gation, but he can lead men, by the judgment of what is the greatest happiness of the greatest number, to exclude much suffering and secure much enjoyment. Here is the broad field for all secular rhetoric, teaching the eloquence of the bar, the senate and the forum, in reference to the legal rights of property, liberty and public prosperity.

But man knows himself as more than animal; and more than appetitive interest generalized into the expedient and prudent; even as existing in a rational spiritual personality. In clearly knowing himself, he knows that the appetites of the flesh should be subjected to the imperatives of the spirit, and that "the law in the members" must be held in subjection to "the law of the mind." As "the spirit of a man knoweth the things of a man," so man comes to know intuitively in himself what is due to himself, and therefore what will debase and what will dignify himself. In this, and in this only, he has "a law written on his heart," and a conscience accusing or excusing." Here is the point where he transcends the animal in kind, and not degree alone, and rises to the moral personality. He has a spring from this imperative within, to hold himself steady against all the clamors of natural appetite without the spirit, and thus the capability and the obligation "to keep his body under and bring it into subjection" to this higher dignity of the spirit. Here alone is man's prerogative of freedom and moral accountability.

Thrown into society with other spiritual beings, he finds at once a higher law than prudence and greatest happiness, even an inner behest that he should act for his highest worthiness. He knows that it is far more to him to be good than to get good, and that he should hold what makes him and his fellows happy, wholly subservient to that which shall make him and them holy. He has a law above happiness, determining for him when only he may be happy; a law above prudence, determining for him when prudence itself is duty; a law above kindness, determining for him when even his benevolence is right. Here originate the grand ethical ideas of the good, the just, the right; imperatives awakened at once in the view of spiritual dignity and excellency, and revealing how terribly debased the man has become, who has sold the immortal freedom of this spirit in bondage to the flesh. Here is no generalization from experience and deducing general laws because experience is so, but here is a higher position disclosing how experience itself ought to be.

These grand moral ideas are for the speaker to apply in his address, and he rises at once from the field of secular into the sphere of moral eloquence. When at the bar, or in the halls of legislation, we have been listening to the eloquence which rests its appeals upon utility, and has rung the changes upon security of property, and popular rights, and public liberty, until all interest is worn to weariness; how, like the voice of a trumpet, does it rouse every soul, when some great statesman rises and takes us back to those original foundations on which all political rights of property and happiness and liberty repose! How, on every side, are kindled the deep convictions of inalienable responsi bility, as this eloquence rises into the morally sublime in applying these grand ideas of immutable morality, and lets us see that all political right is but an empty name, if it does not stand upon the eternal basis of justice, and that all laws are tyranny, and all constitutions but usurpation, if they are not righteous!

But still, even deeper than the wants of man's ethical being, there is the conviction of dependence and helplessness which leads him out necessarily to feel the want of an absolute protector. The soul cries out for God, and cannot rest without a Deity to trust, to worship and adore. He is formed to be a religious being, and he can no more stifle these religious, than he can his ethical, susceptibilities. His spirit must find some presence within which he uncovers himself with awe, and where he bows with reverence, or he knows he has fallen from his proper sphere and is wandering as a lost and wretched outcast. His conscious. ness of sin gives consciousness of condemnation, and hence come all the wants of pardon and redemption. Thus, here come out all the great religious truths of God, a Mediator, an atonement, a gracious justification, and a heavenly mansion prepared by a Saviour. Revelation fully discloses all these great truths which the fallen soul is asking for, and a Divine agency applies these truths to sanctify where this fallen soul feels its helplessness, and thus a broad field of truth and motive is laid open, which is to be preached to every creature. Here is the field of sacred eloquence.

The pulpit has nothing to do with the secular interests of an audience; and, though it may introduce the grand ideas of ethical right, and show their harmony with revealed duty, yet is its address bound by its very position, as well as by the commission given by the Master, to "know nothing else but Jesus Christ VOL. XI. No. 41.

2

and him crucified." Man's religious nature cannot come out acceptably to God, in his fallen condition, except through God's appointed mediation. The sacred orator can thus be only the Gospel preacher. In his intention as address, there can be allowed to him to apply only Gospel themes, and all his eloquence must be exhausted in getting over evangelical truth from his own consciousness into the consciousness of those that hear him.

Sacred rhetoric has thus the teaching of eloquence in the highest sphere of applying address. It deals with themes which are the wonder of angels, and to be the eternal study of glorified saints. It gives more power to the pulpit over the practicable susceptibilities of man than the bar, the senate or the forum. Its themes will keep their hold upon public attention and interest when all others are worn out. The love of Christ will still constrain, when wealth and patriotism and freedom, and even pure morality fail to move.

