THE USES OF ADVERSITY.

'Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.'

E mourn life's numerous ills,

But the ill is disguised good:

The storm-cloud supplies the mountain rills, Sear leaves the forest with food;

And the stars look down on the Desert sands,

With a beauty of hue they wear not in lands

Enricht by mountain and flood.

The darkest earthly woe

A

cup of blessing may prove :

'Thou shalt earn thy bread in the sweat of thy brow'

Was a mandate spoken in love.

Ever the tares must grow with the grain,
Promethean fires bring Promethean pain,

'Till the spirit be born from above.

The soul by ease is enslaved;

But faith groweth in hearts forlorn :

From the thousand dangers he woed and braved

Springs the hero's stately scorn:

And the bard knows well, that mid sorrow and gloom,

When he sat alone in his silent room,

His noblest thoughts were born.

'Man lives not by bread alone!'

He has forfeited rights to regain:
The kingdom of Beauty lies all unknown,
'Till won by combat and pain.

To those who pass thrö affliction's night,
The day star arises with mild clear light-
They are Sons of God again.

K. B.

THE TRUE PREACHER.

"The Divine Law of the Ten Commandments Explained. In a Series of Sermons. the Rev. SAMUEL NOBLE.' Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. 1848.

By

the peculiar theological opinions contained in this volume it is not our intention to speak, further than to state that they are enounced in a beautifully catholic spirit, and with the amplest charity toward all men. Indeed the best characteristic of the book is its aboundingness in that christian love which is remote alike from cant and sentimentalism. The author has been, for nearly half a century we believe, the minister of a Dissenting chapel in London, alike admired for his talents and respected for his virtues. He has published numerous works, well known and much appreciated on both sides of the Atlantic; and tho the singular constitution of sects in this country generally limits the fame of any man who has arrived at eminence in connexion with one of them, to that party there are probably not a few of our readers to whom Mr. Noble's name is familiar. The Ten Commandments afford great scope for moral illustration, and, like the Lord's Prayer, offer a sort of common ground whereon christians of the most divergent doctrines may all harmoniously meet. We are acquainted with no work indeed, where the moral purport and power of the Commandments are more lucidly, learnedly, and persuasively set forth than in the book before us. Without any parade of logic there is great logical accuracy, clearness, and consecutiveness, while the mode of treatment is successfully exhaustive without ever degenerating into tedious minuteness or fastidious distinctions. Eloquent, in the common sense of that word, Mr. Noble can scarcely be called,—in truth no one can have a heartier contempt for the tricks of a tawdry rhetoric; but he has that unction and warmth, which in him who would pierce with transforming energy the souls of his brethren, is far more grand and effectual than eloquence ; he has, moreover, that direct, modest, manly simplicity so rare in the pulpit, but which is yet the most victorious weapon the preacher can employ.

Much has been written on the declining influence of the pulpit, and on the causes thereof. It is an interesting subject, but not much suited to our pages. We will hint, however, at one of the causes. May it not be said, that the pulpit has ceased to be the conquering Fact it once was, from the magniloquence, the extravagant declamation, the exaggeration of phrase, of imagery, and of appeal, in which preachers so habitually indulge? A great truth, and especially the greatest of all truths, should be like the mountain's peak, calm and immoveable amid rolling clouds and rattling thunders. All true inspiration is too earnest to be noisy. It is the still small voice,' felt to be the breath of some divine reality, that soonest and most surely reaches the torpid conscience and the hardened heart. We grant that if nothing higher or nobler is sought than to produce a transient excitement, the present method of preaching is as likely as any other to accomplish that result. But what is the worth of preaching, what is its design,

