The very scantiness of their libraries, by compelling them to think for themselves, was an advantage,-just as, by the law of compensation, financial poverty is often a blessing in disguise. The great majority of men must concentrate,- must patiently cultivate some province of thought, or they will experience the disappointment of those heroes whose empire has been lost in the ambition of universal conquest.

Take note that, in so warmly commending the man of one book, we do not mean the reader who ignores all others, but one who, while making not a few great works his companions, yet selects one among them to be not only his companion but his bosom friend, which he will nocturna versare manu, versare diurna,— with which he will commune till his mind is thoroughly saturated with its thought, dyed and colored by its ideas, yet, while drinking in its inspiration in ox-like draughts, never losing his own mental identity or independence, but growing in stature and strength by what he feeds on, upon the principle that serpens, nisi serpentem comederit, non fit draco. We emphasize the word communion because it is evident that though reading is common, communion with books is rare in this hurrying age, and that if we would get the greatest good from any great thinker, we should cultivate the closest acquaintance with him, till we have sounded all the depths of his intellect, and made his intellectual treasures our own. Of such a communion with books, -especially if they are the bravest and noblest books, books forged at the heart and fashioned by the intellect of the bravest and noblest men,- who can be dull enough not to feel the benefit when he returns to the common world?

PULPIT ORATORY.

W

HY is it that pulpit oratory is productive of comparatively small results? Why is it that of the millions of sermons delivered annually in the United States, so few are remembered for a day, fewer for a week, and fewer still make a lasting impression, and revolutionize men's convictions, feelings, habits, tastes, characters? Reasoning a priori, would not one suppose that the results of pulpit oratory would be so brilliant as, in comparison, utterly to "pale the ineffectual fires" of the lecture-room, the hustings, and the forum? Had an ancient critic, an Aristotle or a Quintilian, been told that a time was coming when myriads of persons should assemble every seventh day to be addressed upon the truths of a religion sublime beyond all the speculations of philosophers, yet, in all fundamental points, within a child's apprehension,- that the loftiest, the profoundest, the most heart-moving of all themes were to be the topics of the address,- that the reception given to it might, and probably would, affect the hearer's condition for weal or woe through inconceivable cycles of time, - could the critic for a moment doubt that such occasions must train up a race of consummate orators, the overwhelming effect of whose eloquence must make the efforts of Demosthenes and Cicero seem puny and contemptible? Yet what is the fact? Out of the fifty thousand or more discourses that will be delivered next

Sunday between the St. Croix river and the Golden Gate, how many will startle or coax men out of their sins? Will one in a hundred of the arrows shot by the clerical bowmen prove barbed ones, not only lodging in the heart, but sticking there? Or, will not the fact be, that, with comparatively few exceptions, they will but graze the surface of that organ, or scratch the epidermis of the hearer, or, perhaps, fall short of the mark, in other words, that while the preacher is haranguing, some of his hearers will be brooding over problems in their business, others planning a "corner" in wheat or some stock, others pursuing a strain of thought suggested by some chance word of the speaker, others building air-castles, others uneasily pulling out their watches and counting the minutes to dinner or bed-time, and others criticising their neighbors' dresses, or criticising the preacher, and wondering that on so inspiring a theme he should harangue in so humdrum a way? We fear the latter supposition will prove to be the correct one, and we propose to state what we think to be one of the fundamental reasons why the ministrations of the pulpit are so often abortive of results.

This reason, we believe to be, in the vast majority of cases, not a defect in the matter, but in the manner, chiefly the delivery, of discourses. Of course, in the clerical, as in all other professions, there are men who have mistaken their calling. Many a man, as South says, "runs his head against a pulpit" who should have followed the plough; and it is still true as when Milton uttered his sarcasm, that "if any carpenter, smith, or weaver, were such a bungler in his trade as are many clergymen in their profession, he would starve. for any custom." It is perfectly true that ministers

fail, like other men, from incapacity, dullness, laziness, half-heartedness,— from all the causes that cripple men's intellects, and paralyze men's energies. So long as parents continue to think that weak, sickly boys, who have not force enough to succeed in law, medicine, or trade, "will do" for the ministry,- that a youth who has not sharpness enough to sift evidence or expose a sophism, who lacks nerve to badger a witness or amputate a leg, may yet be qualified for that profession whose members are to scatter the sophistries of Strauss and Renan, and to smite wickedness in high places,the pulpit will continue to have its incapables. With all these concessions, however, it is still true that the main element of ineffectiveness in preaching is the disregard, the almost contempt, of manner in speaking. The crying want of the pulpit to-day is not profound. scholarship, hair-splitting metaphysic subtlety, rhetorical talent, a firmly accentuated conscience, or the moral aroma of character, but oratorical skill and power. Of what use is learning to a preacher, if it is communicated to his hearers in squeaking tones that grate on their ears, or in a drawling, sing-song voice that puts them to sleep? What matters it that a soldier has a sword of dazzling finish, of the keenest edge, and the finest temper, if he has never learned the art of fence?

All life abounds with illustrations showing that manner is as potent an element of success as matter, form as substance. It is said that Dryden used to speak his plays so coldly as utterly to emasculate them; while Nat. Lee delivered very poor dramas with such force and taste that a performer threw down his part, in despair of acting up to the recital of the author. That famous angler and devout man, Izaak Walton, who, being a brother-in-law of Bishop Ken, knew inti

mately many of the most successful clergymen of the seventeenth century, seems to have understood the secret of fishing for men better than many of the professors in our theological seminaries. In "The Complete Angler" he tells of a certain youthful sprig of divinity, who, going "to procure the approbation of a parish," and wishing to make his success certain, borrowed of a fellow student a sermon which the latter had preached with great éclat. After a few days the borrower came back very much crestfallen, and complained that the sermon, which he had delivered word for word, was a failure. "I lent you, indeed, my fiddle," was the reply, "but not my fiddlestick." From this, honest Izaak very sensibly concludes that "the ill pronunciation or ill accenting of words in a sermon spoils it."

The truth is, there never was a great preacher who was not also a great orator; and there was never a great orator who did not pay immense attention to the science of expressing by tongue and gesture the burning thoughts within him. Some of the most extraordinary effects of oratory have been produced by passages which, when we read them in our closets, seem tame and commonplace. The Country Parson justly remarks that we can see nothing remarkable in those quotations from Chalmers which are recorded as having so overwhelmingly oppressed those who heard them. It was his manner, not his matter, that electrified his hearers. The elder Booth, being once asked to repeat the Lord's Prayer, did it with such power and pathos that every heart in the room was hushed, and every eye was wet; and the gentleman who made the request said: "I have heard the words a thousand times, but I never heard the Lord's Prayer before."