the world from one more fable. I know Madame de Boufflers will attribute this scruple to my partiality to Cromwell (and, to be sure, if we must be ridden, there is some satisfaction when the man knows how to ride). I remember one night at the Duke of Grafton's, a bust of Cromwell was produced: Madame de Boufflers, without uttering a syllable, gave me the most speaking look imaginable, as much as to say, Is it possible you can admire this man!"

Speech of a Lunatic.

The following passage, in a letter to the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 29, 1764,-IV. 458,-is honourable to Walpole's moral sensibility:"I am charmed with an answer I have just read in the papers of a poor man in Bedlam, who was ill-used by an apprentice because he would not tell him why he was confined there. The unhappy creature said at last, Because God has deprived me of a blessing which you never enjoyed.' There never was any thing finer or more moving!"

Warburton and Quin-Regicide.

[For 30th of January!]

Walpole's detestation of Charles I. was always undisguised. His feeling towards Bishops was not more favourable. In a letter to Mr. G. Montagu, April 5, 1765,—V. 14,—he characterizes Warburton by epithets which would have been strong enough for Dr. Parr: we know of nothing in the Bishop's life that justifies them.-The Editor shews by an extract in a note that Gray (the poet) was not displeased to have a thrust at the doughty prelate.-"Though I have little to say, it is worth while to write, only to tell you two bon-mots of Quin to that turn-coat hypocrite infidel, Bishop Warburton. That saucy priest was haranguing at Bath in behalf of prerogative: Quin said, Pray, my Lord, spare me; you are not acquainted with my principles; I am a republican; and perhaps I even think that the execution of Charles the First might be justified.'-Ay!' said Warburton, by what law? Quin replied, By all the laws he had left them.'-The Bishop would have got off upon judgments, and bade the player remember that all the regicides came to violent ends; a lie, but no matter. I would not advise your Lordship,' said Quin, to make use of that inference, for if I am not mistaken, that was the case of the twelve apostles.' There was great wit ad hominem in the latter reply, but I think the former equal to any thing I ever heard. It is the sum of the whole controversy couched in eight monosyllables, and comprehends at once the King's guilt and the justice of punishing it. The more one examines it, the finer it proves. One can say nothing after it so good night!"

-Now I am

Gray, in a letter of the 29th, relates the following anecdote :talking of Bishops, I must tell you that, not long ago, Bishop Warburton, in a sermon at court, asserted that all preferments were bestowed on the most illiterate and worthless objects; and in speaking turned himself about and stared at the Bishop of London: he added, that if any one arose distinguished for merit and learning, there was a combination of dunces to keep him down. I need not tell you that he expected the bishopric of London himself when Terrick got it: so ends my ecclesiastical history.'-Works, Vol. IV. p. 49.-E."

CAUSES OF PROGRESS OF UNITARIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND,

U. S.

(From "The Christian Register," Boston, Mass.)

Why has Unitarianism made greater progress in New England than elsewhere?-One cause which has made the progress of liberal Christianity more rapid and more observable here than elsewhere, is to be found in the character of our Puritan ancestors, and in the impulse which their example gave to religious inquiry and religious liberty. It is time for men to have done with the senseless clamour, that we have departed from the principles of the Fathers of New England. If it is merely meant by this that we have been able to make some progress in religious knowledge during the two long centuries that have intervened, is this any cause of wonder? Is this a proper ground of accusation? Nay, is this any thing more than what, as we have seen, our fathers themselves expected? Besides, it is nothing to the purpose to prove that our opinions and practices are different from theirs,* had they been placed in the same circumstances. The question is, whether we are men of the same cast of character; and being so, whether it is possible for us to hold different opinions from what we do, in the present advanced state of society and the human mind. For who were our fathers? Were they the men who thought that the Reformation had gone far enough? No. -Were they the men who conceived that nothing more was to be learned from the Bible? No.-Were they the men tamely to acquiesce in the imposition of a creed which the age had outgrown? No.-Were they the men to shrink from an avowal of their dissent from popular and long-established errors, from a dread of the cry of innovation? No. All history answers, No. Neither are we; and it is because we are not, that we hold our present position in the religious world; and should we ever desert it from timidity, or betray it from inconstancy, we prove ourselves, by that act, unworthy of our name and race. I believe, as I believe I live, that if the Fathers of New England, if Robinson and Higginson, Bradford and Winthrop, had been born two hundred years later, they would have been found among our warmest and most effective coadjutors. And in that cloud of witnesses who have finished their testimony, and are now looking down on the struggles and triumphs of truth in this world, I believe, as I believe I live, that there are none who will behold with more joy than they, that the impulse which their example gave to religious inquiry and religious liberty has not been lost on the generations that have followed them.-J. WALKER.

