eral rule, do not care to get the reputation of "originality." Imitation is taught as a very proper thing, and the student is encouraged to conform his style to the best models. But while this imitation is allowed, every kind of plagiarism is severely reprobated. In France sermons are not an article of merchandise, nor are they made to order. The preacher must himself prepare them, one by one; he cannot buy them by the dozen. It is not lawful, either, to steal from other preachers, whether contemporary or deceased, whether at home or abroad, and if a canon in Bourdeaux were found to have appropriated the eloquence of the heretic Presseusé, or even of the orthodox De Place, and given it to the people as his own, condign punishment would be the sure result. An English preacher may buy his sermons, and an American may sometimes borrow them, from authors living or dead, and suffer no serious inconvenience, except, perhaps, the charge of a parish, or a temporary loss of prestige. But a French curate must give to the people the fruits of his own toil and thought, however poor they may be, and however inferior to those which he might appropriate from other writers. Plagiarism in France, too, is much more difficult than in England, since the sources are fewer and more accessible; and it exposes the offender to public ridicule not less than to ecclesiastical penalties. "A mediocre preacher, who steals his fine things from another man's sermons," says Father Abelly, "is like those peasants who, having found a ribbon, or a scrap of lace, put it upon their dirty coats, and only make these uglier still. A man cannot be a preacher, if he does not know enough to appropriate in an honest and lawful manner what he cannot invent."

The usual style of French preaching is the memoriter. Extemporaneous performances, except in very short and occasional addresses, are rarely attempted; and if a preacher does not write out his sermons in full, he thinks them out so carefully, from the exordium to the invocation, — argument, illustration, and exhortation, — that his delivery is merely an exercise of memory. A principal part of his labor is to commit to memory what he has written. The manuscript of the discourse is not usually carried into the pulpit; but if the preacher feel uncertain about his power of recollection, he may

have it on the desk before him, taking care to keep it out of sight. This is not very difficult in French churches, where the pulpits are high, and galleries are wanting. Exercises in memory are an important part of the instruction in theological schools, and many artificial means are in use. The ease with which the words of a sermon are learned by heart is undoubtedly owing in large measure to its exact and methodical arrangement, and the admirable balance and proportion of most French discourses helps to fix their language in the speaker's mind. Some very marvellous instances are related of the memory of French preachers, who, after reading over a manuscript once, could deliver it verbatim, or, after having delivered it from the recollection of a mental process, could write it down verbatim, as it was delivered. The instance of M. de Boulonge, which is cited by M. Vétu, who committed to memory, in a single day, the funeral oration which he was appointed to pronounce when the remains of Louis XVI. were transported to St. Denis, seems to us less wonderful than some others on record.

The usual enunciation of French preachers is not, as might be expected, rapid, nervous, and sharp in tone, but, on the contrary, slow, flowing, and methodical in its cadences, fully as much so as the Italian. Nowhere does a foreigner find it so easy to follow a speaker, as when he speaks from the pulpit. It is the just mean between the measured declamatory style of the theatre, and the impassioned style of the tribune, - deliberate and solemn, without that insufferable mouthing of words which spoils the best dramatic performances on the Parisian boards. The worst oratorical fault is, as in England and America, monotony: not such monotony, indeed, as that holy drawl of sanctity long drawn out which marked the last generation of painful, godly preachers on these shores, nor that even smoothness which is honored by the name of "Cambridge tone," but a too sustained tone of earnestness and force. In all the French sermons we have heard, there was a want of variety, the tone kept the mind of the hearer always in tension, and the only relief was given by the change of topic and the passage from one head of discourse to another. This was the fault of Monod's oratory, and more signally still of his

colleague, Montandon. The elder Coquerel is a brilliant exception to the remark.

A Frenchman's form and countenance are so expressive, that, if his hands were held, he would still seem to gesticulate. Gesture is a most important part of his preaching, and a teacher of pulpit eloquence must be a posture-master, as well as a critic of style and tone. M. Vétu gives a curious list of defects in this kind which are to be avoided; - the hands are not to be lifted above the shoulders, nor dropped below the waist, when one is speaking of ordinary truths; the arms ought not to strike out contentiously, as if making a swordthrust; the hands should not be clapped, or the fists doubled and shaken at the audience; the arms should not be crossed on the breast, or extended in the form of a cross, or be kept incessantly swinging; no preacher ought ever to stamp with his foot, or sway his body forward and backward or sidewise, or start as if there were something in the air he was wishing to catch, or shrug the shoulders, or be always sitting down and getting up. These directions would be fatal to the animation of an Italian preacher, but they consist very well with the more precise habits of the French race and training. There is in the pulpits of Paris none of the frantic variety of posture and gesture which associate in the mind of a foreigner the churches of Naples with the San Carlino playhouse and its extravaganzas. A French preacher who observes well the rules of his calling, takes an erect posture, facing the mass of his audience, and keeps this posture until the discourse is done, even though it should exceed the canonical maximum of forty-five minutes. He never undertakes to represent by any grimaces or gestures the scenes he would describe, or to appear dramatically in the character of Abram, or Elijah, or Jesus upon the mountain.

