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those acquainted with the original, in reviving their knowledge of it, and it would put those unacquainted with the original on the same vantage-ground with these that were, and give them the same assistance in ascertaining the meaning. Every conscientious clergyman must be unwilling to preach on a text, till he knows whether it is correctly translated or not.

MISCELLANEOUS DEPARTMENT.

ART. I. SLIGHT FOOT-PRINTS OF GOOD MEN.

DR. MILNOR.

ONE of the most singular laws of nature, is the law of WASTE. In some fruit trees, not one blossom out of hundreds forms a germ or yields fruit. If it did, neither branches nor trunk would bear the burden. The spawn of many fish, forms the food of others; and yet if most of the young that are produced, were not devoured by other tribes before attaining their full growth, it is estimated that whole oceans would become almost solid with them.

For all the useful purposes of life, a similar waste seems to exist in the family of man. How small a proportion of those who are born into the world, ever attain to man's estate; and alas! how few men accomplish the sublime ends of their earthly existence.

The laws of adjustment are hardly less strange. One man seems to be before his age, another quite as much behind it. Fitted for some sphere, perhaps, this gifted person is only a hindrance and a burden in the place he occupies. And the age and the spot are almost always waiting, in vain, for the coming man.

If, however, imperfect adjustment be the law, an almost perfect adjustment is sometimes the exception. It seems to have been so, in the case of the late Dr. Milnor, for many

years the honored and successful Rector of St. George's Church, New-York. Here, for once at least, we have the right man in the right place.

For ten years after the opening of the present century, nearly all the remaining energies of the Church in the city and Diocese of New-York were expended "in strengthening the things that remained and were ready to die."

The elevation of Dr. Hobart and the Rev. Mr. Griswold to the episcopate, on the same auspicious day, soon after the opening of the second decade of this century, was the commencement of a new era. At first, their influence for good was not so much felt in the great cities as in the rural districts, and the urgent demand for men and means for the vast missionary field of Western New-York, gave complexion to almost the entire episcopate of Bishop Hobart. It was not until towards the close of this decade, in the fall of 1819, that the condition of the Church in the City of New-York, and in Brooklyn, fell under the observation of the present writer. The three united churches of Trinity Parish, together with Grace Church and St. Mark's, represented the conservative strength of the Episcopal community. At that time Christ Church and St. Stephen's belonged to the progressive interest, but were by no means led by progressive men: so that St. George's, in the city and St. Ann's, Brooklyn, stood in the fore front of that great conflict, the fluctuations and various fortunes of which have since been observed for nearly forty years with intense and unabated interest. If, within twenty more years, the conservative interest, to a very great extent, became progressive, may it not have been, in part, owing to an impulse lerived insensibly, or in a spirit of noble or necessary competition, from the party whose progress has been so very remarkable? Numerically, morally, socially, that Episcopal interest in New-York, Brooklyn, and vicinity, of which Old St. George's was the exponent, has grown from a little one to be a giant indeed; in view of so large an increase, from so small a begin ning, under such difficulties and in so short a time, who can withhold the exclamation: "What hath God wrought!"

At that time, and for the work then allotted to it, St. George's was favorably enough situated; but its condition, at the time the Rev. Mr. Milnor accepted the rectorship, was far

from encouraging. It had been but lately rebuilt, by Trinity Parish, after having been destroyed by fire-its long difficulty with that venerable corporation, of which it was at first a chapel, had but recently been adjusted, and there had always been something very unsatisfactory about the ministry of his predecessor.

It is certain that the Rev. Dr. Kewley, before he died, was reconciled to the Church of Rome. Opinions vary upon the point whether he had not all along been a Jesuit in disguise. Probable evidence is very strongly against such a supposition, whilst, on the contrary, if his intellect alone admitted the light of Protestantism, for a time, whilst his heart remained unrenewed, nothing is more probable than a relapse, under some sudden spasm of regret or remorse. A convicted conscience, under the true light, can find relief no where but in faith in Christ; but under erroneous teaching, it can find momentary ease by the application of many dangerous panaceas. Confession and a priest are the most natural resort of any alarmed sinner educated under the power of that easy and yet intolerable yoke. He had ability, education, apparent earnestness, at times allied to eloquence; and having embraced a scheme of moderate churchmanship and pure evangelism, he was admired in New-London, and proved very acceptable in St. George's, but left no strong or visible marks behind, and seems never to have commanded any very enthusiastic following.

