Young, whose son wrote the Night Thoughts, observes: 'There is often times a prodigious distance betwixt a man's head and his heart; such a distance, that they seem not to have any correspondence; not to belong to the same person, nor to converse in the same world. Our heads are sometimes in heaven, contemplating the nature of God, the blessedness of saints, the state of eternity, while our hearts are held captive below, in a conversation earthly, sensual, devilish. 'Tis possible we may sometimes commend Virtue convincingly, unanswerably; and yet our own hearts be never affected by our own arguments; we may represent Vice in her native dress of horror, and yet our hearts be not at all startled with their own menaces. We may study and acquaint ourselves with all the truths of religion, and yet all this out of curiosity, or hypocrisy, or ostentation; not out of the power of godliness, or the serious purpose of good living. All which is a sufficient proof that the consent of the head and of the heart are two different things.' This sort of divorcement of practical common sense from dogmatical theology, every way inimical to spiritual progress and a beneficent life, has in all ages but too much characterized the instructions of the pulpit. Why were quadrupeds and birds the only animals brought to Adam to receive their names from him? Was JESUS CHRIST, between his death and resurrection, what he had been before his death and after his resurrection? Was his glorified body seated or standing in heaven? Was his body, which is eaten in the eucharist, naked or clothed? These questions are by no means so absurd as many others that might be adduced from musty tomes of defunct polemics, but concerning which the practical preacher now under consideration is little disposed to trouble himself or others. It is more in harmony with his moral constitution and matured convictions to believe that, The religion which is to open heaven in the human heart is as far away from heated bigotry as from the lowness of a worldly temper. To breathe warmth into the cold, generous piety into the abject and servile, honorable views of God and man into the dejected, timid and superstitious, should be my end. Let me live to exhibit the paternal character of God, the quickening influence of his Spirit, his willingness to raise us to perfection, the glorious capacities and destination of man, the filial nature of religion, the beauty of benevolence, of self-denial and suffering in a generous cause, the union formed by a spirit of humanity between GoD and the soul, the joy of high moral sentiment, the possibility of attaining to sublime greatness of character and habitual largeness of sentiment and action. Men are to be regenerated not so much by a sense of the blessedness of goodness in the abstract, as by coming to understand that disinterestedness, that union with God and his whole spiritual family, in which goodness consists. The glory and nobleness of a soul self-surrendered to GOD, joined to him in purposes of beneficence, swallowed up in a pure, overflowing love, must be made manifest.'

By Dr. Sharp, the pulpit is regarded as the grandest sphere of intellectual action on earth. He ever seems to enter it sensible of its exalted and solemn trusts, conscious that he has thereby assumed

responsibilities which infinitely transcend in importance those connected with any other station or pursuit. This leads him also to feel that there is no domain of knowledge, however ample or profound, that should not be explored, and no power of the mind, however lofty and powerful, that should not be tasked to the utmost in order properly to discharge functions so urgent in their requisitions and so fearful in their results. Relying primarily on Divine influence, exercised through human industry, he copiously diffuses the lessons of practical godliness among his fellow men, that he may instrumentally renovate their spirits, reform their morals, and conduct them to infinite bliss. Holiness he understands to be profound and intense communion with GOD, and the manifestation in our daily actions of God's

purposes and attributes. Man in this way partakes of the divine nature, not by keeping his feelings in a state of ceaseless excitement, but by causing his entire nature to unfold itself harmoniously, at the same time becoming divinely transformed in answer to prayer, and by the energies of heavenly grace. Differing widely from some of the fundamental views in theology held by the late Dr. Channing, he would yet concur with him, doubtless, in the following sentiments: Are we not to aim chiefly at calling forth in men a consciousness of their capacity for embracing Gon and the universe in a pure love; a love unfolding without limit in strength and vastness? Is not this perfection of soul to be brought before men as a great reality? Are they not to be taught to see the germs of it in the common affections which move them, in the moral principle, and above all, in their capacity of communion with the Infinite Fountain of all goodness, joy, beauty, life? Is it not the main design of Christianity to give a revelation of this love as the END of man, and as God's ever-fresh inspiration? Is not the world within thus to be laid open, and the spiritual glory of which all outward splendor is the faint emblem made clear, until men are taught to feel a divine joy in their own nature? Should not the great aim be to awaken the consciousness of the greatness of the soul, and a reverence for the moral element in man as an emanation from the Infinite Being, as GOD's image, voice, life within us? He who would promote this great reformation, for which the religious world is now ready, should live with a vivid, absorbing comprehension of the Divine Life. It should each day revive him, be a perpetual light to him, determine his views of society, and give a tone to every word and action.

