the chief outward attraction of public worship has been too much overlooked. The great majority of nominal Christians have preferred the gorgeousness of a ceremonial above the eloquence of the pulpit. And yet none of the fine arts is so attractive as eloquence. The most philosophical skeptic whom the English world has seen, declared that he would travel twenty miles to hear the preaching of a certain Methodist minister.

There is something in the voice of an orator, that answers to a demand of the soul. By the flashes of his eye, the heart of an audience is inflamed; and men are sometimes spell-bound by the upraising of his hand. Whether they love or hate the truth which is addressed to them, they are enamored of the form in which it appears. Many an obnoxious doctrine of the Bible lies imbedded in a sweet historical narrative, which allures even such as dislike the doctrine. The casket may enclose a pearl, which is less highly prized than the gold in which it is encased. But thousands who come to admire the wining elocution, remain to adore the great Being whose character is so appropriately described. It is the genius of Romanism to raise the orchestra and the parade of the altar above the pulpit. Only a small proportion of its priests have cultivated the art of speaking. They have but little encouragement to do so. The forms of Christian worship most prevalent throughout the world, have tended to withdraw the mind from the proper methods of proclaiming divine truth. Men have been allured into the sanctuary by less intellectual and more artificial attractions, than those of a racy and graceful eloquence. It is, or must we say, it should be the glory of the pulpit, to restore the appropriate allurements to Christian worship; to fascinate men by thoughts well attired, well exhibited. The mind was made for thought, and will be pleased with it longer than with any external ornament. And thought expressed, is thought still. The enunciation of it increases its influence over the soul. There never was an age so intellectual as the presOur lyceums have well nigh supplanted our theatres. It is then a great mistake to spend our time in decorating our ceremonials of worship, when the taste of the age re

quires something more spiritual and refined than mere pageantry. It requires a more copious supply of facts and arguments and illustrations than is now to be found, and a more interesting manner of exhibiting them.

If we would meet the demands of our time, and, indeed, of all times, we must prefer those ornaments which are the natural and appropriate dress of truth, to those which are factitious and far-fetched. The graces of elocution are those which belong to the truth itself. The expressiveness of attitudes and gestures and tones, is nature. It flows from the mind. It is the result of the inspiration of thought. Statues and pictures and robes are artificial adornings of the temple; but the apostle who "cannot but speak the things which he hath seen and heard," will be a permanent as well as an appropriate attraction to the sanctuary; and men who would soon be satiated with the chauntings of the matins and the vespers, will come again and again to hear the preacher who speaks like one anointed to publish glad tidings.

Let it not be said, that this mode of speaking is the result of divine grace. The gifts of the Spirit never supersede the necessity of assiduous culture. Nor let it be said, that an effective elocution must be a natural endowment. God bestows upon men the faculties, which are to be improved by laborious training. All men cannot be orators, but the majority of men may be. The majority of men are eloquent, when they speak for their selfish interests. It is a corrupt habit, which has made our speakers so sluggish ; and now cultivation is required in order to restore the nature which has been expelled by evil practice.

The elocutionist labors not to make men artificial, but to make them cease from being so; not to mend or transform nature, but to restore and develop it. He labors to repress the intrusions of a proud, selfish spirit into the style of a preacher; to excite the dormant energies of a mind, which has been in the habit of contemplating truth with indifference; to rectify the depraved tastes of depraved men; and to teach those subordinate graces of utterance, which would never have been forgotten if man had not been sluggish, regardless of his influence over

others, unmindful of his accountability to Heaven for every gift which he has received. In fine, the elocutionist labors to make the preacher natural, and therefore impressive, and thus attractive. The naturalness is to be the proper expression of the truth; the impressiveness is to be the legitimate effect of the thought fitly uttered; and the attractiveness is to be the alluring influence, which the purity and firmness and and grandeur of the word of God always exert upon a soul that is attuned to the love of holiness, or even awake to the beauties of intellect.

THE STUDY OF ELOCUTION, AN IMPORTANT PART OF THE PREPARATION REQUIRED BY THE PUBLIC DUTIES OF THE MINISTRY.

[Contributed by the Rev. Edward N. Kirk, pastor of the Mount Vernon Church, Boston.]

