ances in this country; but if they perform here as they do in France and Italy, the indecency of some of their dancing feats ought not to be endured a moment.--We have great reason to rejoice in our privileges. No country on earth is so free, and none will be so happy as we may be, if we can resist the corruptions of the old world. But the rage for imitating foreign nations in all that is bad, as well as in what is commendable, presents to us very gloomy prospects. Vicious examples introduce vicious principles and corrupt practices, and corrupt morals will speedily undermine our government. We are departing from the principles and manners of our ancestors with appalling rapidity. 0.

For the Christian Spectator.

LONG SERMONS.

MR. EDITOR,-Having just return ed from hearing a long sermon, (it being a week-day occasion) I feel disposed to trouble you with a remark or two, though in so doing I may seem to convict myself of an unbecoming listlessness in the house of God. As one who has reflected much and observed more on the subject, let me say that in my opinion long religious services generally do not edify the hearers. "Where weariness begins, devotion ends." So says the proverb, and most proverbs, as they speak the general experience of mankind, speak truth. "But what!" says one; "do you bid us straiten the word of truth that we may indulge our hearers' sloth?" Apologies and arguments I know are not wanting for the practice I object to; yet they will be found I think to partake more of theory than of experience. Sluggishness is I am aware a prevailing sin in the Lord's house; and it may be difficult to know how far regard should be had to it in the performance of religious

duties. Yet, plainly, to fatigue is not to edify. Your preaching and your prayers cease to profit when they cease to be listened to; and if you would do your people good, you must in some degree shape your discourses to the circumstances in which you find themshivering with cold, or relaxed with heat, or drowsy from fatigue, or afflicted with bad nerves-there are many such in this dyspeptic age to whom an hour's discourse or a long prayer is scarcely tolerable.

I am not for Cowper's preachers. Every word of Cowper's satire fell on heads that well deserved it. But there is a medium in things, and one extreme may be practically no better than another. "Fifteen minutes" are too short indeed; yet fifteen minutes may be better than five times fifteen, if your hearers wish your sermon done half an hour before it is done. Nay, leaving the patience of your hearers out of the question, fifteen minutes of dense and well digested thought is better for edification than a more diffuse discourse spun out to a great length.

There are certain occasions, when my readers generally will, I think, admit that the grievance of which I speak is not without foundation. Such, particularly, are ordinations, religious anniversaries, and other seasons of special public interest. Ordination sermons are very commonly too long. Many of the hearers are fatigued with the distance they have come; the house is often uncomfortably crowded; the other services are numerous, and often protracted, and not unfrequently rendered the more wearisome by their anticipating one another. The same remarks apply with augmented force to anniversaries. Most of our great religious anniversaries come in clusters; meetings, sermons, addresses, &c. are multiplied, and if the first meeting be fatiguing, the second will be tedious, the third thinly attend

ed, and the fourth nearly deserted. But the evil is a great deal worse where it is an habitual and ordinary thing. If attention flags through the prolixity of the speaker on an occasion of more than common interest, it is scarcely to be expected that an ordinary congregation will not grow listless under a preacher who is tedious from week to week. I speak from knowledge; for it has been my lot to sit under the ministry of such an one as I have mentioned. He was so habitually prolix that his hearers were generally weary before he began. During his prayers, which were seldom less than three quarters of an hour long, you might see the congregation sitting or reclining in all postures save those of devotion; and when he named his text, they seemed like people who sit down in pensive resignation to wait for the river to run by.

Where then is the wisdom of wearing out one's life with writing long sermons only to wear out one's congregation with hearing them? Merely to transcribe the weekly discourses of some ministers would leave an amanuensis not much time for idleness; and when to this is added the mental labour of preparing them, it is no matter of surprise that we meet with so many broken constitutions in the sacred profession. How much better were it to redeem a portion of time then from the confinement and drudgery of so much writing for more profitable thinking, as well as for relaxation, and for the various pastoral duties. I do not encourage indolence. On the contrary, while I would abridge the mechanical labour of a minister's preparations for the pulpit, I would have his mental labour increased. Short sermons are not necessarily the result of small pains. much easier to spread out a given quantity of thought into a large space than to compress the same given quantity into a small compass. He understood this who remarked 1826.-No. 9.

of a certain old voluminous author, that the quantity of his writings was no proof of his having been a laborious man: better evidence of this he would have given, if he had condensed his score of folios into one. But condensing is always against nature, a forced process, whether you would condense matter or mind; and this is the great secret of tediousness in most public performances.

If now, in conclusion, you shall ask me what I consider the proper length ordinarily for a sermon, I cannot answer you in minutes. It will vary with circumstances: on some subjects, before some congregations, at some seasons, you may profitably protract your discourse beyond what would be expedient in different circumstances. But in all cases, that sermon, or that prayer, or that oration, is too long, which leaves its hearers weary and glad when it is done. Your best measure is the medium patience, physical and mental, of your audience, and generally perhaps, those discourses which are continued much beyond thirty minutes are partially lost upon the hearers. LAOS.

