according to the genius of the theological system, and the ecclesiasticism which give it germ and scope and nourishment. And while we thankfully concede the general elevation and power, and the high national traits of American sacred oratory, and the growing excellences that have distinguished our sister Churches especially for the last fifty years, we may be pardoned for a traditional prejudice, which has ripened into personal judgment and conviction in our maturer observation, in favor of the freedom and oratorical vantage-ground of the Methodist pulpit. We were the more anxious, therefore, that a work should be put in the hands of our young ministers which, while it increased their mental discipline and oratorical culture and enlarged their views of this function of the sacred office, should also preserve the spirit of the olden times-“there were giants in those days"-which made preaching a glory to the Church and a terror to the hosts of the enemy. Culture and unction must go together. The laws of motion are of no value without the propelling power of motion. The pulpit must have learning, and skill, and the discipline of art, but above all it must have the meekness and gentleness of Christ, and the baptism of fire by the Holy Ghost. The modern revival of pure evangelism, which dates with the Wesleyan era, has given a new type to preaching, unknown in the Christian. Church hitherto, unknown even in the post-apostolic age; and this regenerated form of preaching, which is not grafted upon the old systems of classical rhetoric, but springs from the joint ideas of "the Church and culture," freshened and invigorated by the Holy Ghost, we would jealously preserve.

The value of the science of homiletics can be estimated only by giving to preaching its due relative position among the means of grace. Two theories respecting Church instrumentality have chiefly obtained since the apostles' days. They relate to the comparative claims and relative offices of preaching and the sacraments. Early in the history of the Church a hierarchal tendency discovered itself, and the theocratic idea of the Mosaic law and priesthood was transferred to the Christian ministry. After this original they modeled without stint or abatement, till the theory of a hierarchy finally culminated in a spiritual autocracy, an earthly headship, the papacy. With the growth of these principles came the superstitious ven

eration of the sacraments, and the cumbrous and often absurd rituals of the papal Church. The leading feature of this theory of grace and Church instrumentality is, that all grace flows to the recipient from Christ the fountain through the channel of the sacraments, by the administration of a priesthood divinely appointed, and lineally connected with Christ through the apostles. The idea we here intend is sufficiently expressed by the Oxford Tractarians. "The sacraments," "The sacraments," say they, "not preaching, are the sources of divine grace; the apostolic ministry has a virtue in it which goes out over the whole Church when sought by the prayer of faith." Such a theory places the sacraments in the foreground of Church instrumentality, and gives to preaching but a subordinate place. Like the Hebrew ceremonials, it is adapted to a stationary, not a proselytic and rapidly expansive Church.

Not so the New Testament. Its mission is not symbolized by a priest standing at his altar, but by a herald rather, “flying through the midst of heaven, and having the everlasting Gospel to preach to all nations." The sacraments were given to those who are saved, to bring them together and build them up in one fellowship. So also is preaching appointed "for the edifying of the body of Christ." But the sacraments have no aggressive mission, like preaching, to perform. They have their place in the bosom of the Church as the blessed mysteries of our holy religion, the symbols and pledges of dying love and renewing grace, while preaching is not only an organic activity for Church edification, but the leading instrument for Church enlargement over the world. No theory of Church which thrusts preaching into the background, or makes it, as in the medieval ages, but a decent addendum to a pompous round of ceremonials, can justify itself by New Testament authority. The multiplication of treatises like the one before us shows. that the Church is awake to the true spirit and grandeur of her commission. A work on homiletics would have made but a sorry figure among the Jewish rituals.

The work before us takes a broad and enlightened view of its subject, and rescues homiletics from the subordinate position to which it has been assigned by an ingrdinate ritualism on the one hand, or the secularizing tendencies of a scholastic theology on the other. Anciently and generally through the

