himself an adversary in the pulpit, and assuming on every subject the air and spirit of a disputant.

There are three ways of refuting objections. The first, and when the case admits it, the best is to aim only at a full and clear exhibition of the truth. The next is to interweave objections, and answer them indirectly and without formality. The last is to state them in form, and refute them by distinct arguments. When this last course is adopted, it requires the following precautions.

1. State no objections that are too trivial to deserve notice. We may waste our time by refuting what needs no refutation, as well as by proving what needs no proof.

2. If objections are really weighty, never treat them as insignificant. Without evasion, without distortion, state them fairly and fully ;-give them all the weight to which they are entitled.

3. Take care that your answers be complete and decisive, so as not to leave the impression, that you have raised an adversary, whom you have not strength to withstand.

4. State no objections in which your hearers are not interested. Though weighty, and capable of complete refutation if they are such as are never likely to be known without your help, it is worse than trifling to discuss them. The physician deserves no praise for his skill in devising an antidote for poison, which his own temerity had administered. What preacher would repeat the language of obscene and profane men, with a view to condemn it? No more does Christian propriety allow us to state artful and blasphemous cavils against religion, for the same end. Even when such cavils are decent in manner, they should not be obtruded on common minds, without urgent necessity. Such minds may understand an objection, and remember it, when the force of a reply

is not seen, or is forgotten. It is from the learned labours of Christian advocates for the truth, not from their own investigations, that sceptics have

- Gleaned their blunted shafts,

And shot them at the shield of truth again.'

5. Avoid acrimony, as both unchristian and unwise. Meet an objector with ingenuousness and kindness. Take no advantage of verbal inadvertence; nor charge on him consequences, as intentionally admitted by him, which he disavows.

6. Seldom or never oppose sects by name.

LECTURE XIV.

CONCLUSION OF SERMONS.

THE close of a regular discourse has been designated by different terms. The ancients called it peroration, and required that it should consist of two parts, recapitulation and address to the passions.

Suppose an argument to have been so conducted, that a brief review of its chief parts will present them in a strong and concentrated light before the hearers, this prepares them to admit an appeal to their feelings. The practicability of such a review as will answer this purpose, depends on the degree of perspicuous arrangement which has prevailed in the discourse. The admirable skill with which Cicero wrought up his materials in his defence of Milo, prepared the way for a powerful peroration. And it will not be deemed out of place for me to refer again to this great pleader, as a pattern of rhetorical method, worthy to be studied by the Christian orator who wishes his discourse to make a distinct and strong impression on the hearers. But supposing a discourse to have been loose and diffuse, without any lucid order of thought, all attempts at recapitulation must be worse than useless. In the secular oratory of Athens, where direct address to the passions was forbidden by law, recapitulation was the usual form of conclusion, in which, of course, much skill was employed to give rhetorical effect.

In sacred eloquence, the close of a discourse is sometimes called application, sometimes reflections or inferences, and sometimes, though not according to the best usage, it is called improvement.

Some preachers are in the habit of intermingling practical reflections with the different topics discussed throughout a sermon, instead of bringing these together at the close. There may be cases in which this is the best course. Claude, in his essay, recommends that some texts should be treated in the way of continued application, and gives an example in a long sermon on the passage, "Work out your own salvation," &c. His design is, to give a specimen of that preaching which is carried on in the strain of direct address. It may perhaps be considered as a general rule, that in proportion as a subject is treated argumentatively, and on the principles of strict unity, it demands a regular conclusion; and when a series of independent points are discussed, it becomes more proper for the preacher to apply each of these, as he goes on. But if this rule is just, it would seem to follow, that in proportion as the sermon has this miscellaneous character, and admits this running application, it is the less likely, in general, to produce any single and strong impression on the hearers.

As it is proper for us to derive instruction from the example of others, I shall direct your attention to some faults in the conclusion of sermons, as they appear both from the press and the pulpit. These, so far as they demand our present notice, may be included in the formal manner, the desultory and the dry.

The formal conclusion varies, with the vogue of the pulpit, at different periods. To what extent this taste formerly prevailed, may be seen from the sermons of the Puritans, and from Bishop Wilkins' Ecclesiastes, a book

which was, for a considerable time, regarded as a standard work on preaching. The usual mode of concluding a sermon, was by a series of many heads, called uses, subdivided into minor parts. As a specimen of this manner, we may take the eleventh sermon of the pious Flavel, entitled England's Duty. After more than sixty heads in the body of this sermon, the application begins with a use of information, which is thrown into five inferences. Then comes the use of exhortation, first to believers, including four heads of counsel; then to unbelievers, including eight minor heads, the first of these again split into three parts, making twenty-four divisions in the conclusion. A sermon of the same preacher, on the evidences of grace, closes with a use of information, containing nine inferences; a use of exhortation containing six motives; a use of direction containing ten rules; the last of these divided into eight meditations; and a use of examination with thirteen minor heads. In the last place, the preacher says, It remains that I shut up all, with a use of consolation,' which contains five parts, making fifty-six divisions in the conclusion.

After the restoration of Charles the Second, the influence of the court being directed in every possible way to discredit puritanism, the fashion of the pulpit was changed in this as in other respects. In the English church, since the time of Jeremy Taylor and Tillotson, the conclusion of sermons has been much less formal than before. Still, the scholastic manner has been retained by many distinguished preachers of the past and the present age. A rigid formality runs through all their applications, so that whatever be the subject or occasion, the same round of particulars in the same phraseology is to be expected.

The desultory conclusion may arise either from affec

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