deficiencies, provoke a disparaging comparison with the article in the newspaper or review. To meet the wants of the age, our pulpits must be filled with men duly qualified for their work-men of sincere and fervent piety-men with natural endowments of a high order, and with intellectual resources equal to the demands which their office makes upon them-men who know what to say, and how to say it, so as to command attention, and enlighten, and persuade-men who are at once sound philosophers, and able divines, and able preachers. This must be done, or our people will become wiser than their teachers, and the pulpit must take a subordinate place to the press.

And the mention of the press reminds me that the more active and effective working of it by us as a community, for the maintenance and diffusion of the truth, is another object to which I should be glad to see us direct our exertions. With a Book Room Establishment, such as we possess with ministers who have given proof that they know how to wield the pen as well as the tongue-with our ten thousand teachers, and sixty thousand scholars, and probably eighty thousand hearers, we ought to do something more than we do. Had we proper energy and enterprise, we might, in a few years, possess a denominational literature which our posterity would thank us for, and not willingly let die.

I

The total extinction of our chapel debts is an object on which I would lay particular stress. Chapel debts are things to be heartily denounced and hated. They are so, because of their obstructive character. They often sour the minds and alienate the affections of those by whom they have to be borne. They drain the resources of the people, and render them incapable of supporting those enterprises of piety and benevolence in which they are bound, by their religion, to engage. They are, could almost say, a pure curse-an unmixed evil. What a strange sight it would be to see some morning the inhabitants of a town or district going to their daily avocations with fetters on their limbs, and a huge burden on their shoulders! and yet that would be a correct picture of the action of churches encumbered with pecuniary difficulties. While our sanctuaries are loaded with debt, we are slaves, and not free men, for they make us that we cannot do the things that we would. In my humble opinion, we missed our way fourteen years ago, in not making the liquidation of chapel debts the sole effort by which to celebrate our jubilee. But devoutly do I thank God for what has been done in this department since then, and that he has given us such men as Barford, and Love, and others, to incite and aid us in the holy work, for holy do I believe it to be. May the crusade against chapel debts never be suspended until the last vestige of them is swept away, and we are in a condition to appropriate our whole income from pew-rents, and other sources, to purely spiritual purposes!

Lastly, I wish the Methodist New Connexion of the future to be preeminently distinguished by a missionary spirit. It is not sufficient that we exist; that we have internal peace and harmony; that we edify one another; we must sound forth the Word of the Lord to the regions beyond. We must be a growing Church and an aggressive Church, going out into the highways and hedges of our own country, and compelling the outcasts to come in; and also sending the light of life to those who are wrapped in heathen darkness and superstitions, that

they, by our instrumentality, may be brought from dumb idols and vain philosophies, to the knowledge and worship of the true God.

Oh, could the sainted spirit of him to whose memory we have reared this beautiful structure visit us again-were he now permitted to appear for a few moments in our midst to speak to us, I do not expect that he would retract the last words he spoke ere he went to his reward— "What I have done in regard to the Methodist Connexion, so far from repenting, I rejoice in it at this moment. What I have done in opposing corruption in the Church I believed my duty; I bless God that he has made me an instrument of doing it. Oh, that I had done it more faithfully!" I do not expect, I say, that he would recall these expressions of satisfaction with his work as a reformer, but to them, I do expect, he would add an appeal to us to labour for diffusion of the truth, as well as maintain liberty and purity. Yes, I believe we should hear him say, "Oh, work, work, work, to win souls to Christ! To accomplish this object, employ your time, your money, your influence, and every talent with which God has endowed you. For in heaven those efforts of God's people give the greatest joy, and obtain the highest reward, which issue in converting sinners from the error of their way, and saving souls from death."

**The above address is more extended in print than it was in delivery, the limited time not admitting the whole to be given vivâ

voce.

ON EMERSON AS A TEACHER.

A LECTURE DELIVERED TO THE BRITANNIA FIELDS YOUNG MEN'S MUTUAL INSTRUCTION SOCIETY.

