greatness, what unequal levies of legal payments, what spiteful suits, what depopulations, what usuries, what violences abound everywhere! The sighs, the tears, the blood of the poor, pierce the heavens, and call for a fearful retribution. This is a sour grape indeed, and that makes God to wring his face in an angry detestation.

"Drunkenness is the next: not so odious in the weakness of it, as in the strength. Oh, woful glory! Strong to drink. Woe is me! how is the world turned beast! what bousing, and quaffing, and whiffing, and healthing is there on every bench, and what reeling and staggering in our streets! What drinking by the yard, the die, the dozen! What forcing of pledges! what quarrels for measure and form! How is that become an excuse of villany, which any villany might rather excuse, 'I was drunk!' How hath this torrent, yea, this deluge of excess in meats and drinks, drowned the face of the earth, and risen many cubits above the highest mountains of religion and good laws! Yea, would God I might not say that which I fear and shame and grieve to say, that even some of them which square the ark for others, have been inwardly drowned, and discovered their nakedness. That other inundation scoured the world; this impures it. And what but a deluge of fire can wash it from so abominable filthiness?

"Let no popish eavesdropper now smile to think what advantage I give by so deep a censure of our own profession. Alas! these sins know no difference of religions. Would God they themselves were not rather more deep in these foul enormities! We extenuate not our guilt; whatever we sin, we condemn it as mortal; they palliate wickedness, with the fair pretence of veniality. Shortly, they accuse us; we, them; God, both.

"But where am I? How easy is it for a man to lose himself in the sins of the time! It is not for me to have my

habitation in these black tents; let me pass through them running. Where can a man cast his eye, not to see that which may vex his soul?

"Here, bribery and corruption in the seats of judicature; there, perjuries at the bar: here, partiality and unjust connivancy in magistrates; there, disorder in those that should be teachers: here, sacrilege in patrons; there, simoniacal contracts in unconscionable Levites: here, bloody oaths and execrations; there, scurril profaneness: here, cozening in bargains; there, breaking of promises: here, perfidious underminings; there, flattering supparasitations: here, pride in both sexes, but especially the weaker; there, luxury and wantonness: here, contempt of God's messengers; there, neglect of his ordinances, and violation of his days. The time, and my breath would sooner fail me, than this woful bead-roll of wickedness."

The following is from a sermon entitled, "Life a Sojourning:"

"It is a true observation of Seneca, Velocitas temporis,' saith he, ‘The quick speed of time is best discerned when we look at it passed and gone;' and this I can confirm to you by experience. It hath pleased the providence of my God so to contrive it, that this day, this very morning, fourscore years ago, I was born into the world. A great time since,' you are ready to say; and so indeed it seems to you that look at it forward; but to me that look at it as past, it seems so short that it is gone like a tale that is told, or a dream by night, and looks but like yesterday. "It can be no offence for me to say, that many of you who hear me this day, are not like to see so many suns walk Yea, what speak I of

over your heads, as I have done.

this? There is not one of us that can assure himself of his continuance here one day. We are all tenants at will;

and, for aught we know, may be turned out of these clay cottages at an hour's warning. Oh then, what should we do, but, as wise farmers, who know the time of their lease is expiring, and cannot be renewed, carefully and seasonably provide ourselves for a surer and more during tenure?

"I remember our witty countryman, Bromiard, tells us of a lord in his time, that had a fool in his house, as many great men in those days had, for their pleasure; to whom this lord gave a staff, and charged him to keep it till he should meet with one that were more fool than himself, and, if he met with such a one, to deliver it over to him. Not many years after, this lord fell sick, and indeed was sick unto death. His fool came to see him, and was told by his sick lord that he must now shortly leave him. And whither wilt thou go o?' said the fool. 'Into another world,' said his lord. 'And when wilt thou come again? within a month ?' 'No.'-' Within a year?' 'No.'-'When then?' 'Never.' 'Never ?' 'And what provision hast thou made for thy entertainment there, whither thou goest?' 'None at all.'-' No?' said the fool, 'none at all? Here, take my staff. Art thou going away for ever, and hast taken no order nor care how thou shalt speed in that other world, whence thou shalt never return? Take my staff; for I am not guilty of any such folly as this.''

