her sons and daughters to weep and wail as if the Day of Judgment were come?'

The exegetical disquisitions and explanatory notes which Dr. Barnes has published are generally of sufficient brevity, learning and clearness for all practical purposes. They are neither pedantically dull nor insipidly obscure, but seem to have been written on the principle, that

'RIGHT ever reigns its stated bounds between,
And taste, like morals, loves the golden mean.'

About the year 1400, a Prussian poet, at a banquet given by the grand-master of the Teutonic order, sang in old Prussian the heroic achievements of the ancient warriors of the country; nobody understood him, and one hundred empty walnuts were given to him by way of reward. It must be confessed that this is more than the authors of many a huge tome deserve. They are so excruciatingly minute, that they contract the soul of the reader beyond all power of enlarged comprehension before they have done with him, as though a contact with their profound stupidity and infinitesimal particularism had, torpedo-like, numbed thought. Such wiseacres, whose original capacities are exactly proportioned to the pettiness of their pursuits, are as unfitted for the department of biblical instruction as the painter of fruit and flowers is incompetent to portray impressive history, or commemorate dignified events. Their laborious dribbling is of transient influence at best; and soon, very soon, it will be said of their most enduring works, that 'Time's gray wing has winnowed all away.'

Dr. Barnes is not only a judicious annotator on divine revelation, but he is an eloquent writer on human freedom. He thinks that man may not hide what GOD would teach,' and both writes and speaks as if he had consecrated the most industrious use of all his best faculties to impart the highest truths to the largest numbers. He is not ambitious to sit idly in the marble porch where Wisdom wont to teach with Socrates and Tully,' while myriads of immortal beings, ignorant of a much loftier wisdom, are rushing down to ruin. As a minister of JESUS CHRIST, his position is higher, his conceptions of rights and duties nobler; and therefore he pants perpetually to breathe the Paradisial air around the universal whole,' feeling that he hath only half a heart who loves not all.' He is as athletic as he is industrious, perpetually vigorous and free; because in early manhood he learned to draw much of his potency from the free soil of his country, as Antæus gained new strength from contact with the bosom of mother earth; but the beams blended in his higher professional radiance are contributed less from physical nature than from moral principle and religious truth. Even pagan scholars had very just conceptions of the degrading tendency of every form of vassalage. Said Longinus: All other qualifications you may find among people who are deprived of liberty; but never did a slave become an orator. He can only be a pompous flatterer. His spirit being effectually broken, the timorous vassal will still be upper

most;

the habit of subjection continually overawes and beats down his genius; for, according to Homer,

'Jove fixed it certain, that whatever day

Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.'

'Thus, we are told, the cases in which dwarfs are kept not only prevent the future growth of those who are enclosed in them, but diminish what bulk they already have, by too close constriction of their parts. So slavery, be it never so easy, yet is slavery still, and may deservedly be called the prison of the soul, and the public dungeon.'

In the same section of the Treatise on the Sublime,' from which the above extract is taken, we find a beautiful and just picture of the happy influence of a free government, which LONGINUS considers as 'the Nurse of True Genius. Great writers,' he adds, 'will be found only in this sort of government, with which they flourish and triumph, or decline and die. Liberty produces fine sentiments in men of genius; it invigorates their hopes, excites an honorable emulation, and inspires an ambition and thirst of excelling; and what is more, in free states there are prizes to be gained, which are worth contending for. Thus the natural faculties of the orators are sharpened and polished by continual practice; and the liberty of their thoughts, as is reasonable to expect, shines out conspicuously in the liberty of their debates.'

a

Many who оссиру the watch-towers of our Zion seem to be the Rabbis of the ancient law, and not Christians of the reign of grace; they are the apostles of the past, and not the prophets of the future. But Dr. Barnes is not of this stamp. He does not believe that science is the corrupter of morality, or that knowledge is the ruin of nations. The enjoyment of universal rights he regards as the true basis of enduring safety, not the mere intellectual development, or the possession of such or such a faculty, but a clear understanding of each and all actual privileges and positions vouchsafed by Heaven to all wise comprehension of the divers interests, temporal and eternal, which every rational creature is called to regulate and enjoy. Political capacity and religious rights dwell only where these conditions meet, and are combined; and no true freedom exists where they are withheld from any portion of mankind. Living in an age of revolutions, when the predominant parties of the day try to stop at certain limits at which they have fixed right and justice, while those who follow crush them under foot, and overleap those arbitrary boundaries, as in a charge of cavalry, the last squadron tramples down the first, if it happens to pause. this divine, with the noblest conservatism, would secure the best welfare of all by a timely impartation of salutary blessings to each. He would equalize rights by equalizing as nearly as possible intellects, feeling that the highest obligation of every public man in this age is to contribute his best endeavors in efforts to raise the masses to the free enjoyment of the most enlightened and sanctified civilization.