Some words are evidently dropped here-probably something like the following -unless it can be shewn that theirs would have remained the same-ED. C. Reformer.

MINOR CORRESPONDENCE.

ON THE PROPER QUALIFICATIONS OF A MINISTER OF THE

SIR,

GOSPEL.

66

Nov. 4, 1841.

I MUST confess I have been much struck by a letter in your last number (VIII. 699), headed, "Means of promoting Unitarianism." "A most important," says the writer, "if not the very best means for the attainment of this desirable object, is the training up efficient young men for the ministry," -so far so good, but he goes on,- young men naturally endowed with a good voice and fluency of speech;" such an endowment appearing, from the position he has given it in his description, to hold the first place in his idea of efficiency for the ministry, while he adds to it that of "also possessing a strong faith in the beneficial results of zealous and well-directed exertions." A little further on in his letter he says, (somewhat, I must own, ex cathedra, as it appears to me,) "No young man should henceforward be permitted by his friends to become a divinity student, unless he is naturally endowed with a good voice and a fluency of delivery; to set apart those for the ministry who are destitute of these qualities, or such as have actually an impediment in their speech, appears to me utterly preposterous." In reading these sentences, somehow or other the anecdote of Demosthenes and the sea-shore, and his putting pebbles into his mouth and shouting to the waves, came into my mind; and I have since thought whether, if the popular assembly at Athens had passed a decree that no one who was not "naturally endowed with a good voice,” or who had “an impediment in his speech," should address the "men of Athens," they would ever have had the benefit of his eloquence. I even began to think whether we should ever have had the speech of Paul in the Areopagus. Descending from these imaginations, I began to think where we should have been, had the law which your correspondent lays down been binding on the friends of Dr. Priestley, when he was a young man; for we are told by those who were accustomed to hear him, that he was troubled with the hesitation in speech of which your correspondent speaks in such broad terms. It is not my intention to pursue this thought of mine. I have been told that Dr. Priestley's living voice riveted the attention of his hearers. Perhaps the spirit and the mind and the acquirements which it spoke from, may assure us of how little comparative moment it was in itself, at the same time that they point also to other "means of promoting Unitarianism" than "a good voice and fluency of delivery"—I mean, the products of time and the press, for the effects of which we should, even with "the tongues of men and of angels," still have to wait, in "the slow payment of a distant day." I have been thinking, too, of Dr. Channing, who I believe is not remarkable for the primary attributes of promoting Unitarianism as laid down by your correspondent; at least, I have heard that simplicity and earnestness are the chief characteristics of his delivery. I am afraid, Sir, these instances are rather against the theory of "A Zealous Unitarian." But as I have mentioned Dr. Channing, I am reminded of his new sermon, entitled "The Church." He, too, like your correspondent, considers the first influence to which a church owes its efficacy to be the character of the minister (p. 11); and when he speaks of "his personal endowments," he immediately mentions "his intellectual, moral and religious worth," "his faithfulness and zeal;" not a word do I find about his voice. He speaks of the "action of an enlightened and holy teacher" on the "mind and heart." He speaks, indeed, of his "tones of love," but not of his “fluency;" * See 2 Cor. x. 10 : 66 - his letters (say they) are weighty and powerful; but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible."

of "wise and touching manifestations of God's truth," not of the natural endowment of a good voice. I very much fear, Sir, that were this plan, of only young men who had good voices being brought up to the ministry, adopted, we should soon have "vox et præterea nihil." Where nature does the most, man does the least. There would be less inducement to attend to the more weighty qualifications; and most certainly we have no need to lessen the motive to the attainment of those. We should, indeed, become as "sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal." This inversion of the rule of the ministry would do us "a world of iniquity." If there be something to inspire the voice, it signifies little what that voice is. It is this surely upon which we should lay the chief stress. Something of a spirit of awe, subdued and humbled by a sense of the greatness of the undertaking and the manifold qualifications it demands; such a spirit as awed the great legislator of the Jews, when he pleaded with God that he was "not eloquent," or the evangelic prophet, sunk in despair at the heavenly vision by reason of his "unclean lips," yet, when touched with fire from the altar, the first to exclaim to Jehovah's call, "Here am I-send me." This spirit it is, shrinking from the greatness of its calling and falling down before the majesty of its subject, that we should rather cherish as the best preliminary for the ministry of religion; as the most encouraging earnest that we may "go," and that "God will be with our mouth," and his Spirit teach us "how or what" we shall speak.† I need not add that a spirit so impressed will neglect no means of thoroughly furnishing itself, as far as it may, to its great work. As I have had recourse to the examples of scripture for the spirit in which the ministry of religion should be undertaken, it may not be out of place to remark, further, how completely this spirit in them absorbs every other qualification. Knowledge of the facts and truths to be declared, it of course pre-supposes, but beyond this it is all in all. I am ashamed to ask the question, "Wherever is the endowment of a good voice made the necessary qualification of a witness to Christ ?" Or where does Paul condescend to lay it down as indispensable to Timothy? What they had to say gave them the true eloquence, "the mouth and the wisdom which their adversaries were not able to gainsay or resist."