The lawyer-statesman, transformed into the humble devoted Christian, and the faithful, laborious clergyman, was precisely the person which the place and the exigency called for. When first introduced to his Sunday-school and Lecture-room, the writer found the work of Dr. Milnor admirably well organized; and that he had already become the centre of a very extended circle of useful exertion.

The grace of God had raised up around him a choice corps of zealous coädjutors. At first, "not many rich, not many noble were called," but they "were rich in faith and abounded in every good work." It would be curious to trace the germ of many a noble charity, in New-York, to the piety and the liberality of those who early gathered around the Lectureroom of St. George's. The Bible and Tract cause, the interests of Sunday-schools and City Missions, and above all, the claims

of Foreign Missions, found there some of their earliest and most devoted advocates and supporters.

The Rev. Mr. Henshaw, long afterwards the honored Bishop of Rhode Island, and successor there to his "master in Israel," Bishop Griswold, a much younger man than Dr. Milnor, and then in his first fervor of industrial zeal, was, at that time, the eloquent and admired Rector of St. Ann's, Brooklyn. No season of sober and chastened religious fervor, is remembered more pervading or more healthy, than that which prevailed during several successive years in these two parishes. Both, in almost every respect, were remarkably well worked. Dr. Milnor, especially, was possessed of very extraordinary administrative faculties, brought with him from his practice of the law; and evinced even more remarkably, perhaps, in the councils of the Bible and Tract Societies, and in the conduct of the Foreign Missions of our Church, than in his parish; justly entitling him to the confidence and respect of the leading men of all denominations; and which shone occasionally (whenever elected to share in them) very conspicuously in the general councils of the Church. Considerable as the difference was in the mere popularity of the two men as preachers, the younger and more ardent naturally bearing away the palm, it was remarkably of the same tone and tenor. They belonged emphatically to the school of Simeon, and both erred somewhat, perhaps, in the pertinacity with which they insisted that each particular discourse should set forth clearly and fully, at least the outlines of the plan of salvation. It limited the range of subjects, but it exceedingly intensified the impression of the paramount importance of the one great subject-salvation, by grace, through faith. It did not minister to an idle and vain curiosity, but it always met and satisfactorily answered the great inquiry: "What shall I do to be saved?"

As younger men came forward, with more finished educations and more various reading, but still, preaching in the main the same great doctrines, hearers began to wonder whether the older class of preachers were flagging in their zeal, or losing their animation, for they certainly did not appear to be as interesting preachers as heretofore; but a more instructive or more useful class has never yet succeeded to them in the Church.

Except in the lecture-room where, it is believed, Dr. Milnor almost always spoke without notes, he took a carefully written sermon with him into the pulpit. A style, to a certain extent, a little antiquated, still prevailed on the part of the older clergy. A scene in the good Doctor's study is well remembered, in which one of the parties figured very little to his own advantage, on the score of diffidence and modesty, but which taught him a lesson of no small advantage through a life somewhat prolonged.

They were discussing the propriety of the occasional use of the figure of speech called apostrophe, in a calm, written discourse. The young man denounced it in unmeasured terms, as presupposing a heat of passion and a fervor of feeling which only some pressing occasion or real exigency could justify; and that in order to its even partial success, the audience, from some cause or other, must have been wrought up to such a state of extraordinary excitement, as to make the most vehement forms of expression appear natural. The impetuosity of the young man carried him so far, as to relate an instance of a young and inexperienced, but very flowery writer, addressing a long apostrophe to poor Joseph, as he lay in the pit. In a very wild and frantic manner, Joseph was reminded of all the horrors of his situation, of his desertion-the solitude-the darknessthe foul and muddy water-the slime-the creeping reptiles, and imagination can hardly conceive what horrors besides, and poor Joseph was earnestly exhorted not to lose heart, for that help and deliverance surely would come. As he proceeded, a very nervous member of the congregation dropped his head, grasped the top of the pew, murmuring to himself: Why don't he let poor Joseph out? I shall die if he keeps poor Joseph there much longer.

It was pleasant enough to join in the merriment which this narrative occasioned; but the character of the emotion was considerably changed when the Doctor quietly remarked: “Take care, young man; if I mistake not, I make use of that figure of speech in the very sermon I am to preach this afternoon.”

No great eclat attended either the utterance or the hearing of an apostrophe to the widow and her two mites, in a charity sermon on that occasion; but caution in its use, had been pretty effectually taught to one of the parties; and a somewhat

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