Achilles, but in another race, another warfare.  Born of a noble family, naturally endowed with sensitiveness and ideality to appreciate all the amenities and suavities of that brilliant sphere, the sacrifice must have been inconceivably great for him to renounce favor and preferment, position in society,—­which, here in England, means more than Americans can ever dream of,—­to descend from being a court chaplain, to become a preacher in a Baptist dissenting chapel.  Whatever may be thought of the correctness of the intellectual conclusions which led him to such a step, no one can fail to revere the strength and purity of principle which could prompt to such sacrifices.  Many, perhaps, might have preferred that he should have chosen a less decided course.  But if his judgment really led to these results, I see no way in which it was possible for him to have avoided it.  It was with an emotion of reverence that I contrasted the bareness, plainness, and poverty of the little chapel with that evident air of elegance and cultivation which appeared in all that he said and did.  The sermon was on the text, “Now abideth faith, hope, and charity, these three.”  Naturally enough, the subject divided itself into faith, hope, and charity.

His style calm, flowing, and perfectly harmonious, his delivery serene and graceful, the whole flowed over one like a calm and clear strain of music.  It was a sermon after the style of Tholuck and other German sermonizers, who seem to hold that the purpose of preaching is not to rouse the soul by an antagonistic struggle with sin through the reason, but to soothe the passions, quiet the will, and bring the mind into a frame in which it shall incline to follow its own convictions of duty.  They take for granted, that the reason why men sin is not because they are ignorant, but because they are distracted and tempted by passion; that they do not need so much to be told what is their duty, as persuaded to do it.  To me, brought up on the very battle field of controversial theology, accustomed to hear every religious idea guarded by definitions, and thoroughly hammered on a logical anvil before the preacher thought of making any use of it for heart or conscience, though I enjoyed the discourse extremely, I could not help wondering what an American theological professor would make of such a sermon.

To preach on faith, hope, and charity all in one discourse—­why, we should have six sermons on the nature of faith to begin with:  on speculative faith; saving faith; practical faith, and the faith of miracles; then we should have the laws of faith, and the connection of faith with evidence, and the nature of evidence, and the different kinds of evidence, and so on.  For my part I have had a suspicion since I have been here, that a touch of this kind of thing might improve English preaching; as, also, I do think that sermons of the kind I have described would be useful, by way of alterative, among us.  If I could have but one of the two manners, I should prefer our own, because I think that this habit of preaching is one of the strongest educational forces that forms the mind of our country.