patriotism and piety; and the success with which this delusion has been practised is one of the most remarkable examples of what may be effected by dint of effrontery and persevering falsehood.

That sentence I am certain will not be disapproved at Fulham or Lambeth. Dr. Southey or Dr. Phillpots might have written it.

The general standard of the clergy has undoubtedly been very much raised since the days when they were not allowed to preach without a license for that purpose from the ordinary. Nevertheless it is certain that many persons who are, in other and more material respects, well, or even excellently qualified for the ministerial functions, may be wanting in the qualifications for a preacher. A man may possess great learning, sound principles, and good sense, and yet be without the talent of arranging and expressing his thoughts well in a written discourse: he may want the power of fixing the attention or reaching the hearts of his hearers; and in that case the discourse, as some old writer has said in serious jest, which was designed for edification turns to tedification. The evil was less in Addison's days, when he who distrusted his own abilities availed himself of the compositions of some approved divine, and was not disparaged in the opinion of his congregation, by taking a printed volume into the pulpit. This is no longer practised; but instead of this, which secured wholesome instruction to the people, sermons are manufactured for sale, and sold in manuscript, or printed in a cursive type imitating manuscript. The articles which are prepared for such a market, are for the most part copied from obscure books, with more or less alteration of language, and generally for the worse; and so far as they are drawn from such sources they are not likely to contain anything exceptionable on the score of doctrine: but the best authors will not be resorted to, for fear of discovery, and therefore when these are used, the congregation lose as much in point of instruction, as he who uses them ought to lose in self-esteem.

But it is more injurious when a more scrupulous man composes his own discourses, if he be deficient either in judgment or learning. He is then more likely to entangle plain texts than to unravel knotty ones; rash positions are sometimes advanced by such preachers, unsound arguments are adduced by them in support of momentous doctrines, and though these things neither offend the ignorant and careless, nor injure the well minded and well informed, they carry poison with them when they enter a diseased ear. It cannot be doubted that such sermons act as corroboratives for infidelity.

Nor when they contain nothing that is actually erroneous, but are merely unimproving, are they in that case altogether

harmless. They are not harmless if they are felt to be tedi. ous. They are not harmless if they torpify the understanding: a chill that begins there may extend to the vital regions. Bishop Taylor (the great Jeremy) says of devotional books that "they are in a large degree the occasion of so great indevotion as prevails among the generality of nominal Christians, being," he says, " represented naked in the conclusions of spiritual life, without or art or learning; and made apt for persons who can do nothing but believe and love, not for them that can consider and love." This applies more forcibly to bad sermons than to commonplace books of devotion; the book may be laid aside if it offend the reader's judgment, but the sermon is a positive infliction upon the helpless hearer.

The same bishop-and his name ought to carry with it authority among the wise and the good-has delivered an opinion upon this subject, in his admirable apology for authorized and set forms of liturgy. "Indeed," he says, "if I may freely declare my opinion, I think it were not amiss, if the liberty of making sermons were something more restrained than it is; and that such persons only were intrusted with the liberty, for whom the church herself may be safely responsive-that is, men learned and pious; and that the other part, the vulgus cleri, should instruct the people out of the fountains of the church and the public stock, till, by so long exercise and discipline in the schools of the prophets, they may also be instructed to minister of their own unto the people. This I am sure was the practice of the primitive church."

“I am convinced," said Dr. Johnson, " that I ought to be at divine service more frequently than I am; but the provocations given by ignorant and affected preachers too often disturb the mental calm which otherwise would succeed to prayer. I am apt to whisper to myself on such occasions, How can this illiterate fellow dream of fixing attention after we have been listening to the sublimest truths, conveyed in the most chaste and exalted language, throughout a liturgy which must be regarded as the genuine offspring of piety impregnated by wisdom!'" "Take notice, however," he adds, "though I make this confession respecting myself, I do not mean to recommend the fastidiousness that sometimes leads me to exchange congregational for solitary worship." The saintly Herbert says

"Judge not the preacher, for he is thy judge;
If thou mislike him thou conceiv'st him not.
God calleth preaching folly. Do not grudge
To pick out treasures from an earthen pot.

The worst speak something good. If all want sense,
God takes a text and preacheth patience.

He that gets patience, and the blessing which

Preachers conclude with, hath not lost his pains."

This sort of patience was all that Daniel could have derived from the discourses of the poor curate; and it was a lesson of which his meek and benign temper stood in no need. Nature had endowed him with this virtue, and this Sunday discipline exercised without strengthening it. While he was, in the phrase of the religious public, sitting under the preacher, he obeyed to a certain extent George Herbert's preceptthat is, he obeyed it as he did other laws with the existence of which he was unacquainted

"Let vain or busy thoughts have there no part;

Bring not thy plough, thy plots, thy pleasure thither."

