from his moral, mental, and thereby of his corporeal maladies. He began a life of new Christian activity as well as of new confidence and joy; he acquired an extensive influence both in church and State; for five years he held the office of Vice Chancellor in Oxford University, and for nine years the office next to this in literary importance; he numbered among his pupils John Locke, William Penn, Dr. South, Dr. Whitby, Sir Christopher Wren and Launcelot Addison, father of the celebrated Essayist; he published during his life seven folio volumes, twenty-one quartos, thirty octavos, and is still revered as a kind of prince and oracle among divines. It was John Owen, who thus ascribed his religious health and much of his usefulness to a single sermon. He was never able to find out the residence or even the name of the man to whose words he owed his freedom from a wasting melancholy. It seemed as if a spirit from a land of mysteries had touched him, and straightway vanished into heaven. But though we cannot ascertain who was the instrument of this eventful cure, we know that the word of God healeth all diseases of the mind, and a single application of it may revive the spirit of him who is to be the physician of many souls.

One of the most effective discourses noticed by modern historians, was preached at the Kirk of Shotts in 1630, by John Livingston,an ancestor of the well known family who bear that surname in our own land. He was at that time chaplain to the Countess of Wigtoun, was licensed but not ordained as a minister, and was only twenty-seven years of age. His discourse is thus alluded to by Rev. Mr. Fleming of Cambuslang; "I can speak on sure ground, that near five hundred had at that time a discernible change wrought in them, of whom most proved to be lively Christians afterwards. It was the sowing of a seed through Clyddisdale, so that some of the most eminent Christians in that country could date either their conversion, or some remarkable confirmation of their case from that day." The religious interest, resulting from this single effort of a youthful licentiate, extended throughout the west of Scotland, and among the inhabitants of the north of Ireland, and terminated in the moral improvement of thousands who, but for the sympathy excited by this discourse, might have remained indifferent to the claims of virtue.

Similar effects were produced by a sermon of President Edwards, preached July 8, 1741, at Enfield, Connecticut. It

gave a great impulse to the powerful religious movement which began, about that time, to engross the attention of the American churches, and which is supposed to have resulted in nearly thirty thousand instances of spiritual reformation. During the delivery of the sermon the auditors groaned and shrieked convulsively, and their outcries of distress drowned the preacher's voice, and forced him to make a long pause. His text was, Their foot shall slide in due time, Deut. 32: 35; and at a certain instance of his repeating these words, some of the audience seized fast hold of the pillars and braces of the meeting-house, they felt so sensibly that their feet were sliding at the very moment into ruin. A large number of the most influential of the hearers gave themselves no rest, till they had planted their feet on the sure ways of Zion. That discourse, which then alarmed hundreds of the citizens of Enfield and the adjoining towns, has been preached again and again to the social circle, and the fireside group in this and other lands, and it is not too much to say that new monuments of its efficacy are rising up every year.

Nor is it only by a single discourse that such great effects are produced; it is sometimes by a single sentence in that discourse. The very first clause of a sermon may seize the attention of some leading mind, and may never cease its transforming efficacy until that mind becomes an efficient advocate for God. Some plain statement, made without any anticipation of its peculiar consequences, is often referred to by a grateful convert as the point on which his destiny was suspended. Many instances are on record of a permanent transformation, wrought by the remembrance of a word with its accompanying gesture and look. "Oh, my hearers, the wrath to come! the wrath to come!"-these were the abrupt clauses that fell from the lips of an eminent orator, and fell in such a way as to sink like lead into the heart of one youth, who could not rest until he had become qualified for a useful station in the Christian ministry. "God only is great," were the words of Massilon, and all his hearers rose and reverently bowed. "Oh eternity! Oh eternity! Oh eternity!" were the closing words of a discourse from M. Bridaine, and they seemed to concentrate into one sudden view the whole subject that had been discussed, and the audience were melted down, and not a few permanently humbled.