--

'BEAUTY, Good, and Knowledge, are three sisters
That dote upon each other, friends to man,
Living together under the same roof,

And never can be sundered without tears.
And he that shuts Love out, in hour shall be
Shut out from Love, and on her threshold lie
Howling in outer darkness. Not for this

Was common clay ta'en from the common earth,
Moulded by GOD, and tempered with the tears

Of angels to the perfect shape of man.'

We have glanced at Dr. Barnes in the double light of biblical commentator and ethical writer. In the third place; let us contemplate him a moment as a sermonizer. Unity of import, discreet adaptation, and palpable good taste, we think are the most marked features of his pulpit productions.

-

First of all, there is a lucid and forcible unity of purpose in the discourses he presents to instruct the minds and improve the hearts of the people. This is a quality of fundamental importance even by the bad commended, while they leave its track untrod.' If the chain is broken, and the fragments are scattered about here and there, it is certain no lightning can traverse it with appropriate effect. Too many preachers, it would seem, labor to promote spiritual regeneration, as Frankenstein, in the romance, sought after the principle of life in the charnel-house; there groping for vitality in the midst of corruption, putting together limbs belonging to different bodies, and thus setting before the world as a homogeneous existence, from an odd.compound of legs, arms, and eyes, belonging to others who long since 'shuffled off this mortal coil.' But no galvanized corpse pic-nic of different dead bodies, collated by laziness and pedantry, can do the work of a spontaneously vitalized and powerfully concentrated sermon. Concerning such productions, as void of sense as of symmetry, it can never be said, with the exactest justice, as Lerminier says of the reading of the history of Herodotus at the Olympic Games: Greece trembled and Thucydides wept.' Dr. Barnes sees what is in his text before he begins to elucidate its particular meaning, and then proceeds to his work with severe unison of manner and clearness of exposition, as

'WHEN Heaven's light Pours itself on the page, like prophecy

On time, unglooming all its mighty meanings.'

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The second prominent trait in the preaching of this divine is a wise adaptation of the means he employs to the end he would attain. An excellent writer in the Eclectic Review speaks on this wise:

'WHAT is good preaching? Alas, how many answers would be given to this question! And yet is not the true answer-the preaching by which souls are saved? Then, the best preaching must be that by which the greatest number of souls are saved. In order to that end, however, men must be brought within the sphere of the pulpit; and to bring the greatest number of men within that sphere is the design of Dr. VAUGHAN in his treatise, (on the Modern Pulpit,) and it is ours. In one word, what we specifically want in the modern pulpit is-ADAPTATION. Now we have read a good deal in our time, not more than enough, of the necessity of adapting the efforts of the pulpit to the constitution of the human mind, to man's moral nature, to his actual condition as fallen, guilty, wretched, and exposed to future punishment. And not seldom have we read most seasonable injunctions, addressed to our young ministers, on the personal adaptation of their discourses to the condition of individual men. All this we regard as of equal importance at all times, and in all conceivable circumstances. But, at present. our aim is to excite as much attention as we can to the truth-that along with these general and fixed adaptations, there is required a constantly varying adaptation to the constantly progressive changes of society.'

The writer then goes on to explain what he means by this varying adaptation of the pulpit to the advancement in society, in reference to one portion of it-the working classes:

'EDUCATION is raising these great masses of the community into higher degrees of intellectual culture. New powers are at work. Incredible facilities are multiplied for diffusing knowledge, spreading opinions, and increasing the number of thinkers. Now in such an age, to say nothing of other views of society, it is obviously the duty of evangelical preachers to adapt themselves to the circumstances in which they are placed; not, as this talented writer would be among the last to suggest, by withdrawing from the pulpit the great themes of the mediatory system, and substituting for them philosophic truth, or a rationalized gospel, but by such a general line of conduct with reference to the circumstances of a growingly enlightened age, and such a strain of preaching as shall lay hold of the public mind, and bring it under that doctrine, which, and which only, is the power of God unto salvation. Let there be a just estimate formed, and which to be just cannot be a low one, of the mental powers of the common people; a judicious and hearty sympathy with their real wants and reasonable wishes; a studious consideration of the means by which the multitude shall be brought back to the sanctuaries of religion, which they have to a considerable extent deserted; an assiduous endeavor to connect the functions of the pastor with the literary cultivation of the people. For these purposes let there be correct information of their state of intellect, their prevailing habits, their peculiar temptations, their literary tendencies and aspirations as to the books they read-let there be all this, but then let it be only as so much power put forth to bring these masses under the influence of the gospel. Oh, it were a noble triumph of the modern pulpit to see men of strong principle, and self-controlling wisdom, gathering round them the most boisterous elements of our social atmosphere, conducting the lightnings with which its darkest thunder-clouds are charged, and showing to the nation they have saved that the preaching of the cross is still the power of God.''

