THE DRAMATIC ELEMENT IN PULPIT ORATORY.

THE earliest modern attempt to make the Drama a vehicle of spiritual instruction was rather amusing than successful. As was its origin in classic Greece, so was its revival in catholic Europe most intimately connected with religion. The monks of the dark ages, unable to render attractive the simple truths of the bible, endeavored to set forth its events and doctrines by scenic representation. But the stupidity of both teacher and pupil made way for barbarous anachronisms in these sacred mysteries. The motley stage-group would at one time bring together in strange commingling, the Saviour of the world, the ass of Balaam, and the poet Virgil talking in rhyme. Another catastrophe would present the figures of our first parents arrayed with the implements of modern industry-Adam with spade and plough, and his frail consort at her spinning-wheel. "I have myself," says Coleridge," a piece of this kind on the education of Eve's children, in which after the fall and repentance of Adam, the offended Maker condescends to visit them and to catechize the children, who with a noble contempt of chronology are all brought together from Adam to Noah. The good children say the ten commandments, the apostle's creed, and the Lord's prayer, but Cain after he had received a box on the ear for not taking off his hat, and afterward offering his left hand, is tempted by the devil so to blunder in the Lord's prayer as to reverse the petition and say it backward,”

And yet there is a dramatic exhibition of truth very different from the measured tread of the buskin, or the flummery of modern theatricals. The stage has become so corrupt that it has degraded the very taste and spirit on which it is founded. We speak of the dramatic element such as it ex

ists in true naturalness and dignity within the soul of man, and such as even Inspiration has employed to arouse attention to its solemn themes. The Old Testament contains whole books, which are eminently dramatic both in their structure and style. The exquisite poetry of Solomon's Song takes the form of almost constant dialogue between the various individuals of the nuptial group, while the company of virgins, as the scholar cannot fail to notice, is like the chorus of the Grecian Tragedy. The poem of Job, not alone in the distinctness of its characters, but in the varied interest of its scenes and the deep and startling power of its descriptions, may lay claim to the dramatic sisterhood. Even David often combines the drama with the ode, and we lose the charm of some of his richest melodies, unless we hear separate and responsive voices, sometimes from a single companion in music and praise, sometimes from the assembled chorus of Israel, again from the ever-eloquent depths of nature, and now deep and solemn from the bosom of God.

Yet it is the dramatic spirit rather than the dramatic form that we chiefly notice in scripture. It is that intense, vivid and picture-like expression, into which the poetry of the bible in its flashes of excitement so often rises. Such are those sudden changes of person throughout the Psalms, where the narrator becomes at once the actor, and throws down the harp to take up the sword and shield. Such is the sombre procession of ghosts that Isaiah summons to meet the king of Babylon. Ushered in by the exulting fir-trees and cedars of Lebanon, they come to utter taunts over his unburied corse, to sound the noise of viols in his ears, and to spread over him his wormy coverlid. The prophets in fact are pervaded throughout by this dramatic spirit. We hear in them the voices of busy multitudes, and the din of bustling action. They hurry us across a stage hung with every form of scenery, fields waving with harvests, or bristling with spears-nations charioted and crowned in triumph, or sitting in sack

cloth, solitary. In our ears are the shouting for the summerfruits, or the trumpeted alarm from the mountains, or the doleful creatures howling over the ruins of ancient splendor, and sometimes sweet strains of the orchestral music of heaven.

Nor in the more didactic dispensation of the New Testament are we entirely destitute of the same rhetorical feature. It is true, the inspired fishermen tell their story with few of the graces of style, and but little vividness of emotion. Luke, the most accomplished historian, has a severe classical taste which confines him to the simple language of narrative and the chasteness of Greek models. Paul, though he occasionally introduces the forms of logical dialogue, would seem to have studied in the school of Demosthenes rather than that of Aeschylus. But where can be found a richer variety of the dramatic style in its simple elements, than in the parables and discourses of our Saviour, crowded as they are with beauty and tenderness and solemn sublimity, and appealing to the soul of man from its sympathy with life and action. And how full of the loftiest dramatic life is the vision unfolded at Patmos, where the spirit of Hebrew Poetry looks out at the eye of the last of the prophets, and

In sceptred pall, comes sweeping by."

