We have said so much of the faults of Dr. Parr's style, that we conceive it to be just to give our readers a single specimen, which combines as many of the qualities of good writing as any passage that we recollect in the language.

"Our blessed Lord's family was poor, and his birth very obscure; he associated with men not distinguished by fortune or desert, by intellectual attainments or elevated situation. With respect to himself he appeared in a character scarcely raised above the contempt of a giddy misguided world. So far was he from feeling any passion for riches and honors, that he lamented the infatuation of those who were dazzled by their glare. He professed in the strongest terms, their utter emptiness and insignificance; he lamented the dangers to which they expose a weak understanding, or a corrupt heart; and he inveighed with the most alarming severity against the follies, and the vices of those, whose superficial greatness the giddy multitude revered, and whose supposed happiness the generality of their inferiors were too much disposed to envy. He never affected to conceal his own poverty; he never shunned the inconveniences to which it exposed him, but submitted without a murmur to the scoffs of the proud, and the insults of the vulgar. From the poor he chose out the companions of his labors, and the partners of his sufferings. To the poor he preached the Gospel, and insisted, too, on this very circumstance as the most solid proof of its authenticity-the most distinguishing mark of its excellence-the most eminent instance of its utility. The admiration, the gratitude of his hearers, sometimes led them to load him with the highest commendations, and to force upon him the most illustrious honors; but he studiously declined all their intended favors; he artfully drew off the attention of his hearers from his own works to that piety which they owed to God, and professedly referred the praise of every pious precept, every holy action, every benevolent miracle, to the glory of Him by whom he was sent into the world. Such was his condescension in those public scenes, where his example was likely to have more extensive influence; and if we attend him in his hours of privacy and retirement, we shall find him engaged in the same acts of humiliation, and influenced by the same lowliness of heart. Every proud thought, every aspiring wish, that arose in the breasts of his disciples, he instantly suppressed. Though their acknowledged Master, he vouchsafed to become their servant; he repeatedly pronounced that servant to be the greatest in heaven, who had made himself the least on earth; he founded his own claims to their respect, on actions which seemed most to forbid it; and in spite of the modest refusal, the well-meant opposition of the disciples, he stooped down to wash their feet. Shall we then listen to the scoffs of infidels, who make the meanness of our Master's situation on earth, an objection to the truth of his claims; who call his condescension meanness, and who dare to brand his meekness by the ignominious title of cowardice?"

But we must bring our sketch to a close. The final scene ony remains to be described. In the summer of 1824, Parr's

strength visibly declined, his appetite failed, and his spirits sank. He was attacked by his last sickness in January of the following year; it was a fever, accompanied with erysipelas. To the latter affection he had been subject for many years; but it now broke out with uncontrollable violence. Almost from the beginning he was under the influence of delirium, without any lucid interval of much length. Yet he once became sufficiently self-conscious to refer to his present state, and to avow his trust in God through Christ, for the pardon of his sins. Fifty days of helplessness and suffering, sometimes very acute, did he pass, during which his patience and magnanimity must have been drawn upon to the utmost, yet no murmuring accent ever escaped him. He died on Sunday, the 6th of March, 1825, being seventy-eight years of age.

As we take our last view of the life and character which we have undertaken to delineate, we are involuntarily reminded of those half sportive but solemn verses of Cowper, in which he computes the value of a day's conversation, as too justly descriptive of the real worth of Dr. Parr's life and labors.

Collect at evening what the day brought forth,
Compress the sum into its solid worth;
And if it weigh the importance of a fly,
The scales are false, or algebra a lie.

ARTICLE III.

THE IDEAL OF A PERFECT PULPIT DIscourse.

By Rev. HENRY N. DAY, Professor of Sacred Rhetoric, Western Reserve College, Hudson, Ohio.

We shall not be chargeable with extravagance or presumption, if we assume that pulpit oratory belongs to the highest grade in eloquence. Whether we consider its designs, its materials, or its occasions, we are constrained to claim for it an equal rank, at least, with any other species whatever.

That the eloquence of the pulpit has actually risen to the highest excellence of which it is capable, may, perhaps, be a matter of doubt. We have, indeed, in our numerous collections

of sermons, beautiful specimens of composition; we have brilliant effusions of genius and great richness of learning; we have, what is more perhaps, unsurpassed efforts in argumentation and persuasion. But where shall we look, in sacred eloquence, for those perfect models which we find in secular oratory? where is the preacher in whom stands forth embodied the idea of a perfect orator? Have we yet, indeed, attained a conception of a perfect standard of pulpit discourse? Where, in all our treatises on the homiletic art-where, in all our systems of æsthetics, is it presented in any such light as to show that the idea has been fully, distinctly, self-consciously grasped? Where is the living teacher, in our numerous schools of sacred rhetoric, who succeeds in infusing this idea into the minds of his disciples, so that they go forth fully possessed of it,-inventing, composing, speaking, under the control of it,-impressing it more or less completely in all their discourses? Has the mind any where been distinctly turned on this point, the possibility of conceiving a perfect discourse? Has the question been agitated, Can there be in sacred eloquence, as in sculpture, in painting, in the drama, a development of the essential idea of perfection? of the beau ideal in pulpit oratory ?-does æsthetical science embrace this field, also, in her domain, and can she establish here any firm, intelligible, and trustworthy principles ?

