ing, and conviction. Form as such he did not cultivate. He was careful and conscientious in his rhetorical culture, and it is perfectly evident that he had trained himself to use his mother tongue with effectiveness. We hear of skilful debate and of careful literary culture during his university days. But his diction was alive with the energy of his thought and feeling. Hence there is but little in his style as such that arrests attention to itself, and nothing that is odd or obtrusive because self-conscious, as in the style of Carlyle, with which Robertson was familiar, but which he never allowed to influence him in his own method of expression. The notable thing is that there is so little that is noticeable. We are impressed with the thought and feeling, and not with the form that is their instrument. Form is wholly subordinate to substance, and the result is that the style is impressive in its general fitness to do its work, rather than in any salient peculiarities. Hence, simplicity and naturalness are its fundamental qualities. It is the moral sincerity and reality of the man that explain this unobtrusiveness of diction. in harmony with the best rhetorical and literary culture of our time and is the most appropriate instrument for the work of the pulpit. For this reason Robertson's rhetorical and literary form is worthy of the preacher's study.

It is

The note of reflection is also recognizable in his style. It suggests the serious, solid, discriminating thinker, the man who is a searcher for the truth and who lives in fellowship with it. We find here the diction of a man who never obtrudes the result of his philosophic reflection, but who has been trained to deal with what

is fundamental. By entering the fibre of his thought "like iron atoms into his blood," the products of his study penetrated his diction. It is a type of speech, level to the apprehension of the average man, but it is the speech of a thinker. Hence the quality of perspicuity, of solidity, and of intellectual dignity. Because of this intellectual dignity and strength, it is a balanced style, without an excess of intensity or an overexuberance of fancy. The teaching quality is fundamental, according to his conception of what the preacher's work should be. It speaks to the mind. It is the speech of a man who has taught his mind to deal with principles, and his tongue to utter them in clear, definite, forceful, and often graceful speech. The quality of intellectual comprehensiveness is manifest in his style, and discloses his skill in crowding large thoughts into small compass of form. But the quality of intellectual discrimination, definiteness, and accuracy is not the less manifest, and the discriminating quality of his statement is often associated with cogency and felicity of statement.

The idealistic quality of his mind is also manifest in his style. Thought is represented in the diction of the imagination. It is therefore the suggestive style. He illustrates from nature, art, literature, and from the higher ranges of human experience, and his language is attractive in its semi-poetic glow. He draws largely from the tragic aspects of human life, and his sympathy with suffering and sorrowing men, and especially with the Great Sufferer, imparts a tone of seriousness, often of sadness, and not infrequently a tone of most impressive solemnity to his speech. The diction that expresses his moods, whether of the higher inspirations or of the sadder

sympathies, are most felicitous in their grace of movement, as well as most forceful in their intensity, moving at once the conscience and the heart as with great prophetic voice.

Perhaps the emotional and ethical intensity of his nature, what may be called the martial quality of the man, is most readily recognized in his style. It is the language of a soul keyed to the highest pitch of intensity. The opening sentences of his discourses are deliberate, reflective, and discriminating, speaking tranquilly to the mind, and awakening mental interest in the truth in hand. The close of the sermon is sometimes shot through as with a flame of moral and emotional passion that is almost overwhelming. The words are short, the sentences are compact, great thoughts are crowded into small compass, and great emotions explode in short, sharp, abrupt vocal utterances. It is like the short, sharp, double-quick of a soldier. It is no leisurely movement, for passion sways the soul. The architecture of the sentence is twisted, words involuted, stress words repeated, ictus thrown where impression is sought, order of the sentence wrecked, and fragments regathered in new form. It is the vocabulary and the syntax of concentrated energy. It is the voice of a prophet who is straitened within himself till his message be given, and his mission be accomplished.

We have lingered wholly with the beneficent lessons of Robertson's short and remarkable life, for one finds almost nothing that was not beneficent. But if we were looking for admonition, we might find it in his too subjective life. He lived too much in his emotions, and could not emancipate himself from their tyranny. He

had his own inner world, where he did not always find a comfortable home. He brooded too much upon his own subjective states. It was in much an unhealthy life. It lacked a certain steadiness which is the gift of the healthier mind. He was restless and the victim of extreme revulsions. Physical disease, temperament, an overwrought brain, the conditions of life, explain it. If he had not anchored at historic Christianity, he might have been wrecked. Even as it was, he sometimes laid disproportionate stress upon the subjective experiences of the individual in validating the claims of Christianity, and as the measure of all objective religious truth. Hence he wavered: and yet, when we recall the singular impressiveness of his solemn earnestness; when we remember that those penetrating utterances, those outcries of his restless spirit, were wrung out of the agonies of that wondrous inner life; when we remember that his great message came out of the struggles of his soul and that these struggles are part of its very substance and form, we come back to the conviction that just here was the hiding of his power, and we say with ourselves that we would not have this disquieted, passionate soul other than it was. We echo the words that stand upon the marble at Brighton: "He awakened the holiest feelings in poor and in rich, in ignorant and learned. Therefore is he lamented as their guide and comforter."

H

CHAPTER III

HENRY WARD BEECHER

FROM the most gifted English preacher of his century we readily pass to the most brilliant of American preachers. Robertson and Beecher belong to the same period, came into prominence at the same time, and may be classed as representatives of the same broad school. Beecher was the elder born by nearly three years, but the same year in which Robertson entered upon his short but brilliant career at Brighton Beecher began his longer, more varied and eventful, and not less brilliant, career in Brooklyn. Strikingly divergent in type of genius and of culture, in delicacy of intellectual and æsthetic fibre, and in the processes of their development, they still share much in common. They were born preachers and intellectual leaders of men. They were men of like independence of spirit, breadth, and intensity of sympathy, and of the same quenchless Anglo-Saxon courage. They belong to the same general school of religious thought, and they look out upon God's kingdom from the same general point of view. They were both subject to influences that wrought strong intellectual and spiritual revulsions, and they both modified and enlarged their views in the process of their development. They exhibit like humanistic and philanthropic tendencies, are path-breakers in the work. of the Christian pulpit, and may be classed as epochmaking men in modern preaching.