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of effect in the modern pulpit. There is undoubtedly too much reason for this complaint, although we think that in the present day it is not so much eloquence that men desiderate in preaching as real instruction, living energy, and wide variety of thought and illustration. Mr. Rogers says very little about the substance of sermons, and in what he does say seems to incline to that principle of strait-lacing which we thought had been nearly exploded. No doubt every preacher should preach the main doctrines of the gospel, but if he confine himself exclusively to these, he will limit his own sphere of power and influence. Why should he not preach the great general moralities as well? Why should he not tell, upon occasion, great political, metaphysical, and literary truths to his people, turning them, as they are so susceptible of being turned, to religious account? It will not do to tell us that preachers must follow the Apostles in every respect. Christ alone was a perfect model, and how easy and diversified his discourses! He had seldom any text. He spake of subjects as diverse from each other as are the deserts of Galilee from the streets of Jerusalem; the summit of Tabor from the tower of Siloam; the cedar of Lebanon from the hyssop springing out of the wall. He touched the political affairs of Judea, the passing incidents of the day, the transient controversies and heart-burnings of the Jewish sects, with a finger as firm and as luminous as he did the principles of morality and of religion. Hence, in part, the superiority and the success of his teaching. It was a wide and yet not an indefinite and baseless thing. It swept the circumference of Nature and of man, and then radiated on the cross as on a centre. It gathered an immense procession of things, thoughts, and feelings, and led them through Jerusalem and along the foot of Calvary. It bent all beings and subjects into its grand purpose, transfiguring them as they stooped before it. It was this catholic eclectic feature in Christ's teaching which, while it made many cry out, 66 Never man spake like this man," has created also some certain misconceptions of its character. Many think that he was at bottom nothing more than a Pantheistic poet, because he shed on all objects-on the lilies of the valley, the salt of the sea, the thorns of the wilderness, the trees of the field, the rocks of the mountain, and the sands of the sea shore-that strange and glorious light which he brought with him to earth and poured around him as from the wide wings of an

angel, as from the all-beautifying beams of dawn.

We think that if Christ's teaching be taken as the test and pattern, Mr. Rogers limits the range of preaching too much when he says its principal characteristics should be "practical reasoning and strong emotion." Preaching is not a mere hortatory matter. Sermons are the better of applications, but they should not be all application. Ministers should remember to address mankind and their audiences as a whole, and should seek here to instruct their judgments and there to charm their imagination; here to allure and there to alarm; here to calm and there to arouse; here to reason away their doubts and prejudices, and there to awaken their emotions. Mr. Rogers disapproves of discussing first principles in the pulpit, and says, that "the Atheist and Deist are rarely found in Christian congregations." We wish we could believe this. If there are no avowed Atheists or Deists in our churches, there are, we fear, many whose minds are grievously unsettled and at sea on such subjects, and shall they be altogether neglected in the daily ministrations? Of what use to speak to them of justification by faith who think there is nothing to be believed, or of the new birth who do not believe in the old, but deem themselves fatherless children in a forsaken world. We think him decidedly too severe also in his condemnation of the use of scientific and literary language in the pulpit. Pedantry, indeed, and darkening counsel by technical language, we abhor, but elegant and scholarly diction may be combined with simplicity and clearness, and has a tendency to elevate the minds and refine the tastes of those who listen to it. It is of very little use coming down, as it is called, to men's level; now-a-days, if you do so, you will get nothing but contempt for your pains: you cannot, indeed, be too intelligible, but you may be so while using the loftiest imagery and language. Chalmers never" came down to men's level," and yet his discourses were understood and felt by the humblest of his audience, when by the energy of his genius and the power of his sympathies he lifted them up to his.

Mr. Rogers thinks that all preachers aspiring to power and usefulness will "abhor the ornate and the florid," and yet it is remarkable that the most powerful and the most useful, too, of preachers have been the most ornate and florid. Who more ornate than Isaiah? Who spoke more in figures and parables than Jesus? Chrysostom, of the "golden mouth," belonged to the same school. South sneers at Jeremy Taylor, and Rogers

