out obliging a perpetual indecision and choice whether or not to insert the vowel while writing the body of the word.

We see not the slightest ground for the assumption that phonography is a failure. We have found no difficulty in corresponding with our phonographic brethren; and were our correspondents, compositors, proof-readers, and friends all phonographers, we should use nothing else. And indeed were every phonographer thus enabled to use phonography always and alone in all his writing, it would in all cases be successful. All the difficulties encounter Mr. Lindsley's system that encounter Pitman's. If phonography cannot succeed, no other system of short-hand can; for both in theory and in practice we esteem it geometrically an ultimate. We therefore feel it a duty to express a friendly regret that any attempt like Mr. Lindsley's should be made, and our advice that nobody imagine it to be comparable to Pitman's.

Lay Representation in the Methodist Episcopal Church: its Justice_and Expediency. By GILBERT HAVEN. 12mo., pp. 46. Boston: J. P. Magee.

1864.

Mr. Haven's pamphlet is a spicy and vigorous production. In the matter of "justice," it maintains the right of the laity to a share in religious and ecclesiastical administration from both the Old Testament and the New. The argument is, to say the least, quite as good as the scripture proof by the venerable fathers, Bond, Bangs, and Barnes, excluding the laity from all such right. Few of us at the present day doubt that right. And yet we are gratified to see that in face of the fact that our ministry sacrifice so many rights, our lay brethren have not latterly argued the matter on the ground of rights, but of "the best good of the Church." We doubt not they are great gainers by this method of putting the case. We recommend the pamphlet before us to the attention of both ministry and laity.

The action of the late General Conference on the subject meets, we believe, the hearty concurrence of all concerned. Its own further action was estopped by the late vote; but the subject is now placed by its direct authority before our attention as a matter of Church-wide consideration and discussion. The columns of our church papers will doubtless be opened to a free and generous debate. So also are the pages of our Quarterly.

The following books arrived too late for notice in the present number: Spring's Pulpit Ministrations, 2 vols., 8vo., Harpers. Merivale's Roman History, Vol. IV, Appleton & Co. Hazard on the Will, Appleton & Co. Harpers' Pictorial History of the Great Rebellion, No. 7. Bethune's Lectures on the Catechism, Sheldon & Co. Light in Darkness, Gould & Lincoln. The Memorial Hour, Gould & Lincoln. Dr. Wayland's Memoir of Chalmers, Gould & Lincoln. Letters of Mendelssohn, from Leypoldt, Phil.

THE

METHODIST QUARTERLY REVIEW.

OCTOBER, 1864.

ART. I.-MINISTERIAL EDUCATION.

It is a thought lying at the very core of Christian responsibility, that it is not so much man's effort which God uses as his instrument to bring men to himself, as man himself. Not human arguments and appeals, conflicts and struggles, treasure and tears, so much as human character; not the man's tools or weapons, but the concrete being, himself reflecting God's glory, gushing with divine sympathy, fervent with divine zeal; man the "embassador of God," intrusted with the responsibility of maintaining the divine honor, bringing his credentials in his look, his tones, his gestures; he it is that is to negotiate with rebellious men in the Great King's behalf, and knit their hearts to his.

It is not, then, the Christian minister's sermons, or visits, or charities, not his logic or his eloquence, his plans or his sacrifices; but it is the man that is the weapon in God's hand. And this weapon should be tempered and sharpened by the highest human skill. Nowhere else does the world need so much the highest style of man. In no other business of life can the largest, most liberal culture be so thoroughly employed without crossing the legitimate boundaries of the profession. When the lawyer has finished his argument, his work is done; the scholar elaborates his speculations and throws them upon the world, and they live or die according as they have in them the vitality of truth; what is called political success is cheaply FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XVI.-34

