most graceful periods and style. I wish to preach so that the common people may hear me gladly. This was the mind of Christ. Some spend days in trimming a sermon, till some say it was a fine sermon. But however arranged, polished, and preached -if it be not understood, if it does not reach the conscience, warm the heart, and impel to the delightful discharge of our infinite and delightful obligations-it is as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.' Lord! save me from trifling in my studies, trifling in my preaching, trifling with my opportunities, trifling with my own soul, and the souls of my hearers."

All history and all experience confirm the judgment which our friend had formed upon the efficiency of a scriptural mode of preaching. It may not ensure extensive popularity-it may not draw the men of philosophy, nor the men of taste to become our auditors-but it will assimilate us to Jesus Christ and his apostles, and will assuredly bring a richer reward in immortal souls. At the same time, I would neither undervalue a more elevated and argumentative style of preaching, than our friend adopted; nor would I hold it forth as a peculiar merit in him, that he did not adopt it. For I believe that preachers of the higher order are necessary in the church of Christthat they are employed by the head of it, to keep at bay and check the pride of human intellect, and to command, when necessary, its reverence and its homage. Their uses are many and high; but I should be sorry to see any very material change in the numerical relations of the two classes; just for the same reasons as I should be alarmed to see any very large proportion of our corn fields and meadows turned into flower gardens or forests. Both have their beauty, and both their uses; but our safety consists in a well regulated proportion. The man who has never converted a soul by his ministry, may have rendered most important services to the church of Christ, and not lose his reward; services which could not have been rendered by the more directly useful preacher. There is the same distinction between these two classes of service, as between those which may be rendered in any human enterprise, by the head of one man, and by the hand of another. As God has set the members in the body, so has he set his ministers in the church. Let not the more intellectual and erudite despise the plainer and humbler labourer, by whom the great work of God and of salvation is carried on; and let not the plainer and more obviously successful labourer despise the more curious and rarer workman "in gold and silver and precious stones, and all manner of cun

ning work;" for the completion of the spiritual sanctuary will require the one as well as the other.

A second impressive peculiarity of our friend was his style of thought, his diction, and delivery. He generally included, by way of argument, whatever was most approved; and, by way of illustration, whatever was most striking. But his language was signally fitted to his style of thinking. It was very plain, but very significant; yet never coarse, nor bordering on vulgarity. No long sentences, no long words; no learned terms, no superfluous epithets. Sometimes his laconisms betrayed him into obscurity; but, in general, they were singularly happy and emphatic. I have seen him produce more impression, more feeling, by one word, than some ministers by a whole sermon. By the repetition of a word well chosen, and expressive in a high degree, he has been known to produce a perfectly thrilling effect in a large assembly. In later years he became a very deliberate, sometimes a very slow, speaker. He made long pauses between his sentences. But then those sentences generally admitted of such pauses, because they made the hearer think and feel; they drove his thought back upon himself, instead of drawing it out in admiration of the preacher, or of his discourse. By long pauses, he sometimes excited and fixed attention.

There was one feature in his leisurely mode of address which was very advantageous to him. He betrayed under it, no inability or inaptitude. He awakened none of that painful suspense, sometimes excited by a slow speaker. Mr. C. generally inspired you with full confidence in his own ability to bring forth his ideas and you felt as little distrust as impatience under his pauses, for they seemed the natural precursors of that mellowed and ripened state in which the fruit of his lips was, at length, presented to you. His personal appearance, in the pulpit, heightened greatly the impression of his matter. He was dignified-self-possessed, and calm in a very singular degree. Nothing could disturb him. Even when I have seen him-labouring under that mental confusion, which all ministers occasionally experience-he retained a firm nerve, and an unruffled tone.

His voice was deep and powerful. Never boisterous, inharmonious, or feeble. He managed it with great discretion and ability; so that when preaching in large places, and to immense crowds, it appeared no fatigue to him to preach. His closing sentences evinced no exhaustion. In general, they were delivered with as clear an intonation, and as full a body of voice as

the introduction. In the highest excitement of his feelings, and when addressing the largest congregations, he betrayed no symptoms of imbecility of tone, and lost no portion of his self-command. I ascribe this, in a great degree, to his natural courage, and to the attention which he is well known to have paid, in early life, to the management of his voice. Sometimes (especially in his later years) he dropped it too much to be well heard at the close of sentences; but then it did not appear to result from weakness, but from a disinclination to be unnecessarily loud: it was a practical mistake and not an error of judgment-and it arose from a growing deafness, by which he was disqualified to judge of the precise body of voice he had uttered, or of its ability to fill the place.