fluence which more genial and fanciful authors have exerted. For one who reads South, ten thousand revel in Jeremy Taylor. Howe, a very imaginative and rather diffuse writer, has supplanted Baxter in general estimation. In Scotland, while the dry sermons of Ebenezer Erskine are neglected, the lively and fanciful writings of his brother Ralph have still a considerable share of popularity. The works of Chalmers and Cumming, destined as both are in due time to oblivion, are preserved in their present life by what in the first is real, and in the second a semblance of imagination. Of the admirable writings of Dr. Harris and of the two Hamiltons we need not speak. Latimer, South, and Baxter, whom Rogers ranks so highly, are not classics. Even Jonathan Edwards and Butler, with all their colossal talent, are now little read, on account of their want of imagination. The same vital deficiency has doomed the sermons of Tillotson, Atterbury, Sherlock, and Clarke. Indeed, in order to refute Mr. Rogers, we have only to recur to his own words, quoted above: " This faculty, fancy namely, is incomparably the most important for the vivid and attractive exhibition of truth to the minds of men.” It follows that since the great object of preaching is to exhibit truth to the minds of men, fancy is the faculty most needful to the preacher, and that the want of it is the most fatal of deficiencies. In fact, although a few preachers have, through the agonistic methods, by pure energy and passion, produced great effects, these have been confined chiefly to their spoken speech, have not been transferred to their published writings, and have speedily died away. It is the same in other kinds of oratory. Fox's eloquence, which studied only immediate effect, perished with him, and Pitt's likewise. Burke's, being at once highly imaginative and profoundly wise, lives, and will live for ever.

very unworthily reechoes the sneer; but | what comparison between South the sneerer and Taylor the sneered at, in genius or in genuine power and popularity? To how many a cultivated mind has Jeremy Taylor made religion attractive and dear, which had hated and despised it before? Who more florid than Isaac Taylor, and what writer of this century has done more to recommend Christianity to certain classes of the community? He, to be sure, is no preacher; but who have been or are the most popular and most powerful preachers of the age? Chalmers, Iving, Melville, Hall; and amid their many diversities in point of intellect, opinion, and style, they agree in this, that they all abound in figurative language and poetical imagery. And if John Foster failed in preaching, it was certainly not from want of imagination, which formed, indeed, the staple of all his best discourses. Mr. Rogers, to be sure, permits a "moderate use of the imagination;" but, strange to say, it is the men who have made a large and lavish use of it in preaching who have most triumphantly succeeded. Of course they have all made their imagination subservient to a high purpose; but we demur to his statement that no preacher will ever employ his imagination merely to delight us. He will not indeed become constantly the minister of delight; but he will and must occasionally, in gratifying himself with his own fine fancies, give an innocent and intense gratification to others, and having thus delighted his audience, mere gratitude on their part will prepare them for listening with more attention and interest to his solemn appeals at the close. He says that the splendid description in the "Antiquary" of a sunset would be altogether out of place in the narrative by a naval historian of two fleets separated on the eve of engagement by a storm, or in any serious narrative or speech; forgetting that the "Antiquary" We have not room to enlarge on some professes to be a serious narrative, and that other points in the paper. We think Mr. Burke, in his speeches and essays has often Rogers lays far too much stress on the time interposed in critical points of narration de-a preacher should take in composing his scriptions quite as long and as magnificent, which, nevertheless, so far from exciting laughter, produce the profoundest impression, blending, as they do, the energies and effects of fiction and poetry with those of prose and fact.

sermons. Those preachers who spend all the week in finical polishing of periods and intense elaboration of paragraphs are not the most efficient or esteemed. A well-furnished mind, animated by enthusiasm, will throw forth in a few hours a sermon incomparably That severely simple and agonistic style, superior in force, freshness, and energy, to which Mr. Rogers recommends so strongly, those discourses which are slowly and toilhas been seldom practised in Britain, except somely built up. It may be different somein the case of Baxter, with transcendent effect. times with sermons which are meant for pubAt all events, the writings of those who have lication. Yet some of the finest published followed it have not had a tithe of the in-sermons in literature have been written at a heat.

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THERE are few sensations more startling | and unpleasant than that which is occasioned by even the slightest of those movements of the earth's surface to which we equally give the name of earthquake, whatever may be the degree of their intensity, or the nature of their effects. Our imperfect knowledge of the causes which produce them, and of the laws of nature by which they are regulated, increases our alarm; and as we have no sure warning of their approach, and are their helpless victims when they come, we may be thankful that they are not of more frequent occurrence. They are fearful in every way: for where they have once been destructively felt, they leave an impression as to the possibility of their return, which, at times, comes disagreeably across the mind, even in our moments of enjoyment.