obtained by narrow culture and shrewd catering to the passions of men, and if the aspirant for these honors but performs his part well in public, the masses of men ask not, care not, where he is when not on the stage before them; but the Christian minister is always in the harness-whether in official garb or in dressing robe and slippers, will or nill, he is always at work in his profession. For there it is the man, and not the man's hand, or tongue, or brain that works. The man behind the words and works, behind the play of the features or the flash of the eye, the man in the strength and symmetry of his character, in the depth of his convictions, the fervor of his sympathies, the gush of his emotions, the man everywhere, if he be a real Christian minister, is a steady battery ever pouring its fire upon human sin. For the orator to persuade, he must seem sincere while on the rostrum, or all his tones and tears are wasted; but the artificial sincerity, the oratorical illusion of the hour will answer his purpose, for his ordeal ends when he steps down from the rostrum; but the preacher's ordeal never ceases, and it is fiercest at the fireside and the bedside. To have a true Christian minister's success, he must not seem to be standing before men to make a plea for an hour or for an emergency, but to unbar the gates of his inmost being, and let the sparks of truth fly from a heart where all men may see that that flame burns evermore. To achieve the highest success he should be an orator, with all the graces of speech and tone and gesture; but he must be far more than an orator, or he fails as a Christian minister. He may succeed as an orator, and win an orator's fame, as has many a preacher Catholic and Protestant, but he must be content to receive an orator's reward; he will never hear his master say "well done." He should be a scholar, skilled to defend his theses with all the weapons of logic, keen to detect analogies and confirmations of religious truth in all the manifold fields of human research, able to follow through all the mental and material universe within our reach the subtle thread that fastens truth to truth and binds all to the Throne; all this he should be and must be to achieve the highest success, yet all this he may be and not feel one throb of the Christian minister's triumph. The man is more than the scholar, more than the orator, more than the reasoner; and it is the thoroughly trained, harmoniously

developed man, that is to do this work with the highest success, the work of representing Christ to men.

Our fathers were compelled, by the vastness and richness of the waving fields, to send many an inexperienced laborer to thrust in his sickle, yet they earnestly inculcated diligent and thorough culture of all the powers, that the man might be steadily strengthened and hardened for his work. Where are there written more earnest and thorough admonitions to diligent and painstaking culture, spiritual and intellectual, than in John Wesley's rules for his preachers? The Christian minister's first duty is with himself. "Study," says Paul to Timothy, "to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed." The duties physical and spiritual which the preacher owes to himself we here pass by to discuss mainly the duties intellectual.

The Christian minister's whole duty is to persuade men to become Christians; if he come short of this he fails, no matter what other splendid things he may do; if he achieve this he succeeds, no matter in what other things he fails. "Go ye, and disciple (uanteúσare) all nations;" these are the words of the commission. To persuade others to be Christians, the first grand qualification is for the man to be a Christian himself; but it is desirable that the precious germ of spiritual life should be fructified in a generous soil, in order that it may live and flourish amid the withering blights and killing frosts which are sure to fall upon it in the Christian ministry. His duties in the public assembly and in the home, by the cradle, the altar, and the grave, are constantly bringing him where he lays his hand on the heart when it is most tender; he is freely invited to enter the very holy of holies of the human affections, while men of all other professions are bid to stand afar off; and again, the truths which, falling from heaven, are reflected from him among men, glorify him in their eyes, as the opaque mirror dazzles the eye while it reflects the sun, so that it comes to pass, that from the very nature of his professional duties, he is exposed to the temptations of vanity and self-sufficiency above all other men, while yet to yield to such temptations for a moment, whatever other success it may offer, is sure to destroy his success as a Christian minister. For the very idea of the office is forgetfulness of self in absorbing devotion to the mas

ter; "we are embassadors of God," and when the embassador is detected in negotiating for himself, that moment his mission fails. Thus the preacher, who from the very nature of his office can succeed only by self-forgetfulness, is incessantly tempted to self-sufficiency, yea, and with success the temptation increases.

Now I do not mean to intimate that mental culture, even when broadest and most generous, is an effectual safeguard against this self-sufficiency, but only that the lack of it furnishes extraordinary facilities for the temptation. This is the very temptation by which an ill-poised, superficially cultivated mind is most easily overthrown. The Christian minister should be holy enough to see how unclean is the purest human heart before Him, if he would escape the meshes of spiritual vanity; and to be clear from the temptations of self-sufficiency on the intellectual side, it is desirable to know enough to see what childish prattle is the highest human wisdom, to be strong enough to know that the highest human strength is a bruised reed.

As we treat of the culture that is desirable, we point to the Ideal at which we should aim; and a correct Ideal held steadily in view will secure a far higher practical realization than one that is low and imperfect. Our Church has hardly begun to realize its own. Ideal; unable to get what we would, we have gratefully taken what we could. "A little learning is a dangerous thing," says the poet; but it is certainly far less dangerous than no learning at all.

We take it for granted that the preacher will study theology in all its departments, doctrines, and history, in whatever books he can find it. But what we are accustomed to call theological study, however thorough and systematic, is no adequate preparation for the Christian ministry. Active life, in any employment or profession, generally developes but one set of muscles, physical or intellectual. We look in vain through all the ranks of mere professional men for the harmoniously developed character, the "homo teres atque rotundus." The real man exists only in fragments, scattered all abroad, and we must make the tour of a score of professions and employments to find the materials of which to form him. It would require the choice limbs and faculties of a hundred to furnish the