lovers of this world, and followers of the pleasures thereof, men hating truth's ways, and opposed to all good. These used detraction in secret against the man of GOD, and sometimes by their open barking raised a disturbance against him, for that he reproved their vices and crimes with severity. But what was worse, some prelates and priests and some wandering religious, took ill the doctrine of such a man, and his zeal for justice against deserters of the holy law; and for this reason endeavoured to blacken his fame, and to wage war against his constancy of mind,—of whom, even he himself writes in one of his epistles in this sort; 66 Many a bark is raised around me, but it burns out, like fire among thorns, and is felt no more." Wherefore this lover of Christ and zealot of souls was neither troubled by the threats of his adversaries, nor was he made angry by the reproaches of those that defamed him, for his foundation was on a firm rock; he sought not the glory of the world, neither did he fear to suffer reproach for Christ's sake; yea, rather he was ready for truth and the Gospel's sake, to give up body and soul to further the glory of GoD, and extend it wheresoever He pleased.

Wherefore blessed be GOD who raised up such a preacher amongst us, and sent him to preach, seeing that by him the light of heavenly life shone upon us, who dwelt in these low countries.

REVIEW.

Sermons, with Prefaces. By W. Ullathorne, D.D. O.S.B. London, T. Jones, 63, Paternoster Row.

It is not often in noticing a work that we stumble at the threshold and get no farther than the introduction, but it has happened in this instance, where Dr. Ullathorne keeps us so long in conversation, that we have not time nor space in one notice, but for the reflections which are suggested by the general preface, and are constrained to leave the sermons that follow to some other opportunity.

In fact, though called a preface, it is a brilliant dissertation on the duty of the preacher of God's truth; on the best means of training up the student to this needful acquirement; we would go farther and say on the practical means by which Dr. Ullathorne has himself learned his art of eloquence, and which he has here set before us, as a guide by which his younger brethren in the holy priesthood, may, like himself,

make progress in this most needful study. If ever there were a time when the chair of truth required to be filled with men of "glowing lips,' it is assuredly this in which our lines have fallen, and however we may look for recruits from the Anglican pale, it is most needful that our own divines should be ever on the alert with their own words of fire, to foster in the hearts of the faithful those sparks, which their own elo. quence, with God's grace, had first kindled.

"The preacher," says our author, " is clothed with power and wears the stole of authority. He is not a man debating questions with his fellow-men, but a herald who proclaims the counsels of God. He stands not on the level of his hearers, for the divine election has raised him up from amongst them. Separated unto the Gospel, and placed within the sanctuary, filled with the divine word and its ineffable wisdom, endowed by consecration with the teaching spirit, replenished in soul with the blood of Christ, and flowing with the unction of the Holy One, he is the organ of God resounding all his wills to man. He "commands and teaches." St. Paul calls him " the man of God;" the same apostle describes him as " the dispenser of the mysteries of God," as the workman of the ministry, as the planter and builder of the Church, and as the prophet of future things. Having received the deposit of grace and truth, and having diligently attained to all things from the beginning, he is sent to reveal "the spirit received of God;" to declare “the sense of Christ;" and to make manifest "the spirit of power, of love, and of soberness."

He goes forth preaching sapientiam in mysterio - wisdom that is wrapped in mysteries; he is charged to bring each soul of man under obedience to its captivity. This truth in mystery is the crucified Christ, a folly and a riddle to the world, but to him, the preacher, the power and wisdom of God, which, the more it is exalted, the more will it draw all things within its wondrous power. With the great model of preachers, St. Paul, he glories in the humiliations of the cross; he knows nothing but the cross, and him, that Holy Redeemer, who is thereon crucified; he makes all things heavenly, earthly, and infernal, to draw near and bow down before this rude and bloody cross; in the centre of all human thoughts and affairs, he plants the cross that bears on its rugged beams the Son of God, as the solution of all human difficulties, and the cure of all human ills. From the roots of this tree of the knowledge of evil changed to good, which grows in the midst of the paradise of the new Adam-the Father of all the living, he follows the course of the rivers of life which water all the garden; whether they flow backwards to all times past, of which the anticipating patriarchs drank by faith, or forwards, to all times coming, on the side of time, or on the side of eternity; he shews what healing and invigorating streams flow down to man from that Calvary of blood and death, where is heard the strong cry of the Man God. Of vile esteem does he hold all other things compared to the possession of the cross. How can he prefer anything short of the heaven to which it leads and opens to the cross? For wher

