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tus Ann. 3, 69), and denominated a man homo popularis who, either in fact or in pretence, labored for the pleasure or the benefit of the community, (see Cic. de off. 1, 25. Liv. 6, 20). Accordingly, that style of address was termed popularis, which was accommodated to the tastes and capabilities of the mass of men, (see Cic. de off. 2, 10).

A sermon is sometimes called popular in the etymological sense, when it is adapted to the lower classes of society. These classes exercise their imagination more than their reason; they attend to the outward more than the inward; they regard phenomena more than the causes or laws of them; they are occupied with particular examples more than with general principles. Hence a sermon addressed to them must be figurative in its style, and its metaphors must be taken from external objects. It must avoid abstractions and generalizations; it must individualize, and give more prominence to the facts than to the reasons for them. The uneducated classes are characterized by strength of feeling, natural as well as religious; and therefore a sermon addressed to them must be highly animated. Their feeling is not delicate and refined; and hence they are not much affected by nicety of words or chasteness of imagery. They require indeed beauties of style, but not such as are particularly modest. They demand vivid conceptions, bold epithets, a strikingly imaginative character both of thought and language. They emphatically require a style of distinctive eloquence. He who preaches to them must draw his analogies from the tangible objects with which they are familiar, and must make frequent reference to the histories, and the parables of the inspired volume. He speaks under some disadvantages from which the ancient orators were free. They harangued the multitude on themes which were felt to be of more immediate importance than the preacher's; which were better understood, and were combined with a more frequent consideration of visible and tangible objects. But the preacher need not be discouraged; for although he is occupied with spiritual truths he also addresses spiritual beings, men who have by nature certain religious longings, and who are predisposed to be interested in the welfare of their immortal part. He must make a greater effort, however, than was made by the ancient orators, to arrest and preserve the attention of the multitude, to accommodate and recommend his statements to their peculiar tastes.

But not only is the term popular applied to that species of eloquence which is intended for the lower classes; it is also appro

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Simplicity of Sermons.

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priated to the eloquence which is designed for the middling, and even for the educated portion of society. There is an order of men who have too much cultivation to belong to the populace, and too little to be classed among the learned, who require a style of preaching less imaginative than the common people, and less refined than the literary circles. It is a mistake, however, to imagine, that even the most intelligent congregations are edified by strictly learned discourses. They do not come into the sanctuary as students but as men; they seek not so much the reasonings of a logician as the persuasives of a religious monitor; they are not to be addressed as mere intellectual inquirers but rather as Christian worshippers. There is a popular style of eloquence for learned audiences; it is the style of general edification; of appeal to the whole nature, to the humanity rather than to the scholarship of the hearers, to their moral sensibilities no less than to their mental powers. The popular characteristic of the pulpit eloquence for learned assemblies is its universality; its fitness to man as man, to Christians as Christians, to the same susceptibilities which are recognized in all, even the humblest members of the human family. An address which is devoid of this popular element, this adaptation to the unsophisticated, unperverted principles of our common nature, is not an eloquent sermon, nor indeed any sermon at all. Popularity is essential to eloquence, especially to that of the pulpit; for the themes of the pulpit are Christian, and all that is Christian is well suited to the susceptibilities of man as man.

16. Simplicity of Pulpit Eloquence.

That work of art is called simple, which does not suggest to him who examines it any suspicion of the labor which has been expended in its production. It seems to have been produced without pains taking, without a rigid application of rules. It appears to be as it is, because it could not have been otherwise. The seeming ease and naturalness of its construction make a way for it at once to the heart. A discourse is simple, when its propositions are so stated and proved as to ingratiate themselves at once into the belief; instead of being encumbered with such a parade of argument, as to occupy the mind with logical forms rather than the main and substantial truth. It is simple, when its arrangement is such as to disclose the whole subject easily to the view, instead of being disfigured with artificial divisions and sub

divisions concealing the doctrine which is parcelled out thus unnecessarily. It is simple, when its sentences are formed as if they could not have been written in any other way, and its ornaments appear to spring spontaneously from the theme; and this noble simplicity is wanting when the style swells into pompous periods, and the metaphors seem not to have presented themselves of their own accord, but to have been sought out with care. A sermon which glides along in this simple course, enters at once into the hearer's mind. It is, in the etymological sense of the term, popular. It is not true, as Dahl asserts, that simplicity and popularity are convertible terms; neither is it true, as Prof. G. Schlegel supposes, that a discourse cannot be simple without being popular, but may be popular without being simple. The reverse is the fact. Popularity includes more than simplicity. The former implies, while the latter does not, a nice consultation of the peculiar wants of the people addressed; an accurate adjustment of the sentiment and style to the mental characteristics of an audience in some respects inferior to the speaker himself. A sermon may be simple while it is not popular, but cannot be suited to the common sensibility of the race without appearing easy, natural, free from the signs of preparatory toil. Schlegel has also asserted, that simplicity is ever calm and unimpassioned; whereas the outpouring of fresh, spontaneous emotion is the best method of avoiding those cumbersome, labored and unnatural constructions which are peculiar to the frigid writer. As the simple style insinuates itself at once into the heart, it is better adapted than any other to the purposes of eloquence. It is peculiarly congenial with sacred eloquence; for the spirit, the very nature of the Christian scheme is fitted to raise the sacred orator above all puerile affectation and love of display, and to make his style, like that of the earliest records of his faith, artless and therefore winning.