Our own countryman, Dr. Griffin, said in a sermon to theological students: My dear brethren, why are we not more impressive? Theology affords the best field for tender, solemn and sublime eloquence. The most august objects are presented; the most impor tant interests are discussed; the most tender motives are urged. GOD and angels; the treason of Satan; the creation, ruin, and recovery of a world; the incarnation, death, resurrection, and reign of the Son of God; the day of judgment; a burning universe; an eternity; a heaven and a hell all pass before the eye. What are the petty dissensions of the states of Greece, or the ambition of Philip ; what are the plots and victories of Rome, or the treason of Cataline, compared with this? If ministers were sufficiently qualified by education, study, and the Holy Ghost; if they felt their subject as much as Demosthenes and Cicero did, they would be the most eloquent men on earth, and would be so esteemed wherever congenial minds were found.' But it is certain, that in our day the practical power of the pulpit does not comport with the above representation of its use. 'Well, Master Jackson,' said his minister, walking homeward from church with a simple-minded and constant attendant; 'well, Master Jackson, Sunday must be a blessed day of rest for you, who work so hard all the week! And you make a good use of the day, for you are always present at preaching.'Ay, Sir,' replied Jackson, it is indeed a blessed day; I works hard enough all the week, and then I comes to church o' Sundays, and sets me down, and lays my legs up, and thinks o' nothing.'

If one has not the gift to win attention, where is the mystery of his failing to do good? Pulpit eloquence that is most attractive, even to the most cultivated minds, and which is especially influential on the popular heart, is embodied in brief, striking, familiar illustrations and appeals, ensouled with common sense and the Spirit of God. homely, but forcible Doolittle:

Says the

'The eyeing of eternity should make us ministers painful and diligent in our studies to prepare a message of such weight as we come about, when preaching to men concerning everlasting matters, and should especially move us to be plain in our speech, that even the capacity of the weakest in the congregation, that hath an eternal soul, that must be damned or saved, might understand in things necessary to salvation, what we mean, and aim, and drive at. It hath made me tremble to hear some soar aloft, that knowing men might know their parts, whilst the meaner sort are kept from the knowledge of it; and put their matter in such a dress of words, in such a style so composed, that the most stand looking at the preacher in the face, and hear a sound, but know not what he saith, and while he doth pretend to feed them, doth indeed starve them. Would a man of any bowels of compassion go from a prince to a condemned man, and tell him in such a language that he should not understand, the condition upon which the prince would pardon him, and then the poor man lose his life because the proud and haughty messenger must show his knack in delivering his message in fine English, which the condemned man could not understand?

To unity of design, and discrete adaptation, Dr. Barnes adds palpable good taste, as the third leading characteristic of his sermons. He never fails in a proper regard to externals; at the same time it is evidently his ambition not to seek the appearance of vigor by violent motions, or the air of elegance by extravagant display. Every discourse is written with an earnest purpose of impressing on the hearer some important doctrine, invested with a lofty and chaste beauty. Entering with sober zeal, on the cultivation of researches that may guide the hand, without imposing fetters upon its freedom, he carefully elaborates each member of the perfected argument as if he felt that mental shallowness would not insure attractive variety, nor carelessness of execution compensate the absence of original force. He is not insensible to the advantage of sometimes presenting 'truth severe by fairy fiction drest;' but he more habitually acts on the wise maxim of the poet: 'Genius again correct with science sage!'

A late critic, speaking of a certain florid writer, says: In ancient times it was a common opinion that Parnassus was hard to climb, and its top almost inaccessible. But in modern times, we seem to have made a beaten cartway over it, and where is the man who cannot travel it without difficulty or danger? Helicon was once represented as a scanty stream, and happy was he who could get a draught of it. But now it has become so bold a river, that every plough-boy in the field of science can water his horses at it. Inspiration descends in the form of a thick fog, and the beclouded fancy which paints a monster, while it aims at sketching nature, is admired for the boldness and wildness of its thoughts.

His metaphors, generally speaking, are too far-fetched. He shows more of the scholar than the man, and none but a scholar can understand his productions. He pleases the refined taste of the critic, but cannot strike the master-springs of the human heart. His poetry is