success which springs from thy presence! Pour into their hearts the spirit of departed heroes! Inspire them with thine own; and while led by thine hand, and fighting under thy banners, open thou their eyes to behold in every valley and in every plain, what thy prophet beheld by the same illumination-chariots of fire and horses of fire! Then shall the strong man be as tow, and the maker of it as a spark; and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them."

In the Funeral Sermon for the Princess Charlotte there are several soaring passages. The following is one of the most striking :

"What, my brethren, if it be lawful to indulge such a thought, what would be the funeral obsequies of a lost soul? Where shall we find the tears fit to be wept at such a spectacle? or, could we realise the calamity in all its extent, what tokens of commiseration and concern would be deemed equal to the occasion? Would it suffice for the sun to veil his light, and the moon her brightness; to cover the ocean with mourning, and the heavens with sackcloth? or were the whole fabric of nature to become animated and vocal, would it be possible for her to utter a groan too deep, or a cry too piercing, to express the magnitude and extent of such a catastrophe?"

Another of his most celebrated flights occurs in the magnificent sermon on 'The Glory of God in Concealing.'

Pathos. We remarked that Jeremy Taylor describes the miseries of human life more as a poet than as a preacher of morality. Hall was opposed to this on principle. He thought that the preacher should endeavour not so much to be tender and touching, as to stir his hearers to virtuous action. He distinguishes clearly the pathetic and the practical treatment of distress :

"There are kinds of distress founded on the passions, which, if not applauded, are at least admired in their excess, as implying a peculiar refinement of sensibility in the mind of the sufferer. Embellished by taste, and wrought by the magic of genius into innumerable forms, they turn grief into a luxury, and draw from the eyes of millions delicious tears. Nor can I reckon it among the improvements of the present age, that, by the multiplication of works of fiction, the attention is diverted from scenes of real to those of imaginary distress; from the distress which demands relief, to that which admits of embellishment: in consequence of which the understanding is enervated, the heart is corrupted, and those feci ings which were designed to stimulate to active benevolence are employed nourishing a sickly sensibility. . . Though it cannot be denied th by diffusing a warmer colouring over the visions of fancy, sensibility is oft a source of exquisite pleasures to others, if not to the possessor, yet never be confounded with benevolence.

A good mar nothing of it; a bad man may have it in abundance."

Wherever, therefore, Hall describes scenes of mise in such a way as to "stimulate to active benevolence no attempt to diffuse over them the warmer colourin from the eyes of millions delicious tears." His wellof the horrors of war is an example.

Besides, his genius inclined much more to subli

pathos. In the Funeral Sermon for the Princess Charlotte, from which we have already given a quotation, he passes lightly over the affecting aspects of death, dilates in magnificent strains on such collateral themes as the grandeurs of eternity, and exhibits "the uncertainty of human prospects, and the instability of earthly distinctions," as considerations to "check our presumption, and appal our hearts."

And again, for purposes of pathos, his diction is too Latinised: language can hardly be touching unless it is simple. His frequent use of controversial forms is peculiarly jarring, when the theme is of a tender nature. Take for example his 'Reflections on the Inevitable Lot of Human Life.' He begins in a determined tone, as if he meant to overbear a very obstinate opponent—“ There is nothing better established by universal observation, than that the condition of man upon earth is less or more an afflicted condition: 'Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward."" Throughout the sermon the melancholy train of reflection is harshly broken by these disputatious turns of expression. Thus-"If we are tempted to repine at seeing others in peace and prosperity, while we are harassed and distressed, we form a most inadequate and premature judgment. Their period of trial will arrive," &c. In expressing the pathos of pious confidence he introduces the same fatal intellectual hardness. The effect of the following passage is destroyed by the two clauses marked in italics-a chilling limitation, and a no less lowering comparison :

"That the Lord reigns, is one of those truths which lie at the very basis of piety; nor is there any more consoling. It fills the heart, under a right impression of it, with a cheerful hope and unruffled tranquillity, amidst the changes and trials of life, which we shall look for in vain from any other quarter."

The last sentence should have been expressed in some such way as follows:

"Amidst the changes and trials of life, it fills the heart with cheerful hope and unruffled tranquillity."

KINDS OF COMPOSITION.

Persuasion. Hall's Latinised diction and argumentative forms were against his popularity as a preacher. How it came about that he was popular in spite of these drawbacks is explained by John Foster:

"There was a remission of strict connection of thought towards the conclusion, where he threw himself loose into a strain of declamation, always earnest, and often fervid. This was of great effect in securing a degree of favour with many, to whom so intellectual a preacher would not otherwise

have been acceptable; it was this that reconciled persons of simple piety and little cultivated understanding. Many who might follow him with very imperfect apprehension and satisfaction through the preceding parts, could reckon on being warmly interested at the end."

On the whole, however, his was not a style of preaching that was likely to have much practical effect on the conduct of his hearers. He was much too general both in his exaltation of virtue and in his denunciation of vice. John Foster relates that after a sermon on the sin and absurdity of covetousness, one of the hearers observed to another-"An admirable sermon-yet why was such a sermon preached? For probably not one person in the congregation, though it is not wanting in examples of the vice in question, would take the discourse as at all applicable to himself." "Too many of the attendants," says Foster, "witnessed some of the brightest displays rather with the feeling of looking at a fine picture than of being confronted by a faithful mirror; and went away equally pleased with a preacher that was so admirable, and with themselves for having the intelligence and taste to admire him."

