MIRACULOUS LEGENDS. 143 There is a story of the same kind, of bread turned into a stone, related by Sozomen. An heretic of the sect of the Macedonians had a wife of the same sect. The man was converted by Chrysostom, and used many arguments, in vain, to bring over his stubborn spouse. At last he told her that if she would not receive the Lord's Supper with him at church, he would live with her no longer. She consented, but was resolved to deceive him, and instead of eating the bread which the minister gave her, she took some which she had brought with her; but as she was biting it, it was turned into a stone in her mouth, a stone neither in substance nor colour like other stones, and bearing upon it the impression of her teeth, which made her repent and publicly confess her crime. This happened about the end of the fourth century, and Sozomen can supply us with an hundred miracles as good. His sending unbelievers to the church to look at the stone which was kept there as a rarity was very judicious. I would willingly have paid a greater deference to the authority and testimony of this pious father and martyr concerning visions and miracles; and if I dissent from him, it is not without some reluctance. I have no notion of differing from worthy persons, living or dead, for the sake of singularity or of contradiction, in which I can discern no charms, and neither pleasure nor profit. To an opinion commonly received, and received by good men, when I cannot assent, I am inclined to say, "Invitus, Regina, tuo de littore cessi." But alas! Opinion is a queen who will not accept of such excuses: "Illa solo fixos oculos aversa tenebat; Nec magis incepto vultum sermone movetur, Origen and other ancient Christians ascribed to our Saviour this saying-" Act like skilful bankers, rejecting what is bad, and retaining what is good." This precept is proper for all who apply themselves to the study of religious antiquiGood and bad money is offered to them, and they ought to beware of the coin which will not pass current in the republic of letters and in the critical world, and of that which is found light when weighed in the balance of the sanctuary. PULPIT ORATORS. A PREACHER Who writes a new sermon every week, produces a thousand in twenty years, and we have no doubt that many a minister might boast an unpublished authorship, quite as extensive as the hundred printed octavos of Sir Walter Scott. Nor are the instances few where all this elaborate preparation has been gone through for the sake of a very limited auditory. The inhabitants of a rural hamlet, the frequenters of a village chapel, have monopolised the whole of it. Could we conceive a poet or a pamphleteer issuing a weekly publication to the inhabitants of a Pitcairn's Island or an Iona, we should have a case somewhat equivalent to the conscientious and unambitious pastor, who spends the best part of his time preparing for his scanty audience the weekly quota of exhortation and instruction, and who feels it "an over-payment of delight," if now and then a sinner is converted from the error of his ways, or if a parishioner shews symptoms of incipient amendment. What becomes of all the sermons? We do not mean, What becomes of all the manuscripts? for many sermons were never written; but, What is the result or product from all this preaching? In our melancholy moods, we are apt to fear that it is very small. Is it not a rare thing to hear of a district solemnised, and devoting even temporary attention to the concerns of eternity? Is it not rare to find so much as an individual, on whom a change so conspicuous has taken place, as to deserve the name of conversion? How many ministers can point to infidels whom their preaching has convinced, or drunkards whom it has sobered? How often is a sermon followed by the healing of a family feud, or the setting up of family worship,-by the restitution of stolen property, or by the discontinuance in a locality of some cruel or demoralising amusement? Yet, occasionally such effects do follow, and assuredly they would not be rare were they sought more habitually and more hopefully. But after their first efforts, it would almost appear as if many ministers ceased to realise their mission, and no longer looked for the help of the Holy Spirit. They and their audience take up a relative position, which is henceforth never more to alter-a professional solemnity on the one side, a respectful non-attention on the other. Year after year steals on, during which the ecclesiastical sing-song or orthodox common-places are drawled forth in hepdomadal instalments to drowsy church-wardens, or less comatose deacons; and, unless it emerge from some funeral occasion, there does not swell up from the flat dry surface a single impressive idea, a single burst of urgent appeal or genuine emotion. In as far as abiding impression or moral result is concerned, the effect is much the same when that voice in the pulpit is hushed, and when that bell in the steeple is broken: a sacred and familiar sound has passed away, but it will soon be replaced by another, of different pitch and tone perhaps, but destined in its turn to diffuse, through half-shut ears, the same Sabbatic lullaby. During the eighteenth century, at the rate of ten thousand every Sunday, fifty millions of sermons must have proceeded from the pulpits of England. Of these we may assume that the best are still extant; and if we set aside those discourses which were preached by the evangelists of the Great Revival, and which we shall have occasion to notice in a subsequent section, they give us, on the whole, a dreary sense of impotence and poverty; and as we turn over the broad-margined volumes, so jejune and vapid, our first wonder is how men could have the patience to consign such inanities to paper; our next wonder is how people could be found to listen to such effusions when preached, to buy and peruse them when printed. Our British literature presents no other expanse so dull and desolate; and to compile the beauties of Smalridge and Moss, Stennett and Guyse, would be a task as agreeable and as remunerative, as the virtuoso's who should try to gather gems in a bricklayer's yard, or who would fill his portfolio with mountain sketches from a rolling prairie. We shall do the best that we can for our readers; but even amongst the most admired preachers of Queen Anne's, and the earlier Georgian eras, they must not expect much fertility of thought, or fervour of spirit. BISHOP ATTERBURY. FRANCIS ATTERBURY was born at Middleton Keynes, in Buckinghamshire, March 6, 1663. At Christ Church, Oxford, he early obtained the reputation of a first-rate classical scholar; and in editing an Anthology of Latin Poems by Italian Bards, and in aiding his pupil Boyle, afterwards Earl of Orrery, in his famous controversy with Bentley, he found some employment for his vigorous mind, and an outlet for his multifarious acquisitions. But his turn was active, and his tastes were rhetorical, and the Lower House of Convocation, as well as the pulpit, furnished an arena more congenial than the cloisters of a college. At an early period appointed chaplain to King William and Queen Mary, he rose to the highest place among the preachers of the day; and as the champion of the rights of Convocation, his zealous churchmanship gave him a position by which he profited in the subsequent reign. In 1712, he was made Dean of Christ Church, and in the year following his promotion culminated in the mitre and the episcopal throne of Rochester. This last he had occupied for ten years, when, by a startling disclosure, he was hurled from his high estate. A correspondence was brought to light implicating him in efforts to restore the Pretender, and notwithstanding his own ingenious and eloquent defence, a bill of pains and penalties was carried |