THE world has need of all its lights and leaders. Its benefactors should be welcomed, whatever true benefit to mankind they bring. Whether workers or thinkers (although thinkers are workers); whether adding a new continent to our geography, like Columbus; or a new planet to our solar system, as Leverrier has just again done; or disclosing the wealth of organisms in the old crust of the earth, like Hugh Miller; or giving new applications to mechanical forces, like Watt and Stephenson; whether creating, in stone or colours, "the thing of beauty" which "is a joy for ever;" whether singing the melodies of the poet; or showing, like Macaulay, what splendid pictures can be set in the framework of language; or whether opening new fountains of thought, or digging new channels for its flow, like Lord Bacon, John Locke, and all great thinkers-there is room for all; every contribution is needed. As the universe, in its grand completeness, is made up of parts, endlessly contrasted and diversified, so human society can be fully developed only by the combined services of teachers and workers of science and art. The glorious Gospel of the blessed God does not supersede humanity, but perfects it; does not discourage the use of any faculty which men possess, but requires only its right direction and employment. It lays no restriction on the intellect, how capacious or brilliant soever it may be, as it still leaves to it the broad field of creation, and, by adding to it that of revelation, simply gives to it the nobler scope of infinity and eternity.

There can be no office more important than that of the teacher. As thought is the spring of action-the life of the mind; as a man's faith is the very soul of his moral life, influencing most essentially his spiritual state, his happiness, and his prospects for the endless future; and as the teacher's aim is to influence the thinking and the belief of those whom he addresses, it is easily seen that an importance we can scarcely calculate belongs to the teachers of mankind. In proportion to the importance of the office, however, should be the competency of him who holds it. As the candidate for a profession must submit his qualifications to the test-must be furnished with his credentials, so society has a right to examine the qualifications of those who offer themselves as its guides and teachers. The Bereans were pronounced noble for bringing even the teachings of Apostles to the test of Scripture, and it cannot, therefore, be improper for us to examine the credentials of one who is extensively regarded as one of the teachers of the age, and to whom Mr. Gilfillan has given two sittings for his gallery of literary portraits.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, who is now fifty-six years of age, is the son of a Unitarian clergyman, and became himself a minister of this denomination in his native city of Boston, in America. In this capacity he had but a very limited popularity. One of his hearers said he never heard him preach a first-rate sermon till his last, in which he informed his congregation that he could conscientiously preach to them no more. The occasion of his resigning was his adoption of peculiar views of doctrines and ordinances. Having abandoned the ministry, he became a writer on subjects of art, morals, theology, and philosophy. He has occasionally stepped forth from his retirement in the capacity of lecturer, and in 1849 visited England, where he was received with great cordiality and admiration, especially by the literary portion of society; and the impression which his spirit, manners, and conversation made, appears to have been very favourable. Mr. Emerson published a monthly magazine, called the Dial, in which religion, philosophy, and literature were freely discussed. His principal productions, besides, are his well-known "Lectures on the Times," his "Essays," the volume into which his lectures delivered in England were collected, on "Representative Men," a volume of poems, and a portion of the Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, a strange and melancholy book, which, like Carlyle's "Life of Sterling," leaves a deeply dreary impression of the effects of genius, when Christianity is rejected. He has also published the results of his observations while in this country, under the title of "English Traits." In this small book he gives a comprehensive and graphic, yet highly condensed and finished picture of England and its people-a picture in which light and shade, beauties and blemishes, are presented with an impartial hand. It is a kind of miniature on ivory, or a pre-Raphaelite painting, in which pebbles, daisies, and lichens are as exquisitely finished as the architecture and the human figures. The writings and addresses of Emerson soon produced an extensive impression. By a considerable section of the theological students and literary men of America, he began to be looked up to as a guide and a master; and he has, doubtless, to some extent, influenced the thinking and the literature of our own country. Such effects could, of course, be produced by no ordinary mind; and to that of Emerson, one of his critics

has given, very questionably, we think, the palm of the highest originality amongst the American writers. He has, in the first place, what is very important to a teacher, the "organ of language," the faculty of utterance, to a rare degree. Speech is to him what an instrument of great compass, power, and sweetness, is to a master musician. His thought appropriates language with a princely command, and sometimes clothes itself with words as a bride with ornaments. For example: "The misery of man appears like childish petulance when we explore the steady and prodigal provision that has been made for his support and delight on this green ball which floats him through the heavens. What angels invented these splendid ornaments, these rich conveniences, this ocean of air above, this ocean of water beneath, this firmament of earth between? this zodiac of lights, this tent of dropping clouds, this striped coat of climates, this fourfold year? Beasts, fire, water, stones, and corn serve him. The field is at once his floor, his work-yard, his play-ground, his garden, and his bed;

'More servants wait on him

Than he'll take notice of.""

