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application; it did not sufficiently discriminate and individualize human characters; it was too general and theoretic. This was, at least, its usual characteristic; for occasionally, sermons were heard from him cast in the best imaginable compromise between, on the one hand, the theoretic speculation and high-pitched rhetoric to which he was addicted, and, on the other, that ' recognition of what men actually are in situation and character, 'to which his mind did not so easily descend.' From passages found in his writings, it is inferred that his conception of the most effective mode of preaching differed considerably from his general practice; and that the defects alluded to partly arose from a repugnance to the kind and degree of labour required in order to produce sermons more specifically accommodated to the diversities of human character and experience.

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It may be consoling to such persons as have hitherto felt disheartened, not to say mortified, at the overshadowing superiority of this great Preacher, to be assured that his intellectual strength did not give him a proportionate advantage in the field of moral exertion, but was in great measure wasted on the air. We cannot conceive that it has been precisely Mr. Foster's object to reconcile individuals of smaller mental stature to their conscious dimensions; but his concession will, we fear, be taken advantage of, beyond what he might intend, as implying almost the inutility of attainments and powers such as Mr. Hall's, in a Christian preacher. 'To attain high excellence in a manner of preaching more useful than his, though it requires a clear-sighted faculty, 'disciplined in vigilant and various exercise, is,' Mr. Foster remarks, within the competence of a mind of much more limited 6 energy and reach than Mr. Hall's power and range of speculative thought.' We rejoice to believe this. Burder's Village Sermons have been doubtless more useful, in a certain way, than Barrow's; and Doddridge's "Rise" has been the means of converting more irreligious persons than Butler's "Analogy." Still, we should not think of estimating the intrinsic value of the several works by their adaptation to popular instruction. Usefulness is a vague term. Even the usefulness of a preacher it is difficult to estimate, so many are the modes of usefulness. To be highly useful to a few, who shall be thereby qualified to act upon the many, in multiplication of the impression they have themselves received, is, in its ultimate effects, more than equivalent to being useful to a multitude in the first instance. It might be regretted that Mr. Hall was not always surrounded with an auditory to whom his style of preaching would have been best adapted to convey salutary impressions; that his peculiar powers of mind were in great measure wasted in the effort to accommodate himself to the illiterate and unthinking portion of his congregation. But to minds of a certain order, no man was adapted to be so pre

eminently useful; and that he was not more so, was the fault of his hearers.

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We should, however, scarcely know how to set about estimating the actual usefulness of such pulpit ministrations as Mr. Hall's, in all the bearings of their influence. The Reviewer in the British Critic remarks with equal candour and acuteness, that the quality of Mr. Hall's mind which led to this abstractedness in his preaching, may have greatly aided in the preservation and completion of his own personal faith and holiness, and in marking him out as an example of the blessedness and the dignity of communion with heavenly things. There is little enough of this ' unworldly quality,' it is remarked, exhibited in the world at 'any time; and never, probably was there less of it than in the present age. . . . . . In this light it is that men like Robert Hall may chiefly be considered as benefactors to their species. They pour contempt upon that drivelling cant which associates de'votional feeling with imbecility of mind. They shew that re'ligion is fitted to absorb the grandest capacities of human nature. It may be the more general purpose of God, that not 'many wise, not many mighty, not many noble should be chosen to glorify his name, that no flesh should glory in his presence. "Nevertheless, it is assuredly an animating spectacle, to see that 'the most prodigal endowments of the intellect may be made as 'pinions to convey the spirit out of "this mortal coil" to the ' place where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God.'*

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In the powerfully written and upon the whole fair and liberal article from which we transcribe these beautiful sentences, it is curious to trace the struggle between generous admiration and ecclesiastical prejudice. There is one point of view in which the Reviewer confesses that he regards the reputation of Mr. Hall as a preacher with something like regret it may, he thinks, 'tend to confirm that idolatry of preaching which is one of the evils 'that rushed in together with the blessings of the Reformation.' With many among us, preaching is represented as having become 'a sort of third sacrament; a sacrament, too, which often well nigh thrusts the others into insignificance.' To the Dissenting communities, Preaching is nearly what Transubstantiation was to the Romanists. It is the grand instrument with which they 'hope to move the world.' This is a strange passage to proceed from the pen of a Protestant clergyman; but it indicates the unhappy influence of that sacerdotal theory which has always led the Church of England to discountenance anything deserving

* Brit. Crit. No. XXVI. p. 231.

+ We must except the historical misrepresentations respecting Cromwell, and the remarks respecting Mr. Hall's earlier publications, which we have not room to notice.

the name of pulpit oratory. Yet, what would have been thought of a French writer who, in the days of Louis XIV., should have deprecated the fame of Bourdaloue or Massillon, because it might tend to encourage 6 a demand for the utterances of the pulpit?' In the preaching of the evangelical clergy, the Established Church gives almost the only signs of spiritual life. That spirit of preaching which has been caught from Dissenting communities, has alone staid in her aged frame the progress of corruption. The greater part of her ministers are, however, still notoriously deficient in those gifts which are requisite for the office of a public teacher; and their vapid school-boy essays, read with professional formality in monotonous tone, are as unimpressive as they are empty of instruction. No wonder that such a church should view with displacency the 'universal craving for excitement', and sicken at the renown of such preachers as Hall! To a writer, intelligent and candid as this Reviewer, it ought, however, to have occurred, that this craving for excitement, so far as it is characteristic of the age, is not peculiar to the religious part of the community: it is seen in all classes; and the demand must be met. It is surely a happy circumstance, and one of which the Christian teacher ought gladly to avail himself, when the appetite for intellectual excitement takes this direction. Surely, it is pusillanimous and imbecile to deplore that which may be turned to so good an account. If it be true, as this Writer alleges, that people not unfrequently carry with them into the church, feelings nearly allied to those which they carry with them into the theatre', it is at least well that such feelings take the better direction. The remark, however, is most applicable to those polite audiences to whom preaching is no sacrament, and who find their most pleasurable excitement in the ceremonial, the spectacle of the well-dressed company, the breathing organ, and the 'decent rite'. The hope of recalling the venerable custom of catechizing, and the primitive practice of simple expository teaching, is small indeed, where the craving for excitement is fed with such inane vanities. But to render catechetical and expository teaching more generally acceptable, what is wanted, but that ministers of the Gospel should be able catechists and competent expositors, which they never can be while preaching itself is depreciated?