A writer, whose work was noticed last month,* speaking of Lisbon, says: "Some traces of the great earthquake still remain; here and there, a huge windowless, roofless, and roomless mass, picturesque by moonlight, but saddening by day; fearful memento of wrath, stands to tell the tale of that terrible convulsion. Slight shocks are continually felt, and when I was in Lisbon, about five years ago, were so unusually powerful, that some fear was excited lest a recurrence of this calamity were imminent. The Portuguese have a theory, that nature takes a hundred years to produce an earthquake on a grand scale, and as that period had nearly

* Hither and Thither.

VOL. XXXIII.-NO. II.

Some say the earth

elapsed, they were frightened in proportion. At Naples one cannot but be conscious that the city is built over hidden fires;' on one side is the ever-active Vesuvius, and on the other the Solfatara, and an evident communication exists between them. Hot springs and steaming sulphur poison the air everywhere; but at Lisbon no such signs exist; here is nothing but a soil prolific beyond measure no streams of lava-no hills of calcined stones, thrown up 1500 feet in one night (as the Monte Nuovo, near Naples)no smoking craters-no boiling water struggling into day. Still, the belief that Lisbon will again be destroyed by a similar throe of nature is prevalent, and perpetuated year after year by the recurrence of slight shocks."

In treating of earthquakes, we cannot seek our materials in the remoter periods of history.

It is remarkable that in the records of the Old Tes' ment there are only, I believe, three passages in which they are mentioned. One of them is part of the well-known description of the appearances attending the revelation of the Almighty will to Elijah. The others refer to the one event of an earthquake in the days of Uzziah, King of Judah-not quite 800 years B. C., and from the language in which it is alluded to, we may infer that such convulsions were then of unusual occurrence. It is in comparatively modern times that

The old
And crazy earth has had her shaking-fits
More frequent.

14

When they are mentioned by the classical | its use in improving the manufactures of porwriters of antiquity, it is generally without celain and of crystal. any detailed notices of their phenomena, and in connection with other incidents.

Thucydides speaks of their frequency in Greece during the Peloponnesian war, and in one instance-describes their more remarkable effects;-chiefly the destruction of life and buildings occasioned by inundations on the coast; and he modestly suggests, that "in his own opinion" the shock drives the sea back, and this suddenly coming on again with a violent rush, causes the inundation; "which, without an earthquake," he thinks, "would never have happened." But he mentions the more noticeable fact, that "at Peparethus there was a retreat of the sea, though no inundation followed."

Inscriptions have been found in temples both at Herculaneum and Pompeii, commemorating the rebuilding of these edifices after they had been thrown down by an earthquake, hich happened in the reign of Nero sixteen years before the destruction of the cities themselves by the eruption of Vesuvius. Yet there is no other account of such an event extant; and the indifference of the ancients in recording them is shown in the fact that even the appalling fate of these cities was only incidentally alluded to till Dion Cassius wrote his fabulous and exaggerated description, about 150 years after their destruction had taken place.

We are constantly reminded, however, of the frequency of such phenomena. The route through Italy, for instance, from Sienna to Rome, is marked throughout by great volcanic changes; and it is not very difficult to believe the tradition that the whole of the Bay of Naples is formed by one extensive crater.

In many instances the ingenuity of man has converted even these fearful ruins into sources of wealth. Without speaking of the well-known commerce in, sulphur and other articles, from Naples and Sicily, I may mention that, amongst the mountains of Tuscany, the Count de Larderel has applied a process to the preparation of boracic acid, which is decribed in the Jurors' Reports of the Great Exhibition of 1851 as amongst "the highest achievements of the useful arts." The vapor issuing from a volcanic soil is condensed; and the minute proportion of boracic acid which it contains is recovered by evaporation, in a district without fuel, by the application of volcanic vapor itself as a source of heat. The substance thus obtained greatly exceeds in quantity the old and limited-supply of borax from British India, and has extended

In every country where organic changes so violent and extensive have occurred, theremust have been earthquakes equally violent; for though it is possible that some of these phenomena have been produced by electricity alone, yet we are so often able to connect them with volcanic action that we must consider this as the most frequent, if not the only cause with which we are at present acquainted. We are reminded also by an eminent writer, to whose "Principles of Geology" I shall elsewhere refer, that in volcanic regions, though the points of eruption are but thinly scattered-constituting mere spots on the surface of those districts-yet the subterraneous movements extend simultaneously over immense areas. Those mere tremblings of the earth, so common in South America, are probably connected with eruptions in mountain ranges, that have never yet been explored. It does not advance us very far in our knowledge of the subject to assume that both volcanoes and earthquakes have a common origin, which often produces movements of the earth even unattended by volcanic eruption. As far as we can trace their connection, this is most probably the fact; but there may be other causes which have still to be discovered.