unless to make men wiser, holier, and better? And how can this be attained but by rousing men's deeper faculties-those which theatrical commonplaces can never touch, nor hollow sounding clap-trap ever educate? When we consider what men's spiritual wants are in these modern times, and how little of spiritual food they receive at all beyond the crumbs which fall from the pulpit, we are forced to lament that preachers should indulge so excessively, and so incessantly, in the habit of vague and vapid talking. Your poor wretched sinful brother comes to drink of the waters of life, and you offer him a froth which first intoxicates his brain, and then, after the fume of momentary fanaticism has past away, leaves him more than ever parched with thirst. Truly we know no sadder spectacle than this. Of course it is the object of the pulpit to teach thrö emotion,— to convert and raise the whole being thrö the heart. Were the pulpit to limit itself to the frigid and unimpassioned exhibition of ideas in their nakedness, as ideas, the church would degenerate into a school of ethics, and ethics too of a very vulgar, prosaic, unimpressive kind. But emotion is not frenzy, and the heart is not synonymous with morbid sensibility. If you want your fellowman to march on with brave and trusting steps toward a perfection which you delineate, you must not commence by upsetting his equilibrium. You must not, in order to hasten his progress, trip up his heels. Whatever theory of human nature we form, we all alike admit that man consists of various powers. And this diversity of powers in Man, the preacher cannot set at defiance without defeating the very purpose of preaching. If he speak to the mere Understanding, the other powers are starved, and the discourse is not a sermon at all, but a dissertation. If he speak to the Imagination alone, ideality may receive much pleasant poetic suggestion, but the Soul yearns in vain for religious impulse and nourishment. If we speak chiefly to the Conscience,—so necessary and difficult to awaken, but so easy to lash and lacerate when awakened,―he becomes a cruel executioner instead of an apostolic instructor. If he speak to the wild, floating, miscellaneous fervors within us, which if not exactly a portion of the senses are so nearly allied to whatever is sensuous, he is but a charlatan (consciously or not)—and whether there should be much hesitation in telling him so, will depend on the taste or the temper of his hearers. While he deserves little mercy, however, it is doubtful whether the other classes of preachers aforesaid, deserve much more. The first would make tolerable professors in some sleepy college or other; the second excellent writers of Album verses and of sparkling magazine articles; the third admirable inquisitors. But they are all out of place in the pulpit. Those most wanted there are men to whom words are facts, and in whom biblical ardor glows too intensely to permit any flash of rhetorical sophistry to play round it, dazzling while amusing the unwary eye. Not he who conveys his meaning in the most attractive terms, is the true Sacred Orator; but he who is possest with a meaning too mighty for speech, and who, by his very inability for perfect utterance, overwhelmingly reveals to others the glory of the unutterable. When we so often see with what pertinacious and pestering facility, the emptiest and most frivolous of our fellow creatures chatter and prate, while genius and prophetic zeal are frequently scant in speech in exact proportion as they are rich in thought, we cannot suppose that it is from the blaze and the fanfarronade of a silly and selfconceited fluency that the world is destined to receive any large and abiding re

generation. We might as well dream that the army which has the best musical bands, and marches to the onslaught to the sweetest tunes, is the likeliest to conquer in the battle. If the pulpit is to put forth once more the triumphant strength which it had in England two hundred years ago, when the puritan tongue was as keen and mighty as the puritan sword, it must again be occupied by men whose Convictions of every kind, and whose love of truth, of man, of God, trample down and annihilate the small hesitancies, and the greedy lusts, of professional ambition.

That Mr. Noble belongs to this exalted order we are thoroly persuaded, tho, if measured by the social requirements, the moral aspirings, and the spiritual yearnings of the age, he perhaps wants somewhat more of that rapid and incisive energy which accomplishes more by one prompt and vigorous stroke than by a succession of well directed but feebler blows. We do not complain that he has too much in him of John the Evangelist, but regret he has too little of John the Baptist. Humanity, at present, needs the 'holy light' of the first, and the 'impetuous flame' of the last. Blessed he, who standing forth amongst us as a Teacher of Men, combines them both in an equal degree: elsewhere are jabberers, but here at length is a Prophet.

EMERSONIA.

FRAGMENTS: ON DOMESTIC LIFE.