I have quoted from Bishop Hall's sermons only, as became my present subject of pulpit eloquence. But it is, perhaps, in his lesser works, his meditations, devotions, parables, sayings, that the sweet and tender eloquence of his style is best shown. His works may be safely recommended to the Christian reader, as a treasure-house of holy thoughts and solemn and comforting words.

You will have already seen that we have, in our last preacher, overpast the limits of the first period of the century, and entered on that of civil and religious conflict,

which extended through its whole middle portion. I need not to-night characterize this unhappy period. It was one of those divinely-ordained pangs, which attended the birth of our national freedom. None will deny, that ill things were said and ill things done on both sides; few will maintain now, that either of the great parties in our state has any right to rise up and charge the other with the calamities which then happened, or the crimes which were then committed. It is high time that all such recriminations should for ever cease, and should give way to our universal gratitude to Him who has manifested to us such signal national mercies: who is knitting our hearts together as one family round our throne and our Bible. It is in such a spirit that I would approach the second period of the seventeenth century. Our first great preacher belonging especially to this troubled time is Bishop JEREMY TAYLOR, who is not unjustly named the English Chrysostom. In genius, imaginative power, weight of persuasive eloquence, Taylor is incomparably the greatest orator of our country. If he is not in all respects, it is because his brilliant parts are carried to excess. He is singularly defective in judgment; overworks his most beautiful thoughts; where one or two lovely flowers (and whose so lovely as his?) sufficed. he pours on blooms of all hues and odours, till the reader sickens with sweetness. At the same time, let it not for a moment be denied that Taylor is one of the mightiest masters, both of thought and speech, who have written in our tongue. Shakspeare, Milton, Spenser, Taylor, would, perhaps, be the right order of our four greatest masters of imagination. Nor is Taylor's power confined to the imagi nation; though, from my unwillingness that you should lose some of his exquisite similes, it is from that portion of his masterpieces chiefly that I shall select my quotations. Born the son of a barber in an humble street in Cambridge;

then placed first at that University and then at Oxford; then rector of Uppingham; expelled and in want; thence a chaplain in the king's army; then lying hid in retirement in the beautiful vale of Towy, in South Wales; imprisoned, promoted; at one time mingling with rough soldiers or rude villagers, at another, with the band of elegant and learned cavaliers who sought the shelter of Golden Grove; and all this with a keen eye for whatever could glitter in description, or melt into pathos, or draw the cords of persuasion,all life was made tributary to his genius; and air, and earth, and sea, and the habits and interests of men, and the stores and illustrations of ancient lore, seemed all to crowd their contributions into the exuberant treasure-house of his eloquence. But I must content myself to-night with a few specimens-alas, how few!-and leave to your own reading the further establishment of what I have said. There is a truly delightful little work-"Bishop Jeremy Taylor, a Biography," by Mr. Willmott, Incumbent of Bearwood, Berks. To this I can safely refer you for every information which time does not permit me to give to-night about Taylor.

I will introduce my specimens with one pleasingly characteristic of the man: he writes from his refuge in exile, Golden Grove, near Caermarthen :

:

"I am fallen into the hands of publicans and sequestrators, and they have taken all from me; what now? Let me look about me. They have left me the sun and moon, fire and water, a loving wife, and many friends to pity me, and some to relieve me; and I can still discourse, and unless I list, they have not taken away my merry countenance, and my cheerful spirit, and a good conscience; they have still left me the providence of God, and all the promises of the Gospel, and my religion, and my hopes of heaven, and my charity to them too; and still I sleep and digest, I eat and