gainsayers; speaking with such power, and yet so sweetly, that they might see their evil to be evil, and his good to be good.

In modern times, one of the most eminent examples of power in the use of incident, in illustrating and enforcing Divine truth, is that of Whitfield. He drew thousands upon thousands to hear him, who probably never would have come to listen, or never stayed a sermon through, but for his wonderful fertility and quickness in the dramatic applications of his subject. He was master of such pathos and naturalness, in describing events illustrative of the grace of God, the solemnity of Divine Providence, the power of conscience, and the nearness of eternal realities, that his facts seemed to come flaming from the fire of his feelings, by which he burnt them in upon the soul, and the truths of his subject along with them. An old fact put on a startling aspect in his hands; he galvanized every incident, and then threw it, in an electric stream, upon the conscience.

He had a most inimitable ease and happiness in the introduction of occurrences into his sermon, that had fallen under his own observation, or had been related to him by others. He brought out the meaning of them, and traced their application with such natural art, and spontaneous deep feeling, that they seemed a new revelation of truth, even to the original narrator of them. A clergyman of this country states, that he once told an affectiug occurrence to Mr. Whitfield, relating it, however, with but the ordinary feeling and brevity of a passing conversation; when afterwards, on hearing Mr. Whitfield preach, up came his own story, narrated by the preacher in the pulpit, with such nature, pathos, and power, that the clergyman himself, who had furnished Whitfield with the dry bones of the illustration, found himself weeping like a child. The tones of the soul possesses an intensity and penetrating depth of feeling to subdue the soul; and Whitfield, amidst all the thunder of a voice that could be heard to an incredible distance, spake with the tones of the soul; and his gestures were impelled by the same spontaneous, magic influence, that made them, as well as his words, seem part of the soul. According to the common saying, so common that we forget the depth of meaning it covers up, he threw his soul into them.

And yet it is said that Whitfield, when a boy, had been taught to ridicule this way of preaching in others. There was an excellent, familiar, plain minister named Cole, whose manner would seem to have been in some way so original as to excite notice, but whose method of story-telling drew young Whitfield's contempt. One of the congregation asked the lad one day, what business he intended to pursue? He said he meant to be a minister; but he would take care never to tell stories in the pulpit, like old Cole. About twelve years afterwards, when Whitfield had begun his career of flame, this old gentleman heard him preach, illustrating in his own powerful way, the application of his subject by some interesting narrative. "I find," said he, that young Whitfield can now tell stories as well as old Cole." Some of young Whitfield's stories may have been, indeed, the very same as old Cole's; but they

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had a new power, because they came from the young man's soul, and not from the mere lumber-room of the memory.

This alchemy of fervent love to Christ and to souls, this power of intense religious feeling, turns all things into gold, creates out of all knowledges, arts, stories in the memory, all scenes of observation, all experiences, inward and external, the means and materials of a vivid eloquence. But there must be discipline of mind, to save even religious feeling from being wasted, and the stores of the memory wantoned away. There may be an idle habit of profuse story-telling, that, as we have hinted, is almost worse than no illustration at all. It is a poor resort to drag in stories merely to help out a sermon, or to conceal the want of thought. It is like our city milkmen stopping at the last pump, and filling their cans with water, when the milk threatens to give out. There must be thought; and true religious feeling, in a well disciplined mind, produces thought, more than all things else together; and then illustrations will be used, not for mere amusement, but to convey thought, and make it suggestive and productive. Habits of close attention, Cowper says:

Habits of close attention, thinking heads,

Become more rare, as dissipation spreads,
Till authors hear at length one general cry—
Tickle and entertain us, or we die.

The desire to be tickled is not confined to the dissipated readers of a trifling literature. Sometimes, the preacher becomes to the congregation as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well upon an instrument;" and they go to church mainly to hear the music, and be amused. Instead of going to muse upon the things of God, they go to be a-mused, and drawn away from them. In this case, if the fault be in the preacher, there is, as John Randolph once said, both a lyre and a liar in the pulpit; and the preacher is a liar, because he is merely a lyre, to play them a pleasant tune.

A man must have the magnificent anatomy of the doctrines of the gospel, to be clothed upon with his illustrations and feelings, or else he might as well be constructing a balloon. When those great doctrines occupy and absorb the soul, being doctrines of life, and not speculation merely, illustration and intense feeling will grow out of them, and grow upon them, and that is the perfection of eloquence. The trite old rhetorical maxim, Ars est celare artem, is only a piece of rhetorical foolery or hypocrisy, having no place, where there is real, deep, heavenly interest in the subject, where the mind is kindled upon it. And illustration, to quote again a few lines from our sweet English Christian Poet, with the change of a word:

For illustration, choose what theme we may,
And chiefly when religion leads the way,
Should flow like waters after summer showers,
Not as if raised by mere mechanic powers.

This is the secret of familiar, life-giving instruction with children. To attract them, we must, in a measure, be their playmates, and draw them on, and draw out their minds in companionship with our own, in illustrations that shall seem to delight us as much as them.

And here we come upon another great use of the excellent and important volume, to which these thoughts are introductory, that of interest and instruction in Sabbath-schools. A fund of authentic stories and anecdotes, moral, providential, religious, is to Sabbath-school teachers invaluable. And such should know how to apply to them. They should be at pains to gather and select them for their purpose. One or two little stories happily told, or the simplest anecdotes or incidents dwelt upon with interest, and bringing the lesson home to the heart, may make each exercise an enjoyment instead of a task, a delight instead of a mere duty. The teacher may present apples of gold in baskets of silver, and every youthful mind will take home a part of the fruit, and keep it. The truth so presented, the lesson so inculcated, will stay in the memory, will circulate in the understanding, as the air does in a room, instead of knocking at the door in vain for admittance. A child receives truth into the mind, presented in lively and interesting incident, as a quiet unruffled lake receives into its bosom the reflection of the sky and the clouds above it, or the trees and flowers upon its margin. There is nothing so susceptible of impression as a child's mind to Divine truth, when it comes in the shape of a story or life, told in a winning, familiar, affectionate manner.

Here it is that teachers are often extremely deficient; and here is the reason why the pupils of one class will sometimes be charmed with their Sabbath exercises, so that the Sabbath shall be the day to which, perhaps, they look forward with more pleasure than to any other in the week; while those of another find the same lessons tiresome, and the Sabbath without delight. One teacher enlivens the exercise with anecdote, drawing from the Scriptures and from real life, a variety of beautiful proof and illustration; the other merely presents the truth in the abstract, dry form of question and answer, without life, without incident. A teacher had better, every Sabbath, tell something to awaken an interest, even if disconnected from the lesson, than leave his little class without such attraction. A volume which provides the materials of such interest, is a great and important gift, to the Sabbath-school, the social circle, and the family fireside.

The use of the pictorial, whether in words or engravings, is an element of indispensable importance, and incalculable power. The enemies of God, of the truth, and of the soul, employ it with dreadful art and energy for the destruction of men in sin, for awakening and depraving the passions, and then supplying them with pernicious gratifications and fiery stimulants. Let good men take the art of illustration, and use it for God, for heaven, for the salvation of the soul. GEORGE B. CHEEVER.

New York, January 25, 1848.