In the nineteenth century the clergy have less relative power than ever before in Christendom; it is partly their own fault, but chiefly the glory and excellence of the age. It has other instructors. But there was never a time when a great man rising in a pulpit could so communicate his thoughts and sentiments as now; a man who should bear the same relation to this age that Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Bernard of Clairvaux bore to their age, so far overtopping men-would have more influence, not less than theirs. Nations wait for noble sentiments, for generous thoughts; wait for the discoverer and organizer. The machinery of the age is ready to move for him,—the steam-horses, the steam-press. His audience has no limit. Even now the position of a minister gives him great advantages. He has a ready access to men's souls, a respectful hearing from week to week, and constant dropping will wear the stones-how much more the hearts of men. The children grow up under his eye and influence. All ministers stand on the same level, and nothing lifts one above another but his genius, his culture, his character, and his life. In the pulpit, the most distinguished birth avails nothing; the humblest origin is no hindrance. New-England, in America, everywhere in the world money gives power, never more than to-day; a rich lawyer or merchant finds himself more respected for his wealth, and listened to with greater esteem by any audience. Wealth arms him with a golden weapon. It is so in politics,— power is attracted towards gold. With the minister it is not so. If a clergyman had all the wealth of both the great cardinals Wolsey and Richelieu, did he dwell in a palace finer than the Vatican-all his wealth would not give him a whit the more influence in his pulpit, in sermon, or in prayer. Henry Ware moved men none the less because he had so little of this world's goods. In this way, therefore, the minister's influence is personal, not material. The more he is a man, the more a minister.

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In virtue of his position he has the best chance to know men. He overrides all distinctions of life, associates with the humblest man as a brother, with the highest as their equal. If well trained, his education places him in the circle of the most cultivated minds, while his sympathies. and his duty attract him to the lowest sphere of rudeness,

want, and perhaps of crime. He sees men in joy and in grief, at a wedding and a funeral, and when flushed with hope, when wrung with pain, when the soul bids earth. farewell. If a true man, the most precious confidence is reposed in him. He looks into men's eyes as he speaks, and in their varying faces reads their confession, what they could oft conceal, both ill and good,—reads sometimes with astonished eyes. Reader, you have seen an old coin, worn smooth so that there was no mark on it, not a letter; you know not whence it came nor whose it is; but you heat it in the fire, and the stamp of the die is plain as when the coin was minted first; you see the image, read the superscription. So the excitement of a sermon reveals the man's character in his oft-unwilling face, and the preacher, astonished, renders unto Cæsar the things that are his, and unto God His own. Sometimes one is saddened to see the miser, satyr, worldling in his many forms, under a disguise so trim and neat; but oftener, perhaps, surprised to find a saint he knew not of before; surprised at the resurrection of such a soul from such a tomb. The minister addresses men as individuals : the lawyer must convince the whole jury, the senator a majority of the senate, or his work is lost; while if the minister convinces one man-or but half convinces him— he has still done something, which will last. The merchant deals with material things, the lawyer and the politician commonly address only the understanding of their hearers, sharpening attention by appeals to interest; while the minister calls upon the affections, addresses the conscience, and appeals to the religious nature of man-to faculties which bind man to his race, and unite him with his God. This gives him a power which no other man aspires to; which neither the lawyer nor the merchant, nor yet the politician, attempts to wield; nay, which the mere writer of books leaves out of sight. In our day we often forget these things, and suppose that the government or the newspapers are the arbiters of public opinion, while still the pulpit has a mighty influence. All the politicians and lawyers in America could not persuade men to believe what was contrary to common-sense and adverse to their interest; but a few preachers, in the name of Religion, made whole millions believe the world would perish on a

certain day, and, now the day is past, it is hard for them to believe their preachers were mistaken!

Now all this might of position and opportunity may be used for good or ill, to advance men or retard them; so a great responsibility rests always on the clergy of the land. Put a heavy man in the pulpit, ordinary, vulgar, obese, idle, inhuman, and he overlays the conscience of the people with his grossness; his Upas breath poisons every spiritual plant that springs up within sight of his church. Put there a man of only the average intelligence and religion -he does nothing but keep men from sliding back; he loves his people and giveth his beloved-sleep. Put there a superior man, with genius for religion, nay, a man of no genius, but an active, intelligent, human, and pious man, who will work for the human race with all his mind and heart-and he does wonders; he loves his people and giveth his beloved his own life. He looks out on the wealth, ignorance, pride, poverty, lust, and sin of the world, and blames himself for their existence. This suffering human race, poor blind Bartimæus, sits by the wayside, crying to all men of power-" Have mercy on me;" the minister says, "What wilt thou?" he answers, "Lord, that I might receive my sight." No man may be idle, least of all the minister; he least of all in this age, when Bartimeus cries as never before.

