and labored in connexion with a literary friend two whole days on as many sentences. A living divine, who has been called the prince of our pulpit orators, spent a fortnight on a single paragraph of one of his published sermons, and three months in elaborating another discourse, which has already accomplished more good than the four thousand sermons which were written by another of our pastors, at the rate of two a week. On the blank leaf of one of Dr. Griffin's manuscripts it appeared that his discourse had been preached ninety times. Thus had it been touched and retouched, reviewed and rewritten, until, so far as the author's power availed, it was perfected. There is danger indeed of acquiring a morbid appetency for perfection, which will polish away all positive excellence, and refine into nothing every natural beauty. We have read of an Italian author who would whet and whet his knife till there was no steel left to make an edge. "Indeed," says Carlyle, "in all things, writing or other, which a man engages in, there is the indispensablest beauty in knowing how to get done. A man frets himself to no purpose, he has not the sleight of the trade, he is not a craftsman but an unfortunate borer and bungler, if he know not when to have done. Perfection is unattainable; no carpenter ever made a mathematically right angle, in the world; yet all carpenters know when it is right enough, and do not botch it and lose their wages in making it too right. Too much pains-taking speaks disease in one's mind as well as too little. The adroit, sound-minded man will endeavor to spend upon each business approximately what of pains it deserves; and with a conscience void of remorse will dismiss it then."

But Mr. Homer was not predisposed to this sickliness of taste. If he had concentrated upon seventeen sermons the energies which he devoted to thirty-four, he would not indeed have gratified his parish with so frequent ministrations, but would have raised, still higher than he did, the standard of a sermon, and would have made his posthumous influence more

extensive. His people however were idolatrously attached to him, and were intent on hearing him every Sabbath. Therefore he became unwilling to relieve himself by exchanges with his brethren. He moreover loved his work, and chose in his hearty zeal to compress a great amount of it into a brief period. Though he was technically a student, and had not designed to pass his life in the pastoral relation, he began to doubt whether he could ever forego the pleasure of writing sermons. The more he wrote, the happier he became. About a fortnight before his last sickness he said in a letter," Preaching grows upon me. It never tires nor palls. It appears to be the most glorious of all pursuits. If my health is spared, and God seems to bless my labors, I shall feel very differently about leaving the ministry from what I have felt. I do not know that I shall turn off from the literary design which has occupied my thoughts for so many years. Still I cannot but feel that if I ever do leave the sacred office, for any other on earth, it will be taking a long stride downward."

It deserves to be added in apology for his rapid composition, that Mr. Homer had been gathering the fruits of christian experience for nearly fourteen years, and had accumulated the materials of his discourses long before he wrote them. They were the emanations of the character which he had been forming, and he could express with ease the trains of thought which had been familiar to him for years. Whatever he did was done with celerity; this was his nature. The results therefore of his past religious meditations he recorded without the effort and delay which ministers often require. It may be that after he had gone round a certain circle of topics, he would have chosen to spend a longer time on every new theme. Every scholar has a certain class of subjects upon which he has perhaps unconsciously expended a peculiar degree of care, and when these are exhausted he becomes once more a novice. On some themes old men are

young and young men are old. We are apt to regard the efforts of a youthful preacher as the very beginnings of his work, as mere experiments; but they are often the results of nearly all the wisdom which he will have acquired in maturer life. He may afterward discuss new topics with superior power, and may not, but on some topics his first sermons are his best. Some of our most useful treatises, in theological as well as other literature, have been the productions of men under twenty-five years of age. There is a rare justness in the following criticism of Mr. Hazlitt: "The late Mr. Opie remarked, that an artist often puts his best thoughts into his first works. His earliest efforts were the result of the study of all his former life, whereas his later and more mature performances, though perhaps more skilful and finished, contained only the gleanings of his after observation and experience."

MR. HOMER'S LAST DAYS.

On the Sabbath after his ordination, Mr. Homer said to his people, "We live in a solemn world. We cannot take a step where sad realities do not stare us in the face. We cannot form a new tie without casting our thoughts forward to the death-pang that must sunder it. Amid the mutual rejoicings of our recent connexion, I involuntarily think of the pall and the shroud and the bier and the grave; and I behold one and another and another, who now look up into my face and hear the sound of my voice, for whose cold remains I shall be called ere long to discharge the last sad offices; and God only knows but that this people may bear me out to my burial. Sabbath after Sabbath, I must stand up here as a dying man before dying men. Yet, blessed be God, I preach a gospel which secures the great antidote to these ills, which enables us to look above and beyond them. And if my people will resolve this day to put themselves under my spiritual

guardianship, and heaven will bless the ministry which begins on my part in weakness and distrust, we may hush these dark forebodings, we may rest assured that death cannot weaken the tie now formed, we may look forward to a gladsome reunion where the sombre weeds of the funeral shall be exchanged for the white vestments of the marriage-feast, and the happy language of the pastor shall be, Behold I and the people thou hast given me.""

On the New Year's Sabbath of his ministry, he preached from the text, 66 This year thou shalt die," the same passage with which so many divines, and among them both the Edwardses, have commenced the pulpit services of the last year of their life. In this discourse he showed the probability that either himself or some of his hearers would be called to fulfil the prediction of the text. "The night," he says, "is far spent, the day is at hand; some of us can almost discern the first red streaks of the dawn. We are hastening on, we are hastening on to the brightness of an eternal day. 'Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light.'

It is not to be understood that Mr. Homer had a presentiment of his early death. He had not. He was not given to such presentiments. Nor had his friends been fearful of such a calamity. They had not thought of him in such associations, and even now they cannot recall the freshness of his countenance and the elasticity of his manners, without feeling that after all they have been only dreaming of his death, and he is soon to appear again with some bright saying or with some new hope. It had not even occurred to their thoughts that the star would sink away into nothing, just as men were beginning to turn their glasses to it and examine it.

When a Christian has toiled faithfully and successfully through a long life, he lies down upon the bed of death as the bed of rest. He has finished the work which was given him to do, and if by reason of strength his life should be further

prolonged, yet would his strength be labor and sorrow. He chooses to leave the world, that he may escape the weariness of a second childhood, and may commune again with the friends of his youth. His age is well rounded off, and death calls for his gratitude rather than resignation. But the subject of this memoir had not been satiated nor disgusted with life, nor was he shut up to death as his only avenue to enjoyment. The hopes and the promises of youth were clustering around him, he had just begun to use the materials which he had amassed; to die, therefore, as soon as he had ended the preliminaries of his chosen work, was not so much to leave the world as to be torn from it. He had but recently entered upon that state which is but a figure of the union between Christ and the church, and to go so soon from the companionship which he had anticipated so long, was something to be submitted to rather than rejoiced in. His plans were definitely formed for a life of study, he had numbered the mines of intellectual wealth which he was to explore, and he had every inducement to cry, "Cut me not down in the midst of my years, deprive me not of the residue of my days."

His unremitted labors during his last year at Andover had somewhat enfeebled his frame, and should have induced him to defer his settlement in the ministry for several months. Emerging suddenly from the seclusion of a student into the duties of active life, he was more excited than he would have been if the transition had been more gradual, or if he had previously disciplined himself, as every clergyman ought to do, in some active business. The excitement was greater than he could sustain without a more healthful regimen of body than he was careful to practise. The labors of an earnest preacher and an anxious pastor cannot be united with those of a severe student, without a previous and careful preparation of the body as well as mind. This preparation Mr. Homer did not make, and here was "the beginning of the end." He felt a degree of interest in his labors which his