'A new voice is needed, a voice of the deepest, calmest, most quickening conviction, in which the whole soul speaks, in which every affection and faculty is concentrated. The divinity of goodness must burn within us; must awaken all our sensibility, call the whole being into action, come forth irresistibly as from an exhaustless, overflowing fountain; must give to the voice a penetrating power, and infuse through the whole manner an inspiring animation. What is this new spirit which is striving to utter itself, to give a new manifestation of the soul in individuals, a new form to society, and to awaken enthusiasm in overcoming evil? The knowledge of the Perfect God as Infinite Goodness, Infinite Energy of Good-Will, All-communicating,

All-inspiring Love; is not this the great truth? Must not religion be presented habitually as such an exercise of the moral power in pure, enlarging charity as will bring us within the near and constant influence of Infinite Goodness, till the whole being is penetrated with this spirit of disinterestedness, and filled with trust, gratitude, sympathy, hope, joyful coöperation? Philanthropy, a noble, victorious benevolence, like that of CHRIST, is to be the great end; not a precise, defined virtue, but an expansive, ever enlarging action of goodness. And this love must not be vague, abstract, spiritual merely, but wise, practical, specific, efficient, just, tender, vigorous, in all relations; of home, of friendship, of society at large, of patriotism, of humanity.'

We have spoken of three prominent characteristics in Dr. Sharp, his dignity, simplicity and practicalness. We proceed, fourthly, to remark that these attributes, in their combined action and habitual use by him, produce and exemplify permanent power.

He

possesses the happy art of animating and dignifying his subject with intellectual grandeur, of impressing upon it the air of philosophic wisdom and celestial virtue. His style is imbued with that dignity which is produced by independent reflection and the free play of a self-relying mind. From man he seeks no homage, and will pay none when it is exacted by either craft or force. He is religiously resolved to

'LAUGH at danger far or near;
Spurn at baseness, spurn at fear;
Still with persevering might,

Speak the truth, and do the right !'

The character of this divine was strikingly exemplified by another of the same name long time ago. We refer to Doctor, afterward Archbishop Sharp, when he was Rector of St. Giles, London. He was compelled by conscientious duty to resist the king, and the still more infamous tyrant, Lord Chancellor Jeffries. The history of the interview is as follows:

'In the year 1686, Dr. Sharp preached a sermon wherein he drew some conclusions against the Church of Rome, to show the vanity of her pretensions in engrossing the name of Catholic to herself. The sermon was complained of to James II., and the Lord Chancellor Jeffries was directed to send for the preacher, and acquaint him with the King's displeasure. Dr. Sharp according waited upon his Lordship with the notes of his sermon, and read it over to him. Whether,' says his son, 'the Doctor did this for his own justification, and to satisfy his Lordship that he had been misrepresented, or whether my Lord ordered him to bring his sermon and repeat it before him, is not certain; but the latter seems most probable: "because Dr. Sharp afterward understood that his lordship's design in sending for him and discoursing with him, was, that he might tell the King that he had reprimanded the Doctor, and that he was sorry for having given occasion of offence to his Majesty, hoping by this means to release Dr. Sharp from any farther trouble. However it was, his lordship took upon him, while the Doctor was reading over his sermon, to chide him for several passages which the Doctor thought gave no occasion

for chiding; and he desired his lordship when he objected to these less obnoxious passages, to be patient, for there was a great deal worse yet to come.'

It is added that the sermon was nevertheless a good sermon, as temperate as it was properly timed. This instance of fidelity to righteous principle was one of the most important in English history; for that sermon gave rise to the ecclesiastical commission, which, in its consequences, produced within two years, the revolution.