ever the mystery of the cross has not come, darker and thicker mysteries find their dwelling-place, whose gloom the light from the cross can alone dispel. Therefore, amidst all the miseries and ignorances of human trial, he exalts the cross, as that beacon from which eternity, on which is hung the light which illumines the world, and sheds its rays of hope to its lost and wandering people.”— pp. 55-58.

With this view, Dr. Ullathorne's "general preface" is most worthy of perusal, and if there be one thing more than another we are pleased with, it is this, that in all the appliances he prescribes for learning the art of Christian eloquence, he presupposes or assumes that all must first pass through the alembic of the preacher's own heart, before he can be said to have attained his end, or learned the art of holding influence over that of his hearers. This is most true in practice. A plain and simple discourse, unadorned by one trope or flower of elegance, often makes a deeper impression than a stiff, cold, pompous oration, in which it would be difficult not to find every rule exemplified, with which musty grammarians have so often succeeded in banishing from the thesis every appearance of nature, in whose place they leave stiff-formed parterres, terraces, and flights of steps, as a melancholy memorial of what bad taste can do, when she sets art above nature, or rather ties up nature to be subservient to the rules of an ideal art.

But this is not our author's view. Nature, grace, study, and prayer, these are the elements which he presses into the service of the pulpit, and they who can bear them in mind, but most of all in practice, will assuredly succeed. He strongly inculcates an earnest and most serious study of the fathers of the Church, and glances at their several merits in so masterly a manner, that we cannot do better than quote a few passages consecutively.

"All the illustrious men of his own and of recent ages vie with each other in exalting St. John Chrysostom as the great model of Christian preachers. And, whether we consider the substance and extent of his doctrine, the genius with which he illustrates it, the profound knowledge of the human heart which he discovers in its applications, the feeling with which he is animated, or the free and fervid spirit of his delivery, all these qualities combined in one, as his earnest and luminous soul blends her unction with his voice, to proclaim him the perfection of Christian oratory; for his very writings speak, as if aloud, to the ear, the true test of written eloquence. The reading of St. Chrysostom is like contemplating a series of great pictures from the Catholic pencil, and listening, at the same moment, to the exposition of their sense and spirit from the lips of a St. Paul; for this saint has drawn forth the entire spirit of the Gospel, and presented to us its beautiful precepts and sublime doctrines in bodies of harmonious and exquisite colouring, such as never satiate the gazing

mind. St. Paul was his model. He wrote, it is said, with his portrait before his eye; certainly with the spirit of the apostle animating his breast. St. Paul is the inspired philosopher of the Gospel. He shows the reasons of things. He abounds in proofs and illustrations drawn from every region, whilst his vehement soul labours under the full and consuming glow of his inspirations. Strong as the angel of God, he wrestles with the soul, seizes hold of her in turns by all her faculties, overthrows her to the confession of her weakness, and only permits her to depart after he has blessed her with a divine strength and a divine benediction. This contest against the fallen spirit of humanity with the arms of divine truth is the commission of the preacher. The Christian Demosthenes spent years in the solitude of a cavern, meditating the sacred Scripture, and chiefly St. Paul. He imbibed the whole spirit of his great master; and, by his comprehension of the whole, he interprets and clears the obscurities of individual parts. Thus aided, and wholly filled with the spirit of the apostle, he was prepared to become the most clear, solid, and eloquent expounder of the Gospel. St. Chrysostom is eminently popular. He treats upon all the most exalted mysteries of our holy religion, and that often, yet never soars beyond the sight of common minds; he discusses difficult questions of doctrine and of sacred history, yet never trespasses on the borders of obscurity. Where else shall we find so much profound knowledge, which, through his clear and simple manner of unfolding it, we never think of as being profound knowledge? so much of true philosophy, without our being troubled, even for an instant, with any apparitions of the quaint and formal garb of science? Every thing in his discourse is embodied, lives and and moves before the very carnal sight of men, and yet this beautiful imagery, drawn from sacred Scripture, from man and from experience, from the very men before him, is only a transparent veil, that, without concealing, covers and makes attractive the exalted and divine spirituality of his thoughts. He never loses sight of the actual condition, wants, and circumstances of his hearers. Let an abuse arise or a vice prevail, and he allows it no rest; he pursues it in every way, presses after it through every refuge, and combats it without relaxation, and with all the weapons of speech, until the evil disappears. Although on all the mysteries he has said great and sublime things, it is on the holy eucharist that he is incomparable. He has been also styled the trumpet of the last judgment, from the appalling grandeur with which he has put forth the terrors of that fearful day. He preached to vast multitudes, and preached so often, that he could have had but little time for immediate preparation, yet he produced the most surprising effects. His homilies on St. Paul and on St. Matthew, his discourses to the people of Antioch, and the treatises on compunction, should be the constant study of the preacher for the people.