I have been led, Sir, to these remarks by what I cannot but consider the improper precedence given, in the letter of "A Zealous Unitarian," to perhaps the least important accomplishment to a minister of the gospel, or at least to one which a deep sense of his duty will always call into efficient action. I write, too, under a strong feeling of the injury done alike to our cause and to the minds of the young, (in this case, both those who possess the accomplishment in question and those who possess it not,) when that which is outward, superficial and showy, is held out as of more importance than the inward life and soundness and substance of religion.

I fully agree with your correspondent that "the highest attainments in the various branches of knowledge cannot possibly, of themselves, constitute an able minister of the gospel;" but I do maintain that such attainments (more especially in the various branches of sacred knowledge, for there are various, very various branches here)-I maintain that such attainments, animated, and I may say inspired, by a sense of the majesty of Religion and the all-commanding claims of the Gospel, will make themselves heard very widely and very eloquently in its behalf; will supply a deeper and a stronger "faith in the beneficial results of zealous and welldirected exertions," than where such a faith is the offspring only of a "fluency of speech," or such attainments have only a "good voice" to give them utterance.

I hope I am not unfair to your correspondent: very likely he thinks with

* Exod. iv. 10, Isaiah vi. 5—8, Jer. i. 6, 7, Ezek. i. 28, Dan. x. 9.
† Matt. x. 19.

me. I wish only he had ranked the voice as subordinate. He will perhaps excuse me in thinking that our ministers are rather hardly dealt with in his hands. I hope he speaks with book, or rather I should hope he speaks without book; for I should be exceedingly unwilling to believe that they are unable to explain the Scriptures even to children. He speaks of "the stores of their learning:" it has been somewhere said, "It requires the greatest proficient to write the most elementary treatise." It has been said, too, by no mean judge, that a knowledge of the original languages of Scripture is necessary to a minister of religion in the smallest country village.

A word or two on preaching "extempore." "If it be desirable that our students should become extensively useful ministers," your correspondent says, "they ought and must be trained to preach extempore." The power of speaking extemporaneously is most important; it is becoming more and more necessary. Dr. Channing, in his "PRESENT AGE," speaks of it as one "sign of the tendency to universal intellectual action" in his country. In its application to the pulpit and in connexion with our students, your correspondent speaks of it in a way that we friends of the right of private judgment must think rather dogmatical. Whatever I may think of the power, I should rather demur to the habit. I would rather, mutatis mutandis, act somewhat upon Mr. Canning's doctrine in politics, viz. "Preserve peace by always being prepared for war." And I would here further illustrate and fortify my position by his distinguished authority. It is related of him, that "his enviable faculty of speaking eloquently at all times and on all subjects, was the result of early discipline in frequent and varied composition; it proceeded from years of assiduous habits of industry in writing, in reading, and still more in thinking; and to estimate the time which Mr. Canning took in the preparation of his celebrated speech on the affairs of Portugal, it is not merely the few hours which he may have meditated on the subject that is [are?] to be taken into account, but the hours and years of by-gone study, of political experience, of accumulated knowledge of constitutional and continental history, which matured his mind and made it adequate to that master-effort of his genius." We have been let into the secret, too, much to the same purport, of the most brilliant efforts of Sheridan. We know what extreme pains was bestowed by the ancient orators on the preparation of their speeches. In the case of every thing that is excellent in its kind,

"Nil sine magno

Vita labore dedit mortalibus."

For excellence, then, in extemporaneous speaking, (including the matter as well as the manner of it,) I should say, let "our students" give this great labour. Let it proceed "from years of assiduous habits of industry in writing, in reading, and still more in thinking." Still, I should question very much the efficiency of it as a constant habit of the pulpit among us. As I said before, where nature does much, man does little. Were this power always at command, little heed would be given to what was said, provided something was said. Fluency would be sufficient. And then, Sir, where should we be? Why, we should very soon require some one to come among us to convert us, as your correspondent now wants us to convert "the Independents and Wesleyans." The power of speaking extemporaneously I would by no means depreciate, but let it be the product of that labour of which we have spoken. If we have weighty and interesting matter to communicate, we can generally make it known. We do so in conversation; and what is called a speech, is but an extension of that. Only out of the abundance of the heart let us bring forth good things. It is perhaps not known or considered how much of a written sermon is uttered without notes; how much the fervour of the moment takes different words,

Sketch of his Life (p. 146), prefixed to his Speeches. Therry. 6 vols. 8vo.