HIS SERMON THAT I HEARD.

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thoughts for all his feminine lucubrations-I was too full of the manly and the mighty morning services. Indeed, his heavenly sprinklings scarce made a ripple on the surface of the flowing stream of my meditations. Perhaps I did him no justice in the way of proper attention. And yet, how could one be charmed with the flow of purling rivulets, in soft meanders, through meadows of verdure and gardens of spicery, with the loud echoes of Niagara still resounding and thundering in his ears!

Mason was a judge-and the same wit from many another would pass for less, justly, with those who knew him as, in his day, without a rival or an equal, the giant pulpit rhetorician of New York.

It was a noble and a generous instance of the laudari a laudato, a great preacher praised by a great praised preacher-and plainly with no envy, no effort, no affectation, no sordid motive; truth and feeling alone having inspired the bosom of greatness to utter its own revealings, in this and in the former instance.

His

But I may tell my own impressions of his sermon. text was announced, as Rev. 22 : 11. He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still; and he that is holy, let him be holy still.

The sermon is now before the world, in his published works. Yet I have not seen it there, and the fact may be unreal, though others have reported or suggested it. It was often preached by him; and has been criticised by many, not without favor and laudation. I was sensible to its merits as a whole, as also dazzled with its brilliants. My objections to it were almost instinctive, and chiefly two only.

First. It was severely topical, not textual, in its total plan and finish. No adequate explanation; and especially no clear fixing of the point, in reference to sinner or to saint, where the words apply, as beyond it all must remain so STILL ;

REV. THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D. LL.D.

HUMAN greatness is often-if not always-an equivoque, an ambiguity. It is sometimes an assumption, sometimes a misfortune, sometimes the creature of circumstances, factitious, ostentatious, false. It is sometimes a crime, a fallacy, an impiety. With some men their greatness is in inverse ratio as their proximity; it requires "distance to lend enchantment to the view;" since to be acquainted with them is an effectual cure for the temptation to idolatry. Here a man is a monarch, not because he ever did or ever was any thing great, or splendid, or virtuous; but for several other reasons. He was the child of such parents; he was older than their other children; a vacancy occurred in the throne, and he was passively ordained the proper candidate.

Among the incumbents of the clerical profession greatness is too often the result of no certainly appropriate qualities of its possessor. He was elected in the conclave—either by scrutiny, or by accession, or by acclamation, and, quem creant adorant, he is, presto, the great Father of all Christendom, the Prince of this world, the Prophet of eternity, the Arbiter of human destiny, the Vicar of the Son of God! Or, the premier of Great Britain has named him to the Archbishopric of York or Canterbury, with a stipend of imperial affluence; and the Head of the Church there-masculine or feminine-has, as a matter of course, confirmed the nomination! Or, an Irish Papist comes to the United States, works at gardening for a while, then takes the chrism of the Popish priesthood, and then, rising on the pyramid by merit or contrivance, he gets at last to be appointed by the pope

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TWO FAULTS IN IT.

and then each class becomes unalterable. This seemed to me a defect of a grave character.

Second. He told of the saint as holy and righteous, and of the sinner as filthy and unjust; but how a sinner could become a saint, if this indeed were possible, he seemed not to tell us whereas, this very thing is, in a sermon, certainly in one of this class, a cardinal virtue of a preacher, and necessary to the edification of all ordinary hearers. He told us faithfully and well what would become of the sinner, what of the saint, in the coming world; but as to the material from which saints are made, or that saints by grace accrue from sinners, and that sinners might become saints, and how this could be done, and what hope of such a change there might be for any sinner there, he comparatively told us not: on the contrary, the desperate alternative seemed to be implied, If you are filthy, be so still; if unjust, be so still. This, indeed, he meant not; yet this seemed to be the impression really produced, though perhaps unconsciously, on the mind of the irreligious hearer. The precise opposite of this should have been the luminous and the living consequence. This was the sermon I read in London, and now heard in Glasgow. My estimate was increasingly the same. It is a great fault or defect, and one which is good against all the sermons I heard in Scotland. They are too abstract, or general, or speculative, or hypothetical, in their statements. To show a sinner, with due energy and directness, that he must become a saint, or perish forever; that this change is quite practicable; that his own is the responsibility for its occurrence; that he ought to seek it in the way of God; that rightly to seek, is surely to find it; that in the present, not the future world, is all his opportunity; that now is the accepted time, and there is no performance of the doing of it, except on the now principle; that procrastination is deceit, as well as crime; that not he for the Spirit, but the Spirit for him, is waiting, saying, To-day, if you will hear his voice, harden not your

HIS GREAT EXCELLENCE.

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hearts; that to reject offered mercy, and to neglect so great salvation, is the most aggravated sin against your own souls, as well as against God; that this sin leads to all others, and necessitates your doom; and that the justice of your condemnation, in all this, will be terribly enhanced, and gloriously illustrated at last, should you, by the sovereign order of His throne, die in your sins, filthy and unjust, with the awful fiat of the text confirmed against you forever: all this, I say, virtually impressed on the mind of the sinner, evinces THE KIND of sermons that we ought to preach; and the type of impression that we ought to make; and the very scope and drift of the written word, to radiate and seal, as the means of actuating every hearer, practically, to make good his retreat for refuge, to lay hold on the hope set before us in the Gospel-to do this, by God's offered help, and to do this while he may, and to do this promptly and sincerely, by the exercise of faith in the testimony of God, corresponding with God, in that obedience of faith, to which the Gospel summons and obligates every rational hearer. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to THE CHURCHES.

It is not for me to praise so great a preacher, and I am far enough from any desire or thought of disparaging him. But in this fraternal censure, while I regret it, I say only what honesty, and a sense of usefulness, alike inspire; and nothing for the sake of criticism, nothing at all with the least idea of his depreciation. If any man's affluence of fame could bear some animadversion, surely here one need not be afraid to be hearty and truthful, and free in his observations.

His manner, also, had some faults, if rules or canons are to guide us; such as Campbell or Whately has with philosophic eminence prescribed. But it had excellences too, such as directness to his object, earnestness, naturalness, symmetry, and bravery evinced, superior to any low consideration, bent only on pleasing the Master and benefiting the people. In a good sense, not in a proud, or a vain, or an affected one, Chalmers