INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE PREACHER.

THE remark has been often made, that a scholar of but moderate powers can be more certain of a livelihood in the profession of divinity, than in that of law or physic. It is said that men are more willing to intrust the care of their souls, than of their bodies or estates, to incompetent pretenders. In order to attain eminence at the bar, a man must analyze with great care the principles of ethics and jurisprudence, must be familiar with the intricate windings of the human heart, must be well versed in the history of nations as well as individuals, must retain in his memory a multitude of statutes and precedents, must be capable of intense mental application to an individual case for a long time, must be calm amid the excitement of all around him, must think amid noise and confusion, must be ready for emergencies, for sudden rejoinder and repartee, for extemporaneous analysis and invention, as well as unpremeditated speech. But in order to succeed in the ministry, it is said, no more intellectual effort is required than to understand a number of truths in which the way-faring man, though a fool, need not err; to pen homilies in the retirement of the study; to read them without the perils of being interrupted and confused or perhaps refuted by antagonists; to go from house to house, uttering mild and sweet words to men, women and children. Thus has an opinion gone abroad that the clerical profession makes a less imperative demand than the legal, upon the energies of the mind and will. It is recorded of certain men, that "being of a weakly habit," they were set apart for the church. Some eminent politicians have entered upon active life as clergymen, but have abandoned their sacred vocation, because they deemed its sphere of activity too low and small. Young men of promise often turn away from the ministry, because it seems to demand of them a sacrifice of mental excellence. "Marrying and christening machines" have the clergymen of certain churches been called, not without some coloring of truth. dull as a sermon," has become a proverbial phrase. In the memoir of an eminent preacher we read the following words, which he addressed in a

"As

letter to a friend: "I am so used to writing sermons, that I have prosed away here most unconsciously." But it was a sagacious remark made by Robert Hall to his fellow-clergymen: "The moment we permit ourselves to think lightly of the Christian ministry, our right arm is withered: nothing but imbecility and relaxation remains. For no man ever excelled in a profession to which he did not feel an attachment bordering on enthusiasm; though what in other professions is enthusiasm, is in ours the dictate of sobriety and truth.”

In order to form a proper estimate of the worth and grandeur of the preacher's office, it is well to consider the influence which he exerts upon the community. It is often said, that the effects which he produces afford no argument in favor of the office which he holds; for every man and every event may be the occasion of results which no finite mind is able to comprehend. The genius of Robert Hall received no inconsiderable aid from the conversation of a tailor. A single leaf from Boston's Fourfold State, found and perused by an individual in Virginia, led to the small gathering at "Morris's Reading House," and to the preaching of Robinson in that house, and to the assistance of Samuel Davies in his education for the ministry, and to the subsequent employment of this "prince of preachers" in the vicinity of that same reading house, and to the long-continued results of his labors in the region which was first enlightened by a leaf from the "Fourfold State." But from the circumstance that all things are important in their operation upon society, it were singular to infer that the Christian ministry is not important. The agency of many causes is, in the common language, accidental; that of the pulpit is the uniform operation of known laws. It is a prominent agency, attended with consequences peculiarly extensive, and meliorating the state of man more directly than is done by other causes-more uniformly and more radically.

The preacher has an influence upon the intellect of his hearers. He presents to it the most enlivening and enlarging thoughts; and nothing takes so deep a hold of the reasoning powers as the series of proofs which he may enforce. The mind is invigorated by grappling with the objections that have been urged against the omniscience and goodness of God, the responsibility of man, the whole scheme of moral government. A sermon, if it be in good faith a sermon, reaches the very elements of the soul, and stirs up its hidden energies; for such a sermon is a message from God; is pregnant with what the mind was made for-the solemn realities of eternity; is prolific, if need be, in stern and skillful argument, holds out a rich reward to man's desire of mental progress, and allures, as well as urges, to an intense love of study. It is a book of mental discipline to its hearers, and its author is a schoolmaster for children of a larger growth. A late professor in one of our universities, who has been

famed throughout the land for his effective eloquence at the bar and on the floor of Congress, says that he first learned how to reason while hearing the sermons of a New England pastor, who began to preach before he had studied a single treatise on style or elocution; and two or three erudite jurists, who dislike the theological opinions of this divine, have recommended his sermons to law students as models of logical argument, and affording a kind of gymnastic exercise to the mind. It is thus that one of the most modest of men, while writing his plain sermons, was exerting a prospective influence over our civil and judicial tribunals. The pulpit of a country village was preparing speeches for the Congress of the nation. The discourses and treatises of such divines as Chillingworth* and Butler have been often kept by lawyers and statesmen, on the same shelf with Euclid and Lacroix. Patrick Henry lived from his eleventh to his twenty-second year in the neighborhood of Samuel Davies, and is said to have been stimulated to his masterly efforts by the discourses of him who has been called the first of American preachers. He often spoke of Davies in terms of enthusiastic praise, and resembled him in some characteristics of his eloquence.t