It is easy to recognize the difference between a speaker who is agreeable and one who is disagreeable, between one who is powerful and another who is feeble. Nor can any one entertain a doubt whether that difference is just as obvious in the pulpit as in the senate. Every preacher would desire so to deliver his sermon as that his meaning should be clearly perceived and his sentiments deeply felt, rather than to utter it in a manner unintelligible and unimpressive. Every congregation of worshippers would prefer in their pastor a good delivery, to an awkward and disagreeable style of speaking. Let two men of equal piety and scholarship be presented to any of our religious societies; the one a man of easy, becoming carriage in the pulpit, of simple, natural, and powerful utterance; the other uncouth in attitude and movement, indistinct and stammering in his enunciation, and wearisome in his drawling tones; can any man in his senses doubt, which of the two will be chosen? No; thus far the case is plain. But if we go back of this, and observe this finished speaker

practising in the detail of his studies and vocal gymnastics, there we shall find some demurring. Many who admire the orator, are averse to the process of discipline which gave him the better style. There is, in other words, a prejudice in the community, and among many excellent candidates for the gospel ministry, in regard to elocution as an art to be obtained by study and practice.

This prejudice is worthy of a candid examination and of an earnest effort to remove it. In the minds of some, the study and practice of elocution is connected, if not identified with the idea of substituting sound and emotion for sense and truth. To such persons it may be suggested that there is no necessity for this substitution, The importance of elocution presupposes the importance of other things. If a preacher have not the right things to say, and the right motives and spirit in uttering them, manner can do nothing for him nor his hearers. But for men who are morally and intellectually qualified to preach the gospel, the importance of manner can scarcely be overrated. And to overlook it is a proof neither of piety, dignity, nor wisdom. If there were some ethereal way of communicating with the mind; if the process of preaching were designed to be mesmeric; and people were to be put to sleep, instead of being aroused, in order to instruct and impress them, we might dispense with elocution and the culture it requires. But so long as men are in the body, it will be found requisite for the most effective exercise of the ministry, that a part of clerical education consist in the study and practice of oratory. That necessity is founded on these two facts, that the communication of thought and feeling depends upon the right exercise of our bodily organs; and that those organs are within the domain of that great law which requires the cultivation of the faculties. It is not sufficient for the purposes of electrical power that the battery be fully charged; a good conductor must be added. Alas! how much preaching is in the class of nonconductors. Elocution is indeed vanity and vexation of spirit in a man who has no other excellence; but it multiplies indefinitely the power of him who possesses the solid qualities of the ministry.

In the minds of others, elocution is identified with the ostentatious exhibition of the parts and graces of the speaker. But this is confounding the use and the abuse of a good thing. Since it is a man who is to be seen and heard, and since there is but one right way of speaking, while there are a thousand wrong ways, the man will do well to learn the right. And if the agreeable impression produced by an agreeable person and manner, can conduce to the right impression of truth, the very purity of his desire to do good, should induce him to cultivate his person and his manner. There is nothing in the study of elocution peculiarly adapted to awaken vanity. Nor is there any more inducement for an eloquent man to make display his end, than for a learned man.

Others fear that they shall be tempted to turn their attention in the pulpit, to gestures and tones; and thus infinitely degrade their high vocation. This again is a possible, but by no means a necessary consequence. It is a

perversion of oratory. There is no more need of bringing the rules of oratory into the pulpit, than the rules of grammar or rhetoric. Both must be studied, and both must exercise a powerful influence in the pulpit; but neither must be seen there, for an instant diverting the current of thought of feeling in the speaker. The greatest orator, in an extemporaneous address, pays strict attention to the minutest rules of grammar. In constructing a long and complex sentence, he observes with scrupulous exactness the bearing of grammatical rules upon the inflection and position of each word; but there is no interruption in all this to the concentrated action of his understanding, no extinction of the fiery current of his feeling. The rules of elocution are designed to form the man, to correct the bad habits of attitude, speech, and gesture, to make the body, in every way, the fit instrument for a mind full of noble thoughts and powerful emotions. There may be cases of half-fledged orators or of pedantic speakers turning the rostrum or the pulpit into the platform of a school, and showing off the attitudes and tones and gestures which they admire as mere attitudes, tones, and gestures. But all this, we repeat, is perversion, equally disgusting with