The wisest of ancient legislators, laying the foundations of the state in religion and virtue, believed it was better that 'the halls should not be filled with legal tablets, but the soul with the image of righteousness.' They sought to elicit and fortify in every citizen a lively sense of appropriate self-respect, and to guard him by this feeling, not by force or fear, against all ignoble deeds. Our doctor is of the same way of thinking. He believes that the plains are everlasting as the hills;' and that each order of human society is equally essential to the accomplishment of the Creator's infinite designs, but that no rank or individual should be abandoned to ignorance and vice. The only levelling system he regards with complacency is that which aims to excite intellectual action in every mind, and which raises all to the highest possible attainments of wisdom and moral worth. He has no desire to see such a dead and uniform level as the ploughshare that overthrew Jerusalem, produced; when down went the streets and market-places, palaces and hovels, the temple of the LORD and the hut of the beggar, all levelled in one undistinguished mass, prone in the dirt, and no more valuable. It is not brutal force of any kind that he would see predominant, but the golden words and conservative influence of the wise, bursting every fetter and ennobling every mind. He would have all men become Christians indeed, coöperators for mutual good; as in the original enterprises of religion, the Apostle exhorted those whom he addressed to become 'fellow-workers with Christ,' in achieving the salvation of the world. The whole life of this distinguished preacher has been a perpetual commentary on the distich:

'SHUN all excess; and with true wisdom deem,
That vice alike resides in each extreme.'

Let us here glance a moment more particularly at the person, the manner, and the professional influence of Dr. Sharp.

Though evidently far advanced in life, he yet stands erect and tall, elastic and energetic, with all the evidences of strong and unimpaired vitality about him. His cheek, though worn, has the bright hues of health upon it; and though his head is approaching baldness, showing that time has snowed many years thereon, the vivacity of his eyes, that shoot their light from beneath somewhat shaggy brows, exhibit a mind whose faculties, all matured as they are, still glow with inextinguishable flames. He has lived a sufficient number of days on earth to feel something of their weariness, and to profit much by their instruction; but not enough to exhaust his genius or amiability, which remain entire and abundantly efflorescent. Bossuet and Milton were both fifty-nine when they composed their most eloquent master-pieces.

The author of 'Paradise Lost' had little occasion to complain of being frozen with age while depicting the love of Adam and Eve. The Bishop of Meaux pronounced the funeral oration of the Queen of England in 1669, the same year that the persecuted bard gave his receipt for the second five pounds paid for his poem. Yet Milton was young to his latest breath; and Bossuet, with what youthful fire does he speak of his gray hair!

The powers of Dr. Sharp as a preacher have for a long time been of a very high order. Many congregations, like students at a public school, are induced to listen to religious instruction as if it were only a part of the mere routine of their ordinary occupations. But not so with those who have worshipped in the Charles-street Church for the last thirty-five years. When their pastor ascends the pulpit he is wont to fix every eye and ear in earnest attention. His command of clear and lofty diction; his chaste but forcible delivery; the noble port he instinctively assumes, as the herald of intelligence from Heaven; and more than any thing else, the profound conviction which he manifestly entertains of the truth of the doctrines which he interprets, and the respectful strenuousness of his adjuration in calling men's hearts to GOD, together with the latent consciousness in every hearer of the personal worth and professional integrity of the speaker, give him every title to be regarded as an orator of the first class. He unites in himself an uncommon measure of independence and courtesy, rugged power and calm serenity:

'WHILE Genius, Practice, Contemplation join,

To warm his soul with energy divine.'

In the structure of his discourses Dr. Sharp is neither profound beyond human comprehension, nor prolix beyond reasonable endurance. He does not emulate those who are described by an old preacher in the following words: As some mathematicians deal so much in Jacob's staff that they forget Jacob's ladder, so some physicians (GOD decrease the number!) are so deep naturalists that they are very shallow Christians. With us, Grace waits at the heels of Nature, and they dive so deep into the secrets of philosophy that they never look up to the mysteries of Divinity.' Avoiding this fault, he as little deserves to have it said of him that he draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument." He does not set out at the beginning of each sermon as if he had a journey to perform from Dan to Beersheba, halting occasionally to expatiate on the same points in every doctrine of his creed, tracing minutely the progress of Noah's ark, and all the well-known circumstances of the downfall of the tower of Babel, together with an apt exemplification of the confusion of tongues consequent thereon. Evidently, the thin integument that divides great wits from another class is not wanting in his brain. A very great scholar,' is quoted by Dr. Eachard as saying, 'that such preaching as is usual is a hindrance of salvation rather than the means of it.' It is certain he did not refer to this distinguished American divine, who himself says, with Luther, 'I would not have preachers torment their hearers and