Distinguishing, then, as we may, between the theoretical and the empirical-between what is ideally practicable in pulpit eloquence and what has already been attained, we may assume that there is here room for indefinite progress and improvement. But while in any art there may be tendency towards perfection without any distinct apprehension of the essential idea of the art, by which, as a perfect standard, every product of the art may be tried, so, until that idea is grasped and the standard ascertained, it is clear that tendency must be irregular, slow and fitful. Even if that perfect idea is not fully realized, if only approximations to that standard are attained, still, unless essential error be embraced, that imperfect standard will not be without its value in inspiring and directing effort.

In the hope, therefore, of contributing something to the improvement of that most important art-pulpit oratory-we propose, at the present time, to attempt the development of the essential idea of a perfect pulpit discourse.

Before entering directly on this design, it will be of use to indicate and justify the ground that is taken in the discussion, as well as more clearly and distinctly to define our object.

It must have been observed, in what has already been said, that we regard pulpit eloquence as an art; and not merely an art in that more general sense in which none would deny it to be an art, a product of human skill, but in that stricter, more specific sense, in which it implies a definite aim or end, with a reference to which the whole product of the art is contrived and shaped. For the same may be said of eloquence which has been said with so much truth and beauty of the sister art of poetry. "There is an art, the child of a joyous nature, which sings from a mere inability to do aught but sing. Its song, as has been well said, is the voice of nature-the spontaneous outburst of its own and the national feeling. Very different is her sister art, which selects and considers, has views and follows aims; art, self-conscious of art." There is an eloquence which merely overflows; which issues at no prompting of reason, and follows no guidance of reason; which flows out spontaneously because the fountain is full, and falls, it knows not, it cares not where. Such eloquence is rational only inasmuch as it proceeds from a rational soul, all whose motions are tinged with rationality. Reason, however, in the exercise of its own proper prerogative, exerts upon it no control. This eloquence we sometimes meet with. There are those who court it. The uncontrolled outpourings of a feeling soul, the unchecked rovings of a restless imagination are with them the highest effusions of eloquence. Such effusions-they cannot be called productions-are sometimes poured from the pulpit. They constitute, it is supposed, nature's pure eloquence uncorrupted by art. This kind of eloquence, which is mere expression without further object. or aim, is not oratory. For oratory, in its essential import, is address, and necessarily implies an end out of itself. Such eloquence, therefore, is excluded from the comprehension of art in

our notion of the term.

Art, in its stricter sense, necessarily implies the control of the reason; and reason never acts without an aim. Nothing, therefore, is worthy of the name of art in which there is not a definite end or aim proposed and pursued. Art is highest in its nature when the noblest aim is proposed. It is most perfect in degree, when that aim is most strictly and perfectly pursued.

We shall not stop here, from these almost self-evident propositions, to establish for pulpit oratory the highest rank among the arts; or to demonstrate the erroneousness of that opinion which regards the attentive study of the peculiar aim of sacred

eloquence and of the means of accomplishing it, together with all systematic training in the use of these means, as worthless or absolutely injurious, because it cramps the free movement of the spirit; or to expose the folly, we may say the criminality of those, who, to their preparations for the pulpit, apply no severe effort of reason, but leave all to passion, fancy, and a purely spontaneous intellect. But it seems necessary to dwell, one moment longer here, in defining and vindicating the ground from which the development of the essential idea of the art of eloquence must proceed, in order to throw in an illustration or two for the preventing of misapprehension.

It is certain that different minds move very differently in the process of artistic construction. We may distinguish, particularly, two great classes, in this respect, not separated from each other in regard to the individuals which compose them by any well defined line, but represented rather by the extremes to which the one or the other of the individuals more or less approximates. In the one class, we observe the subject taking a firm and controlling hold of the producing mind, and, although working even in subordination to the final end or aim, yet seeming to proceed only from its own peculiar grounds, as if irrespective of any such end. In the other class, it is the end which seems to control; and the subject seems to be merely an instrument to that end, although never managed in violation of its own nature. We may easily perceive how minds from both these classes might produce, from the same subject and with the same end, essentially the same perfect result, when we consider the matter from this point of view, that truth in reference to a designated end admits, theoretically, of but one perfect development; and that a particular end to be accomplished by a specified truth can be perfectly attained only in one particular way, and these forms, being in the one case a development, in the other a process, are coincident. We could not desire happier exemplifications of this distinction than are furnished to us in the two great poets of Germany, contemporaries and intimates. Schiller is the representative of the first class. In him the subject seems the great thing. Every where we discover the earnestness which characterizes one wholly possessed of his idea which labors within him struggling for expression, and never resting till it has fully developed itself in objective reality. What that shall be, it seems little anxious. With him art is a travail, and its product is a birth. Goethe is the opposite of all