement,  31. 
"Waverley  novels,  discovery  of  their 

authorship,  273. 
Webster,  Daniel,  his  imitation  of 
John  Adams,  301. 
his  use  of  the  Scriptures,  242. 
preaching  criticised  by  him,  64. 


Whitefield,     George,     disappoint- 
ment in  reading  his  sermoriS, 
220. 
his  study  of  men,  91. 
reception   of   him   in    England, 
68. 
Wickliffe,  John,  his  place  in  the 
history  of  the  English  pulpit, 
329. 
Wordsworth,  William,  a  quotation 
from,  31,  1G8,  241. 
**  Ode  on  Immortality,"  its  debt 

to  the  Scriptures,  241. 
his  opinion  of  English  literature, 

140. 
his  opinion  of  Milton,  140. 
his  reply  to  Jeffrey,  101. 
Jeffrey's  criticism  of  him,  101. 
the  debt  of  "  The  Excursion  "  to 
the  Scriptures,  241. 
World,  distinction  between  it  and 

the  Church,  70,  73. 
Young  men,  the  world  predisposed 

to  favor  them,  308. 
Youth,  the  consciousness  of  proba- 
tion begins  early,  31. 
"Zurich  Letters,"  no  such  volume 
in  New  England,  186. 


CHRISTIAN   EVIDENCES  AND 
HOMILETICS. 


THE  GROUNDS  OF  THEISTIC  AND  CHRISTIAN  BELIEF.     By 

Prof.    GEORGE    P.     FISHER,    D.D.,    LL.D.,     Professor    of 

Ecclesiastical  History  in  Yale  College.    C»-own  8vo,  $2.50. 

FROM  THE  PREFACE.—"  TMs  volume  embraces  a  discussion  of  the  evidence^ 

of  both  natural  and  revealed  religion.    Prominence  is  given  to  topics  having 

special  interest  at  present  from  their  connection  with  modern  theories  and  diffl- 

culties.     The  argument  of  design,  and  the  bearing  of  evolutionary  doctrines 

on  its  validity,  are  fully  considered.    I  have  sought  to  direct  the  reader  into  lines 

of  reflection  which  may  serve  to  impress  him  with  the  truth  contained  in  the 

remark  that  the  strongest  proof  of  Christianity  is  afforded  by  Christianity  itself, 

and  by  Christendom  as  an  existing  fact.    I  venture  to  indulge  the  hope  that  they 

may  derive  from  it  some  aid  in  clearing  up  perplexities,  and  some  new  light  upon 

the  nature  of  the  Christian  faith  and  its  relation  to  the  Scriptures." 

JULIUS  H.  SEELYE,  Presiclent  of  Amherrt  College.— "I  find  it  as  I  should  ex- 
pect it  to  be,  wise  and  candid,  and  convincing  to  an  honest  mind.  I  congratulate 
you  upon  its  publication,  in  which  you  seem  to  me  to  have  rendered  a  high 
public  service." 

PROF.  JAMES  O.  MURRAY,  o/Prtricefon  CoZZpcre.—"  The  volume  meets  here 
a  great  want,  and  meets  it  well.  It  is  eminently  fitted  to  meet  the  honest  doubta 
of  some  of  our  best  young  men.  Its  fairness  and  candor,  its  learning  and  ability 
In  argument,  its  thorough  handling  of  modern  objections— all  these  qualities  fit  it 
for  such  a  service,  and  a  great  service  it  is." 

ESSAYS  ON  THE  SUPERNATURAL  ORIGIN  OF  CHRISTIAM- 
ITY.  By  Prof.  GEORGE  P.  FISHER,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  Professor 
of  Ecclesiastical  History  in  Yale  College.  8vo,  new  and 
enlarged  edition,  $2.50. 

THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW.— "Able  and  scholarly  essays  on  the  Super- 
natural Origin  of  Christianity,  in  which  Prof.  Fisher  discusses  such  subjects  as 
the  genuineness  of  the  Gospel  of  John,  Baur's  view  of  early  Christian  History  and 
Literature,  and  the  mythical  theory  of  Strauss." 

THE  NEW  YORK  TRIBUNE.—"  His  volume  evinces  rare  versatility  of  intellect, 
with  a  scholarship  no  less  sound  and  judicious  in  its  tone  and  extensive  in  its 
attainments  than  it  is  modest  in  its  pretensions." 

THE  BRITISH  QUARTERLY  REVIEW.— "We  know  not  where  the  student  will 
find  a  more  satisfactory  guide  in  relation  to  the  great  questions  which  have  grown 
up  between  the  friends  of  the  Christian  revelation  and  the  most  able  of  its  assail' 
IHits,  within  the  memory  of  the  present  generation." 