It is not surprising that one who could thus speak should find willing listeners. His style, it is true, is not always thus transparently clear and beautiful. If there are banks of flowers, there are also knotted jungles in it; if it has often the simplicity of Addison, it has not unfrequently more than the obscurity of Carlyle. The obscurity of the language, however, doubtless arises from that of the thinking, and to this we shall have occasion again to refer.

He speaks, secondly, as a teacher. He accepts the office, and his tone is that of one having authority. To discover him, we must look far up, and "his voice falls like a falling star." There is nothing higher, apparently, in knowledge, insight, or inspiration, than himself. We miss in him the spirit of humble inquiry, the modesty of tone, which distinguished Plato and Socrates, and which Dr. Chalmers, in his "Astronomical Discourses," has eloquently eulogised as one of the very highest qualities of the mind of Newton. The diffidence and caution of this mightiest of human intellects were equal to its strength, and not only contributed to his magnificent discoveries, but added to their value, and shed a higher glory upon them; and the modesty which appears so admirable in the expounder of the physical laws of the universe cannot be less becoming or less needful in that of the moral ones. Emerson speaks, however, not as having found merely a few shells and pebbles of truth, but as though he had explored the ocean to its remotest shores, and sounded all its depths. If these professions are not put into so many words, the spirit of them is seen in the undoubting assumption, the confidence of tone, and the reduction. to his own level of every other authority, which pervade his writings, no diviner standard of truth being recognised than exists in his own mind. There is, indeed, a class of persons-rather numerous, we fearto whom this self-asserting and confident tone is of itself a powerful attraction. Men love to consult oracles, however dubious and worthless their responses. To the weak, it is a relief to lean upon the strong. One of the secrets of the power of Popery is its claim to infallibility; and there are no views so absurd, and no pretensions so extravagant,

but that a leader, with unlimited self-confidence, will find followers, from Mahomet downwards to Joanna Southcote or Joseph Smith.

The message of the prophet, however, is of more importance than his mode of delivering it; and we must now proceed to consider the matter of Emerson's teachings. And first, his system-if system it can be called which has but little form "distinguishable in member, joint, or limb"-is one which cuts away the roots of an external revelation, and entirely destroys the authority of the sacred Scriptures. In the "Essay on Self-Reliance" he says:-"The relations of the soul to the Divine Spirit are so pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. If, therefore, a man claims to know and speak of God, and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old, mouldered nation in another country, in another world, believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak, which is its fulness and completion? Is the parent better than the child, into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past?" "This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a value on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children, who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talent and character they chance to see, painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered these words, they understand them, and are willing to let the words go; for at any time they can use words as good, when occasion comes.' A part of this appears to mean that, of whatever value the Scriptures may have been in the world's infancy, they are now unnecessary, as the richer and riper intellect of modern days has outgrown such elementary instructions, and prophets like Mr. Emerson can at any time speak "words as good" as those of Moses, Isaiah, Paul, or Jesus! Incredible and extravagant as is such an assumption, this is everywhere his doctrine. Any man, by putting himself properly in relation to Nature or the universe, may be as much nspired as prophets and apostles, and teach as divinely as the Son of God himself! Even on this supposition, Mr. Emerson must allow that men in earlier ages and in other countries have been admitted into as close contact and familiar intimacy with the Divine mind as himself. The most commanding minds of all the world may be especially supposed to have enjoyed this privilege; and if they should have left a report of their interviews which has every mark of authenticity and honesty upon it, is not such a report entitled to respectful and even reverential regard? We must say, however, that, in reference to the Scriptures, Mr. Emerson neither speaks with that consistency nor philosophic composure which becomes a seer of such amazing pretensions, nor with the gratitude which the oak should feel to the acorn from which it sprung, or the child to his parent, although he may have outgrown his sire in wisdom. He speaks with apparent animosity of "dead Bible societies." He says Swedenborg and Behmen both failed, "by attaching themselves to the Christian symbol." Swedenborg, it seems, would have been perfect, had it not been for scriptural theology, which he can hardly forgive, for having spoiled so fine an intellect. Of Plato he says:-"It is almost the sole deduction from his merit that his