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Does Mr. Smyth intend by this insinuation, that theism shall have no public and avowed advocates or conductors of its religion? For

my part, I am always willing to separate the faults which may attach themselves to advocates of any system from the system itself, which they advocate; and I think it is one of the highest advantages attaching to Christianity, that it makes provision for public advocates of it to explain and defend its truths before all nations, and guide their multitudes in the rites of its public and social worship. In this very respect, it has an advantage over theism, which it will always retain, so long as professed theists will not allow to their own system public and devoted advocates, and ninisters. Let Mr. Smyth acknowlege that this particular institution of Christianity gives to it one of the strongest holds on the human mind, and knowing its power, let him attach it also to theism ; let him become himself, a priest at her altars, and send forth priests to collect parents and households to to hear her dictates and bow before her throne, in assembled congregations, and I should have more hopes of theism. When something like this is done, theists will give to the world greater proofs, than they have yet given, that they in reality deem their religion true and most important of all religions to be embraced by their fellowmen. When this is done, and theism shall have had her thousand priests scattered over the nations and for centuries, there will be a fair opportunity of comparing the history of her public advocates with the public advocates of Christianity not to intimate any thing respecting the character of the few who have already appeared in the world as the supporters of theism. Till then, it will be in vain to carp at the public advocates of a system who have had at least, the honesty and devotedness to stand forth to the world as its defenders, and conductors of its rites. We shall wait for this period, before

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we hearken to the vain outcries of theists against the priesthood of Christianity.

THE CANADA Bugle.

For the Christian Spectator. A REVIEWER of the sermons of the celebrated French preacher Bridaine, in the Christian Observer, taking occasion to censure the Catholic intolerance which Bridaine sometimes exhibited, turns to administer the same reproof to his own church. As the reviewer's admonition may be salutary to some who set up the same exclusive claims for a "primitive and apostolic church" in this country, you will probably oblige your readparagraph. ers by transcribing the following E. R.

"But while we justly censure the intolerant spirit of the RomanCatholic Church, let us not forget that intolerance is not the vice of that church alone, but of human nature itself. Has our own church been always free from this antichristian spirit? and do we not owe it far more to the growing freedom of our political institutions than to the liberality of some churchmen, that we have not in this age to lament the scenes which darkened the days of Charles the Second, of Laud, and even of Elizabeth? Have we not heard divines of our own times attributing to the Church of England prerogatives little short of those claimed by Rome; and charitably consigning the Dissenters from it to "the uncovenanted mercies of God?" And are we sure that in the temper and conduct of that party which in this and the sister kingdom assumes to itself emphatically the designation of Protestant, there have not too often been displayed the worst fruits of that proud, exclusive, and persecuting spirit, which constitutes the lasting reproach of Popery?"

A Volume of Sermons, designed to be used in Religious Meetings, when there is not present a Gospel-Minister. By DANIEL A. CLARK, A. M., late Pastor of the First Church in Amherst, Mass. pp. 328, 8vo. Amherst; Carter & Adams.

HAVING read the preface to this volume, we paused to indulge in some desultory reflections which arose in our minds. "I have long believed," says the author, "that sermons of a distinguishing character, and in a popular dress, having point, and pungency of application, are very much needed in the American churches."

"In every other department of learning new efforts are perpetually made, and every fascination of style and argument employed to render interesting the art or science that it is feared may languish; and why not carry the same wisdom into the church of our Lord Jesus Christ." The minister of Hatton Garden tells us that, "it hath appeared to him, from more than ten year's observation, that the chief obstacle to the progress of divine truth over the minds of men is the manner in which it is presented to them;" and there are not a few on this side of the Atlantic, who would seem to hold the same opinion.* Hence, it

At least Mr. Irving is not quite alone in thinking that sermons are generally dull things; insomuch that "the very name of sermon hath learned to inspire

drowsiness and tedium." We allude to an instance the mention of which may be worth the space which this short note will occupy-of a most reverend body of divines in one of our cities being entertained with " An Oration for Christian Missions." Not a sermon, though Paul furnished the orator with a text, and "the foolishness of preaching" was his theme. But perhaps many a fine discourse, though pronounced before

is that there is an impression, which is apparently becoming prevalent with ministers, and more particularly perhaps with younger ministers, that to be successful preachers they must acquire what is called a popular manner.

A popular style of preaching is a thing not easily definable to the general apprehension. Abstractedly considered, it commonly means a manner adapted to please the people. But as different tastes prevail in different communities, there will be, according to this definition, a corresponding variety in the popular style. Each individual will form his standard with reference to the particular community with which he may be connected; or perhaps according to some peculiar notions of his own. With one class of hearers, then, a popular manner will imply melody of voice, gracefulness of gesture, and prettiness of language. It consists in such a union of graces in tone and sentiment as throws a softening radiance over the sterner features of religion, and leaves the conscience quiet while it amuses the fancy and gratifies the ear. With another class, the opposite of these, it is vehemence of declamation and extravagance of diction. These two kinds of preaching may be otherwise described by their ef fects. The one affords the hearers the luxury of feeling, the other of repose; the one produces an excess of zeal with a deficiency of knowledge, the other imparts neiSome ther zeal nor knowledge. mistake the pompous style for the

a religious assembly, and called a sermon, may be quite as appropriately characterized by some other term as by that old fashioned word with which the good people of former days were wont to associate their most hallowed thoughts and feelings.