mankind, should find some other organ of communication with them than the pulpit. He may imitate the poetry of Byron, or adopt the cold philosophy of Hobbes, or select for his weapon the blighting satire of Voltaire; but to him belongs not the gentle and solemn ministration of the Gospel. I advocate no soft effeminacy in the pulpit; no lax complaisance towards human nature; no weak sympathy for it that compromises any lofty principle. That, indeed, were both scorn and cruelty towards it. Let the pulpit be bold. Let it clothe itself with indignation against sin. I would see more than I ever yet saw, in the pulpit, of that honest and manly indignation. Let its law be strict, and its scrutiny piercing,

"the tent that searches

To th' bottom of the worst."

But in all this, there is nothing inconsistent with the sentiments which I advocate. I respect, whom I warn: I love, whom I would recover: I sympathise with him, that I would save. From the bosom of these affections proceeds the only true fidelity; and not one of them can be spared. Whose voice, to recall from wandering, so powerful as the parent's? And why? Because, it is with mingled respect, and love, and sympathy, that he speaks to his erring child. Let one of these be wanting; and he might as well speak to the dead; he can do nothing.

The pulpit in this respect must conform to the great laws of human nature. And this principle I do not set forth, as demanded by policy, but by truth. The human heart is entitled to respect. Amidst all its debasement, there are in it solemn monitions and mementos of better things to be recognised. I cannot fling scorn upon its awful depths. I cannot with rude blows strike the guilty heart. The fallen throne that human hands have built-the shattered tower that beetles in sublime desolation over the land that it once ruled, must not draw from me a veneration that I will not give to the mournful and monitory ruins of humanity. And if that ruined greatness of a human soul casts its dark shadow over the world unknown-if there is before me a being who may sink to hell, bearing with him-more than the wreck of an empire — bearing the world of his affections with him, down to woe and agony; it is not with slight and scorn, but with awe, with a horror of reverence, that I must look upon him, and speak to him.

God

Nor yet from our love as well as our respect, is an erring nature shut out. It is written that "God so loved the world, that he gave his Son to die for it." I cannot help feeling as if that love of God, paternal and pitying, takes the part of its poor, erring child, against the cruelty, and contempt, and misanthropy of his fellows. Men hate us. loves us. Men denounce us. God loves us. Men tread us under foot, or pass us by. God still loves us. Men, sometimes with seeming satisfaction, doom us to hell. God yet loves us; and gave his Son to die for us; that he may raise us to heaven. Thou who art most fallen, forlorn, neglected! remember that. Remember that there is one that loves thee-thy Father above, who can never hate thee. All other love may fail thee; yet shall that love never fail thee. For thus is the comparison set forth: "Can a mother forget her child? Yea, she may forget; yet will not I forget thee."

Finally; sympathy should flow out in all the ministrations of the pulpit. I see this pulpit, not as a piece of carved work-not as clothed

with crimson and gay adorning: but I see it, and feel it, as softened and clothed all over with human sympathies. It is the altar of respectful, friendly, and affectionate communings; and is to give living expression to all that pertains to sacred, human fellowship. In this respect, among all public situations, it stands alone in the world; and if it fails in this point, it will be wanting in the true consecration to human improvement and welfare.

The fortunes of men—the fates of a human life-seem to me to be but rarely contemplated in the light in which they should ever present themselves in this sacred desk. In the great field of human probation, there are no clergy and laity, no learned and ignorant, no rich and poor: there is a destiny for all, in whose presence the varying circumstances that clothe this life, are but the modes and fashions of an hour! And it offends me when I see any man making a parade of coming downeither to bestow a charity, or to do a kindness called patronage, or to teach the people. He has to go up, if he would understand it, to reach the sublimity of his vocation. He has to go up, if he would feel the true and enlarged sympathy of humanity. It is through the want of this true sympathy that many offices are now base, which with it, might be high as heaven, and beautiful as the ministration of angels. It seems to be rare that we find any man great enough to be a man-a breathing soul of the great humanity-and not being able to be a man, what does he become? He becomes a minister, conscious of power and influence; or a nobleman, conscious of rank; or a rich man, of wealth; or a celebrated man, of fame. The real sinks into the phenomenal; the man becomes a mode; and life, intense, all powerful life, is but a fashion of living.

