ever. His power is not to be judged by single passages, taken unconnected with their context. It consists essentially, in the completeness of his conceptions, the finished manner in which they are chiseled as it were, into exquisite shapes, the unerring justness of proportion between the parts, their graceful repose, and majestic ideality. His genius is not dramatic. Its sphere is not action. His thoughts never assume the liveliness and pith of the epigram. To enjoy his writings perfectly, the reader's mind must be brought beforehand to a state of sobered meditation. He must forget the littleness of vulgar life, look abroad on nature, recall the faded impressions of purity and beauty and grandeur, which have been stamped on his soul in happier hours; rekindle the enthusiasm of early life, and then sit down to the poet's page, in trusting simplicity of heart.

Bryant is emphatically an American poet. The cast of his mind is republican, and his sentiments are all for human freedom. The scenery he describes is American scenery. His eye ranges over the prairies, and his heart

-swells, while the dilated light

Takes in the encircling vastness.

His mind wanders over the centuries during which our forests have raised their tall heads to the sky, and he thinks sadly of the mighty race, who formerly roved uncontrolled through their sunless thickets. He describes a landscape on the banks of a mighty river-that river is the Hudson. He celebrates the seasons, and we know them for American seasons. He revisits the country-it is a village in New England to which his muse returns with the familiar recollections of youthful love. His verse glows with a "Sunset" -it is no Claude Lorraine, no Italian scene, no Grecian sky-but it is a sun that "o'er the western mountains" of America " goes down in glory." The Americanism of sentiment, which Mr. Bryant occasionally expresses in allusion to the political condition of Europe, has been censured by a late English Reviewer. To a European taste, formed under aristocratic institutions, it may appear offensive; but for ourselves, we would cherish the poet, whose genius, like an undimmed and unbroken mirror, reflects the thoughts, feelings, principles, character and scenery of his own, his "native land."

ARTICLE VIII.

DR. PORTER'S LECTURES ON PREACHING.

Lectures on Homiletics and Preaching, and on Public Prayer, together with Sermons and Letters. By Ebenezer Porter, D. D., President of the Theological Seminary, Andover. 1834.

THE art of preaching has hitherto received a very small share of the attention which its vast importance demands. The history of the church records many examples of great power in the pulpit; but, if we except some cold, technical treatises in German, nothing has ever been published that deserves to be called a system of sacred eloquence. While preaching forms the mainspring of all the instrumentalities employed for the salvation of mankind; while it confessedly exerts on their character and immortal interests an influence more powerful than all other causes combined; while it is, a work not only more important, but far more delicate and arduous than any in which men can be engaged; the preacher has, after all, been left either to imitate such examples as accident may have brought before him, to cull from secular oratory a few rules more or less applicable to his peculiar art, or to follow his own genius and judgment without any foreign aid.

The few fragments that have appeared in different ages and countries on the art of preaching, cannot justly be considered as exceptions to this remark. More than three centuries of the Christian dispensation passed away before any thing was written on the subject that has come down to us; and even the work of Chrysostom De Sacerdotio, and that of Augustin De Doctrina Christiana, serve rather to show what views were entertained by those luminaries of the Greek and Latin church respecting the importance of sacred eloquence, than to exhibit its principles and rules in such a way as would materially assist young preachers.

From the time of Augustin to the dawn of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, nothing worthy of preservation was published on the subject; and, during that long and dreary night of the human mind, the pulpit sank into such

shameful degeneracy, that preachers of the everlasting gospel discussed questions nearly as frivolous and absurd as any that ever occupied the hair-splitting schoolmen of the dark ages. "Whether Abel was slain with a club, and of what species of wood it was? From what sort of tree was Moses' rod taken? Was the gold offered by the Magi to Christ, coined or in mass?" In a collection of sermons composed by the theologians of Vienna early in the fifteenth century, a minute history is given of the thirty pieces of money received by Judas for betraying our Saviour. "These pieces were said to have been coined by Terah, the father of Abraham; and, having passed through a succession of hands too ridiculous to be named, they came into possession of the Virgin Mary as a present from the Magi, and went into the temple as an offering for her purification."

We should suppose that the Reformation would have called forth treatises on the art of preaching. So it did; but none of them can claim to be regarded as a system of sacred rhetoric. The first and most respectable was that of Erasmus De Ratione Concionandi, stamped with the impress of his genius, taste, and good judgment, but altogether insufficient for its purpose.

