manner to that which Paul esteemed the highest, "the knowing of things which are freely given to us of God in Christ."* For it brings us indeed into the most intimate communion with the true God and with Christ, who is Himself the King of Truth—a communion whereby the original relationship between man and his Creator is restored, the true life becomes his, and the Spirit of truth comes to dwell and work in the heart. But is it not God, with whom-according to the suggestive word of the Psalmist—is the fountain of life, in whose light alone it is given us to see the true light? Is not the Logos, who is the Life, precisely on this account also the light of men? Is it possible to be guided and renewed by the Spirit of truth, without being at least to some extent conscious of this guiding and operation? And can there, in a word, be any question of a true, i.e. reciprocal, relation between God and man, without all discord ceasing within, at last also that between believing and knowing? I, for my part, cannot see otherwise than that that illustrious thinker was right, when he wrote: "A living God, upholding and penetrating the life of nature and of the spirit, cannot possibly have in such wise realised His image in man, that for the latter a separation of the consciousness were necessary in the opposition of faith and of knowledge."+ The more boldly do we speak thus, when we observe how faith, in communion with God and Christ, raises us to the inward contemplation of the spiritual world. Believing is indeed opposed to seeing; yet it is itself in turn a contemplation with the spiritual eye, the oμμa rês ↓ʊxîs [eye of the spirit], not inaptly termed the sixth sense. On this account it is said: "He that seeth the Son and believeth in Him, hath everlasting life," and again: "he endured, as seeing Him who is invisible." Who then will, taking his place at a truly Christian standpoint, assert that that which is perceived by the eye of the senses has a so much higher certainty, in other words, may so much more I Cor. ii. 12. F. Fabri, Briefe gegen den Materialismus (1864) p. 173. reasonably claim the name of science, than that which the eye of the spirit, by the light of a higher revelation, discovers concerning the supersensuous world? Shall what the eye itself beholds be an object of science, but that which is unveiled before the telescope bear a lower name? Intuition-I know it, nowhere perhaps has the imagination more dangerous room for play than in this mysterious domain. But on the other hand, I have only to point to the analogy alike of poetic and prophetic inspiration to show how intuition, frequently at once, as with an eagle's glance, knows how to seize that which reflection long afterwards is able to overtake only step by step. Then it is as in the well-known lines: "Und hat Genie und Herz vollbracht Was Locke und Descart's nie gedacht, Die Möglichkeit erwiesen." Is something similar inconceivable in the life of faith? I leave the answer to all to whom that life is known experimentally. I defend no single delusion of a sickly mysticism, but to be as mystic as, e.g., the Apostle John, will yet be open to us ; and I can provided only the word know is duly understoodmake my own the saying of the Middle Ages, Tantum Deus cognoscitur, quantum diligitur. In this domain the life precedes the light, the love, the knowledge; and I appeal to the voice of every truly loving heart for an answer to the question whether the great Vinet ever spoke a truer word, than when he named sympathy "the organ of intelligence." * Schiller, die Weltweisen. Thus also wrote Dorner, l.l., p. 10, “ Faith has immediately the Spiritual Intuition of Christ and of God, as the Father; it knows not simply of itself and of being redeemed, but also, yea primarily, of the redeeming God. Faith is not so certain of its power and perfectness, as of the power of God and Christ, in which it is conscious of being strong and safe.' + God is known just so much as He is loved. The Lantern turned on the Preacher. BY THE AUTHOR OF "SECULAR ANNOTATIONS ON SCRIPTURE TEXTS." I. PLAYING AT PREACHING. PROFESSOR T. J. POTTER, in his recent treatise on "The Spoken Word," approves and illustrates the teaching of Besphas, that every sermon is a syllogism, of which the major is contained. in the introduction, the minor in the proposition, the arguments or proofs in the body of the discourse, and the consequence in the peroration. Thus, in the skeleton of a sermon on Mortal Sin,* the leading idea is, that there is only one real evil in the world -the evil of mortal sin. The introduction states, that if there be only one real evil in the world, we, if we were really Christians, should be horror-struck at the thought of offending God by it. The proposition considers mortal sin severally as an offence to God, as an injury to ourselves, and as an egregious folly; and the conclusion is, that we should do our utmost to avoid sinning. A grave, if not reverend, reviewer confesses that this meagre skeleton reminds him of one composed by a certain preacher of five years old. "This text," he began, "teaches us that we should all be good ;" and, after some reflection, he added, "and that