There is a greatness in this life beyond all that is called greatness. All earthly seeking-all business, care, weariness, and strife-is but the clothing of a deeper want-the heaven-sent need of virtue-of the happiness whose essence virtue is. That want, whether it pierces the world with its cry, or struggles in smothered silence, is the grand index of all human fortunes. Reality lives beneath all that is visible, wrestles amidst the turbulent passions, and heaves in the bosom of this world's restless tumult. In those depths of life, is conscience, empassioned yearning, conscious destiny; and from those dark fountains, flow out tears, sorrows, and sighings.

To communings with such a life, my brethren, is the pulpit consecrated. The thousand ties that bind that spiritual life, meet--it is an awful thought-meet, as it were, in the pulpit. And here it is that we are to touch those chords, that shall send thrilling into the depths of reality. Must not this ministration, then, be a living sympathy? Such was it to the heart of Jesus. If God is represented to us as allembracing love; so is Jesus, emphatically, as all-embracing sympathy. Though sinless, he sympathized with the sinful. In that feeling he lived and taught, he suffered and died. And in so far as we can imitate him, that great example should be the model of all who preach his religion.

To such a ministration be this pulpit dedicated! All life will pass before it here; for no shadow of consecrated walls can drive out from any bosom, the spirit that is in it. All life shall come here, and here it should be recognised--the gladness and beauty of youth - the

swelling heart of manhood-the cares and anxieties of fathers and mothers. Young men and maidens, old men and children, shall be here; and all that life is-whether it is passed amidst joy or sorrow, amidst thrilling strains of music or "the solemn brood of care," amidst the gaiety of assemblies, or in the solitariness of reflection-amidst troops of happy friends, or by the desolate hearth of the bereaved and stricken one-all must mingle itself with the meditations of his holy place.

Yes, my brethren, I know whence ye shall come, and whither in a few days more, ye shall go. From the noise of busy streets, or from the bustle of crowded marts, ye will come; or perhaps from the surgings and soundings on, of the majestic, melancholy sea; from the din of manufactories, or from the tedious hum of school-rooms, or from the litigations of courts, or from the sighs of pain by the sick bed, or from the many-voiced utterances-questions, commands, children's cries, sounds undefinable-of domestic abodes; and will ye not ask for a calm hour, for a clear atmosphere, for the vision and comfort of things divine? God grant that ye may ever find them here!

And I know whither, ere long, ye shall go. The day will come, when other eyes than ours will look upon these walls, and upon these crowded streets. It is but a little time-and the last sound of our footsteps will have died away from these pavements; the last shadow of our form shall have passed from this threshold; and the places that know us, shall know us no more for ever.

But, thanks be to God! no dark despair, no overwhelming sorrow, mingles with these thoughts. When another generation shall fill and crowd the places where we now live-the walls within which we this day worship; our humble hope, and our trust, is, that we shall dwell in some loftier sphere, and wait the coming of those beloved ones to join "In an house not made with hands eternal in the heavens," may we say eternally-"blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth- on the throne, and to the Lamb for ever and ever!"

us.

A DISCOURSE

ON THE

CHARACTER AND WRITINGS OF W. E. CHANNING, D.D.

PSALM CXii. 6: "The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance."

THE commemoration of the good man can never be too late, nor can he ever be held too long in our remembrance. In the oldest Christian churches, the Roman and the Greek, certain days in the year are consecrated to the memory of such; and often have I listened, not without emotion, to the solemn chimes of bells which thus celebrated the virtues of some venerated saint; with sounds of triumph and gladness up in the high air, above the turmoil of this world; up in the regions lying towards the world where he is gone. It is good for us so to remember those, who in faith and patience have gone before us; whose lives have been like our lives, whose sorrows, like our sorrows, whose strifes, like ours, and who have gained the great and last victory.

