As for the solemn question, how far Scotch preaching answers the great end of all right preaching, it is hard to speak.  No doubt it is a great thing to arouse the somewhat comatose attention of any audience to a discourse upon religion, and any means short of clap-trap and indecorum are justified if they succeed in doing so.  No man will be informed or improved by a sermon which sets him asleep.  Yet it is to be feared that, in the prevailing rage for what is striking and new, some eminent preachers sacrifice usefulness to glitter.  We have heard discourses concerning which, had we been asked when they were over, What is the tendency and result of all this?—­what is the conclusion it all leads to?—­we should have been obliged to reply, Only that Mr. Such-a-one is an uncommonly clever man.  The intellectual treat, likewise, of listening to first-class pulpit oratory, tends to draw many to church merely to enjojr it.  Many go, not to be the better for the truth set forth, but to be delighted by the preacher’s eloquence.  And it is certain that many persons whose daily life exhibits no trace of religion, have been most regular and attentive hearers of the most striking preachers.  We may mention an instance in point.  When Mr. Caird was one of the ministers of Edinburgh, he preached in a church, one gallery of which is allotted to students of the University.  A friend of ours was one Sunday afternoon in that gallery, when he observed in the pew before him two very rough-looking fellows, with huge walking-sticks projecting from their great-coat pockets, and all the unmistakable marks of medical students.  It was evident they were little accustomed to attend any place of worship.  The church, as usual, was crammed to suffocation, and Mr. Caird preached a most stirring sermon.  As he wound up one paragraph to an overwhelming climax, the whole congregation bent forward in eager and breathless silence.  The medical students were under the general spell.  Half rising from their seats they gazed at the preacher with open mouths.  At length the burst was over, and a long sigh relieved the wrought-up multitude.  The two students sank upon their seat, and looked at one another fixedly:  and the first expressed his appreciation of the eloquence of what he had heard by exclaiming half aloud to his companion, ‘Damn it, that’s it.’

The doctrine preached in Scotch pulpits is now almost invariably what is termed evangelical.  For a long time, now long gone by, many of the clergy preached morality, with very inadequate views of Christian doctrine.  We cannot but notice a misrepresentation of Dr. Hanna, in his Life of Chalmers.  Without saying so, he leaves an impression that all the clergy of the Moderate or Conservative party in the Church held those semi-infidel views which Chalmers entertained in his early days.  The case is by no means so.  Very many ministers, not belonging to the movement party, held truly orthodox opinions, and did their pastoral work as faithfully as ever Chalmers did after