CHARLES  SCPJBNER'S  SONS' 


THE  PHILOSOPHIC  BASIS  OF  THEISM.  An  Examination  of  the 

Personality  of  Man,  to  Ascertain  his  Capacity  to  Know  and 
Serve  God,  and  the  Validity  of  the  Principle  Underlying  the 
Defense  of  Theism.  By  SAMUEL  HARRIS,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  Pro- 
fessor of  Systematic  Theology  in  Yale  College.    8vo,  $3.50. 

Dr.  Harris  embodies  in  his  work  the  results  of  his  long  meditation 
on  the  highest  themes,  and  his  long  discussion  and  presentation  of 
these  truths  in  the  class-room.  His  fundamental  positions  are  thor- 
oughly in  harmony  with  soundest  modem  thought  and  most  trust- 
worthy modem  knowledge. 

THE  INDEPENDENT.— "It  is  rare  that  a  worS,  which  is  of  necessity,  so 
severely  metaphysical  In  both  topics  and  treatment,  is  so  enlivened  by  the 
varied  contributions  of  a  widely  cultivated  mind  from  a  liberal  course  of 
readinj^.  His  passionate  and  candid  argument  cannot  fail  to  command  the 
respect  of  any  antagonist  of  the  Atheistic  or  Agnostic  schools,  who  will  take 
the  pains  to  read  his  criticisms  or  to  review  his  argument.  In  respect  to  cochiess 
and  dignity  and  self-possession,  his  work  is  an  excellent  model  for  scientists, 
metaphysicians,  and  theologians  of  every  complexion." 

THE  HARTFORD  COURANT.—" Professor  Harris'  horizon-hnes  are  uncon- 
tracted.  His  sm-vey  of  the  entire  realm  he  traverses  is  accurate,  patient,  and 
considerate.  No  objections  are  evaded.  No  conclusions  are  reached  by  saltatory 
movcmenta.  The  utmost  fairness  and  candor  characterize  his  discussions.  No 
more  thoroughly  scientific  work  In  plan  or  method  or  spirit  has  been  done  in  our 
time.  On  almost  every  page  one  meets  with  evidences  of  a  wide  and  reflec- 
tive reading,  not  only  of  philosophy,  but  of  poetry  and  fiction  as  well,  which 
enriches  and  illumines  the  whole  course  of  thought." 

THE  SELF-REVELATION  OF  GOD.  By  SAMUEL  HARRIS, 
D.D.,  LL.D.,  Professor  of  Systematic  Theology  in  Yale  Col" 
lege.    8vo,  S3. 50. 

In  this  volume  Dr  Harris  presents  a  statement  of  the  evidence  of 
the  existence  of  God,  and  of  the  reality  of  His  revelation  of  Himself 
in  the  experience  or  consciousness  of  men,  and  the  verification  of  the 
same  by  His  further  revelation  of  Himself  in  the  constitution  and 
ongoing  of  the  xiniverse,  and  in  Christ. 

PROF.  WM.  G.  T.  SHEDD,  D.D.,  in  TTie  Presbyterian  Review.— "Such  a 
work  is  not  brought  out  in  a  day,  but  is  the  growth  of  years  of  professional  study 
and  reflection.  Few  books  on  apologetics  have  been  recently  produced  that  will 
be  more  influential  and  formative  upon  the  mind  of  the  theological  or  philosophi- 
cal student,  or  more  useful.  It  is  calculated  to  influence  opinions,  and  to  influence 
them  truthfully,  seriously,  and  strongly." 

BISHOP  HURST,  in  The  Korthwestem  Christian  Advocate.— "Wq  do  not  )sxiO^ 
a  better  work  among  recent  publications  than  ttiis  one  for  building  up  old  hopes 
and  gi\ang  a  new  strength  to  one's  faith.  The  book  is  thoroughly  evangelic, 
fresh,  and  well  wrought  out.  It  is  a  valuable  contribution  to  our  American 
Oieology." 


STANDARD    TEXT  BOOKS, 


THE  THEORY  OF  PREACHING;  or,  Lectures  on  Homiletics. 
By  Professor  AUST.N  PHELPS.    8vo,  S2.50. 

This  work  is  the  growth  of  more  than  thirty  years'  practical  ex- 
perience in  teaching.  The  writings  of  a  master  of  style,  of  broad  and 
catholic  mind  are  always  fascinating  ;  in  the  present  case  the  wealth 
of  appropriate  and  pointed  illustration  renders  this  doubly  the  case. 

