gion. () Defect of family religion, and want of connection of the minister's family with his work. (j) Want of faith. 3. Hints to improve. Strive to interest your hearers by addressing them directly, feeling after their hearts, and showing them that you are dealing with them individually. Don't deliver an essay, instead of a sermon. Study closely human nature. Historical facts, and occurrences of common life may be happily employed, as they are fitted to catch the attention. But don't make your discourse a rag-bag and scissors patch work. Follow no special model. Be natural. Use a clear style. Avoid all quaintness and conceited points; also many epithets. Don't soar above the comprehension of your hearers; but by easy steps and a simple logic you can carry them a good way upward or downward. Be earnest, not tumid. Write much, even if you do not read your sermons. Stop when you are done. DOING AND KNOWING. "Every duty which we omit (writes Ruskin) obscures some truth which we should have known." Is there any thing strange, then, in the origin and spread of idolatry among the pagan nations; or in the perverted ethics of modern days, and memorably, in the Southern sections of our own republic? If God's commandments are continually broken, even under the light of nature, how can he be retained in men's knowledge as the one object of worship? If the spirit of Christianity be rejected from a people's national and social life, how can conscience be saved from losing the sense of the simplest moral truths? MAKING A BOOK. Dr. Sprague, that prince of clerical and ecclesiastical annalists, has put his eighth volume of "Annals," the one on the Unitarians, into the hands of his stereotyper. Two more embracing several minor denominations, will complete this vast work. It is a life work, though he has written or edited some twenty other volumes, all a pleasant excursus from a laborious professional career. One gains an index to the amount of labor expended on his Annals in the fact that he has paid out twenty-five hundred dollars in postage alone. This is as it should be. If a man assumes to give a book to the world he ought to put time and labor into it, equal at least to a tithe of the time and labor expected in reading it. We do not now mean by books those thousand and one things, written in the afternoon by scribes ycleped authors, published at night, read the next morning, and made waste paper at noon. We mean a volume that aspires to see the next century. In writing such a book an author should feel with the old painter, who was reproached for being so long a time on his piece. "I paint for a long time," was the noble defence. He should not repeat others unless he can excel them, nor leave any Ruth much to glean after him. To save the greatest amount of labor and time, an author on most subjects should epitomize the old of his predecessors, and tell us distinctly where his new begins. The most of us readers want to begin just there. Guild's "Manning and Brown University" is an illustration fresh and in point of what we mean by an exhaustion of material. We admire the way in which the author of a real book has drawn his wide net through alcoves and garrets, old barrels, associational records, and the retreats of private correspondence. We are told that a book is indebted for its longevity very much to its style. The knowledge it contains may be reproduced by later writers, and so the old author die out of memory, if his style do not give him a life insurance. Schiller's "Thirty Years' War," Voltaire's "Charles XII.," and some English volumes of the Elizabethan age, illustrate the vitality of a thoroughly classic diction and structure. This being so, the more need is there of toilsome and protracted labor in the making of a real book. LIFE-WRITING. One of the gravest and most common faults of biographies is, that they present so highly varnished pictures of their subjects, putting in strong lights their commendable qualities, and screening unduly their failings. This tends as much to discourage as to encourage the reader. In this is conspicuously seen the superiority of the biblical narratives of personal lives in both the Old and New Testaments. They give the bad and good qualities with a judicious fidelity. Here there is alike a model and a test of biographical writing. This, too, is the severest touchstone of an autobiographical competency for that delicate work. BORES. Among the most tiresome of these are your philosophic generalizers who will resolve you the cause of all national, social, historical, and scientific phenomena, with a single glance of their astonishingly astute optics. They remind you of the shrewd hit at the discoverers of false causes, in Guesses at Truth: "If they catch sight of a dry stick lying near a tree, they cry out, signza! here is one of the roots." PHRENOLOGY AT A DISCOUNT. Sir William Hamilton, after dissecting several hundred human brains, and particularly examining the subject of the frontal sinus, concludes that "no assistance is afforded to mental philosophy by the examination of the nervous system, and that the doctrines which are founded upon the supposed parallelism of brain and mind are, so far as observation extends, wholly groundless." SATAN told our Lord that the angels would bear him up from being dashed on the stones (for so it was written) if he would leap from the battlements of the temple. But Christ knew that the promise of protection is against the stones which lie along our paths of every day duty, and not against danger and damage when we jump over precipices. A SELFISH person is like a top spinning round on the point of its own axis. A benevolent person is like a planet revolving around the central sun, and reflecting its brightness. That sun of the soul is God. Yet the soul may have also a revolution on its own centre, so that this be in harmony with its motion upon the greater orbit. AUGUSTINE in his De Civitate Dei (xxii. 6.1.) thus gives, in a string of Latin preterites, the history of the Pagan persecutions of the early Christians: "Liga bantur, includebantur, cædebantur, torquebantur, urebantur, laniabantur, trucidabantur, et multiplicabantur." So the bush which Moses saw in the desert burned with 66 fire, nec tamen consumebantur”- VOLTAIRE used to say that the heart never grew old, but that it becomes sad because lodged in a ruin. Why could not the philosopher-poet see, that grace is the only restorer of this ruin? ERRATA. On page 440, fourth line from the bottom insert: "All right understanding of the origin of the gospels, as we may understand it, must rest upon a living, believing apprehension of their contents which are unlike aught else in the world's history. The Bible has never failed to speak for itself, without the assistance of the learned. In its application to preaching use in the church it has ever preserved its living power, and it ever will. There is the exegesis of the Spirit at home." On page 448, tenth line, for EXHAUST read EXPAND; nineteenth line, for SPIRANT read SPIRANTE, and twenty-first line, for BREATHED read BREATHING. INDEX. A. Agrarian laws of Israel, 617. A living dog better than a dead lion, 319. American Diplomacy, The Rise of, arti- America, certain great social vices of, Ancient Egypt, noticed, 518. Annual of Scientific Discovery, noticed, 316. Antiquity of Man, Review of Lyell's work Arnold's European Mosaic, noticed, 419. B. Bangs' Life by Stevens, noticed, 509. Bayne's Testimony of Christ to Chris- than belief, 151; miracles a proof of the was Beecher's, H. W. Freedom and War, Beecher's, Lyman, Autobiography, no- Beecher's, C. Redeemer and Redeemed, Beliefs, The Chaos of, article on, 295- Bethune's Lectures on the Heidelberg Bible Atlas and Gazetteer, noticed, 210. Bones, sacred in the Papal church, 546— Browning's Dramatis Persona, noticed, 606. Brownson's Review, notice of, 613. C. Calvin held to infant Salvation, 335. Christian Home Life, noticed, 604. Church Pastorals, by N. Adams, D. D., Church, Track of the Hidden, notice of, Civilization, Hindrances to, article on, Colenso on Moses and Joshua, 318. 212. Dissenters, The English, articles on, 90- of God, 527; choice of obedience or dis- Drummer Boy, The, noticed, 211. E. Edwards' Biography of Self-Taught men, Responsibility of to Ellicott's Commentary on Thessalonians, Enoch Arden, noticed, 514. F. Fall of man and the Serpent, 282-92. Free Institutions, Sources of Our, article |