Athenians. Save that the Athenians were a finical people, and would not tolerate the Fifeshire dialect, nor any except the most exquisite accuracy of pronunciation in their orators; Demosthenes, in respect of energy in the act of delivery, must have been an Athenian Chalmers. Apart from his own celebrated saying about 'Action, action, action,' this seems to be proved by the very tradition of his physical uncouthness at first, and of the natural difficulties of utterance he had to overcome. According to our observation, a certain difficulty of movement about the organs of speech is not an unfrequent characteristic of the orator. Extreme physical facility in speech we should regard as a bad sign—a certain whale-like movement of the jaw, or even a tendency to stutter, as a good one. The os magna soniturum cannot be one that moves easily and with glib rapidity. Fox was not a fluent speaker, in the ordinary sense; he stood on the floor of the House, like a swarthy, thick-necked Norfolkshire farmer, his meaning sometimes gurgling to his mouth faster than he could utter it, in his excitement, and then ejected in intermittent bursts. Had Demosthenes been an Englishman or a Scotchman, he might have begun practice at once; but the Athenians, being a finical people, made him put pebbles in his mouth till he had added ease to his energy. Still, that which was the source of his power must to the end have been his constitutional quality of vehemence. read his speeches we cannot but admire, and admire greatly; but in completing our conception of him as the living Greek,

'whose resistless eloquence

Wielded at will that fierce democracy,'

As we

we must take into account, as something altogether tremendous, the effect of the breathing and agitated personality of the man as he paused, or recoiled, or pointed with his quivering finger, charging, as it were, with a distinct shock out of his own nerve and being, each winged and ringing sentence as it passed from his lips.

But something more definite seems yet desirable. Excitability, perturbability, a sympathetic co-operation of the body with the mind in the act of utterance, is, undoubtedly, the characteristic of the orator. There may, however, be excitability and perturbability enough where there is no oratory; and we have farther to inquire what is the kind of perturbability that constitutes the true oratorical vehemence. Now, at first sight, it is plain that the perturbability must not be of the incapacitating kind. The orator must be a man whom his own agitation rouses intellectually. He must be a man, so to speak, who cogitates best under those very conditions of nervous excitement which would para

lyze other men. To say this, indeed, is but to state an identical proposition. To say that a man is a born orator, is but to say that he is a man so constituted as to be at his best under the conditions of oratory-i.e., standing up in a hall, with a crowd before him expecting what he is to say. These conditions are certainly exciting. No man can be in them, however much accustomed to them, without feeling a change or elevation of mood to a pitch corresponding. As there is such a thing as a battle-fever, the effects of which, according to Goethe's memorable description of it from his own experience, is to make the person subject to it see everything as with brown eyes through a brown atmosphere, so there is such a thing as a platform-fever, the special character of which we leave it to some competent authority to describe. Veteran soldiers may get over the battlefever, so that in the end they will tramp forward amid the whistling bullets without experiencing the optical illusion referred to by Goethe; and so, also, veteran orators get over the platformfever. But some feeling corresponding with the situation will remain even with the veterans. The old soldier may seem to walk into the battle cool and collected; but under that cool and collected mien there is already rampant the fighting devil. And so even with the most practised and the most seemingly nonchalant of orators. Crassus, one of the speakers in Cicero's Dialogue on Oratory, and himself represented there as among the greatest orators of his time, not only avows his liking for those orators who show some perturbation in the beginning of their speeches, but maintains that, whether it is shown or not, the perturbation always exists. Speaking for himself, and also for his auditors, three of whom are also orators, he says, 'What I often observe in you I very frequently experience in myself, that I turn pale in the outset of my speech, and feel a tremor through my whole thoughts, as it were, and limbs.' Crassus confesses that, in his case, the disturbing emotion was most frequently that of fear. This, however, is not essential. It is enough that the full sensation of the situation is present, whether the form it takes is that of fear, that of triumph, or any other. In any case, the feeling may be said to be one of excitement or perturbation. Here, therefore, comes the peculiarity of the orator. As the born soldier is the man who, while the battle-field fever is on him, in whatever degree he may be subject to it, is not thereby incapacitated for his work, but is rather wound up for its perfect and exact fulfilment, so the born orator is the man on whom the platform-fever, in whatever degree he is liable to it, takes a similar effect. In other words, that man is by constitution an orator who becomes recollective and inventive in the act of becoming excited; with whom the peculiar agitation attending