The reputation of Mr. Hall, founded on his pulpit eloquence, instead of having the effect of confirming the idolatry of preaching, (by which we must understand converting the instrument into the end, the medium into the object of worship,) seems to us more adapted to induce a melancholy impression of the inefficiency of that means of promoting the regeneration of society; since the highest order of faculties, applied to the single-minded discharge of the sacred function, under the inspiration of fervent

piety, was found to produce no more extensively decisive results. It was surely not intended by Our Saviour to reflect the character of inefficiency on the ministry of the Baptist; when he reproached the Jews of that generation with their perverseness in not having profited by his ministry; when he compared them to children sullenly refusing to dance when their fellows piped, or to lament when they played the mourner. It may be true that Mr. Hall's general style of preaching was not of a cast which would justify its being held up as a model of popular instruction; but his very faults as a preacher were above the reach of imita tion, since they were allied to qualities of mind rarely found in those who could be misled by his example. It was a kind of preaching almost sui generis. Of his printed discourses, it is remarked by the Reviewer in the British Critic, that these, 'even when studied without the advantage of any personal know'ledge or recollection of the preacher, must always be sufficient give the world assurance of a man", such as very rarely 'has borne the office of turning many to righteousness: and these, "--when aided by a vivid remembrance of his outward aspect and ' demeanour, his overpowering impressiveness of delivery, and his 'frequent appearance of abstraction from all earthly things,'must convey the notion of one whose faculties were merely as 'channels for conducting down to earth the choicest influences of 'heaven.'

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Of the sermons contained in the sixth volume, this Reviewer appears to speak in terms of disparagement, which can be accounted for only on the supposition of his not having found time to peruse them. He deems it necesssary to guard the reader against the delusion of imagining that they have before them in many of the feeble sketchings contained in these volumes, any 'tolerable representation of the "dazzling miracles" of Robert 'Hall.' This remark is just as regards some of the briefer sketches, but is quite inapplicable to the discourses given with such felicitous fidelity from the compared notes of Mr. Gurney, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Grinfield, and other gentlemen accustomed to track Mr. Hall's fiery course,' and well acquainted with his phraseology. We have given above some specimens of the second discourse in the present volume. There are several others of an equally splendid character, and preserved with similar success. Mr. Foster refers to the XVIth Sermon, on the Love of God, as a remarkable example of specific illustration, point'edly applied,'-the quality in which Mr. Hall's preaching is represented to have been ordinarily deficient. The XVIIIth, on the Nature and Danger of Evil Communications, preached at Cambridge in 1826, is a most beautiful specimen of Mr. Hall's admirable and peculiar method of treating a practical subject in a philosophical spirit, yet so as to make the philosophy of the dis

course strictly subservient to the religious lesson. But, indeed, all the sermons in this volume are, without an exception, highly characteristic and valuable; and the selection, as well as the very careful manner in which they are edited, does great credit to the judgement of the learned Editor of the Works. The public are indeed greatly indebted to Dr. Gregory for the manner in which he has discharged his most honourable but delicate office, both as the biographer of his friend and the superintendent of the whole publication. The blame he has incurred in certain quarters, for not suppressing what the public would not have allowed him to suppress, even had there been any sufficient reason for the attempt, he will know how to appreciate. Had the principle which it is thought he ought to have applied to the published writings of Robert Hall, been observed by the editors of Warburton, South, or Burke himself, we should have been deprived of some of the finest specimens of their eloquence.

Art. IV. 1. The existing Monopoly, an inadequate Protection, of the Authorized Version of Scripture. By Thomas Curtis. 8vo. pp. 115. London, 1833.

2. Oxford Bibles. Mr. Curtis's Misrepresentations exposed. By Edward Cardwell, D.D., St. Alban's Hall, Oxford. 8vo. pp. 23. 3. The Text of the English Bible considered. By Thomas Turton, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge, and Dean of Peterborough. 8vo. pp. 44.

4. Report from Select Committee on King's Printers' Patents, ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 8th of August, 1832. Bungay. Reprinted and published by J. R. and C. Childs. 1833. pp. 111.

THE

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HE public Version of the Scriptures, is generally described as the Authorized Version,' though it would be difficult to assign the grounds on which the authority prescribing its exclusive circulation is supposed to rest. No Act of Parliament was ever passed in its favour. It was not, we believe, even so much as sanctioned or protected by any proclamation. It was undertaken, and, as the title to the Bible declares, was with the 'former Translations diligently compared and revised', 'by his Majesties speciall commandment." At the Hampton Court Conference, a new Translation was solicited by the Puritan leader, Dr. Reynolds; and the suggestion being approved by the king, he signified his pleasure, that some special pains should be 'taken in this matter for one uniform translation, and this to be 'done by the best learned in both universities; after them to be ' reviewed by the Bishops and the chief learned of the church: 3 R

VOL. IX.-N.S.