"St. Gregory Nazianzen, after the manner of St. John the Evangelist, soars with the eagle's wing into the very bosom of the Divinity, and comes down amongst men covered with the clear splendours of divine light. He is the doctor of the Divine Word, and of the Word made flesh. He has merited the

name of the Theologue. He contemplated the Divinity, until he is filled, and sees all things else to be filled, with the intelligence of the divine presence. There is a majestic, a godlike amplitude in his lofty declamations. Full of energy and ardour, he is yet more full of light. Of the cherubic more than of the seraphic order of spirits, he illuminates all things with a divine splendour. His bosom friend, St. Basil, is the sacred orator who is esteemed as being, on all sides and in every respect, perfect and without a fault. 'He had profoundly meditated the whole detail of the Gospel,' remarks Fenelon; 'he was acquainted with the maladies of men in all their depths; he is a great master in the conducting of souls.'

"St. Augustine, like St. Paul, had sounded the depths of human weakness, and had passed through all the regions of error in his own painful and sad experience. Thus dreadfully instructed and experimentally advised of man's natural helplessness, he is prepared to comprehend, with the great apostle, the rich and inexhaustible treasury of divine gifts, and to discern, from the midst of human nature, the divine operations of grace. He is eminently the doctor of divine grace. Separating the precious things of God from the vile productions of man's mere will, he discovers to us all our wants, our natural blindness, our weakness of heart, the fever of our passions, and the natural debility of the soul; whilst, on the other hand, he displays the power, magnificence, and abundance of those gifts and healing graces in which the God of mercy and of goodness descends unto our remedy. His works against the Pelagians appear to me of inestimable value to the preacher. And what a knowledge does he discover of the human heart, not only in these, but in all his writings, especially in those admirable Confessions, which always praise God!' What clear discrimination of the divine from the human elements which strive to hold the mastery of the soul! What pictures of the interior combat waged by corrupt nature and the passions against the will and grace of infinite goodness. This Father is pre-eminently the doctor of divine charity. The love of God is the animating principle, the very spirit of that life which pervades his writings. He draws all things from, he directs all things to, the divine principle of love. What a fountain of divinest thoughts and emotions flowing, with what an unction. in his commentary on the Psalms! Then, those effusions of the heart over the Gospel of St. John!"—p. 17-22.

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"Lord Bacon has said, if any man's wits be wandering, let him apply himself to the mathematics. To the divine, under similar circumstances, I would say, let him apply his mind to Tertullian. The concentration and weight of his thoughts seem to impede his progress, yet does he advance majestically, encumbered though he be with the grandeur of his conceptions, too great and rising too thickly for human words to utter them. He is greater than that emperor and that world which he addresses. He sees the cruel power of the flesh arrayed against the spirit, and the world against God; a world of executioners, yielding ready obedience to their chief, and trying, with their tortures, all the innocent victims who love God, of whose number he is one,