A third feature which I would just notice in the character of Mr. Cooke, as a preacher of the gospel, was the deep seriousness and impressive spirit of devotion which marked his discourses. His devotion was not of the impassioned, but of the sentimental character. His earnestness was not that of emotion, but of reason. He made the hearer rather see than feel; and his effort was more generally directed to convince and carry the judgment with him, than to excite the affections which might be captivated by pathos, before any rays of divine truth had penetrated the mind. A tone of the deepest seriousness pervaded all his public services. He never trifled, never amused, never dealt with anything less than subjects of eternal and infinite moment. The hearer felt, that matters of supreme interest weighed upon the preacher's mind, and that he was labouring with the firmest conviction of their infinite importance, to impress them upon every auditor.

But, connected with these features of his devotional feeling, I cannot forbear to notice the vigorous faith which he appeared to have in the efficiency of those means which he employed for the benefit of immortal souls. He seemed to speak with the persuasion I am now employing-an instrumentality which has been divinely appointed, which has effected the most memorable results, which connects with itself a spiritual virtue, essential to its success, but irresistible in its operation. This gave a firm tone, a strength of conviction, a vividness of manner, an inspiring sense of the presence of God, which kept up the aspect and the character of a Divine messenger. He spoke as one who, though he made no pretension to an inspired judgment, yet felt that Omnipotence was engaged on his side; and that in the day of the working of that mighty power, the most reluctant

would be made willing. This was, indeed, a very striking feature in our friend's character, one which, in this brief analysis, I could not overlook. Many must have observed it as well as myself; for it imparted a dignity and a composure to his mind, an energy and confidence to his statements of the truth, which assimilated him, in a very eminent degree, to the Apostolic men of other ages. I cannot but connect this fact with the success of his ministry: because I see in it something like a natural precursor of success :

"Possunt, quia posse videntur."

But chiefly because, I believe, there is a pre-eminent Divine sanction to the exercise of faith. The man that honours God, is honoured of God; and the minister that honours God, by preaching in the spirit, not only of Apostolic zeal and self-devotedness, but in the spirit of Apostolic confidence in the Divine influence-and of anticipating faith-shall reap that blessing in a richer abundance. The Apostle James, appears expressly to state the principle, when he said, "Let him ask in faith, nothing wavering, for he that wavereth is like a waver of the sea-driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord." James, I. 6. 7.

It may not be deemed unsuitable or presumptuous to connect with the observations already made, a hint upon the deficiency of this spiritual feeling among us of the present day. The labours of the ministry are too little viewed in the light of a divine instrumentality-and though, in one sense, weak and contemptible as the rams' horns, with which Israel encompassed Jericho; yet it may become like those instruments, mighty in its very weakness, "that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." It does appear that there must be a strong and honourable confidence in the God of the gospel, and in the gospel as of God, ere it can be made effectual for the ends of its divine ordination. If it pleases God, by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe then it cannot be consistent with the supremacy of his glory, to lose sight of the dependence of the means of conversion upon his grace. It is necessary that the agents he employs should view their means exclusively in this light. Were this the prevailing feeling of the Christian ministry, there is little doubt but there would go forth with the word from the lips of the weakest of God's ministers, an influence and an unction which would give them the desire of their heart. Perhaps there is a tendency in cultivated minds, and

in ministers of eminent talents, to dwell, in thought, more upon the moral fitness of their labours-the force and the energy of human persuasion, than upon the single fact that all their sufficiency is of God. If we revert to the history of the church, we shall find that the scale of ministerial success would very nearly, if not perfectly, comport with the respective heights to which this principle has risen in the minds of ministers—or the degree in which faith, in a divine arrangement, has been in operation. But without attempting to decide this point, it must be conceded, that those ministers, who have cherished great faith in the preaching of the holy word, and who have gone to their work, not only in the strength of the Lord, but in the full anticipation of his blessing, have, in the issue, found themselves rewarded by a larger measure of success, than has attended the labours even of more gifted, and not less pious individuals.

This attempt to exhibit, somewhat in detail, those excellences of my friend, which appear to have been intimately connected with his eminent success, will not, I trust, be deemed unsuitable to the office of the biographer. I have, throughout, endeavoured to exhibit a faithful and impartial transcript of the man.

Such, both in private and public life, were the characteristical excellencies of Mr. Cooke, and such as we have before described-were the circumstances of his departure. If it is desirable that a minister's removal should be made subservient to the great end for which he has lived and laboured, and that his translation to his reward and rest should both accord with the tone, and deepen the effect, of his ministry, then, perhaps, in no conceivable way could this have been more signally accomplished, than by the manner in which it pleased God to remove our friend. It was in the full exercise of the eminent qualities he possessed, and at the very height of his usefulness, that he was suddenly prostrated by the stroke of death. There was here no lingering process of dissolution, no gradual debilitation of the faculties, no long abdication of the pulpit, impairing the recollection of the pastor by the intervention of strangers. Ever spiritual, and always sounding from house to house the note of preparation and of warning, in the full maturity of his powers, and in the mellowed exhibition of his graces,-after a Sabbath, of unusual fervour and devotion, he received that summons, from which there is no appeal-joyful to himself, but producing a sort of consternation among his numerous friends.

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