With what a magic hand are we hurried through the three great acts of this sublime yet mysterious drama—to watch the shifting scenes in seals and vials and trumpets—each movement of the grand plot amid thunderings and earthquakes -till time deepens into eternity, and the toiling church on earth becomes the praising church in heaven.

With these inspired models, and with subjects so fitted to foster the dramatic spirit, it seems natural that the preacher should exhibit something of this element in his discourses. The most eloquent pulpit-orators have often availed them

selves of the dramatic form with no little effect. It may be observed in those changes of scene and of character, by which the monotony of the didactic discourse is relieved, and its truths stand out like life. Particularly do the historical themes of the bible furnish scope for this peculiar style. A sermon founded upon a scene or character in sacred history, may be in one sense a perfect drama, constructed in close accordance with the most classic models. The preacher may trace the progress of the story with a vividness surpassing pictured and shifting scenery. He may present the varied characters, with an individuality of delineation, more striking than if they stood forth in person upon the stage. He may act out the catastrophe in glowing language, and lifesome gesture, as if himself were living over again the scene he depicts. He may intersperse the whole with homiletic preludes and interludes, like the chantings of a moral chorus, amid the stir of tragedy. Or without attempting this prolonged exhibition of dramatic skill, he may, like Whitefield, mingle this form with his occasional discourses-varying the sameness of direct address by alternate scenes of terror or of joy-causing the past and the future to come home like the living present to the soul, and making the pulpit speak forth with the varied tongues of angels and men. But for this dramatic form in the pulpit rare powers are requisite. It demands an ability to distinguish and depict the nicer shades of character, or it is the form without the power and life. It should be characterized by true dignity of moral picturing, or it becomes the false glare of histrionic tinsel. It should be pervaded by spiritual unction, or it degenerates to buffoonery and farce.

But it is the dramatic spirit which may be most successfully and generally cultivated in pulpit oratory. As the form of dialogue may exist without its impression of vividness and force, so the dramatic spirit may pervade the sermon, and warm and animate the style, where there is no formal succession of scenes and persons. It is this characteristic which

is most opposed to the barren and deadening influence of abstract theology—theology which has made the men described, and the men addressed from the pulpit, like statues lifeless and cold. The dramatic spirit in all its dealings with men, will turn away from the stiff specimen picture hung up in the garret, and in the open air will draw from the breathing figures of nature. And not content with re-creating the men that had been turned to stones, the dramatic preacher will invade the very domain of this granite Circe, to transform its stones to men. Under his Ithuriel touch abstraction becomes being. The words dealed out to the people are truths passed through the fire of life. Ideas stand forth with the breathing force of objective realities. The lines of his own experience blaze around his thoughts, and he speaks with the energy of one who reads his doctrine in the clear pages of history, or the burning revelations of prophecy-with a cloud of witnesses from the past and the future, gathering near to confirm with trumpet-tone the sentence. He presents truth as it breathes in the stirring scenes of every day life, or as it speaks in some new, yet lifelike group which the imagination may call up. He is so familiar with men that he seems to dwell within the temple of their very consciousness. Does he draw from that store-house of scenery and character, the bible, he seems to live over again the David, and the Paul, and the Jesus. To him, Christianity is one walking among men, with his form erect and his eye on heaven, and Judgment is the hurrying of the very audience to whom he speaks, pale and trembling, before the bar of the great assize. When he touches upon sin, it instantly leaves the vague abstraction of depravity, and assumes a concrete and palpable form. It is one sin selected with penetrating eye from the long black catalogue. It is the very one that he has wrestled with and wept over in his own closet, or traced with keen sagacity in the hearts of others. It stands out as no cold hypothesis, but a stern reality. The subject of his discourse is the criminal himself