"It appeared a serious defect in Mr Hall's preaching, that he practically took on him too little of this responsibility of distinguishing degrees of Christian virtue. In temporary oblivion of the rule that theoretic description should keep existing fact so much in view that a right adjustment may be made between them, he would expatiate in eloquent latitude on the Christian character, bright and full-orbed' in all its perfections, of contempt of the world, victory over temptation, elevated devotion, assimilation to the divine image, zeal for the divine glory, triumphant faith, expansive charity, sanctity of life; without an intimation, at the time or afterward, that all this, so sublime if it were realised, so obligatory as the attainment toward which a Christian should be, at whatever distance, aspiring, is yet unhappily to be subjected, on behalf of our poor nature, to a cautious discussion of modifications and degrees; especially when the anxious question comes to be, What deficiencies prove a man to be no Christian?"

OTHER WRITERS.

THEOLOGY.

About the beginning of this period the Evangelical movement inaugurated by Wesley and Whitefield among the lower classes, began to make itself powerfully felt in higher circles. One of its chief leaders was Charles Simeon (1759-1836), appointed vicar of Trinity Church in Cambridge in 1782. Simeon was, in the face of very bitter opposition, an energetic preacher of evangelical doctrine, and a generous patron of pious young men, such as Henry Martin and Henry Kirke White. He bore the chief part in originating the missionary schemes of the English Church. His 'Hora Homiletica' (complete in 21 vols., 1832) is a repre

sentative exposition of evangelical views. -Another representative work of this school of religious thought, of a more popular character, is Wilberforce's 'Practical Christianity,' published by the great agitator for the abolition of the Slave Trade in 1797This work has gone through fifty editions in England and America, and has been translated into several European languages.

To the same school belonged the brothers Milner, -Joseph Milner (1744-1797), vicar of Hull, and Isaac Milner (1751-1820), Senior Wrangler, Master of Queen's College, and Dean of Carlisle, two sturdy-minded natives of Yorkshire, who raised themselves from humble life. The History of the Church' was begun by the elder brother in 1794, and finished by the younger in 1812. Isaac Milner is said to have been the means of converting Wilberforce to evangelical piety, and he was an honoured member of the society that we have already mentioned as influencing the youth of Macaulay.

With these may be linked, as an Evangelical of a different type, John Foster (1770-1843), a Baptist clergyman, a friend of Robert Hall's, known in general literature as a writer of essays. Foster was far from having Hall's reputation as a preacher: he was a reserved kind of man, and his power lay more exclusively with the pen. The best known of his essays, which have passed through many editions, is one "On Decision of Character." He cultivated originality both in thought and in expression. His command of language and illustration is copious, but his style has a want of flow, an air of labour. He repeats an idea again and again, but the successive repetitions do not, like the varied expression of Chalmers, make the meaning more and more luminous; they often burden rather than illuminate the general reader, and they strike the critic as a laboured exercise in the accumulation of synonyms and similitudes.

We may place in another group the divines that engaged deeply in politics. Chief among these (excluding Bishop Horsley, who remained during the first half of this period the Jupiter of Conservative Churchmen) stands Dr Samuel Parr (1747-1825), known in his day as the Whig Samuel Johnson, but by the present generation hardly distinguished from the founder of "Parr's Life Pills." Parr was a man of unquestionable ability, and the oblivion that has overtaken his name is due to his having left no great work on any great subject. His fame rested upon two accomplishments, both perishable foundations,-Latin scholarship and powers of conversation. His pre-eminence in Latin composition was universally acknowledged: although a Whig, he was selected to write the epitaphs of Johnson and of Burke. His powers of conversation are attested by evidence equally unequivocal: although he held no higher station than the curacy of Hatton, he

was received at the tables of the Whig nobility, and corresponded with "nearly one-half of our British peerage, and select members of the royal family." His talents secured this admission to high life in spite of a rude dogmatic manner, a homely person, and eccentricity in the matter of dress. Besides this indirect evidence of his social acceptability, we have the direct evidence of Johnson, whom the lesser Samuel imitated in the rudeness of his manner"Sir," he said to Langton, "I am obliged to you for having asked me this evening. Parr is a fair man. I do not know when I have had an occasion of such free controversy." With all this it is strange that Parr never received the coveted distinction of a bishopric: the explanation probably is that his chief patron, Fox, died just as the Whigs came into power, and that his other friends in high circles were not so indulgent to his arrogant eccentricities and classical licence of personal invective. His style was grandiloquent to an extravagant extreme. De Quincey speaks of "his periodic sentences, with their ample volume of sound and selfrevolving rhythmus ;" and of "his artful antithesis, and solemn anti-libration of cadences." And Sydney Smith, who reviewed his 'Spital Sermon' in the first number of the Edinburgh Review,' characterises the style as follows: "The Doctor is never simple and natural for a single instant. Everything smells of the rhetorician. He never appears to forget himself, or to be hurried by his subject into obvious language. Every expression seems to be the result of artifice and intention; and as to the worthy dedicatees, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, unless the sermon be done into English by a person of honour, they may perhaps be flattered by the Doctor's politeness, but they can never be much edified by his meaning. Dr Parr seems to think that eloquence consists not in an exuberance of beautiful images-not in simple and sublime conceptions-not in the language of the passions; but in a studious arrangement of sonorous, exotic, and sesquipedal words."

Another clergyman and politician, more successful in the world than Parr, was Richard Watson (1737-1816), successively Second Wrangler at Cambridge, Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Divinity, and Bishop of Llandaff. In politics he was a moderate Whig; he vindicated the principles of the French Revolution at the outset, but in 1798 he issued 'An Address to the People of Great Britain, warning them of the danger which the French Revolution taught them.' He also wrote An Apology for Christianity,' in reply to Gibbon; and An Apology for the Bible,' in reply to Paine. His own orthodoxy was suspected. He was an exceedingly ambitious man, and although more than once in his life he received undeserved promotion, yet in his autobiography he is indignant that the Whigs did not prefer him to a more lucrative see.-Watson's anti-revolutionary address was fiercely commented