An able writer in one of the early volumes of the Edinburgh Review--while denying the theory that volcanic explosions are caused by "the eructations of a central fire, occupying the interior of the earth," and while showing that the lava thrown out by these convulsions could not be so produced-admits that substances in a state of fusion may exist, which, by the action of water pouring from above, or by the irruption of the sea, "might produce earthquakes, with furious emissions of gases and steam." Lyell gives his reasons, based upon electro-chemical influences, for attributing them to a similar cause. In his

Geology of the Countries visited during the voyage of H. M. S. Beagle round the World," Darwin supposes that, in Chili, there is a subterranean lake of lava of nearly double the area of the Black Sea, and "that the frequent quakings of the earth along this line of coast are caused by the rending of the strata, which is necessarily consequent on the tension of the land when upraised, and their injection by fluidified rock." But it is useless to theorize. In the present state of human knowledge, earthquakes are a description of phenomena of which we can merely record the facts.

One of the most remarkable earthquakes of antiquity of which we have any account was contemporaneous with the battle of Thrasimene, and was alluded to, incidentally, by Livy, as showing the ardor of the fight. The passage is translated by Lord Byron. "Such (he says) was their mutual animosity, so intent were they upon the battle, that the earthquake which overthrew in great part many of the cities of Italy, which turned the course of rapid streams, poured back the sea upon the rivers, and tore down the very mountains, was not felt by any of the combatants." We may repeat the description in Lord Byron's verse:

And such the storm of battle on this day,
And such the frenzy whose convulsion blinds"
To all save carnage, that, beneath the fray,
An earthquake roll'd unheededly away!
"None felt stern nature rocking at his feet,
And yawning forth a grave for those who lay
Upon their bucklers for a winding-sheet;

Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations

meet!

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ance of valleys and mountains, which had never, since the formation of the globe, been exposed to the sun. But the tide soon returned with the weight of an immense and irresistible deluge, which was severely felt on the coasts of Sicily, of Dalmatia, of Greece, and of Egypt; large boats were transported and lodged on the roofs of houses, or at the distance of two miles from the shore; the people with their habitations were swept away by the waters; and the city of Alexandria annually commemorated the fatal day on which 50,000 persons had lost their lives in the inundation. This calamity, the report of which was magnified from one province to another, astonished and terrified the subjects of Rome; and their affrighted imagination enlarged the real extent of a momentary evil. They recollected the preceding earthquakes which had subverted the cities of Palestine and Bithynia; they considered these alarming strokes as the prelude only of still more dreadful calamities, and their fearful vanity was disposed to confound the symptoms of a declining empire and of a sinking world." In speaking of the similar convulsions which occurred about the year 526, the same historian observes, "that the nature of the soil may indicate the countries most exposed to these formidable concussions, since they are occasioned by subterraneous fires, and such fires are kindled by the union and fermentation of iron and sulphur." (We do not stop to question the correctness of his theory.) "But their times and effects (he continues) appear to lie beyond the reach of human curiosity, and the philosopher will discreetly abstain from the prediction of earthquakes till he has counted the drops of water that silently filtrate on the inflammable mineral, and measured the caverns which increase by resistance the explosion of the imprisoned air. Without assigning the cause, history will distinguish the periods in which these calamitous events have been more or less frequent, and will observe that this fever of the earth raged with uncommon violence during the reign of Justinian." (It was of the close of this reign that he was writing.) "Each year is marked by the repetition of earthquakes of such duration that Constantinople has been shaken above forty days; of such extent that the shock has been communicated to the whole surface of the globe - or, at least, of the Roman empire. An impulsive or vibratory

Of those which, in the year 365, ravaged nearly the whole of the Roman Empire, we are told that" in the second year of the reign of Valentinian and Valens, on the morning of the 21st day of July, the greatest part of the Roman world was shaken by a violent and destructive earthquake. The impression was communicated to the waters; the shores of the Mediterranean were left dry by the sudden retreat of the sea; great quantities of fish were caught with the hand; large ves-motion was felt: enormous chasms were sels were stranded; and a curious spectator (Ammianus) amused his eye, or rather his fancy, by contemplating the various appear

opened; huge and heavy bodies were discharged into the air; the sea alternately advanced and retreated beyond its ordinary

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