Missions, and inducing them to contribute more generously to our various benevolent societies. He also intended to deliver an address in the spring of the year, on the connexion between taste and religion, and hoped to persuade his fellowcitizens to adorn their village with ornamental trees and with promenades.

The results of his brief ministry cannot be estimated with precision. It is always difficult to ascertain the amount of evil which a preacher prevents, as well as the amount of good which he accomplishes; to ascertain also those general impressions of his ministry, which are often more important than particular though striking instances of individual benefit. He united parties among his people that had previously been discordant. He allured to the sanctuary men who had formerly forsaken it. He gave to all an exalted idea of the pulpit, of a sermon, of the sacred office. He taught them to honor the ministry for its relations to the literature and the politics and the liberties, as well as to the virtues of the country. He produced such an impression upon his hearers as they had never felt before, that holiness of heart is essential to all that is most lovely and alluring, and that opposition to evangelical truth is neither rational, nor safe, nor manly. From his ministry of four months, his professional brethren may learn both the real and factitious value of a sound scholarship, in augmenting the influence of a preacher, in fitting the style of his discourses for a favorable operation upon his hearers, and predisposing them to rely on his statements as the statements of a practised thinker. They may also learn the eloquence which there is in an earnest desire to do good. It was the simple-hearted wish of Mr. Homer to promote the religious welfare of his people. They saw it, they felt it, they gave him their confidence as the reward of it. They loved him because he loved them. The religious zeal of a benevolent and refined and honest man, especially when it is conjoined with the character as well as the reputation of a schol

ar, will always exert an influence, and often command homage. It will receive honor from the piety, the conscience of some, the amiable sentiment, the good sense of others.

How long Mr. Homer would have attracted the admiration which he received in the morning of his ministerial life, cannot be determined. His pungent appeals to the conscience of his hearers might have increased his real power over them, and at the same time have diminished his seeming popularity; for it is not always the most popular minister who is the most influential. But until the time of his death, the interest of his people in his ministrations was regularly increasing. His visits became more and more acceptable, every sermon was thought to be more powerful than the preceding, and his last appearance in the pulpit is described by them as if they had seen an angel. "Those who were absent from his church on a Sabbath would often come to me," said one of his parishioners, “and ask me to repeat what I could remember of his sermon; and his arrangement was so lucid that I could easily recall his main ideas." Many of his hearers are described as fixing their eyes upon him steadfastly, and as giving to him that earnest attention which a minister loves to receive. "The house was so still that the slightest whisper could be heard in it." He secured the esteem of other denominations as well as of his own, and was useful not only as the minister of a sect, but as a teacher of the whole community. After the lapse of more than a year, his incidental remarks are daily quoted, and the veneration for his memory has excited the wonder of strangers who have casually visited the place. So strong and deep and long continued an impression upon so intelligent a people, is one sign of his power and worth. Had he labored among them a third of a century, rather than a third of a year, we might have anticipated the influence that is still exerted by his precepts and example. But we did not expect that he would have compressed into four months, the efficiency of a long life. "Honorable age

is not that which standeth in length of time, nor which is measured by number of years; but wisdom is the gray hair unto men, and an unspotted life is old age."

MR. HOMER AS A PREACHER.

There are various standards of pulpit eloquence, no one of which can be praised to the exclusion of any other. Every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that." A true liberality of christian taste will be gratified with the doctrines of the gospel though they be administered in varying forms. All ministers need not write and speak "just as we do." Men of narrow views would fain banish from the pulpit every preacher who is not elegant and refined, but the great Reformer said, "Human nature is a rough thing and must have some rough ministers to chastise it." There is a class of the community who never will be reached by softnesses and delicacies of language. We of ten hear it said that all abstruse reasoning and recondite speculation are unseemly for the pulpit. But there are some hearers who demand a philosophical style of address, and will listen to none but philosophical preachers. Others are prejudiced against the refinements of language and the graces of delivery. No one, they say, was ever converted by a metaphor, and poetry is neither "doctrine, nor reproof, nor correction, nor instruction in righteousness." But there are men of poetical fancy in our parishes, and they are as immortal as men of business, and have as much need of salvation, and are as much entitled to be addressed in an ornate style as children are in a simple one or mathematicians in a dry one. "Are all apostles? are all prophets? are all teachers? are all workers of miracles? have all gifts of healing? do all speak with tongues? do all interpret? But covet earnestly the best gifts."

It is not claimed that Mr. Homer's discourses present a model to which all ministers should conform, but they meet

one demand of our natures which is too seldom gratified. He was not a rude preacher, but he was plain-spoken when he thought it desirable to be so; he was not distinctively a metaphysical preacher, but he did not always avoid severity of argument. He had more depth of thought than men of his physical conformation are often supposed to have. He was not large of stature, he walked with sprightliness, his voice though masculine was not deep-toned, and he was not clumsy in his attitudes. Now a man who is thus formed will be regarded by some as less profound, than those who have a heavy movement and a very deep enunciation. So much are men affected, consciously or unconsciously, by the outward appearance, in judging of the inward character. The nodosities of the oak are deemed essential to its strength. But if the subject of this memoir had been inferior to the majority of students in mental vigor or acumen, he would not have been so enthusiastic and persevering in his study of the Greek orators and critics, nor would he have selected Bishop Butler as the companion of his leisure hours. But he was sensitive rather than profound, and literary rather than scientific. His superiority lay in his quick sympathies with the beautiful and the good, in his ardent and varied emotion, and in the versatile energies of his mind. He was a man of taste. He would gaze in silence at an Andover sunset until the last golden tint had vanished. He would instinctively stop his walk, that he might listen to the song of a bird. Some graceful or majestic sentence in Jeremy Taylor or Richard Hooker was ever present in his memory. By his multifarious reading, especially in the ancient classics, he had acquired a flexible style of composition; and this, united with his freshness of feeling, his earnest and natural delivery, gave an extemporaneous air to his written discourses. It was by his delicacy of sentiment, his elastic fancy, and the gracefulness of his inner and outer man, that he would most easily have distinguished himself above his brethren in the pulpit. Those who read

his published sermons will perceive his blandness of temper, and the mellowness of his social and christian spirit, his refined and classic taste, his well stored memory. But some of his qualities as a preacher are not so distinctly visible in his printed discourses, as in those which are excluded by want of space from the present volume. A few of the characteris

tics which are prominent in his unpublished sermons may here be mentioned.

He was a systematic preacher. It is not meant that he adjusted the thoughts of every single discourse with logical exactness, but each of his sermons was a part of an extended series. No one of them was a mere isolated address. This discourse was designed to modify the impression of that, and that was intended to prepare the way for a third, and the third was not complete without reference to others. He had formed the plan for his pulpit efforts for several months or even years to come. He had already commenced two series of doctrinal sermons, although he deemed it inadvisable to announce the fact that he was preaching the parts of a system. One of these courses was on the character and state of man; another on the existence and attributes of God. He had written two sermons in the first course and four in the second, and had sketched the topics and divisions for seven or eight lectures in a third course.

Mr. Homer aimed to unite in his sermons, the doctrinal, the historical and the practical element. It will be one object of my preaching," he said from the pulpit on the Sabbath after his ordination, "to present in a systematic form the doctrines of our evangelical faith-such as I find them in the word of God, or the revelation of our own consciousness. I am persuaded that there is a way of making the sternest theology come home to the human bosom, and of clothing the dry bones of metaphysical belief with the breathing forms of life. I believe that the minds of my people will be greatly enlarged and invigorated by contemplating such