the conditions of public speech is a necessary, or, at all events, an appropriate stimulus to intellectual activity and productiveness. This or something equivalent to this, will be found to answer as a definition. Popularly speaking, the orator is a man who does not lose himself as he becomes excited, but who, the more phrenzied he waxes, grows in the same degree the more shrewd, the more perfect in his command of all his faculties. Speaking more scientifically, the orator is a man who can never cogitate better than when he is agitated. That there are such men, no one can doubt. Placed before an audience, the majority of men become helpless and foolish: what sense or wit they have forsakes them, often carrying memory, and grammar, and the very power of coherent articulation, along with it. But there are others who positively outdo themselves when they are placed in the same circumstances; who seem as if they had found their element, and who move in it in a way to surprise themselves and others; in whom the excitement of speaking, so far from numbing their various faculties, seems to evoke some for the first time, and to make all more nimble and alert-memory, wit, fancy, imagination, speculative intellect, and even judgment and critical taste, simultaneously. They positively become more cool, more shrewd and subtle, and more self-possessed, less apt to blunder, as they become more fervid. There are many common proverbs and observations respecting orators which in reality embody this theory. When some one jocosely defined an orator as a man who can speak nonsense till sense comes," the definition, though satirical, was scientifically accurate. When another-an American orator, we believe-declared that he "never could make a speech without first making a few remarks," he said substantially the same thing. But perhaps the finest recognition of the notion, as we have been expounding it, is that contained in a very happy phrase, used by some ancient writer on rhetoric-we think by Quintilian, Clarescit urendo, "He grows clear by burning," is the phrase in question; used, too, if we remember aright, precisely in reference to the orator. Whether it was originally so used or not, it suits him well. The orator is emphatically the man who, clarescit urendo, is clearest when he is most fervid, shrewdest when he is most excited, universally most capable when he is in the highest state of oratorical paroxysm.

66

British Quarterly Review.

THE

CHRISTIAN AMBASSADOR

ART. I. PERSONAL ELECTION.

"HE shallis the epitome of the gospel, the sum

E that believeth shall be saved, he that believeth not shall

mary expression of Divine mercy and justice with respect to the hearers of the gospel. It is the solemn and immutable decree of God, the plan of grace formed in favour of the children of Adam. This decree comprises the grounds both of the salvation and the perdition of men. The elect are saved first, because God has given his Son and bestowed his grace, and secondly, because they have believed. Evidently faith is indispensable, since none are saved before they believe; and reprobates are lost because they despise the gift of his Son and the offers of his grace. This decree then is, properly speaking, the law by which men will be judged. Jno. iii. 18. Now, since this law, emanating from a just Legislator, gives an eternity of happiness to its observers, and an eternity of suffering to its violators, as it is by it that the last judgment will be pronounced, it implies on the part of those to whom it is given, liberty not to believe and capacity to believe. There is then in every man, it matters little how he came by it, a power to believe, because he will be absolved or condemned according as he will or will not have believed. Every man is therefore capable of believing, seeing that the righteous Judge can punish no one for his not having done what he could not, nor reward him for his having done what he could not but do. Faith is then the great law of the gospel. It includes all others, and by the fulfilment of it all are fulfilled. It is the basis upon which particular Churches and the general Church are established. Whosoever believes is a member of the true Church, and believers only enter its bosom. Thus the condition of admission into the invisible Church is faith. God makes choice of all those who believe to make of them the mystical body of his Son, their head; their faith distinguishes them from the rest

H

of mankind. They become the chosen, the elect of God. All who are in the Church have a right to this title, and it belongs to none other. Whatever may afterwards transpire in relation to those who are outside the Church, they are not the chosen of God, seeing the choice is made through faith, and they are not the possessors of faith. Election is then the setting apart of certain individuals, separated from the world, to be the Church of God. Believers only are subjects of this election, and it never takes place but when faith exists. Our attention shall be directed to the nature, the time, and condition of personal election.

As we understand it, the election of grace is the choice of all those who believe. It takes place at the moment a man believes, and is conditional, seeing it is made only on the condition of faith. Calvinistic election includes three views directly opposed to these. It is the choice of a certain number of men which can neither be augmented nor diminished. It is made from all eternity and is unconditional. To discuss this question advantageously, the meaning of the term election must be distinctly apprehended and fully established. The question is not a doubt as to the reality of election and the elect. That is not denied. We acknowledge that the words "elect of God,” “chosen in Christ," "elect according to the fore-knowledge of God the Father," indicate an act of grace in favour of certain persons considered individually and applying in general to all believers in Christ. We shall find the nature of personal election clearly given in the two following passages of Scripture. It is explained negatively by our Lord, when he said to his disciples, "I have chosen you out of the world," and positively by Paul, when he wrote to the Thessalonians that "God had from the beginning chosen them to salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth." All those texts of Scripture wherein the subject is the elect and election, and which do not treat of collective election or of election to special services, agree with the definition which has been given. "Many are called but few are chosen." Many are called to faith, but as many refuse the call, only those who obey by believing are chosen, elected for divine adoption and eternal life. Many are called to believe, but there are few believers. "Put on as elect of God, bowels of mercy, kindness, humbleness of mind," &c., &c., which are invariably fruits of the Spirit,-believers being always humble, kind, and merciful. "Make your election sure;" God having chosen you by faith to obedience, that your faith might increase, so that your election might be increasingly sure. "But for the elect's

sake, those days shall be shortened," those of believers whom he has chosen to be his children, and whom as such he loves with a pecu liar love. "The elder unto the elect lady,"-to a believing lady. "Paul, an apostle according to the faith of God's elect,”—the faith