With this apprehension of rhetoric as both determined and applied, we will close by alluding concisely to some of its results, when thus faithfully used. Both because it is of the highest kind of eloquence, and also from the place and occasion, it will be appropriate to confine our attention to the pulpit, and look at some of the results secured to the preacher by an exact rhetoric as we have now determined it.

This intention in applying appropriate truth as address, gives a principle which will run through the whole system of rhetoric and bind up all its parts in order. The art of rhetoric will rest on exact science. The law for transferred thought in address will expound every rhetorical rule, and control in the whole rhetorical culture and discipline. This will be for the rhetorical teacher fully to explain and use, but we may here very cursorily indicate what some of its prominent results must be to the preacher.

1. It will secure that the preacher always have a distinct aim. Eloquence is always a means and not an end. The orator is altogether absurd, if he makes himself to be eloquent solely for eloquence's sake. His work is to transfer thought and sentiment from his own mind to others, but this for a distinct design. As its very first condition, rhetoric sternly demands a definite end to be reached in this intention to communicate thought. The intent in addressing can possibly have no steadiness and persist

ency, except as it reaches on and takes hold of some fixed object to be attained by it. Why labor so completely and clearly to implant your sentiment in another mind, if nothing is to be gained by it?

The very first thing which a determined rhetoric demands of the preacher is, that he propose some definite object to be gained in every address he makes. What absurdity to be eloquently giving over truth to an audience, and yet mean nothing by it! Intent in transferring, with no intensity of purpose to execute any result thereby! The hope to do good in general by preaching, and yet not to aim at some specific good in every sermon, is a solecism. A rhetoric truly determined will effectually exclude all the vague and pointless harangues, which so often usurp the name and the place, and waste the sacred time of a Gospel sermon.

2. The preacher will thus always have thought. How ridicu lous, in the light of a true rhetoric, to be gravely and laboriously intent on putting over something into other waiting minds, and yet have absolutely nothing in your own to transfer! The object to be attained first having been fixed, the next thing is to get the right truth to reach it. Nothing at all can be accomplished by the most eloquent speaker, if he have only mere words and gesture. The thought must put itself into words, and the intention to lodge it in the hearer's mind must prompt every gesture, or the whole rhetorical action becomes a mere dumb-show. Words are but the dress of thought; and how idle to spend the time in setting forth costly clothes, when there is no living body and limbs to put into them! The speaker has not any possible use for words until he has first got thoughts, and the fitting words can only come, as the energy of the struggling thought prompts them. If the living, quickening idea does not go over into the hearer's mind, the whole time and labor are spent to no purpose. The mere passing of empty buckets from hand to hand must be a very profitless and tedious employment, hardly worth the effort to seek doing the thing elegantly.

A true rhetoric will not let the speaker open his mouth until he has been deeply thinking. It strikes dumb all mere prating, ranting, empty declaiming; and only opens the sacred desk to such as have a mind rich in Bible truth, and a heart warm with evangelic emotions. The word of God must be in the preacher as in the old prophet, "a burning fire shut up in the bones, so

wearying with all refraining that he cannot stay." It may be only thus "from the abundance of the heart that his mouth speaketh."

3. The preacher will always have unity. Many sermons are manifestly built up from the outside. The rubbish is cleared away and a foundation prepared, the materials are collected and shaped, the framework is put up by the application of plumbline and measuring-rule, and thought after thought is spliced on or framed in with tenon and mortise, and the whole is finished according to the model given, or by following out consecutively the arbitrary directions. There is a very common view of rhetoric which so teaches to make sermons, and which is doubtless some better than to throw the raw materials into a promiscuous heap together. A mechanical unity is attained, and the application of square and compass perhaps detects no deficiencies nor redundances. The sermon is quite according to rule, but is wholly a mechanical product, and may be taken to pieces and its parts framed into any other sermons again at pleasure.

But the rhetoric here determined gives a very different process and secures a very different unity in the result. The sermon grows into shape. The intention in the address has singleness of aim and adaptedness of thought, and works in and through the whole to one issue. One life originates and develops the whole product. One germ with all its rudimental elements grows up to maturity, under the control of an inner law which determines what its form must be and when its growth must stop. There will be a vital unity. You might as well seek to take the life out of one plant and make it to develop itself anew in another, as to make a proper rhetorical life develop itself dividedly. Its working is all from the inside, and the vital force perpetually energizes in the living intention, and makes thought and word, plan and style, voice and look and act, all to come out completely, and all to stand together in symmetry. The sermon is one, and the delivery is one with it.

4. The preacher will always be earnest. When any mind has its clear plan, which is a distinct end and a plain way to get it, it works at once spontaneously and joyously. But of all employments, the work of putting over thoughts and sentiments from one mind into others, is the most intensely stimulating. Let a determined rhetoric prevail with the speaker, and he can be no other than a sincerely ardent and earnest man. He has his end