by the still waters of eternal love and tranquillity. Every brother, we apprehend, who feels toward the Church he would nurse and vivify, as a mother toward her first-born, will be glad to find these help-hints to the creation of revival power.

CHAPTER XIX.

VARIETY OF MINISTERIAL TALENT.

FOR the want of remembering the import of our caption, false estimates are often made of ministerial talent. Many are prone to set up one standard for all. Every preacher must come to their particular measure, or he is second-rate. With some, the prestige of a great education, with the name belled with literary titles, becomes a charity that covereth a multitude of sins. With another, these very qualifications excite suspicion. The college-bred man is necessarily dull, arid, and dry, a conclusion, by the way, as untrue as it is unphilosophical, there being as few dry preachers among the educated, as a class, as among the non-educated. With another, the reasoner-the dealer in syllogisms-is the preacher of his fancy; while, with another, the man is mere mediocre unless he can deal in flights of fancy, flowers of rhetoric, and gorgeous and original creations of the imagination. With another, (and he is the representative of a very

large class,) the preacher is always perfection, no matter how prosy, diffuse, and superficial his thoughts, if he be but only able to burn himself out of the brush at last; in other words, if some fifteen or twenty minutes of the conclusion of his sermon be employed in the highly impassioned. With another, the eccentric man is the model of pulpit excellence; he abounds in flashes of wit, quaint sayings, facetious anecdotes, etc., etc. I am for the learned preacher, says one; I am afraid of the man who preaches from his learning, says another; I am for the man who makes me think, says another; I, for him who makes me cry, says another; and I for him who makes me laugh; and thus it is, some are for Paul, and some for Apollos, while Christ may be forgotten in the contest. Now, the truth is, that he who would correctly estimate ministerial talent and qualification, would place a high estimate upon all that diversity of talent just represented in the classes of ministers referred to. No invidious distinction should be drawn. No extolling of one above measure, and the depreciation of the rest. All are necessary. "There are a diversity of gifts." Were there but one gift for the pulpit, and that gift the most brilliant, men would soon become disgusted with it by

reason of its monotony. Variety is a necessity of the human mind. We should be careful, then, in speaking of ministers, by what rule we estinate their gifts. We may do them great injustice, and ourselves also. For the man who cannot go and hear the preacher that happens not to be a special favorite, or the brother who cannot engage heartily in his pastor's support, unless he happen to be of the class of preachers for which he has taken a particular fancy, are both alike guilty of folly. To expect all men to preach alike, would be to require that all men be constituted alike. This is no more true to the great law of Providence in the case, than it would be to require that the trees of the wood should all be of the same species.

What if all forests were composed of the sugar maple? Well, mankind might have a sweet time, especially about sugar-making season; but they would, undoubtedly, soon feel that it would be much better to do with less sugar, and have a little oak and ash among their ligneous possessions. "There are a diversity of gifts." Ministerial merit, also, should be estimated in the light of its fruits. It often happens that the very men upon whose talents we place the lowest estimate, are the most highly honored of

God in the conversion of souls and the work of building up his Church. By their fruits we should judge them. But even in this there is great danger of mistake. It is not always the brother whose fruits are among the most showy kind who is to be ranked foremost among the apostles. There is such a thing as "preparing the way of the Lord," while another, again, may herald him, and in so doing meet him. There is such a thing as one preacher taking care of the "stuff" that another may have collected. It is not always the preacher that we hear the most about who is actually doing most for God. There is a talent that works in silence, like the law that crystallizes the gem in its undiscovered hiding-place. There are others, again, who, like a summer rain, seldom come without bringing thunder and lightning with them. Both are necessary. "There are a diversity of gifts."

But, after all, there is one fact about the preacher and preaching, which may be mentioned almost as a universally attractive quality, a quality, we mean, on which human nature everywhere will place about the same estimate. To this quality we give the single title of earnestness. This word we would make generic