If the students of moral history were as watchful as the

students of nature, they would often trace the influence of a phrase over such an extent of space and time, that it would excite our wonder and be gazed at like a lusus naturae. As we find the remains of fishes on mountains and deserts, so we may discover the effects of a spoken word where we would almost as soon have looked for the identical breath with which the word was uttered. Botanists have admired the wise provision of nature for the dissemination of seeds. The embryo plant is encircled with gossamer and swept by the wind over streams and wastes, and comes up in a strange land. And so a pithy remark is appended, as it were, to a tuft of down, and brings forth its fruit far away from where it was first uttered. There was a native of Dartmouth, Englaud, a member of the trained band of Charles the First, who was present at the beheading of that monarch, had some acquaintance with Oliver Cromwell, and subsequently found his way to Massachusetts, and lived first in the merchants' service at Marblehead, and afterwards on a farm in Middleborough. At the age of fifteen years, while yet in his native land, he heard the pious Flavel preach from the text, "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema maranatha; and at the age of a hundred years, while sitting in his field at Middleborough, he recalled the sermon that he had heard eighty-five years before, and the scenes that ensued when Flavel dismissed the auditory. He vividly remembered the solemn appearance of the preacher rising to pronounce the benediction, then pausing, and at length exclaiming with a piteous tone, "How shall I bless this whole assembly, when every person in it who loveth not the Lord Jesus Christ is anathema maranatha." This sinner of a hundred years became at length alarmed by his reminiscence, and particularly by the fact that no minister had ever blessed him. He pondered on that closing remark of Flavel; and at the beginning of the second century of his life gave evidence to the church that he was worthy to be enrolled among her members. He began to address pious counsel to his children, and adorned his profession fifteen years, when he went to receive the benediction of God. His sepulchre remaineth with us, and his dwelling-spot is remembered to this day. The moral of his epitaph is that a phrase dropped into the mind of a lad on one continent and in one century, may lie buried long in dust, and then spring up and bear fruit on another continent and in another century, and be

destined to perpetual remembrance. Such instances remind us that a thousand hallowed associations cluster around the preacher; that his words come with power, not as his words but those of God; that they borrow efficacy from the house, the time, the whole scene of their utterance, and are retained in the memory long after they seem to be lost. A movement of the arm or eye has often a meaning in the pulpit which it has nowhere else; for it is enveloped there with new means of suggestion, and is witnessed by men of excited, quick-moving sensibilities. The preacher stands like one insulated and charged with the electric fluid; the touch is now startling, which a few minutes ago was like the touch of a common man. Or, if we may change the figure, he is like the surgeon operating on the most delicate tissues, and a hair's breadth movement of the knife saves or kills. That is not an office for the indolent, weak or trifling, in which the causes are for a moment and the effects for eternity; the causes are a short phrase condensing a world of import, or a breath of air making a significant interjection, or a line on the face indicative of a thousand hopes or fears; and the effects are, what "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man."

The high character of the preacher's work is further illustrated by the bad effects which he may produce in a very short time. The evil that may ensue from an office poorly filled, sets out in relief the good that may be done by a fit incumbent. He is an important man who may do much hurt, even if he can never become a positive and decided benefactor. Though an armed maniac is powerless for good, he is guarded with jealous care merely for his tendency to mischief. Now the preacher may benumb the intellect which he ought to arouse and brighten. He may darken the conscience that he ought to illuminate, and may deprave instead of purifying the tastes and affections. As the soul which, with aid from above, he might have allured towards heaven, would have gained without ceasing new capacity for holiness and bliss, so the soul which he now indisposes for a pious life will be perpetually drinking in new sin and new punishment. The sin is just as debasing as the holiness would have been exalting, and the punishment is as refined and spiritual and keen, as would have been the reward. Nor does this soul go on alone to its ruin. Spirits move in sympathy, and make companions for their gloom if they do not find

them. The man whom the preacher hardens in guilt imparts a like hardening influence to at least three or four of his friends, perhaps of his household; and these will not shut up the contagion within their own breasts, but will spread it perhaps through nine or twelve of their admirers or dependents; and in this geometrical ratio the progress of the contamination may not cease in this world till the millennium, nor in the world to come till spirits no longer assimilate with each other. If the tide of virtuous influence flows upward from generation to generation, what shall be the breadth and depth and bitterness of that river of death that flows downward! As the good influence of Augustine is conspicuous at this late day, so likewise the evil which he did lives after him. The asceticism of monks, the gloominess of certain religious systems, the rudeness of some theological terms, and the results emanating therefrom, have an intimate connection with his labors. Nor is it only from the aggregate of the preacher's life, that such evil may take its rise. It is from one sermon and one sentence that a hearer may start in his course of desperation, and go on diverging further and further from the line of hope. A single unguarded expression has gone from the pulpit, and eased a conscience that had for days been extorting the complaint, Oh wretched man that I am! A rough remark on the perdition of infants has been known so to shock a hearer, as to make him leave the house of God and never listen again to an evangelical ministry. A morose appellative on the doctrine of eternal punishment was referred to by an enemy of that doctrine, as the first thing that inflamed his mind against it, and induced him to become a minister of false tidings, proclaiming peace to large assemblies for whom there was no peace, said the Lord. Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved;" this was one of the first texts from which Mr. Murray discoursed on his first visit to Boston. "If one should buy a rich cloth, and make it into a garment, and then burn the garment, but save the remnant, what must be thought of him;" this was one of his first sentences. Homely and clumsy as was the argument, it had a strange and sad effect upon a young man of enterprise who heard it; he carried it to his home in one of our inland towns, and made it the means of awakening a curiosity and a prejudice that terminated in the defection of a large neighborhood from the faith once delivered to the saints. From