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ments, to give him due credit for the conclusions to which he arrived, to account for some of them, in a word, to appreciate all that he became, and all that he effected, we must bear in mind the circumstances under which he grew up. The manifold disadvantages through which he had to struggle out into the sphere that he eventually occupied, make his achievements the more wonderful. If we have succeeded in placing his early life and early ministry in clear light, we may trust to have contributed something towards a true judgement of his claims upon us, at the same time that we have helped to preserve the traces which future biographers will search out with so much interest.

H. B. 2d.

ART. XIII.

Style.

STYLE we may reckon to be the method of so choosing and arranging words, as to transfer thoughts, arguments, convictions, and feelings, from the speaker to the hearer, or from the writer to the reader; and a discussion of Style would be a discussion of the modes by which this work can be accomplished, or is attempted.

As we speak mostly to preachers, what we have to say will have direct reference to their peculiar work. The preacher is like a burning-glass, required not to make, but to transmit truth, and to concentrate it to a focal and effective point. That style which best does this, is, of course, the best style; and he who uses such a style is, so so far as this point is concerned, the best preacher. He may gather the beams of truth from the wide circuit of the heavens, but he must cause them all to fling their convergent light and heat upon his chosen point. The good preacher is no more to deal with truth in such a manner as to turn attention on himself, than the glass is so to refract the light that it shall fall back on its own face.

One may produce showy, yes, even splendid sentences, without establishing any claim to be a good writer of sermons; for the work which those sermons do, is the only true test of their excellence. If they are not adapted to produce upon their hearers some worthy effect, to nurture some good resolve, to destroy some seeds of evil, to uplift the soul, or lead it in the path of duty; however great the pleasure with which they are heard, or the praise with which they are welcomed, they must be found wanting.

Such a prismatic preacher may produce beautiful spectra, but his words will not make his hearers' hearts "burn within them."

Not to let our illustration carry us too far, we must admit that beauty, or that which gratifies the taste, is often a very important element in a discourse, and that a truth may gain admission to the heart in tasteful clothing, which would be rejected in homelier garb. But we are to have a care that the body enters also with the dress, else the mind may receive the clothes-apparition, and nothing more. The number of those who can worship God only through the medium of a "splendid " sermon, is, we fear, decidedly increasing. They are persons of taste; the preacher too has taste;-and hence his danger is great of becoming a mere clerk of taste, instead of a preacher of truth and righteousness. This tendency is much strengthened by the almost universal opportunities of hearing in Lyceum Lectures the most highly finished and piquant productions, which insensibly become standards, by which the preacher is measured by others, and by which he measures himself. Against this constant danger he needs to be on his guard.

May we not lay it down as an axiom concerning the style of sermons, that nothing can be really agreeable to a good taste, which does not, at the same time, aid the purpose of the piece? The ornament must be also a part of the strength; whence it follows, that whatever is otherwise unnecessary, cannot be truly ornamental. Accordingly, while harmonious combinations of words, or apt illustrations drawn from agreeable objects, give us pleasure, and indicate the good taste of the preacher, yet our satisfaction is but momentary at best, if we find they

add nothing to the strength and persuasive power of the discourse, but are intended only to elicit admiration.

On the other hand, let us take, for example, conciseness, or compactness of expression. How intimately is it associated in our minds with vigor of thought, and how readily the mind submits to the terse, muscular force of a condensed sentence. We might gather abundant illustrations of this fact, were it in order, from the sentences of a celebrated Brooklyn preacher, which shoot into sharp crystal needles, as they come from his lips. How many, by the pithy brevity of "Our country, right or wrong," were seduced into assent to doctrines, which if expressed in two or three merely logical and exact sentences, they would have disowned. The pithy brevity of such a sentence lends it power; it has a clean-limbed, athletic vigor, which any addition of eloquent words (so called) cannot augment, but will certainly diminish.

Let us illustrate, by an example taken from one of the most celebrated preachers of modern times:1- "We sometimes hear of shipwrecked passengers thrown upon a barbarous shore, and seized upon by its prowling inhabitants, and hurried away through the tracks of a dreary and unknown wilderness, and sold into captivity, and loaded with the fetters of irrecoverable bondage, and who, stripped of every other liberty but the liberty of thought, feel even this to be another ingredient of wretchedness; for what can they think of but home, and as all its kind and tender imagery comes upon their remembrance, how can they think of it but in the bitterness of despair." One gets so weary in following these passengers through all the circumlocutions around which the author's style has rolled them, that all will or power to form a clear picture of the scene is lost. As the mind forms no picture, so it feels no interest or sympathy for the unfortunate passengers.