none of us should be naughty." The tautology is venial enough in a preacher of five years old. Some of fifty indulge in similar displays of it with almost equal innocence. Many a pulpiteer aged fifty is, indeed, not much less obviously playing at preaching than he was at five, when he conducted divine service in the nursery, attired in pinafore for surplice, or in some borrowed black apron or shawl for Genevan gown. The child is father of the man; and the man, like his father, is sometimes uncommonly childish. Let us glance at some of these nursery preachers in the first It is in a Roman Catholic College that Mr. Potter is Professor (of Sacred Eloquence); and his book, whose alias, is "The Art of Extemporary Preaching," 1872, bears the imprimatur of Cardinal Cullen. instance. Not of the kind sketched by M. Bourgoing in his "Tableau de l'Espagne," where he speaks of "de petits moines de quatre à cinq ans polissonnant dans la rue;" but of highly respectable and perfectly sincere young essayists, who are anxious to instruct with all authority betimes, and to improve the occasion at its very earliest. Rather of the kind, therefore, of that eminent exemplar among the founders of Jesuitism, the third General of the Order, Father Francis, as they called him, -the Don Francis Borgia who, as if to rescue the name he bore from the infamy of his progenitors, "exhaled," as Sir James Stephen phrases it, even in his childish days, the odour of sanctity, with each returning month casting a lot to determine which he should personate of the saints with whose names it was studded on the calendar; and who, in his tenth year, played at saints so perfectly as to inflict a vigorous chastisement on his own naked person. A pronounced type is forthcoming in Henry Bullinger, who, from the age of three onwards, would steal into the Church at Bremgarten, climb up into the pulpit of his papa, the Dean, put himself into a grave attitude, and repeat with all the strength of his infantine lungs all the articles of the Christian faith, that is to say, of the Apostles' Creed. When John Evelyn was at Rome, in 1644, he was more than a little impressed by what followed a sermon in the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, by one of the Order; after whom "stepped up a child of eight or nine years old, who pronounced an oration with so much grace, that I was never better pleased than to hear Italian so well and so intelligently spoken. This course it seems they frequently use, to bring their scholars to a habit of speaking distinctly, and forming their action and assurance, which none so much want as ours in England.” By the time he was ten years old, George Whitefield was bent on a clerical career. "I was always," he says, "fond of being a clergyman, and used frequently to imitate the minister's reading prayers," etc. Part of this ambition a biographer takes to have been no doubt inspired by the pleasure the boy already felt in the exercise of his fine voice and power of declamation. John Wesley, in his teens, had, perhaps for the same reason, a hankering after the stage; his only qualm of conscience being on the vexed question, which he formally submitted to all comers, Pray, could he be a player, and yet go to the sacrament, and be a Christian? We are told of Lalande, that, at the age of ten years, it was not unusual for him, in the costume of a priest, to deliver a sermon of his own composition, to a select society, who requested as a favour to be present at the declamations of so precocious an orator. He was at this time of life surrounded by Jesuits, and nurtured by his mother (Marie Monchinet) in the strict observance of devotional ceremonies: both parents, however, appear to have spoilt their only son by their inordinate indulgence of his every whim, and even an extreme solicitude to anticipate his every wish. Of Fichte, again, the story is told of his being sent for, as a little boy, to the castle of the lord of his village (Rammenau), to repeat from memory a sermon preached that morning by the pastor at church,—a visitor, the Baron von Mittiz, having to his regret missed hearing it; how little Gottlieb arrived from the village in a clean smock-frock, and bearing in his hand a large nosegay, such as his mother was accustomed to send to the castle occasionally as a token of respect; how, being asked to repeat as much as he could recollect of the morning's sermon, his voice and manner became animated at once; and how the animation gained force as he proceeded, until, forgetting altogether the presence of the formidable company, little Johann Gottlieb Fichte became so fervid and abundant in his eloquence, that the Count (Von Hoffmansegg) thought it necessary to interrupt him, lest the playful tone of the circle should be destroyed by the serious subjects of the sermon. Robert Story, of Rosneath, who had an exceptional gift of mimicry, used, as a child, to imitate every minister he heard in his young days at Yetholm; and in after life recalled his frequent anticipation (being himself intended for the ministry) of the rapture he should one day inspire by a tone similar to that of an old screeching minister in the neighbourhood. He |