17. The Design, and the various Departments of Rhetoric. In its more general acceptation, Rhetoric is the system of rules according to which either a prosaic or an eloquent discourse is adapted to its end. In its more limited meaning, it is the theory of eloquence, or the system of rules according to which an oration should be written and orally delivered. In this narrow signification, it includes secular rhetoric, and sacred, or homiletics. It is true that eloquence was practised before the principles of rheto

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Departments of Rhetoric.

47 ric were recorded; and in ancient Greece and Rome it had even passed the state of its perfection, ere its rules were reduced to system. This only proves, that the spirit of those republics had vanished before rhetoricians appeared. It does not prove, that the science is productive of no advantage. The design of this science is not to create those qualities which are needful to an orator, but rather to describe them; to show, that a good physical organization, a cultivated taste, excitability of temperament, liveliness of fancy, rapidity in rising from particular to general ideas, in descending from generals to particulars, and in discovering the resemblance, the dissimilarities and the reciprocal influences of related conceptions; that a deep interest in the present state of man, and in his progress toward a perfect ideal; that pure virtue and even a Christian spirit are the necessary elements of an orator, especially of one who speaks on sacred themes. The design of rhetoric is to induce a man to inquire, ere he devote himself to the practice of eloquence, whether he possess the acuteness, the versatility, the power of easy expression, and all the other mental and moral qualities which are essential to his success; to induce him to cultivate those parts of his constitution that are most immediately serviceable to him, to stimulate those that have lain dormant, to correct those that have run wild, ever to keep in view the great object to which eloquence aspires, and ever to observe the rules which are prescribed for the attainment of that object. The design of rhetoric is further, to free the orator from the observance of artificial prescriptions, from all slavery to forms, from all forced compliance with the customs of society, from all unmanly imitation of models; to bring him back from the constraints of art to the freedom and ease of nature.

As no one can affect the minds of others without understanding their constitution, so rhetoric involves an exhibition of the laws of psychology. As an orator must make all his appeals in harmony with the principles of moral obligation, so rhetoric involves a statement of ethical science. As no man is able to convince another without complying with the rules of the reasoning power, or please another, without obeying the canons of taste, so rhetoric includes a delineation of the principles of logic, and likewise of aesthetics. As the oration is orally delivered, so rhetoric must add to its other departments the principles of elocution. Rhetorical science, then, is a branch of practical philosophy; and homiletics, as it prescribes the rules for Christian edification, is also a branch of philosophical and of practical theology.

An oration, being a work of art, has a unity in itself; it has some leading idea. This is called its theme. The first duty of the orator is to find his theme, the subject matter of his oration. Hence the first part of rhetoric is inventio, Evgɛsis. The next duty of the orator is, so to arrange his thoughts as to make them correspond with the nature of his theme and with the end which he aims to promote. Hence the second part of rhetoric is the dispositio, collocatio, ráis. In expressing his ideas, the orator adopts a certain form of language accommodated to the genius of his subject, or to the peculiarities of his own mind. This form of language is called his style. The third duty of the orator, then, is his selection of words and phrases; and the third part of rhetoric is elocutio, pronunciatio, is, Egurreía. The oral method of address being peculiarly appropriate to eloquence, the fourth part of rhetoric is devoted to the corporeal expression of ideas, and is called pronunciatio, actio, rooqová, úrózgios. The ancient rhetoricians added a fifth department, the memoria, ars memoriae, μvýμn; the art of calling to mind the various divisions of the discourse by associating them with certain images of the fancy, or certain rooms in a building, etc., imagines and loci. As our rhetoricians, however, prescribe that an oration be committed to memory previously to its being delivered, they dispense with this fifth department.

ARTICLE III.

CRITIQUE ON STRAUSS'S LIFE OF JESUS.

By Rev. H. B. Hackett, Professor of Biblical Literature in Newton Theological Institution.

Wissenschaftliche Kritik der Evangelischen Geschichte. Ein Compendium der gesammten Evangelienkritik mit Berücksichtigung der neusten Erscheinungen bearbeitet von Dr. A. Ebrard. 1842. pp. 1112.

NO PORTION of the Bible, not excepting now even the Pentateuch, which had been so long the battle-field of the German critics, excites so much interest at the present moment in Germany as the four Gospels. This is owing to the new direction which the course of biblical criticism has taken in that country,

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