THE  NEW  YORK  CHRISTIAN  ADVOCATE.-"  Ministers  of  aU  denominatiDns 
and  of  all  degrees  of  experience  will  rejoice  In  It  as  a  veritable  mine  of  wisdom." 

THE  INDEPENDENT.—"  The  vclume  Is  to  te  coniimeiidcd  to  young  men  as  a 
superb  example  of  the  art  in  w'alch  it  aims  to  instruct  tiicm." 

THE  WATCHMAN —"The  reading  of  it  is  a  mental  tonic.  The  preacher 
cannot  but  feel  often  his  heart  burning  within  him  under  its  inQuence.  V\'e  could 
wish  it  might  be  in  the  handa  of  every  theological  student  and  of  every  pastor." 

MEN  AND  BOOKS;  OR,  STUDIES  IN  HOMILETICS.  Lectures 
Introductory  to  the  "Theory  of  Preaching."  By  Professor 
AUSTIN  PHELP3,  D.D.    Crown  8vo,  32.00. 

Professor  Phelps'  second  volume  of  lectures  is  devoted  to  a  dis- 
cussion of  the  sources  of  culture  and  power  in  the  profession  of  the 
pulpit,  its  power  to  absorb  and  appropriate  to  its  own  uses  the  world 
of  real  life  in  the  present,  and  the  world  of  the  past,  as  it  lives  in 
books. 

PROFESSOR  GEORGE  P.  FISHER.— "It  l3 a  live  book,  animated  as  well  as 
sound  and  instructive,  in  which  conventionalities  are  brushed  aside,  and  the 
author  goes  straight  to  the  marrow  of  the  subject.  No  minister  can  read  it 
without  being  waked  up  to  a  higher  conception  of  the  possibilities  of  his  calling." 

B03T0N  WATCHMAN.—"  We  arc  cure  that  no  minister  or  candidate  for  the 
ministry  can  read  it  without  profit.  It  is  a  tonic  for  one's  mind  to  read  a  book  so 
laden  with  thought  and  suggestion,  and  written  in  a  style  so  fresh,  strong,  and 
bracing." 

A  TREATISE  ON  HOMILETICS  AND  PASTORAL  THEOLOGY. 
By  W.  G.  T.  SHEDD,  D.D.    Crown  8vo,  S2.50. 

In  this  work,  treating  of  the  main  points  of  Homiletics  and  Pastoral 
Theology,  the  author  handles  his  subject  in  a  masterly  manner,  and 
displays  much  original  and  highly  suggestive  thought.  The  Homileti- 
cal  part  is  especially  valuable  to  ministers  and  those  in  training  for  the 
ministry.  Dr.  Shedd's  style  is  a  model  of  purity,  simplicity  and 
strength. 

THE  NEW  YORK  EVANGELIST.—"  We  cannot  but  regard  it  as.  on  the  whole, 
the  very  best  production  of  the  kind  with  whicii  we  are  acquainted.  The  topics 
dlBcussed  are  of  the  first  importance  to  every  minister  of  Christ  engaged  in  active 
service,  and  their  discussion  u  conducted  by  earnestness  as  well  as  ability,  and  in 
a  style  which  for  clear,  vigorous,  and  unexceptionable  English,  is  itself  a  model.* 

THE  CHRISTIAN  INTELLIGENCER.— "The  ablest  book  on  the  subject  whicii 
tlie  generation  has  produced." 


CHURCH    HISTORY. 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRSSTIANITY.  With  a  View  of  tho 
State  of  the  Roman  World  at  the  Birth  of  Christ.  By 
GEORGE  P.  FISHER,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  Professor  of  Church 
History  in  Yale  College.    8vo,  S2.50. 

THE  BOSTON  ADVERTISER.— "  Prof.  Flsher  has  displayed  in  tliia,  as  in  his 
prevloii3  publlaiied  writings,  that  catholiciry  and  that  calm  judicial  quality  of 
mind  which  are  so  indispensable  to  a  true  historical  critic." 

THE  EXAMINER.— "The  volume  is  not  a  dry  repetition  of  well-known  facts. 
It  bears  th3  marks  of  original  research.  Every  pa._e  glows  with  freshness  of 
material  and  choiceness  of  diction." 

THE  EVANGELIST.— "The  volume  contains  an  amount  of  information  that 
makes  it  one  of  the  most  useful  of  treatises  for  a  Gtadcnt  in  phi:os:pl:y  and 
theology,  and  must  secure  for  it  a  place  in  his  library  as  a  standard  authoiity." 