E are eager to make ourselves acquainted with the ancient fossils; foreign manners and customs; the distant parts of the earth; the depths of the sea; and the stars; but the things which are nearest to us, of which we cannot get out of

sight, are the strangest to us of all.

Domestic events immediately concern us ;-public events may or may not. That which is done and suffered at home,-not what is carried on, or left undone, in the State House,must be the History of the Times, and the Spirit of the Age to us.

The question we should each put to ourselves is,-does our Household obey an Idea? A man's money should not follow merely the direction of his neighbor's money. I am not one thing, and my expenditure another. I and my expenditure are one.

Never subscribe at another's incitement; or buy what you do not want. We must not make-believe with our money.

Our houses are not found to have any unity; or to express an idea of the man. A man's house should show what his real opinions are.

Take off all the roofs from one street to another, and we shall scarcely see any higher God than Prudence worshipt anywhere.

The houses of the rich are confectioners' shops; and the poor imitate them as far as they have the means.

Household life is not the beautiful thing we all have in idea, and which it is capable of becoming. This simply proves that we are false to ourselves. A house for prudence, for

festivity, for show, is a labor and a slavery to woman. veniences and requirements, embarass and oppress us.

The very multitude of our con

The false position in which we are with respect to our houses is evinced by the fact, that wealth is now considered requisite to execute our idea of what the household ought to be. 'Give me the means, " says the Wife. And forthwith goes the Husband to toil and slave;—and in getting the wealth the man is sacrificed;-and is often sacrificed without getting the wealth.

The greatest men of History are invariably the poorest. Let us ask what sort of houses did they keep?

The man, not the materials, is what our friend or neighbor who comes to see us, wants. Giving money or anything else instead, is but a shift, a bribe, a promissory note to pay another time. We owe to man, man ;-to our neighbor, ourselves;-and cannot pay our just debts in any other coin.

If a man is sick, it is because so much of his nature has been withholden from him. It is not desirable that labor should be avoided. It is the birthright and privilege of all. But another age may divide the manual labor of the world more equally.

The true acceptance by each man of his vocation, not that chosen for him by others, is that which alone will reform the age. We may then expect to see the truth acknowleged, that human culture is the end for which the House is built and garnished, and not for festivity, not for sleep.

Animals know what they want. The human being without his mission found, does not. Measured in a true scale, many of the rich, and very rich too, are indigent and ragged indeed.

Only low habits crave superfluities, ease, and indulgencies. What to me that I am sumptuously entertained and finely lodged, if I am defrauded of the means of Divine life? Let the Husband say, 'Oh excellent Wife,—an eating-house and a sleeping house, shall ours be for the traveler; but let it be something more. Delicacies and a soft bed he can get at any Inn, in any Village, for a few shillings;--we will give him something that money cannot buy.'

Honor to the house where these things are practised, even unto hardship; so that truth and love are respected, and dwell therein.

There is as much scope for the exercise of the greatest abilities, as much breadth of aim and enlargement of heart and character, requisite to be a master of living well, as the hero or statesman require to become masters of their respective arts;-nay indeed, much more. It is the vice of our housekeeping, the vice of our conversation, the vice of our religion, that we take so little account of what really is of the most consequence, and do not hold the highest things sufficiently sacred. We account circumstance every thing, the man himself nothing.

Every man is furnisht with a model which he instinctively applies to others, and does not find it to fit any one; but we still hold fast our belief in a better life; a happier state of things and circumstances. This affords a certain test that we are not what we are

capable of.

In the

To every one occurs some event, which becomes the chief fact in his history. life of woman, this event is love and marriage. In man it is the place of his education, the choice of a calling, or some other circumstance apparently accidental.

The men we see every day, are whipt thrö the world, as if they were the hacks of some invisible power. We know not the majestic manner, the calm repose, the invincible order. All is hurry and confusion instead. Therefore there is no Divinity amongst us.

Every individual nature has its own interior beauty. There is no human expression but what has its intense interest, its links down into the very depths of Being. In each we