The minister's influence is upon the taste, as well as intellect. There is a kind of mystic union among all the virtues and excellences of the head and heart. A golden chain seems to bind them together, and when one link is gained all the rest are drawn along with it. Thus there is a strange tie between the sense of right and the sense of beauty, between the good and the elegant. The preacher holds out before his congregation the choicest models of all that can please the taste; of that

Chillingworth is the writer whose works are recommended for the exercitations of the student. Lord Mansfield, than whom there could not be a more competent authority, pronounced him to be a perfect model of argumentation. Archbishop Tillotson calls him "incomparable, the glory of his age and nation." Locke proposes, "for the attainment of right reasoning, the constant reading of Chillingworth; who, by his example," he adds, "will teach both perspicuity and the way of right reasoning, better than any book that I know; and therefore will deserve to be read, upon that account, over and over again; not to say any thing of his arguments." Lord Clarendon, also, who was particularly intimate with him, thus celebrates his rare talents as a disputant: "Mr. Chillingworth was a man of so great subtilty of understanding, and of so rare a temper in debate, that as it was impossible to provoke him into any passion, so it was very difficult to keep a man's self from being a little discomposed by his sharpness and quickness of argument and instances, in which he had a rare facility and a great advantage over all the men I ever knew. He had spent all his younger time in disputation; and had arrived at so great a mastery, as he was inferior to no man in these skirmishes." Chillingworth has been named, for the reasons above assigned, as eminently calculated to subserve the purposes of mental discipline, for the student. He need not, however, be the only one: the subtle and profound reasonings of Bishop Butler, the pellucid writings of Paley, the simplicity, strength, and perspicuity of Tillotson, may all be advantageously resorted to by the student anxious about the cultivation of his reasoning faculties."-See Warren's Law Studies, §§ 153, 154,

160.

+ See Davies' Sermons, vol. i., p. xliv. Stereotyped ed.

spiritual comeliness which is the archetype of whatever is graceful and refined in nature or art. By winning his hearers to what is beautiful and grand in religious truth, he fosters the love of those lower excellences that are but the shadowings forth of the good things in heaven. In many minds he cherishes a taste for the elegances of Addison and Gray and Cowper and Wordsworth, and encourages that sense of honor, that interest in heroic deeds, that reverence for genius and worth, in fine, all those amiable sentiments, which are allied with a due appreciation of the beauties of nature and art.

Working, as the preacher does, upon the mental sensibilities, he of course modifies the literary character of a people. Whitefield made so little pretension to scholarship, that men often smile when he is called the pioneer of a great improvement in the literature of Britain. They overlook the masculine and transforming energy of the religious principle, when stirred up, as it was, by his preaching against the pride and indulgences and selfishness of men. They forget that influence often works from the lower classes upward; and that when the mass of men become intellectual, the higher orders must either become so, or must yield their supremacy. Whatever operates deeply on the soul of the humblest mechanic, will modify the character of the popular literature. The sermons of a parish minister are the standard of taste to many in his society; his style is the model for their conversation and writing; his provincial and outlandish terms they adopt and circulate; and his mode of thinking is imitated by the school-teacher and the mother, the merchant and the manufacturer. You can see the effects of his chaste or rude style in the language of the plowboy and the small-talk of the nursery. He has more frequent communion than other literary men with the middle classes of the people, and through these his influence extends to the higher and the lower. He is the guardian of the language and the reading of the most sedate portions of society; and in their families are trained the men of patient thought and accurate scholarship. His influence on the popular vocabulary is often overlooked, and is not always the same; but he often virtually stands at the parish gate, to let in one book and keep out another; to admit certain words and to exclude certain phrases, and to introduce or discard barbarisms, solecisms, impropriety and looseness of speech. The sermons of Leighton, South, Howe, Bates, Atterbury and Paley, show somewhat of the extent to which the literature of England is indebted to her priesthood. When Lord Chatham was asked the secret of his dignified and eloquent style, he replied that he had read twice, from beginning to end, Bayley's Dictionary, and had perused some of Dr. Barrow's sermons so often, that he had learned them by heart. Dryden "attributed his own accurate knowledge of prose writing, to the frequent perusal of Tillotson's works." "Addison regarded them as the chief standard of our language, and actually pro