Pleasure made no part of his speculations at any time. Plots he had none. For the plough, it was what he never followed in fancy, patiently as he plodded after the furrow in his own vocation. And then for worldly thoughts they were not likely in that place to enter a mind, which never at any time entertained them. But to that sort of thought (if thought it may be called) which cometh as it listeth, and which, when the mind is at ease and the body in health, is the forerunner and usher of sleep, he certainly gave way. The curate's voice passed over his ear like the sound of the brook with which it blended, and it conveyed to him as little meaning and less feeling. During the sermon, therefore, he retired into himself, with as much or as little edification as a Quaker finds at a silent meeting.

It happened, also, that of the few clergy within the very narrow circle in which Daniel moved, some were in no good repute for their conduct, and none displayed either that zeal in the discharge of their pastoral functions, or that earnestness and ability in performing the service of the church, which are necessary for commanding the respect and securing the affections of the parishioners. The clerical profession had never presented itself to him in its best, which is really its true light; and for that cause he would never have thought of it for the boy, even if the means of putting him forward in this path had been easier and more obvious than they were. And for the dissenting ministry, Daniel liked not the name of a nonconformist. The Puritans had left behind them an ill savour in his part of the country, as they had done everywhere else; and the extravagances of the primitive Quakers, which during his childhood were fresh in remembrance, had not yet been forgotten.

It was well remembered in those parts that the Vicar of Kirkby Lonsdale, through the malignity of some of his Puritanical parishioners, had been taken out of his bed-from his wife, who was then big with child, and hurried away to Lancaster jail, where he was imprisoned three years for no other offence than that of fidelity to his church and his king. And VOL. I.-12

that the man who was a chief instigator of this persecution, and had enriched himself by the spoil of his neighbour's goods, though he flourished for a while, bought a field and built a fine house, came to poverty at last, and died in prison, having for some time received his daily food there from the table of one of this very vicar's sons. It was well remembered, also, that, in a parish of the adjoining county palatine, the Puritanical party had set fire in the night to the rector's barns, stable, and parsonage; and that he and his wife and children had only as it were by miracle escaped from the flames.

William Dove had also among his traditional stores some stories of a stranger kind concerning the Quakers, these parts of the North having been a great scene of their vagaries in their early days. He used to relate how one of them went into the church at Brough, during the reign of the Puritans, with a white sheet about his body, and a rope about his neck, to prophesy before the people and their whig priest (as he called him) that the surplice, which was then prohibited, should again come into use, and that the gallows should have its due! And how when their ringleader, George Fox, was put in prison at Carlisle, the wife of Justice Benson would eat no meat unless she partook it with him at the bars of his dungeon, declaring she was moved to do this; wherefore it was supposed he had bewitched her. And not without reason; for when this old George went, as he often did, into the church to disturb the people, and they thrust him out, and fell upon him and beat him, sparing neither sticks nor stones if they came to hand, he was presently, for all that they had done to him, as sound and as fresh as if nothing had touched him; and when they tried to kill him, they could not take away his life! And how this old George rode a great black horse, upon which he was seen, in the course of the same hour, at two places three score miles distant from each other! And how some of the women who followed this old George, used to strip off all their clothes, and in that plight go into the church at service time on the Sunday, to bear testimony against the pomps and vanities of the world; "and to be sure," said William, they must have been witched, or they never would have done this." "Lord deliver us!" said Dinah; "to be sure they must!" sure they must-Lord bless us all!" said Haggy.

66

"To be

CHAPTER XXVII. P. I.

A PASSAGE IN PROCOPIUS IMPROVED-A STORY CONCERNING URIM AND THUMMIM; AND THE ELDER DANIEL'S OPINION OF THE PROFESSION OF THE LAW.

Here is Domine Picklock,

My man of law, solicits all my causes,

Follows my business, makes and compounds my quarrels
Between my tenants and me; sows all my strifes,

And reaps them too, troubles the country for me,

And vexes any neighbour that I please.

BEN JONSON.

AMONG the people who were converted to the Christian faith during the sixth century, were two tribes or nations called the Lazi and the Zani. Methinks it had been better if they had been left unconverted; for they have multiplied prodigiously among us, so that between the Lazy Christians and the Zany ones, Christianity has grievously suffered.

It was one of the Zany tribe whom Guy once heard explaining to his congregation what was meant by Urim and Thummim, and in technical phrase improving the text. Urim and Thummim, he said, were two precious stones, or rather stones above all price, the Hebrew names of which have been interpreted to signify light and perfection, or doctrine and judgment, (which Luther prefers in his Bible, and in which some of the Northern versions have followed him,) or the shining and the perfect, or manifestation and truth, the words in the original being capable of any or all of these significations. They were set in the high priest's breastplate of judgment; and when he consulted them upon any special occasion to discover the will of God, they displayed an extraordinary brilliancy if the matter which was referred to this trial were pleasing to the Lord Jehovah, but they gave no lustre if it were disapproved. "My brethren," said the preacher, "this is what learned expositors, Jewish and Christian, tell me concerning these two precious stones. The stones themselves are lost. But, my Christian brethren, we need them not, for we have a surer means of consulting and discovering the will of God; and still it is by Urim and Thummim, if we alter only a single letter in one of those mysterious words. Take your Bible, my brethern; use him and thumb him-use him and thumb him well, and you will discover the will of God as surely as ever the high priest did by the stones in his breastplate!"