merfield. When this accomplished preacher began sweeping the people of Philadelphia on the tide of his eloquence, the clergy of New York came together for deliberation on the phenomenon, and decided to send Dr. McAuley to the former city to learn the secret of Summerfield's power. When the doctor returned, they met again to hear his report, which was this: "It is not because he says anything new that he draws and thrills such multitudes; it is not because he says anything that I have not said a hundred times; but because he says it so much better."

Let no one fancy that it detracts from such a preacher's genius, to say that his power lies far less in what he says than in the way he says it. It is saying only that his weapon can be wielded by no other hand than his own. When Mirabeau's friend complained that the National Assembly would not listen to him, that fiery leader asked for his speech, and the next day electrified that body by uttering as his own the words they had refused to hear from another. "The words were the same; the force and the fire that made them thrilling and electric were not his friend's, but his own."

Have the
Jews
Humor?

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"No," says Renan; they lack, almost utterly, curiosity and the faculty of laughter." This, if overstated, is substantially true. The Jew has some wit and some humor, but they are not spontaneous, irrepressible, not the result of an exuberance of animal spirits. There is an undercurrent of sadness even in his mirth, a tincture of melancholy even in his taunts and bursts of irony. Laughter is rarely mentioned in the Bible as the outcome of a merry temper, of hilarity of spirit; it is almost always an expression of

triumphant self-complacency, of derision and scorn, and its end is said to be "heaviness." There is a grim humor in the mocking exclamation of Elijah to the prophets of Baal, when they vainly cried to him on Mount Carmel; and, again, an exquisite pleasantry in Isaiah's description of the manufacture of an idol from a tree. Even Heine's humor, with all its weird fancies, wild fun, and airy riot, was nearly all of a cynical, mocking kind; as, for instance, when he tells us he might settle in England "if it were not that I should find there two things, coal-smoke and Englishmen, and I cannot abide either;" and again, when, commenting on the fate of Herr Saalfeld, a professor at Göttingen (a great seat, Heine thought, of pedantry and Philistinism), who had written angry pamphlets against Napoleon, the humorist says: "It is curious, the three greatest enemies of Napoleon have all perished miserably. Castlereagh cut his own throat; Louis XVIII. rotted upon his throne; and Professor Saalfeld is still a professor at Göttingen."

Bells.

WHILE spending a summer in Waterville, Me., I saw one day on the ground, near the Universalist church, the bell which for over sixty years had summoned the worshippers to its service, and which had been taken down on account of a fatal crack. It is not, perhaps, sufficiently known that bells should be examined, from time to time, to ascertain how much they have been worn at the parts struck by the hammers. If a considerable indentation has been made, the bell should be rehung, and turned a quarter round, so as to present a fresh surface to the action of the hammer. Some good bells (including the one noticed above probably) have been cracked

without any extra or violent use, simply by being struck and worn out at only two places.

Is not the same thing true of men? Do not they too, when their minds are struck day after day, year after year, with a wearisome ding-dong, at the same points, by the same hard and narrow idea (especially if there is much brass in their mental composition), often become cracked? Are not many of the tenants of our insane hospitals and lunatic asylums men who have been struck and dominated all their lives by one ponderous thought, - some scheme, perhaps, for reforming the world, or uprooting a mighty evil, which has been hammered upon their brains monotonously and exclusively, till their pia mater, struck continually in the same place, has at last been rent asunder? Diversity in the thoughts presented is as necessary to the soundness of the mind, as diversity in the points presented to the hammer is to the soundness of a bell.

Reconver

Duke.

THE history of the plucky little Dutch Resion of a public, so vividly and dramatically related by Motley, affords many illustrations of Shakespeare's saying that "the whirligig of time brings about its revenges." When in 1577 the fortress of Antwerp, reared by the Spaniards to overawe the city, was torn down by the Dutch, the old statue of the military butcher Alva (or Alba) was discovered in a forgotten crypt, where it had lain since it had been thrown there by his successor in the government of the Netherlands, Requesens. Fancy the ecstasy of the Hollanders at this opportunity of wreaking their wrath upon the duke's "counterfeit presentment"! A thousand sledge-hammers were ready to dash it into pieces, and it was soon reduced to a shapeless mass. The

bulk of it was melted again, and reconverted, by a most natural metamorphosis, by a most happy poetic justice, into the cannon from which it had originally sprung.

Long Sermons IT is said that the celebrated English vs. Short. barrister, Sir James Scarlett, being asked why he never spoke to a jury, even in the most momentous cases, more than thirty minutes, replied: "It takes just thirty minutes to lodge an idea in a juryman's mind. The average juryman's mind can hold but one idea; consequently, if I succeed in putting a second idea there, I only dislodge the first."

Is there not a thought here that preachers would do well to ponder? Is it not better for the preacher to set forth in a clear, luminous, and vivid manner a single important thought, and impress it indelibly on the hearer's memory, to drive one nail home, and clinch it, than by hammering for fifty minutes or an hour upon half-a-dozen ideas, to run the risk of exhausting his patience and making him forget all? Is it not as true now as in the days of Thomas Fuller, that "the memory is like a purse, if it be overfull that it cannot shut, all will drop out"? We are aware of the reply that will spring to some preachers' lips. They will say there are subjects so vast that one could barely nibble at their edges in such discourses. But might not Scarlett have said the same of some of his great law-cases? Again, to some preachers it will seem small thing" to develop, illustrate, and press home, even in the most effectual manner, two ideas only in a Sunday. But is this necessarily "a small thing"? Is it a trivial matter, a mere bagatelle, to have lodged two barbed arrows of conviction in a sinner's conscience, or to have

66a

planted two great fruitful thoughts for his instruction or consolation in the memory of the Christian? Think of the sum total at the year's end, over a hundred ideas, each weighty and suggestive, and not hinted at or half stated, but fully unfolded, and couched in language that rivets the attention and makes them stick like burrs in the memory!

We read some years ago in a religious newspaper an account of a preacher who tried the plan which we have suggested, and with eminent success. He struck but one blow in his sermons, and that with all the might of his soul and brain. However long or fruitful his text, he so unfolded it as to bring out one and only one leading idea, which the hearer distinctly saw, and could never forget. Sometimes a single word suggested the idea which he would make prominent; and he would emphasize it and repeat it, till it was almost wrought into the very substance of the hearer's brain. Once, when preaching to a large congregation from the words of Christ, "Ye must be born again," he began his discourse with, "Oh, that inexorable MUST!" and then, looking at different parts of the audience, he repeated successively in thrilling tones, "Ye MUST! ye MUST! I speak to all who are not Christians, -ye MUST be born again." That "must" was a point which in a sermon of thirty minutes he pressed again and again, and yet again, upon the hearts and consciences of a thousand attentive hearers, many of whom at the next inquiry meeting were anxiously asking, "What must I do to be saved?" A similar sermon we once heard Newman Hall preach, in London, from the text, "What think ye of Christ?"— the deep impressiveness of which lay in the earnestness, pungency, and power with which, at brief intervals, he pressed home this inquiry.