HISTORY  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH.  By  GEORGE  P. 
FiSHER,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  Professor  of  EccleGiasiical  History  in 
Yale  University,    Cvo,  with  numerous  maps,  S3  50. 

This  work  is  in  several  respects  notable.  It  gives  an  able  presenta- 
tion of  the  subject  in  a  single  voluine,  thus  supplying-  the  need  of  a 
complete  and  at  the  same  time  condensed  survey  of  Church  History. 
It  will  also  be  found  much  broader  and  more  com.prehensive  than  other 
books  of  the  kind.     The  following  will  indicate  its  aim  and  scope. 

FROM  THE  PREFACE.— "There  are  two  particulars  in  which  I  have  sought 
to  make  the  narrative  specially  serviceable.  In  fac  first  place  the  attempt  tas 
been  made  to  exhibit  fully  the  relations  of  the  hiatory  of  Christianity  and  of  the 
Church  to  contemporaneous  secular  history.  *  *  *  i  have  tried  to  bring  out 
more  distinctly  than  us  usually  done  tho  interaction  of  events  and  changes  in  the 
poUtical  sphere,  with  the  phenomena  which  belong  more  strictly  to  the  ecclesiasti- 
cal and  religious  province.  In  the  cecond  place  it  has  seemed  to  me  possible  to 
present  a  tolerably  complete  survey  of  the  history  of  theological  doctrine.    *    «    • 

"  It  has  appeared  to  me  better  to  express  frankly  the  conclusions  to  which  my 
Investigations  have  led  me,  on  a  variety  of  topics  where  differences  of  opinion 
exist,  than  to  take  refuge  in  ambiguity  or  dlence.  Something  of  the  dispassionate 
temper  of  an  onlooker  may  be  expected  to  result  from  historical  studies  if  long 
pursued ;  nor  is  this  an  evil,  if  there  is  kept  alive  a  warm  sympathy  with  the  spirit 
of  holiness  and  love,  wherever  it  is  manifest. 

"As  this  book  is  designed  not  for  technical  students  exclusively,  but  for  intel- 
ligent readers  generally,  the  temptation  to  enter  into  extended  and  minute  diacuic 
Biona  on  perplexed  or  controverted  topics  has  been  resisted." 


STANDARD    TEXT  BOOKS. 


HISTORY  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH.  By  PHILIP  SCHAFF, 
D.D.  New  Edition,  re-written  and  enlarged.  Vol.  I.-Apoc- 
tolic  Christianity,  A.D.  1-100.  Vol.  ll.~AntG-Nicene  Chris- 
tianity, A.D.  100-325.  Vol.  Ill.-Nicene  and  Post-Nicene 
Christianity,  A.D.  311-600.  Vol.  IV.-Mediaeval  Christianity, 
A.D.  590-1073.    8vo,  price  per  vol.,  $4.00. 

This  work  is  extremely  comprehensive.  All  subjects  that  properly 
belong  to  a  complete  sketch  .ire  treated,  including  the  history  of  Cbris- 
tian  art,  hyranolog-y,  accounts  of  the  lives  and  chief  works  of  the 
Fathers  of  the  Church,  etc.  The  great  theological,  christological,  and 
anthropological  controversies  of  the  period  are  duly  sketched  ;  and  in 
all  the  details  of  history  the  organizing  hand  of  a  master  is  distinctly 
Been,  shaping  the  mass  of  materials  into  order  and  system. 

FROF.  GEO.  p.  FISHER,  of  Yale  College.— '•Dr.  Scl^aff  haa  tHoroughly  and 
Buccessfully  accompUshcd  Ws  task.  The  volumes  are  replete  with  evidencea  of  a 
careful  study  of  the  original  sources  and  of  an  extraordinary  and,  we  might  say, 
uasurpa33cd  acquaintance  with  the  modern  literature— German,  French,  and 
English— in  the  department  of  ecclesiastical  history.  They  are  equally  marked  hy 
a  fail-minded,  conBcientioua  spirit,  as  well  as  by  a  lucid,  aaimated  mode  of 
presentation." 

PROF.  ROSWELL  D.  HITCHCOCK,  D.D.— "In  no  other  single  work  of 
Its  kind  with  which  I  am  acquainted  will  students  and  general  readers  find  so 
much  to  instruct  and  interest  them." 

DR.  JUL.  MULLER,  of  Halle— "It  is  the  only  history  of  the  first  six  cen- 
turies which  truly  satisfies  the  wants  of  the  present  age.  It  is  rich  in  results  of 
original  investigation." 