This is a writer whose thoughts are grand and stirring; hence he must always be read with pleasure. But a man needs to be strong who has such a style to uphold, for of the ninety-three words in this extract, we judge at least twenty-two to be more than useless.

Sterne's picture of the prisoner in his cell will finely

1 Dr. Chalmer's Astron. Dis.

contrast with the foregoing, and illustrate the idea we are considering: "He was sitting upon the ground upon a little straw, in the furthest corner of his dungeon: a little calendar of small sticks was laid at the head, notched all over with the dismal days and nights he had passed there; he had one of these little sticks in his hand, and with a rusty nail he was etching another day of misery to add to the heap. As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted up a hopeless eye towards the door, then cast it down, and went on with his work of affliction. I heard his chains upon his legs as he turned his body to lay his little stick upon the bundle. He gave a deep sigh-I saw the iron enter his soul." There are in this sketch, only four, or at most, five intensifying epithets: "dismal days," "day of misery," "hopeless eye," "work of affliction," "deep sigh," while the quotation from Dr. Chalmers is almost made up of such words. It is needless to ask which most affects our sensibilities. Nor is it difficult to ascertain the reasons of the difference. The first is encumbered with dead words, which, like dead coals, keep the live ones so far apart that their heat is lost. Its unwieldy bulk burdens the mind. The last is clear, compact, and simple. In reading it your eye rests on the prisoner and not on the style. The full sentence supplies you with one idea after another, as fast as you can receive them. We perceive at once, how many advantages are possessed by the naked, compact style. Another point of difference is worth noticing.

The one endeavors pompously to exhibit a feeling, the other simply exhibits that which awakens feeling. The last reveals the very lines of the countenance of anguish, the first spreads over it a black veil, wrought all over with emblems of woe. The improvement is plain. When we wish to produce in our hearers, convictions or emotions like our own, our labor must be to exhibit, not these conditions of our minds, but that which produced them, believing that what produced a given effect in us, will do the same in our hearers. The suggestions of ease will always point to the other road. It is easy to declare our convictions and feelings; the roots of them are often laid bare only after the most severe scrutiny. One of the most celebrated English divines, Jeremy

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Taylor, shall furnish us with another example of the ornamental style. It is from a sermon on prayer: "The first thing that hinders the prayer of a good man from obtaining its effects, is a violent anger, and a violent storm in the spirit of him that prays. For anger sets the house on fire, and all the spirits are busy upon trouble, and intend propulsion and defence, displeasure, or revenge; it is a short madness, and an eternal enemy to discourse, and sober counsels, and fair conversation; it intends its own object with all the earnestness of perception, or activity of design, and a quicker motion of a too warm and distempered blood; it is a fever in the heart, and a calenture in the head, and a fire in the face, and a sword in the hand, and a fury all over, and therefore can never suffer a man to be in a disposition to pray." It is easy to see that this mob of images, "houses on fire," "fevers," "swords," &c., distracts the mind and draws it away from the plain position that, Anger precludes prayer. This is no ornamental style, but a style of ornaments. It is scarcely surpassed in its fulness of illustration, by the exordium which Southey records of an English lawyer: "This man, gentlemen of the jury, walks into court like a motionless statue, with a cloak of hypocrisy in his mouth, and is attempting to screw three large oak trees out of my client's pocket." Whenever, in hearing a discourse, our minds turn largely, as in this, from the subject to the style, we may be sure the style is not good.

The same is true of writing a discourse; when we forget our subject in the pursuit of fine words, beautiful thoughts, or splendid illustrations, we may be sure we are in the way of writing a poor discourse, however elegant we may flatter ourselves it is.

The more fully to illustrate our case, let us place in contrast with this extract another which is not from a sermon: "The accusing spirit which flew up to Heaven's chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in, and the recording angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word, and, blotted it out forever." This sentence, which has been pronounced the most musical in our language, has in it not one unnecessary, nor one intensifying word. How little they could have benefited

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