Dr Channing was born at Newport in Rhode Island, the 7th of April, 1780, and educated under the most favourable circumstances which the country then afforded; employed as a private teacher for more than a year at Richmond, and settled as a clergyman in Boston more than five and forty years ago. Here he laboured in this calling, more or less, for nearly forty years. He was emphatically a Christian minister, in all the high meaning of that term. He has had a deep influence here; a wide influence in the world. For forty years, though able men have planned wisely for this city, and rich men bestowed their treasure for her welfare, founding valuable and permanent institutions, yet no one has done so much for Boston as he-none contributed so powerfully to enhance the character of her men for religion and for brotherly love. There is no charity like the inspiration of great writers. There were two excellent and extraordinary

ministers in Boston contemporary with Dr Channing, whose memory will not soon depart-we mean Buckminster and Ware. But Dr Channing was the most remarkable clergyman in America; yes, throughout all lands where the English tongue is spoken, in the nineteenth century there has been no minister so remarkable as he; none so powerful on the whole. No clergyman of America ever exercised such dominion amongst men. Edwards and Mayhew are great names in the American churches, men of power, of self-denial, of toil, who have also done service for mankind; but Channing has gone deeper, soared higher, seen further than they, and set in motion forces which will do more for mankind.

What is the secret of his success? Certainly his power did not come from his calling as a clergyman: there are some forty thousand clergyman in the United States. We meet them in a large city; they are more known by the name of their church than their own name; more marked by their cravat than their character. Of all this host, not ten will be at all well known, even in their own city or village, in a hundred years; perhaps not one. Nay, there are not twenty who are well known in America, now even, out of their denomination-they, perhaps, known by the unlucky accident of some petty controversy, rather than by any real eminence of character and work. Who of them is otherwise known to Europe, or even to England? But Dr Channing is well known in Germany and France; his writings more broadly spread in England than in his native land; his power widens continually, and deep

ens too.

His eminence came from no extraordinary intellectual gifts born with him. Truly his was a mind of a high order. Yet it is not difficult to find men of far more native intellectual force, both here and everywhere; and throughout all his life, in all his writings, you see the trace of intellectual deficiencies-his deficiencies as a writer, as a scholar, and still more as an original and philosophical thinker. Nor did it come any more from his superior opportunities for education. True, those were the best the country afforded at that time, though far inferior in many respects to what is now abundantly enjoyed with no corresponding result. In his early culture there were marked defi

ciencies the results of which appear in his writings even to the last, leading him to falter in his analysis, leaving him uncertain as to his conclusion, and timid in applying his ideas to practice. His was not the intellect to forego careful and laborious and early training; not an intellect to cultivate itself, browsing to the full in scanty pastures, where weaker natures perish for lack of tender grass and careful housing from the cold.

His signal success came from no remarkable opportunity for the use of his gifts and attainments. He was one minister of the forty thousand. His own pulpit was only higher than others, his audience larger and more influential, because he made it so. His clerical brothers in his last years hindered more than they helped him; his own parish gave him no remarkable aid, and in his best years showed themselves incapable of receiving his highest instructions and in the latter part of his life proved quite unworthy of so great a man.

He had none of the qualities which commonly attract men at first sight. He was little of stature, and not very well-favoured; his bodily presence was weak; his voice feeble, his tone and manner not such as strike the many. Beauty is the most popular and attractive of all things-a presence that never tires. Dr Channing was but slightly favoured by the Graces; his gestures, intonations, and general manner would have been displeasing in another. He had nothing which at first sight either awes or attracts the careless world. He had no tricks and made no compromises. He never flattered men's pride nor their idleness-incarnating the popular religion; he did not storm or dazzle; he had not the hardy intellect which attracts men with only active minds, nor the cowardly conservatism which flatters Propriety to sleep in her pew; he never thundered and lightened-but only shone with calm and tranquil though varying light. He had not the social charm which fascinates and attaches men; though genial, hospitable, and inviting, yet few came very near him.

He was not eminently original, either in thought or in the form thereof; not rich in ideas. It is true, he had great powers of speech, yet he had not that masterly genius for eloquence, which now stoops down to the ground and moulds the very earth into arguments, till it seems as if