The same is true of succeeding authors. Even the Dialogues of Fenelon, though called by Doddridge himself incomparable, and "mentioned by many writers of eminence with a sort of respect bordering on veneration," are in fact little more than a series of desultory remarks on a few important points connected with the business of preaching. They are admirable in their place, but do not profess to teach the whole art. The views exhibited in them are very correct; but only a small part of the subjects that ought to be embraced in a system of pulpit eloquence, are there taken up at all, and not one discussed with the fullness necessary for a student of sacred rhetoric.

Claude's Essay on the Composition of a Sermon, is more systematic, but far too artificial for any man of genius, taste, or sense to follow. It is an elaborate piece, perhaps the ne plus ultra of a Frenchman's powers on such a subject; but however worthy of being carefully read, we see not how any preacher of ordinary talents could consent to trammel himself with such a set of rules, and force his mind, like a car on a railway, to run forever in the same track.

The work of Abbe Maury on Pulpit Eloquence, is in

some respects more defective than either of the preceding. It is not so much a system of rhetoric, or a collection of rules for the composition and delivery of sermons, as a string of fine and florid declamations. It contains some excellent remarks, but would be a poor guide to the young preacher. Reybaz on the Art of Preaching, gives in a small compass a variety of useful hints; but a short letter, with whatever beauty and force it may touch on many topics of importance to the preacher, cannot teach a system of sacred eloquence. In German works we have still less confidence. The literary enterprise of Germany would of course intermeddle with a subject like this; but its writers have handled it with fingers of ice. Its degenerate theology, a body without a soul, has paralyzed the energies of its pulpit; and its systems of sacred eloquence sufficiently numerous, are extremely dry and technical. Its histories of the pulpit are worthy of a perusal, if not of a translation, and some of its treatises on preaching would furnish valuable materials, though imbedded in ice, for a professor of sacred rhetoric; but wo to the churches of America when our candidates for the Christian ministry shall study the divine art of prophets and apostles in such systems of pulpit eloquence as we have happened to meet from Germany. Reinhard, the best preacher she has produced since the days of Luther, sought not their aid, but drew his skill in the pulpit from his own genius and the masterpieces of ancient eloquence.

Our own language contains its full share of fragments on this subject. Beside translations of Fenelon, Claude, Maury, and other foreign writers, a large number of essays, such as they are, have been written by English and American divines, on topics connected with the business of preaching. We find hints, or hortatory appeals, in almost every evangelical writer of any eminence. The subject has been in one form or another, discussed by bishops in their charges to the clergy, and by dissenting ministers in discourses delivered at their meetings for mutual improvement, and the consecration of their brethren to the pastoral office. In some of these ways the most eminent preachers of England and America have been led to touch upon a variety of topics belonging to their sacred work; but not one of them has ever sketched a full system of pulpit eloquence, nor would all their essays and hints put together, form a sufficient guide to

the study of an art so incomparably delicate, difficult, and important.

This assertion our limits will not allow us to verify by analyzing the principal works in our language on preaching; but, if any one doubts its truth, let him consult Wilkins on Prayer and Preaching, Fordyce on the Art of Preaching, the Lectures both of Doddridge and Smith, Edwards's Preacher and Hearer, Gregory on the Composition and Delivery of a Sermon, and even all that Burnet, Baxter, and Campbell wrote; and he will, if we mistake not, rise from the task deeply impressed with the necessity of something more and better than all these put together, to assist the student of sacred eloquence. These treatises deserve to be read, some of them repeatedly, by every preacher, but they are, in our opinion, quite insufficient properly to instruct him in his delicate and difficult work. The lectures of Campbell on Pulpit Eloquence, we regard as superior in most respects to any thing hitherto published on the subject in any language; but even these, though systematic in arrangement, rich in thought, and worthy of being studied by every candidate for the sacred office, give us little more than an outline, hardly a full skeleton of what we need on the science and art of preaching.

In this dearth of satisfactory treatises on a subject so immensely important, we hail with much pleasure the work before us. Knowing the excellencies of its author as a model and a teacher of sacred eloquence, we had long cherished the hope, that he would give to the world the result of his experience, observation, and researches; and since reading the announcement of his purpose to publish a course of lectures on which many have attended with so much satisfaction and profit, we have waited for them with high expectations. Nor are we disappointed. After having heard them twice in the lecture-room, we have read them with fresh interest, and been fully confirmed in our opinion of them as superior to any thing yet published on the subject. The book is in our judgment worth more to the student of sacred rhetoric, than all that we have been able to find on the art of preaching in any language. It is refined gold, and ought to be studied not only by every candidate for the Christian ministry, but by every preacher who is neither too wise to learn, nor too old to improve. We may be somewhat partial to a book in which we recognize on every page the impress of a