HISTORY  OF  THE  CHURCH  OF  CHRIST,  IN  CHRONOLOGI- 
CAL TABLES.  A  Synchronistic  View  of  the  Events,  Charac- 
teristics, and  Culture  of  each  period,  including  the  History  of 
Polity,  Worship,  Literature,  and  Doctrines,  together  with  two 
Supplementary  Tables  upon  the  Church  in  America;  and  an 
Appendix,  containing  the  series  of  Councils,  Popes,  Patri- 
archs, and  olher  Bishops,  and  a  full  Index.  By  the  late 
HENRY  B.  SMITH,  D.D.,  Professor  in  the  Union  Theologi- 
cal Seminary  of  the  City  of  New  York.  Revised  Edition. 
Folio,  $5.00. 

REV.  DR.  W.  G.  T.  SHEDD.— "  Prof.  Smith's  nistorlcal  Tables  are  the  best 
that  I  know  of  in  any  language.  In  preparing  such  a  work,  with  so  much  care  and 
research.  Prof.  Smith  has  furnished  to  the  student  an  apparatus  that  will  be  of 
life-long  service  to  him" 

REV.  DR.  WILLIAM  ADAMS.-" The  labor  expended  upon  such  a  work  la 
Immense,  and  Its  accuracy  and  completeness  do  honor  to  tae  rcseaich  ana 
Bcholarship  of  its  author,  and  are  an  Invaluable  acquisition  to  our  Uterature." 


CHARLES  SCBTIlXEn'S  SONS' 


LECTURES  ON  THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  JEWISH  CHURCH.  By 
ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY,  D.D.  With  Maps  and  Plans. 
New  Edition  from  New  Plates,  with  the  author's  latest  revis- 
ion. Part  I.— From  Abraham  to  Samuel.  Part  II.— From 
Samuel  to  the  Captivity.  Part  III.— From  the  Captivity  to 
the  Christian  Era.  Three  vols.,  12mo  (sold  separately),  each 
$2.00. 

The  same— Westminster  Edition.  Three  vols.,  8vo  (sold  in  sets 
only>,  per  set,  $9.00. 

LECTURES  ON  THE   HISTORY  OF  THE  EASTERN   CHURCH. 

With  an  introduction  on  the  Study  of  Ecclesiastical  History. 
Gy  ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY,  D.D.  New  Edition  from 
New  Plates.    12mo,  $2.00. 

LECTURES  ON  THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  CHURCH  OF  SCOT- 
LAND. By  ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY,  D.D.  8vo,  $1.50. 

In  all  that  concerns  the  external  characteristics  of  the  scenes  and 
persons  described,  Dr.  Stanley  is  entirely  at  home.  His  books  are  not 
dry  records  of  historic  events,  bnt  animated  pictures  of  historic  scenes 
and  of  the  actors  in  them,  while  the  human  motives  and  aspects  of 
events  are  brought  out  in  bold  and  full  relief. 

THE  LONDON  CRITIC— "Earnest,  eloquent,  learned,  with  a  style  that  la 
never  monotonous,  but  luring  tlirougti  Its  eloquence,  the  lectures  will  maintain 
his  fame  as  author,  scholar,  and  divine.  We  could  point  out  many  passages  that 
glow  with  a  true  poetic  fire,  but  there  are  hundreds  pictorially  rich  and  poetically 
true.  The  reader  experiences  no  weariness,  for  in  every  page  and  paragraph 
there  is  something  to  engage  the  mind  and  refresh  the  soul." 

THE  NEW  ENGLANDER.—"  We  have  first  to  express  our  admiration  of  the 
grace  and  graphic  beauty  of  his  style.  The  felicitous  discrimination  in  the  use 
of  language  which  appears  on  every  page  is  especially  required  on  these  topics, 
where  the  author's  position  might  so  easily  be  mi3taken  through  an  unguarded 
statement.  Dr.  Stanley  is  possessed  of  the  prime  quality  of  an  historical  student 
and  writer— namely,  the  historical  feeUng,  or  sense,  by  which  conditions  of  life 
and  types  of  character,  remote  from  our  present  experience,  are  vividly  con- 
ceived  of  and  truly  appreciated." 

THE  N.  Y.  TIMES.— "The  Old  Testament  History  is  here  presented  as  it 
never  was  presented  before  ;  with  so  much  clearness,  elegance  of  style,  and  his- 
toric and  literary  illustration,  not  to  speak  of  learning  and  calmness  of  judgment, 
that  not  theologians  alone,  but  also  cultivated  readers  generally,  are  drawn  to  its 
pages.  In  point  of  style  it  takes  rank  with  Macaulay's  History  and  the  best 
chapters  of  Froude." 


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