CONTENTS. ESSAYS. ON THE ELOQUENCE OF THE PULPIT. Oh! ye cold-hearted, frozen formalifts! Shall Heaven, which gave us ardour, and has fhewn YOUNG'S NIGHT THOUGHTS. ONE of the chief faults of the generality of those writers who profefs to deliver precepts for the fuccefsful cultivation of any branch of literature, feems to be expreffing themselves in too loose and general a way; instead of practically adapting their obfervations to the parti cular B cular fubject treated of. Thus we have many didactic pieces on Eloquence in general, but few, which confider its particular modifications. One of these, the most important and moft neglected, the eloquence of the pulpit, it may be useful to make a few reflections on. The number of our preachers is immenfe-their education must be clafficaltheir endeavours fhould be zealous. It is, however, a furprising truth that, in general, (though, certainly, not in all cafes) their weekly floods of oratory are diverfified, if they ftart not out into extravagance, but by different gradations of dullness! 1 The chief caufe of this want of energy, where every exertion of human intellect is called for, I believe to be custom. It is a generally-received opinion, handed down to us from our ancestors, and fanctioned by hereditary error, that, in a preacher, nothing more is neceffary than found found doctrine, delivered in a plain, unanimated manner. This opinion is not the more juft, for being general. Though the audience may not condemn, they will sleep; and of a moral truth, or a religious exhortation, caught up in the intervals of repose, the memory is not very tenacious. Befides, when we confider that the drowsy orator is combating, or should be combating, our deareft pleasures, our moft cherished habits, vices implanted by imitation, rooted by cuftom, and nourifhed by paffion, we cannot wonder that his warfare is not very fuccessful. In order to the improvement of which the fubject I am treating of, is fufceptible, a change fhould, I apprehend, be made in the fituation and felection of the perfons appropriated to the moft honourable, and (it fhould be) most useful clafs of fociety, the clergy. Let not the father of a family, when he discovers in one of his boys a droning mediocrity of talent, a temper callously infenfible, or per |