This is the anniversary Sunday, and I would make it a saint's day among ourselves, which reminds us of the passing away of one, long to be remembered in our churches the lamented Channing! The news of this mournful event reached me in a foreign land; saddening the hours and days of absence from my own country. I could not join my brethren in the tribute so widely paid to him then; and I ask your indulgence to the attempt I shall make, to express to you my thoughts of him, on the present occasion.

His memory is fresh among us, and will be, I think, while we live. The impression he has made upon our minds is one, indeed, of a very remarkable character: and it is meet that we should inquire, after the first gush of our sorrows is past, what was the mission and ministry of a life like his. It is to this inquiry that I would direct your thoughts this evening.

The mission, then, of all true genius; the same in all ages; the same in all great men of studious lives; the same, whether displayed in writing, or in works of art, was the mission of Channing. It was to set forth the True, the Right, the Godlike; and to portray its loveliness and majesty. Genius, I repeat-that which is divinest in man -is, in its appropriate work, ever striving to unfold its own ideal of moral beauty and grandeur: this is its great vocation.

Permit me to pause upon this thought a moment; for it lies at the foundation of my present undertaking. Let the instrument used be

the chisel, the pencil, or the pen, consider what is, and always must be, the end in view. The sculptor, the painter, seeks to express some conception; and what is it, but the conception of the highest beauty or power? The poet, the novelist, always has a hero; and his hero embodies his loftiest idea of goodness, virtue, magnanimity. The orator, the preacher, when he ascends to the noblest discourse, labours to inculcate truth, right, duty; in short, the divinest excellence. It is with this that his bosom swells in secret; and this it is that he strives to pour forth in speech. This, then, I say, was the mission of Channing. And, certainly, I do not know the man of the present day, who has done more to stamp upon the world the sense of the True, the Right, the Godlike, than Channing. His work, in this respect, was not technical, not what is ordinarily called philosophical; that of the highest genius seldom is so; it was the work of inward meditation and prayer. Especially in him it was a sacred, a religious work. From the adoring contemplation of what God is, from that altar he brought the burning and luminous thought of what man should be. There was a consecration to him of his theme. Everything about it was invested with a solemn, religious light. He knew no true grandeur in man but a divine grandeur. He questioned much what the world calls greatness, however lauded and idolized: he had set up another and purer idea of greatness in his own mind; and no prophet of modern times, I think, has done so much to break down the idol, and to establish the true worship instead.

The forms which this labour of his life assumed, and the qualities of mind which he brought to it, demand our attention in this brief survey of his character.

The first form was preaching. This was the chosen vocation of his youth; it was the glory of his manhood; and only under the severe pressure of necessity did he relinquish this great calling. It was always attended in him with extreme exhaustion. I well remember, as doubtless you do, one of the last occasions on which he addressed a religious assembly; it was in this pulpit. Three weeks after, I met him on an excursion in the western part of this State; and he had not then recovered from the effort. Justly did he conclude that he ought to give up a function that was wearing so fatally upon his physical strength. This effect on him resulted from the character of his mind and sensibility, and from the idea he entertained of this great ministration. He did not think that a good sermon was a simple exhortation; that it was a bare repetition, however fervent, of truisms and commonplaces; that it was enough to say to the people, "be good." He did not mistake, as some seem to do, the aged John's traditional saying in the assembly, "dear children, love one another," when he was too feeble to say anything else; he did not mistake that for preaching. He did not listen to those who said, “labour not the matter so much; the Gospel is a simple thing;" forgetting that it is a deep thing, too. No; to preach, was to speak to a nature clothed with the awfulness of unmeasured capacities and unspeakable exposures; to penetrate its depths; to awaken its slumbering powers; to reason with its errors; to unveil its disguises; to convince it not only of its sin but of its sanctity; to make the man feel that he was too great a being for the littleness and paltriness of vice, too great for the world to have, and use, and wear