These hasty and perhaps trivial jottings down of impressions concerning the French pulpit may seem to some to generalize too much, and to neglect those individual varieties which, in the French, as in every pulpit, must certainly exist. We do not pretend that these characteristics are the measure of every instance, or that they will be observed in every volume of French sermons, or the pulpit performances of all the preachVOL. LXVII. — 5TH S. VOL. V. NO. I.

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ers.

We had hoped to include in the present sketch some notices of the more eminent men of both communions who occupy at present the pulpits of France, but we are compelled to defer such notices to a future occasion, when we may also speak of the relative strength of the religious bodies in France, including the Hebrew, which in that land has a highly respectable and influential place. We can only advise those who visit France to include in their plan, not merely the music in the churches and their monuments, but the discourses of those who instruct the people. After an acquaintance with this form of sacred eloquence, we may come to prize more truly the freedom, and estimate more candidly the failings, of our own pulpit. We hardly know which recollection is the more thrilling, that of a Pentecost Mass in the Madeleine, when the vox humana of the great organ flooded the air with the trembling songs of seraphic voices, or that of a Pentecost sermon in the Oratoire, where the eloquence of Coquerel could make us almost feel that the gift of tongues and the day of inspiration had returned.

1. The State of the Impenitent Dead. By ALVAH HOVEY, D. D., Professor of Christian Theology in the Newton Theological Institution. Boston: Gould and Lincoln.

1859.

2. The Reasonableness of Future Endless Punishment. A Sermon preached at the Hollis Street Church, Boston, Sabbath Evening, April 25, 1858. By NEHEMIAH ADAMS, D. D., Pastor of the Essex Street Church. Boston: Gould and Lincoln. 1858. 3. What Religion may do for a Man. By REV. THEODORE PARKER, Minister of the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society. Preached at the Music Hall on Sunday, January 2, 1859. Boston: Published by the Fraternity. 1859.

4. Eschatology; or, The Scripture Doctrine of the Coming of the Lord, the Judgment, and the Resurrection. By SAMUEL LEE. Boston: J. E. Tilton & Co. 1859.

LESSING wrote in 1770: "I perceive that the controversy respecting the endlessness of hell punishments is about to be

1

agitated again by our theologians. Would that it might be so agitated as to be finally settled and considered as done with. For, undoubtedly, the saddest in these controversies is that they settle nothing, and that twenty or fifty years later any zealot or quibbler who is so disposed, imagines himself justified in taking up the matter anew." Nine tenths of a century have rolled by since these words were written, and in this country the controversy is still fresh; and, judging from the publications of the past year, as far as ever from being settled.

The doctrine of endless punishment, never theoretically abandoned by the Orthodox Church, but kept in abeyance, and seldom insisted on by preachers of this generation, has been recently proclaimed with new emphasis. It is, or should be, of little importance to well-disposed minds, how speculative theology may decide this matter, and what shall be the dogmas, -generous or rigorous, of universal or exclusive grace,- in which churches formulate their conception of the future life. The repugnance felt by liberal Christians to "Orthodox " views of this subject respects not so much the doctrine of endless punishment as it does the slavish spirit which often accompanies that doctrine, the spirit that attaches supreme importance to the penalties of the law, as if the penalty made the obligation, or could justly enhance the sense of accountableness in rational souls. To such a spirit, a revelation which should suddenly abolish hell would seem a release from duty, a welcome discharge from the painful necessity of moral progress.

We have no quarrel with the dogma of endless punishment as a theological speculation. We have no quarrel with those who claim for it the sanction of Scripture. Our controversy is with that system of views concerning the moral government of God, and concerning the nature and calling of man, in which this doctrine is so essential. We object to this system, that it turns the mind from that which is primary and vital, and fixes it on that which is secondary and subordinate, - turns it from the everlasting substance, and fixes it on the accidents; that it puts happiness above goodness, and puts goodness as a means of happiness.