middle ages, it rested on the basis of classical rhetoric. The development of Christian rhetoric from the pastoral, or as it has been called, the "Christian and churchly life principle," had not been made. The sermon, as a production of Christian rhetoric developed from the Church-life relation, has been the slow growth of centuries. The sermon has a history of its own, a science of its own, a sphere and destiny all its own. What could heathenism propose as an aim of oratory, and an object of eloquence, to be compared with the salvation of the soul? The themes, the ends, the sources of Revelation were infinitely above the conceptions of the most enlightened of the heathen nations. The character of God, the grandeur of the moral government, the mysteries of redemption, the glories of heaven, the terrors of hell, the certainties of spiritual and eternal things, the responsibilities of human beings under the noon-day light of these revelations of the world to come, all conspired to elevate Christian oratory above all conception of Grecian or Roman models. It is too sacred, too sublime, to be fashioned in their schools. The Church has been long, culpably long, in disenthralling the pulpit from the toils of the heathen masters of rhetoric and the manners of the theater; but at last the living principle of Christianity has herein individualized itself, and subordinated true science and philosophy to its own uses, and presented to the world Homiletics as a Christian science. Our author justly regards Homiletics "not as a branch or species of rhetoric," but "a higher science, to which rhetoric, logic, and other systems of human knowledge are tributary." The pulpit is not identical with the platform, the forum, the floor of deliberative debate, or the lecture room. It has a sphere of its own, and a type of eloquence and oratory not shared in common by any other species of address. Homiletics, indeed, is a generic term. "It comprehends not only the sermon, but also those various other forms and styles of religious discourse which have been publicly practiced and recognized at different periods of the history of the Church, such as exhortations, homilies, postils, and platform addresses.”— P. 94. But of these the sermon is the characteristic and standard work of the Christian minister. "To this work he needs to devote his constant study and his diligent labor, his profoundest meditation and his most fervent prayers, that he may

show himself' approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word.'"-P. 111.-The postil, indeed, is superseded; it belonged to the dark ages, when preaching was little else than a supplement to give decency and character to ceremonial worship. "The postil sustained a relation to the mass analogous to that of a postscript to a letter." The homily is too familiar and hortatory in its character to be suited to all the ends of preaching. The exhortation, a most important and indispensable part of homiletic address, is yet too free and persuasive to admit the didactic and dialectic elements of the sermon. The same may be said of the platform address, which admits of "greater freedom of manner and variety of matter than the sermon, while it demands less of thorough discussion and systematic arrangement." But it is the sermon which is "the representative product of homiletics."

It is an admirable feature of this work that it considers the homiletical functions of the minister in connection with the multiplied and expanded agencies of the modern Church. The activity of Christian benevolence has opened new fields for Christian oratory. Aside from the regular Sabbath services, and from the common liabilities of demand in all ages for "funerals, special providences, and festive occasions," we now reckon the claims of temperance, missions, Sunday-schools, education, and multiplied public charities. These are not occasional, but uniform. They are part of the organic life of the Church. The platform has hence become second only to the pulpit for the advocacy of truth and benevolence, and as the theater of sacred eloquence. Preaching to children our author brings under a distinct head in his "classification of sermons." It is expected of the minister of the Gospel in this day that he will be the advocate of all humane, religious, and educational enterprises, and Dr. Kidder has done well in thus setting the standard before the aspirant to the sacred office.

A treatise on homiletics should not only lay down those fundamental principles on which the science rests, but trace its connection also with the history and life of the Church. Preaching has a history as well as a philosophy, and it is that history which supplies us with the circumstances of its growth or decline through the successive ages of the Church. The FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XVI.-41

homiletical functions of the ministry stand organically connected with Church life, and in their artistic form, with the general culture of the ages also. The history of the sermon as to its exterior and human features, like all history, is not merely a given number of facts chronologically or serially arranged, but a genetic development from a seed planting disclosing alike the wisdom and folly of the ages, their fidelity and corruption, as to the grand genius and intent of the New Testament Church.

In the apostolic age preaching became a power that already shook the world. Through the patristic ages, as heathen learning and philosophy appeared in the Church, preaching became more conformed to the schools, with a corresponding loss of spiritual simplicity and evangelical purity. As the Church increased in wealth, secularity, and formalism, the power of Christian oratory declined, and the former part of the medieval period made no improvements in this direction, while the latter part developed the pulpit only in the direction of the scholastic philosophy. The Reformation of the sixteenth century awoke the genius of the pulpit, and preaching has always flourished under the revival of pure religion and true science. Modern homiletics must not ignore the admonitory lessons of the past. In estimating what a sermon should now be, we must take into account the experience of the Christian ages. The history of a science indicates the laws of its natural unfolding and growth according to fundamental principles. Each science, too, has its relative sphere in the cyclopedia of sciences; and while it has a legitimate sphere of its own, its points of connection and correlation with other branches, according to a true and philosophic Methodology, should be pointed out. In all these respects the work before us is more ample and satisfactory than any of its predecessors which have fallen under our eye. The demands of the student are sufficiently met, and the tyro here finds an ample historic and scientific unfolding of the subject brought down to the wants of the modern pulpit. The work is a thesaurus of facts and principles, in which the author shows himself a skillful teacher, always practical, perspicuous, and judicious, never losing sight of his pupil, and supplying an analysis which leaves nothing to be desired beyond.